Latest / WoT Spoilers / Questions of Control, A Message in Haste, & Gambits - The Gathering Storm chapters 17, 18, & 19 - EP523

Transcript

Questions of Control, A Message in Haste, & Gambits - The Gathering Storm chapters 17, 18, & 19 - EP523 · WoT Spoilers

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: This is the Wheel of Times podcast.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: The fact that this is titled Questions of Control and
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: we are having so many issues with internet control and
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: sound control and controlling ourselves to actually sit down and
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: do this chapter. I have some questions about the control
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: going on here for sure. For sure. Yeah, and it's
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: a Blacksmith's puzzle. Is that the same icon you have?
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess because Parent gets a POV later.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, that's right, he.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: Gets the second POV of the chapter. But like I
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: just I forgot.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: That he was also in this chapter.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: You put the parent symbol on the floor beans, it
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: should have been the cads Swain.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Symbol, right, the stars in the moon. She's got her
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: own symbol. Use it or a forsaken symbol, right, Like
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: we're just beans. Yes, that would be a great icon.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Beans on the floor, Beans.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: Just flattered cans of Bush's baked beans just across farmboard.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I would love a styled icon of baked beans on
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: the floor in the style of the chapter headers.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: All right, you heard people get out there.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: It's like a can and a splatter and a few
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: beans on it, and then like, oh.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: My god, what is this gift? In a chat? It's
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: a shark glove just chomping on a bowl of baked beans.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's disgusting and terrible.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I feel like you could label that shark Codswain posted
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: on some places and call it a real time gift
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: and it would definitely get some dressing rock.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: What did I say, like it's a it's a bad time.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: The hand is cod Swain, the shark.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you could definitely put that, yeupmh y?
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: All right, all right, let's dig into this sucker. Do
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: you want to?
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: I don't, but I will.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Do it. I'll do it, or I'll rub your face
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: in it.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: No no, no, no, no no no no no. Questions
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: of control Chapter seventeen are simple as the Blacksmiths puzzle
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: icon read in. Uh, you should be more careful, Sirian
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: said from inside the room the armorland seat. We have
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: much influence with her your punishments. We may be able
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: to persuade her to lessen them if you are helpful.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Samarad just sniff of disdain was quite audible to Kat's Swayn,
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: sitting from the hallway outside the interrogation room. Sitting in
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: a comfortable log chair, Kat's Swain sipped at a cup
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: of warm sweet leaf. The hallway was of simple wood
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: carpeted with a long maroon and white rug, prison like
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: lamps on the walls, flickering with light. There were several
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: others in the hallway with her, digging on arion Elsa,
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: whose turn it was to maintain Semarag's shield. Aside from Kadswain,
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: each Isadai in the camp took turns. It was too
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: dangerous to risk forcing the duty only on the eyes
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: tode of lesser of lesser stature, lest they grow weary.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: The shield had to remain strong. Light only knew what
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: would happen if Semarag got free. Kat Swain sipped her
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: tea her back to the wall. Al Thor had insisted
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: that his eyes to daye be allowed opportunities to interrogate
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Semarag instead of just those Kadswain had chosen. She wasn't
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: certain if this was some attempt at asserting his authority,
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: or if he genuinely thought that they might succeed where
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: she so far had failed. And I got it there,
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: that's uh the situation.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, who how would we ever figure out what it's
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: going to happen if Semarrog gets free. Oh wait hm
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: hmmmm a few chapters from now. Yeah.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: I mean it's good for shadowing to ratchet up the
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: tension of like we have this panicky horse that's also
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: rabid held on a fraying round. You're just waiting for
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: it to finally get loose. Check off's forsaken basically basically.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and in the way that they never really was,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: like what happens if Mugetiing gets free, she's going to
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: do It's like no, if she gets free, she's gonna
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: escape and bow revenge and suck at it like we're
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: not worried about We're not that worried about it. Yeah.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: So you've got this cycle of women questioning samarrog in
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: a very respectful way, which is apparently the downfall of
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: all the questions because they're worried about offending her and
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: that gives her the upper hand.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: I don't think they're worried about offending her. I think
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: they're just like treating her with respect, Like what she
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: has to say carries any kind of weight. It's like
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: in fairness, they are asking her important questions. So like,
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: but yeah, they're treating her with kid gloves. Has Matt suits,
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: like they have just this level of like, oh, no,
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: everything's going to blow up if we don't. And also
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: like they're threatening her with non existent torture and non
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: existent reprieve from inevitable execution. Like everything they're saying to
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: her has no meaningful weight behind it, right, but it
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: comes cloaked in this like on a silver platter, please
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: don't bite me kind of energy. No wonder, She feels
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: in control, no wonder.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Right right, you know, we get some some internal thoughts
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: from Cotswain about how she tracked down the dragons basically
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: to get clout so that when the Dragon Reborn was around,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: she could deal with a man who could channel like
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: her whole taking down other male channelers. Oh that's just
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: to get me like in position to deal with the
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Dragon Reborn.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: I mean kind of is like a really pie in
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: the sky contingent.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: It's like if you're a little kid and you're like,
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: there's going to be a Mars program someday, so I'm
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: going to make sure i'm the very best athlete and
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: able to get into the Mars program when it definitely
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: gets initiated and I'm not too old.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: And then she complains that Mars sucks. She's like, I
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: got here and it's dry and it's cold, and he
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: doesn't like me very much, and he's not doing what
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: I want him to do.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: I'm not getting the accolades I was expecting for being
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: first to do this well exactly.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's some complaining that RAN's not being accommodating
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: to her needs or desires.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she's also really mad at everyone else in the
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: space program for being.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: A bunch of videos.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: She like, she literally has the line. At times, it
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: seemed half her allies were only determined to make her
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: job harder, Like she is doing the most thankless impossible
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: task as she sees it.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, in fairness, they did plunge the probe into
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: the surface of the moon twice, so I understand where
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: she's coming from. Where it's like, yeah, you know, why
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: is everybody around me an idiot? Because everyone around you
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: is just not very smart. I don't know what to
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: tell you, Like they're all corrupted by the black Aja,
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: and these weakened cracks have been seeping through the tower
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: that you is one of the most powerful and longest
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: standing I said, I maybe should have thone something about
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: over the last three hundred years. Now, just leave that
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: to var Varen's got it.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: No, Kat's Wade is very convinced of her own importance
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: in ways that have made her less than perfectly.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Effective because she's isolated herself, and so she's let the
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: corruption run free through the organization while making herself very powerful.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: Toxic individualism combined with actual competence is frightening combo.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: And you know, a huge power up in those tarangrial right,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: those things make her the equivalent of almost any other
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: channeler in the world, not to mention she's already really powerful.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and she's kind of let the rest of them
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: wander around on their own and is then critiquing them
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: for not being as smart as her when it's like
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: you could have been participating in any of the group discussions.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Oh I do. I always wonder this, But she's also
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: has an ngreoll in her jewelry. Correct, Yeah, so I
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: always wonder if like land Fear, because land Fear carries
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: around a tarr ungreal that I think gives her the
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: low We always talked about that, the low level compulsion
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: that makes everybody fall in love with her. That what
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: if coat Swayne when she channels uses that terranngriol, and
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: that makes people think she's more powerful than she is,
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: and that puts her at the top level of the
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: like if she's actually just like a slightly weaker channeler
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: than that, and she just always uses a terroranngreoll to
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: fool everybody into thinking she's more powerful to put her
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: at the top of the food chain in the White
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Tower so she doesn't have to deal with fools.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: I would agree with that, except that I'm pretty sure
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: she was ranked highly before she acquired that whole collection.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: But it wouldn't hurt writing hurt to be like, wait,
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: you have ten percent more powerful than I remember, fascinating, Well.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: You know I wasn't quite done, uh growing when I
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: was raised to the Because I'm sure some people continue
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: to get more powerful after they raise to the Shawl. Sure, yeah,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: because the raising to the Shawl has very little to
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: do with finishing getting more powerful in the one power,
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: we don't really know how that works, and I kind.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: Of assumed it would. But yeah, I guess there's nothing.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: Because the training usually keeps you there for like twenty years.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: It should be a moot issue. But yeah, Kat's Wan
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: presumably did it fairly quickly.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if we get the numbers on that,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: but you know, the more powerful people generally do it quickly.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So yeah, we have Samarak basically starting to
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: take control. She's decided that she's bored of the plateau
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: that the conversation is at and wants to escalate, and
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: she begins making demands, being to throw her food on
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: the ground and demand that she'd be brought something else.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: This is her making her first foray into her escape. Basically,
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: this is how she affects her escape in her mind, right,
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: she starts getting to people's heads, getting them to do
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: what she wants, and it's just a matter of iterating
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: from there. This is step one. And then Kat'swayne nips
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: that in the butt because she correctly identifies this as
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: like kind of a.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Now or never moment and sort of really yeah, that
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: measure of awe is the word she brings up, like,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: how can you not feel awe? And it's like, oh,
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: that's the problem is we're feeling awe from this whatever
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: that is, whatever that awe is, but that like, oh
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: I think I felt it when I was like around
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Brandon Saane, like, I went to Sanderson for a signing
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: and it was just like it made me freeze up.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god, this is Brandon Sanderson
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: who's signing the book I'm holding, and like it was
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: just this and I felt that awe that I feel
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: like you would feel coming off a forsaken.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: Brandon Sanderson A foresaken.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I am absolutely Batman made a deal with
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: some fricking devil to write that many books that fast,
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: That is not humanly possible. I'm convinced he has powers
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: that are not of this world.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: That's fair, that's fair.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No, he's he's pure evil, pure period.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: That's why we like his books exactly.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: I can't keep off he's writing too much. Yeah, the
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: devil also has a team. They're called Devils.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But I think it is really important to consider
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: who we are treating with awe and why, because sometimes
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: some people are given a level of deference that they
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: do not fucking deserve, and you just need to call
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: out that the emperor has no fucking clothes sometimes, and
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: that's really kind of the essence of what Katshwayne is doing,
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: is saying that the emperor has no clothes, but in
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: this case it's more of a Oh my god, there's a.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Beans carlg rule, liligion, you rule so much like a
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Celtic nod with a can of beans just flattered across it.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Beans on the ground, plastic. I'm loving it. Oh wow, Yeah,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: that's exactly what I pictured, is just the beans on
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: the ground. Oh god, yeah.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: So yeah. Katswain decides to treat Semarag with the opposite
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: of a measure of awe and see if that will work.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: And it does, I guess.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: It's so she she summons a bunch of maids, She
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: gets everybody around, she spanks her first.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: So Katswain walks in the room, addresses Semarag as a child,
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: positions her for a bit of spanking. Also requests that
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: a bunch of low ranked people get brought in. Gives
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: a wee bit of a spank. Demands that the beans
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: be eaten. Gives more of a spank. Demands that the
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: beans get eaten, gives more of a spank, gets the
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: beans eaten. It's it's it's a thing that happens, and
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: the relevant part is that, like, there is a stable
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: boy and a maid and a janitor and like another
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: maid and like that is who is standing there looking
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: at cad Swain with a measure of awe. Cad Swain
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: is now the one that everyone is in awe of.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: End Semarog is the object that is being used to
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: demonstrate Kadswain's power, and that is the inversion that kad
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: Swain saw as how to break Samarog.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, I it's spanking. It's spanking again.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: It's and it really is driving in on the humiliation
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: aspect of it that it's not the pain of being
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: spanked is the humiliation of eating beans off the floor.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: That's like really what gets her? And like, I don't know, man,
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: I've been chronically embarrassed my whole life by existing. I
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: don't know that I get this mechanism.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: I don't really either. And and the fact that like
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: repeated spanking is what gets her to eat the beans
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: that somehow the spanking is worse than eating the beans
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: off the floor. When I'm like Sammarog would just like
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: she'd be like, spank me, it's painful whatever.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the humiliation of being span is worse than the
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: humiliation of eating floor.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Beans, right right?
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: And don't I don't think so. I think I take
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: the beating over the fucking floor grit mixed in with the.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Beans, especially being summerg and especially like she's prepared to
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: deal with pain. The humiliation of being spanked to me,
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: just doesn't feel significant in front of maids, doesn't feel
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: significant enough, right, Like she's expected to be stripped, naked
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: and tortured with like hooks and shit, right like spanking. Yeah, I.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Again returned to what you pointed out last week, that
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: making her do dishes would have been far more effective. Yeah, definitely, Like,
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: and I'd been thinking that that all week, and it's like, yeah,
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: instead of making her eat beans off the floor, make
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: her do her own dishes like that would genuinely humiliate
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: her so much more.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Robot Radia is.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: Back every twenty minutes, I guess.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: I guess you get about twenty minutes of editing, and
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: then it's like, we get robotic radia.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: For a bit, assume it'll go away.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, see if we see if we can get it
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: to go away in a few minutes. So that's I mean,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: that's it for that scene. I don't have any Like
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: my notes were pretty sparse as we went through that,
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: and have a lot of things I wanted to discuss
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: or anything deeper than that talk about.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: I just want to put in one more, one more
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: defense of Brandon Sanderson that he did write this under
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: dear rest at Harriet's insistence. It's not Sanderson's fault that
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: this scene happened. He is protesting as much as the
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: rest of us. Even if he is a forsaken he
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: does deserve that acknowledgement.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Is that from his statements that he didn't want to
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: put in Floor Beans?
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I have not read those statements directly, but
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: I've seen them referenced repeatedly in other servers, like this
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: is canonical Sanderson lore is that he didn't want it,
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: and Harriet said, you will write floor Beans or you
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: will not write this series. So you know, gotta give
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Sanderson a pat on the shoulder for having having had
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: to go through that. But uh, yeah, that's all I got.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: So so, wait, is this spanking really we've been blaming
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Jordan this whole time? Should we be blaming Harriet? Is
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: she the one who's really into the kinky spanking? Like
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: because the pipes we know is Jordan. But the editor
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: has something to say about this?
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Someone thought easing the badger was funny. That's all I'm saying.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: That's all I'm saying.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: Yep, Yeah, Harriet is the real villain.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: All right. So now we have a little bit of
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: a Parrin pov. This is a pretty short one. This
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: is really just a redirect, I think, sort of talking
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: about gateways and where to go from now. Right, This
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: is him going, Okay, it's time to go find Rand
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: again after all this stuff, after Malden. We've left Malden.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: We're done with that. I have to go find Rand.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: Except we're not done with that because you have a
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: one hundred thousand refugees to resettle, and the math of
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: getting them through gateways is actually a week's long process.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: And we get that sort of oh, there's only we
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: only have one channel, or who can open up a
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: gateway that's big enough, or you know at a time, Really,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: if you're working at shifts, who can get two people through?
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: And if you think about like a massive stadium trying
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: to get out after a game and only having one doorway,
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: like it just takes hours, if not days, to move
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: that many people through a small space. And that's a
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: problem because they can't support it for that long.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I love that. Sanderson is like, no, no, no,
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: you don't get to just escape your plot. You have
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: to deal with logistics.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: I love it, my Lord Grady said, rubbing his weathered face.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: I don't think you understand, then explain it to me.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Paren said. He stood on a hillside, looking down over
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: the huge gathering of refugees and soldiers. Mismatched tents of
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: many different designs, tan, single peaked ideal structures, colorful, large
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: kyrie in in ones, two tip tents of basic design
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: sprang up as the people prepared for the night. The
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: shadow I Yeel, as he hoped, had not given chase.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: They had let Parent's army withdraw, though his scouts said
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: they had now moved in to investigate the city. Either way,
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: it meant Parent had time time to rest, time to
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: limp away, time. He hoped to use gateways to transport away.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Most of the refugees light, but it was a big group,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: thousands upon thousands of people, a nightmare to coordinate and
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: an administer to. His last few days have been filled
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: with an endless stream of complaints, objections, judgments, and papers.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Where did ball we find so much paper? It seemed
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: to satisfy. Many of the people who came to Paren
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: judgments in the settlements of dispute seemed much more official
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: to them when a piece of paper outlined the ball
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: were said. Paren would need a seal. Now, where he's
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: going to get an aquatic animal in this world, I
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: don't know, but apparently.
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: He needs to see approval, yeah, pun book all right, Yeah,
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: So I mean it's he's he's being an administrator right
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: to thousands upon thousands of people, right, All.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Of the people that the Aeel gathered as Guy Shine
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: are now under his purview, plus a bunch of soldiers
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: that he are prisoners that he took I think, yeah,
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: a bunch of a bunch of shidow Did he take
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: a bunch of shidow prisoners?
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because he did a bunch of fighting with Ayeel
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: on his side, so they would have taken Guy Shine
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: in that way.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Right, So in a lot of ways, like he's gathered
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: a giant army and then kind of absorbed a lot
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: of the Malden group, which was gigantic. It was one
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: hundred thousand people, right, Yeah, it's.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: Like one hundred thousand Guy Shine and like one hundred
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: thousand aieel and like a lot of those guy Shine
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: are going to turn into his army, right and.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: And the iel A good amount of the shidow do
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: get away. It wasn't quite the slaughter. I mean, he
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: killed a lot of them, don't get me wrong, but
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: it wasn't the slaughter that I initially thought it was
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: where he wipes them out. A good number of them
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: recombined with Gleina and head back to the Threefold Land.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Thava collects a lot of people and gets out
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: of there. But like a good portion of the active
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: fighting force is what goes down, right while everyone else bails.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Right right, And from the prophecies, we can assume anyone
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: who makes it back to the Threefold Land will quickly
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: become irrelevant and die out in like a generation or three.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, very much, very much so. Yeah, parents still
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: got all these refugees. He's got all these rumors, he's
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: got all this stuff he needs to sort out. And
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: she also has all this achievement angst around having retrieved
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: retrieved Fayil but not talked with her about anything. And
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: he's just kind of like articulating the pivot that he
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: needs to make. And there's a section here tech Go.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Ahead, Oh, I was just saying. He says he had
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: to find a balance somehow, And is that not the
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: theme of this book? Right? I mean, really ran finding
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: his balance up on the mountaintop and then finding the
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: balance between the mission they need to perform and their
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: desires to be human.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And then there's this paragraph here that, for me,
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: is just quintessential neurodivergent representation coming from Paren. Sometimes Paren
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: wondered if his senses weren't actually any better than anyone else's.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: He took the time to notice things that others ignored.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: How could they miss that smell of blood and the
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: crisp air of the mountains to the north. It smelled
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: of home, though there were many leagues from the two rivers.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: If other men took the time to close their eyes
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: and pay attention, would they be able to smell what
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: he did? If they opened those eyes and looked closer
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: at the world around them, would men call their eyes
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: keen as they did parents? No, that was just fancy.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: His senses were better, Like to me, it's just that's
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: so much the autistic sensory sensitivity experience. It's like, you
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: can you really not hear the electricity in the walls.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: I think you're just not listening closely enough.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Does parent have better senses or is he just over stimulated?
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly exactly, And parent has magic, right, Autistic people
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: have synaptic pruning or lack thereof. Like, we actually do
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: have more sensitive senses. It's not just a matter of
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: attention and where you put your attention. But it's like,
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: to what extent are people who think they can't hear
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: things just not slowing down enough? You know? I feel
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: like there's a very real tension there that is part
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: of the human condition totally.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: So we have this whole discussion about the fact that
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: with Grady, about the fact that he can only make
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: a gateway big enough for two people to walk through,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: and Parent's like, well, at least let's just try and
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: send a few people home every day, right. We don't
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: need to necessarily send everybody who wants to go home
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: all at once, but some people do want to go home.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Even if it's a small percentage of his hundreds of
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: thousands of people, it's still hundreds and hundreds, if not
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: thousands of people that do need to go through the gateway.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: That will take time and effort, right, He's like, do
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: a little bit each day, but isn't that the whole Like,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: I guess you'd have to do it in the morning
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: after sleeping there because it some time to learn the place.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: Which would be fine because it takes a whole ass
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: day to move an army, so that aschaman could just
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: be part of who comes at the end train, Like
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: that's not an unrealistic armage. But yeah, I was thinking
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: that too, Like are they going to be able to
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: learn the space fast enough? I guess yeah, overnight, if
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: you do it first thing in the morning with your
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: cup of coffee, then I guess that works.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: And then and then you just make a gateway to
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: the like the wherever the army's the next campsite. You
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: just never would do the walking. You just stay in place,
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: make a gateway to the next campsite. Yeah, stay there.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: And also making a gateway to the place helps you
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: learn that place. So why wouldn't they I don't know,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: But either way, he's portraying these achaman as incredibly exhausted,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: incredibly tired and having them open burned out, they're burned out,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: and having them open a gateway and hold it open
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: for hours and hours and hours at a time just
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem realistic, especially when they need to use them
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: for other things battles, peeling, a hundred other things that
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: channeling is good for.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, nodding.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: This is more of the the whole politics about Paren's
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: night in Barylon's tent. Right, that's a weird one. They
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: still think he cheated with Barylon. Still, Yeah, And it
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: takes Fayelle making an alliance with Berlaine, plus quashing the
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: rumors to really get that one down. I am glad
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: though that Brandon addresses that and gets rid of it.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: I like how Fayel and Berylaine fix it, Like Paren
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: did not make the problem and he does not fix
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: it either. That's entirely Berylen's wheelhouse.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Yep, definitely, No, it's just and again it's one of
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: those things that like, man, this that that fixes a
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: plot line that started way way back in what book
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: four when she was like three God, when she was
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: like I get what I want, I hunt it, I'll
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: take it from you, like this whole back and forth
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: between the two of them, which and Men's prophecy right
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: hawk on one shoulder and the falcon on the other right,
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: there's no doubt that this that helps fulfill it. But
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: everyone everyone's like, oh, the Fayel is so bad for parent,
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, it's not even Fayel, it's Barrelaine that
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: often makes this plotline unreasonably annoying and Fayl's reaction to it.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: But it's really Barreline that I find to be just like,
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: stop trying to take him away from his wife, Like,
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: why is that so crazy? Like everybody else in the world,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: even the other cultures who like aren't so indo fidelity,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: understand it.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do like Fayel and Berylaine finally becoming friends
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: and doing like tag team politics together. So if this
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: is what we needed to get them in the same room,
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: I guess it's fine.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess fine. It just took so long that
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: should have been resolved, like way back when I think,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, that should have helped parents. They
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: should have been together, helping parents rise to power, not
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: fighting it the fighting each other the whole time, and
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: only once he's in power resolving their issues.
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: When Ruark took away their knives and made them stop fighting,
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: he should have actually taken them to like a quiet
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: room and like force them to stay locked in it
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: all night and like talk it out.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's when they should have been resolving this issue.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I think that would have been a better like, Okay,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: it's resolved then and we don't have to worry about
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: it from here on out and they can help each other,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: and then they could have been allies when they were
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: in the camp and all that kind of stuff.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: Anyway's fault.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: This is be a better daddy, come on, I know, right, yeah,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: And like of course they're saying parents should have told
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: fight you about his senses sooner, Like oh my god,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Wheel of time, if two people communicated, would have been
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: half the length, if not shorter, right, Like we just
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: communication and lack of is a problem.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, don't be the wheel of time in your
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: own life. Communicate better than the wheel of time.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, low bar, But you can do a low bar
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: because like in the wheel of time, everybody can read
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: each other's micro movements and understands exactly how they feel
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: and think based on that, or at least think they do.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: In the real world, that is not the case.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: A lot of people think it is, though, so it's
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: worth taking into account.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, I can usually tell them my wife's mad
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: at me, so there's that the only person for it matter.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: But then half the time I am wrong. I'm like,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: are you mad at me? She's like no, I'm in pain,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: or no, work sucked or no, you know, traffic sucked.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, casual wretching, resting bitch face, but just
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: resting autism face. But then plus the RSD to be like,
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: what I'm being rejected? Is the sky falling? Can I
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: crawl to keep the sky from falling? No? I do
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: that all the time.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: What did I do? I was playing a game with
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: somebody and we explained the rules and they were making
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: a move and I was like, that's not how that works.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: We talked about the rules and they're like, oh, but
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: you can understand how I would have thought that, and
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: I was like, no, that's not in the rules. Never
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: later was like, you can't say that to people. You
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: can't say that you don't understand how they got it wrong.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: But I don't understand how you got it wrong. That's
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: clearly not what the rules say. I don't under but
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: you can understand why I got No, I don't. I
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: don't you like Also, I think you purposely misinterpreted it
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: because the rule, the misinterpretation was in your favor. I
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: don't think you misinterpreted it because you actually didn't understand.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: And then you want empathy. No, I'm not giving you
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: empathy for your life. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, so then that's
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: that's that gets me in trouble because like and any
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: other in the social response is oh yeah, totally, I
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: get no, no problem, I get where you got that
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: that rule wrong. We're like, no, you were trying to cheat.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Fuck off. Gets me in trouble. It gets me in trouble.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: It got me in trouble.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, autism be like that.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Then you know, he brings up the old fears about
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: you know, behaving like wolf being locked in the cage.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: That will come up later, but it's basically Moraine instilling
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: this fear of being a wolfman in him, even though
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: she was just completely wrong.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: Oh she was explaining it while they were looking at
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: Gnome in a cage. I mean like she was doing
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: her best with the available information.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: I also feel like it's a giant retcon to be
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: like Gnome was abused by his family because like in
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: that moment we talked about it when we went over
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: that scene, but in the moment, his brother, who seems
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: like this very nice guy, well, we would later find
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: out that's the man who was abusing him and his
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: family and all this kind of stuff, And it doesn't
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: feel like that's the same person in the two scenes.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: That's not how I read it. I read it as
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: that his brother, Simeon was like the person who put
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: him in the cage, but not that he was the abuser.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: My impression was that their father was the abuser. Oh,
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: and that when everything ultimately fell apart and Simeon had
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: to put his brother in a cage, it was not
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: a good day for any of them. Simeon was yelling
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: and threatening, but he was not. I'm pretty sure I
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: read it that their father was the problem.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, but we'll.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: See when we get there, because intergenerational trauma and confused
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: recollections are a normal thing. Yeah, but yeah, I liked
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: getting backstory on Gnome, But it did also feel a
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: little bit like, well, this is the backstory you would expect,
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: and it's like I would have expected a twist.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Right right. Well, yeah, it's just the fact that paren
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: never considers that he didn't He just was kind of
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: had a shitty human life and so he chose to
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: go wolf and like that it wasn't this like, in fact,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: there was nothing there when he reached out to him
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: in that initial like, I don't know, it's just it's
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: it's I like the way it came full circle. But
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: I will this is one moment where I do feel
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: like this wasn't foreshadowed well enough, because I don't feel
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: like it was in I do because here's the thing. Essentially,
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: what Paren learns is that his danger of becoming a
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: wolfman never existed. That everybody finds their own balance, you
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: make your own choice. Nobody ever falls off the deep
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Endnome only chose what he chose because right, And so
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, it just it feels like
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: it invalidates a lot of parents struggle, right because he's
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: always trying to fight this thing that he's scared of,
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: and it's just like, oh, you were just wrong. That
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: just wasn't a thing you had to worry about this
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: whole time. And it just I don't necessarily like the
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: retcon of making Gnome not a wolfman who isn't in
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: control of that and was abused into being what he is.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it sucks to have Paren be running away from
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: a non threat for this many books. But you know,
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: like it is realistic. How many of us do run
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: away from things that don't exist, right, how many of
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: us do warp our lives out of fears for things
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: that are wildly unrealistic? Like, that's true. But after this
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: many books of wanting Parent to figure out what seems
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: obvious to us, to have the obvious thing be the answer,
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: and to have all those threats in fact be nothing,
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: It's just like I wanted a twist. I wanted something surprising,
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: some sort of rabbit's foot, monkey's paw, yeah, monkeys paw
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: kind of thing like something right. Paren was treating it
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: like there was an edge, and Elias could have told
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: him there wasn't a long time ago. Popper could have
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: told him a long time ago, I.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Could have seen, like maybe, hop here's here's what I
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: went to see. Hopper dying in the wolf dream, Paren
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: no reaches out, tries to save Hopper, pulls Hopper's soul
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: into him. Hopper starts to take over his body. He
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: starts to become a wolf man. Hopper says, no, I
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: won't do that and sacrifices himself, right, But in that moment,
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: that's the danger. That's what happened to Nome. Nome took
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: a wolf into himself and basically that wolf now lives
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: in his body something something like that, that sort of
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: danger of like, oh, this is something you can avoid
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: because it's like an action that Nome took that h
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: wiped out his personality that you can actually avoid.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Or he could have just gone through this entire
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: angsty arc like in book four. It could have been
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: a book anxiety and then he just figured it out
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: straight ahead, no twist, and it wouldn't have been unsatisfied
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: because it would have been a single book plot because
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: like it's fine that, Like the question was just that
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: he needs to learn balance and it relates to his
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: acts versus hammer thing, and there's all this like intrinsic
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: like that could have been fine, but you didn't need
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: to take ten books dragging out a non existent threat.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Well, this is where I come back to. I think
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: book eight, nine, and ten could be combined into a
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: single volume, and a lot of what we find objectionable
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: in these later books would be much better, because there's
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: enough in those three books to make one very good book.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: There's the cleansing, there's I mean, there's there's great stuff
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: in there, but it is stretched out on this extended
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: you know. And basically from the end of from Jumai
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: as well as to now is only about three months,
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: you know, and like that it should only be about
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: two books worth of content. I think one of the
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: things we struggle with is, yes, these things happen on
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: a very realistic timeline when we look at like how
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: much the characters change over the beginning books versus when
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: they change over the later books. Right, It's just the
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: later books only take place over like a week, so
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: the characters can't change a lot. We'd be complaining if
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: they changed a lot.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So all I have left for this chapter
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: is Yay, Sanderson is going to take Parent back into
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: the wolfstream and we're going to get cool wolfdream mechanics
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: and that's going to be fun.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Prepare for some anime. Look behind you, I've teleported Shenanigan's
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: going on because he takes Parent into anime fight territory
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: very quickly.
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: And it's fun.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: It's fun.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: It's fair enough that Parents, like half human half animal
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: character gets so much anime magic in the blood I
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: think it pairs nicely.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: And we're going to go right into the chapter eighteen.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: I think, yeah, fish cuts is the fish cut? Chapterrac on,
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: it's just a fish. Fish are cuts inside the fish?
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: There are, but it's the swad fish. Yeah, yes, yes.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: Chapter eighteen a message in.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: Haste, which is the message to Gareth Brynn that the
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: tower has gateways.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Sending the message to Brinn as quickly as
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: possible is kind of Swan's entire purpose.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: In this chapter. Sending a message in haste yep, the
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: zurid in yep.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Swan froze basket of dirty laundry on her hip
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: the moment she walked into the eyesidike it was her
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: own laundry. This time she had finally realized that she
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: didn't need to do both hers and brims. Why not
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: let the novices put in some time on her washing.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: There were certainly enough of them these days, and every
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: one of them crowded the walkway around the pavilion. At
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: the center of camp. They stood arm to arm, a
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: wall of white topped by heads of hair in every
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: natural hue. No ordinary meeting of the Hall would have
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: drawn such attention. Something must be going on. Swan set
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: the wicker laundry basket on a stump, then pulled a
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: towel over it. She didn't trust that sky, although it
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: hadn't rained more than the occasional drizzle in the past week.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: Don't trust a dock master's sky words to live by,
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: even if the consequence only meant a basket of wet
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: clothing soiled. At that, she hurried across the dirt road
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: and stepped up on to one of the wooden walkways.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: The rough boards shifted slightly under foot and creaked with
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: her footfalls as she hurried toward the pavilion. There was
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: talk of replacing the walkways with something more permanent, perhaps
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: as expensive as paving stones. She reached the backs of
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: the gathered women. The last meeting of the hall that
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: had drawn this level of attention had revealed that Oshamon
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: had bonded sisters and that the taint itself had been cleansed.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: Lights said that there weren't any surprises of that size waiting.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: Her nerves were taught enough dealing with Gareth Bloody Brin
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: suggesting that she let him teach her how to hold
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: a sword, just in case. She'd never thought that swords
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: were much use. Besides, who'd never heard of an eyes
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: to die with a weapon? Fighting like a crazed ieeal?
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: Honestly that man. I love her personality. I love her snart,
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: and also I would like to point out that her
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: girlfriend Morain stabbed a woman in the back in New Spring.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: And also Elaine is going to pick up a sword
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: while nine months pregnant and swing it at a trolly,
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: So you know.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Uh, I did think we bring up a dock master's
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: sky again in that read in which she goes over
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: in detail an early chapter what that is, which is, basically,
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: you don't know whether you're going to go a storm
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: or not, so the dog master charges you full rent,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: so you have to risk it. She's not risking getting
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: her clothing wet. I don't know. I like the idea
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: that she figured out that she can make somebody else
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: do her laundry, even if she still has to do
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Gareth Brynd's laundry according to the oath. I like that
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: little getting around of the oath. I thought that was clever.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: And at the end, do you notice the callback to
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: book two? She never thought swords were much use anyway?
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Why is that a call back to book too?
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: Remember when she first meets Nineve and they're in the
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: boat and she's like, oh, yeah, I could make a
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: sword out of air. Doesn't seem very useful. I remember
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: that whole scene.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah yeah,
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: yeah yeah, as long as you got channeling, a sword
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: seems kind of pointless. Yet at the same time, Ninive
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: has shown how effective a punch in the face can be,
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: even when channeling is something that you can do, right, Like,
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: I kind of feel like there's there is this philosophy
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: among certain channelers that fighting's no good, but like Tayim
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: shares that with her right, it's such a weird You've
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: got these people who are like really focused on their
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: channeling and don't necessarily see the value in a good sword,
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: whereas like Moraine Moraines used the hell out of her dagger. Right.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I was saying when my signal was
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: all shot up. Is like Moraine stabbed to bitch in
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: the back in the spring, right, and Elaine is going
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: to pick up a sword during the last battle. Like
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: I said, I do pick up weapons when they have to.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: No, I like Rand's philosophy of like, you should train
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: in the sword a little bit if you're going to
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: be a living weapon, right, Like, you might not always
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: have the power, so maybe train in more than one way.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: To kill, yeah, exactly, or at least defend yourself, like,
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: don't be a one trick pony.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: Well, and then so many of these channelers are just
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: like the glass cannon, right, they're just super vulnerable. It
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: doesn't take that much. No matter how powerful you are,
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: a single arrow can take you out. How many times
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: do they say that over and over and over again, right, Like,
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: having some way to defend yourself with a sword can
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: be because you know, in the fantasy world you can
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: defend yourselves with swords. Whether that's true or not in
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: the real world whatever, I'm not going to go into that.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: And people like swords aren't good defensive weapons. They're really not.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: Okay, get a shield whatever, depends on who you're fighting.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: There is this sort of whole area is going to
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: become I bet a town, right even as after the
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: towers merged, there's enough support people and they're talking about
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: making the walkways more permanent. I bet this whole area becomes.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: A town like the bridge towns.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the bridge towns, right, It's just it's it's a
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: place of commerce, and like gateways kind of make location
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: a little less important because you can like, oh, well,
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: you don't need a bridge right there, you can still
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: open a gateway to the middle of it. It's because
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: it's become a central traveling ground, and I bet there's
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: a lot of inertia and momentum right in the same
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: way that once you create infrastructure, it's hard to move it.
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: So you're saying that this is the White Tower's official airport.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Site exactly slightly out of the White Tower because you
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: don't want people coming and going into the White Tower itself, right.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, you was one on the edge of town
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: with the traffic.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Chair exactly exactly.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: So yeah. Next thing I've got is a swan comes
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: upon Shiriam and thinks about how whatever has been bothering
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: her is not bothering her anymore, and she's been denying
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: anything was bothering her. Definitely nothing to look into.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: There, you know. And she's totally lost a bunch of weight,
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: which is normal for when somebody's not being bothered by anything.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: Mm hmm. People randomly lose weight while denying anything's wrong
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: all the time.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: Being which we should probably talk. Yeah, No, I mean
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: weight changing is always an indication of somebody in crisis.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: Not always generally can be a you know, somebody has
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: made a significant change to their life. Whether that's intentional
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: or not, it can make all the difference in the world.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: But right, like, you don't tend to gain or lose
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: a lot of weight unless something happens with your health,
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: with your weight, with your behavior, stuff like that.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, something has happened, something has happened emotionally or physically.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: There has been a change. You have not been at
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: a plateau state and Sherry, I's like, yes, I have.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: It's like, girl, your clothing is hanging off of you.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Like, buy some new clothing.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Rind a better lie.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so the big news is that Alida has
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: traveling and their advantage and their siege is totally neutralized. Right.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: The whole point of them being there is to have
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: a siege, and the fact that Alida has channeling, which
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: again was given to them by the trader, neutralizes the
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: benefit of doing the siege. Yeah, And there's a whole
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: little thing about how they've been collecting the tributes, like
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: That's how they've been funding the army is basically by
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: going out and being like, yes, we're the White Tower,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: give us your tribute, and they can get there because
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: they have traveling right, and so they've been able to
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: collect those sorts of tributes and fund the whole army
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: against the White Tower with the funds of the White Tower.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: It's funny. I like it. I like that their system
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: is so bureau like an esoteric that they can just
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: like snag tribute from kingdoms and they're just like, whatever
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: the flame was on the letterhead, we're good to go.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: Right, But they did they spotted someone from the Toweritasita
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Dark Friend alert, right, that is, yeah, she's a Dark Friend.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: She's very haughty, very cruel. But yeah, of course Elight
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: is giving out. You know, for some reason, Dark Friends
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: were able to learn this traveling weed faster than most
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: of the other people. Hmmm, because they had it already.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: I'm convinced that some of the Dark Friends had traveling
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: already that like.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: Some of them. Yeah, we know that the highest ranked
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: it is distribute it down probably yeah. But yeah, now
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: now it has broken containment from Dark Secret to just
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: the entirety of the White Tower. Has its. Just that
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: whole side of the conflict has traveling. And yeah, that's
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: the entire reason why you could do a siege, right Like,
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: if they have traveling, then the siege is useless.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: And that quickly comes into play when the sean Chan
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: right plan their attack, because they are doing it partially
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: because they want traveling and the fact that the White
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Tower has it means that their the raid is successful.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is one of the selling points. Here's the
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: prose of why we should attack the tower. We might
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: be able to get traveling if we attack the tower,
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: and that would make a big fucking difference exactly. And yes, yes,
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: damn you Bannon.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Right, And and again this is one of those points
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: where I had to point out Sanderson has Suan, say Bannon,
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: it had to be her burn it all and yes,
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: it had to be her. Jordan would never let one
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: of his characters be right about that. Never, he would
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: absolutely throw a red herring in there and her be like, ah,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: it had to be when they captured a GWayne they
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: got it from her, or it had to be that
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: was not realistic, but it would be the other Ferrets,
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: Ney of the Ferrets. Yeah, oh yeah, even she thought
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: it was like, oh, we shouldn't have sent in those ferrets.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: They betrayed us or they got you know, it's like, no,
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: that wasn't them, it was Bannon betraying you.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or if someone had been like but if it
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: was a band, and no, it couldn't have been banned.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: And then they like go off in another direction. So
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: like it was mentioned, but like immediately the characters were like, well,
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: clearly not. Yeah, you pointed this out to me at
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: the start of the book, and it's like, oh my god.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: He never lets his characters be wrong, and that's annoying.
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: I never could have put my finger on that. But
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: that is what is annoying is it's like there's nothing
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: to talk about if it's correct.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no unreliable. He does not do unreliable narrator
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: very well.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: No, No, he does reliable narrator very well. He has
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: very reliable narrators and.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: They and I think he gets better about that in
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: some of his later books, but certainly in his early books,
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: his characters just aren't wrong about things, and that's how
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: he gives you exposition. As his characters say this is
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: what I think, and you're like, oh, Okay, well that's
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: I'll take that at face value, because his characters aren't
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: wrong about things.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: One time, I was assigned to write a little like
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: short story mystery in high scho school. It was so hard.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: It was so hard. I could not figure out how
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: to craft a plot and put misdirection into it, right, yeah,
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: which was high school writing, I guess Simon. I was
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: just like, oh wow, I had no idea. This craft
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: was so difficult. That's the point of high school right
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: at this point. And he could have done better, but whatever.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so I will always say, you know,
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: I am certainly a critic who can't do right. There's
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: no way I could write anything, you know, a fraction
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: as good as Sanderson's worst short story right or whatever? Right,
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: Like He's he's much much better. Writing doesn't mean I
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: can't criticize.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: It, absolutely absolutely. We do get a really fun line
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: from Swan they wanted to catch the fish but didn't
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: want to gut it with respect to Aguay, and they're like,
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: you want to raise agway in Ombrelin and then not
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: treat her as omorlind freaking hypocrites like and I just
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: like love that phrasing, not deal with.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: The consequences of the thing you did, which is you
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: caught the fish, and the consequences are you have to
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: get a fish out the fish spoils.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, and which you know, if you're Morain,
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: you can just get parent and loyal to do it.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: But that's that's not the situation.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: And yeah, when Shearim's like, what's that all about with
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: her like frantic sending off message, She's like, to make
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: sure that we don't end up with an army around
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: our packs. We just lost our biggest strategic advantage or
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: you're all stupid, like and she phrases it in this
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: like the isid I are more concerned about the lot
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: information leak than the consequences of that information leaking. But man,
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: that it just feels like he's trying to make Suan
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: look smart by dumbing down everybody else around her.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, but it also does kind of fit with
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: the Isidie behavior we've seen with agwayin in the Tower,
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: like especially.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: With ignoring the generals and no.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: Especially with the Brown that she sent off looking for
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: secret history information and then gets like sidelined because they're
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: worried about a leak right, Like, I feel like this
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: concern over proprietary secretive information, Swan is articulating here, right,
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: It is echoing that thing that we saw before with
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: the Thirteenth Depository. Like the eyes of Dye are not
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: touching grass very often, they're not grounded.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: They're incorporate espha espionage where they're exchanging information and data.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: But what that data actually means and does is less
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: important than the fact that you're hiding it from somebody
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: else around you.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: That seems to be how they look at the world. Yeah,
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: and you know they get around to the implication second,
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: but you know it's it's more about the publishing credit
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: than about the actual repeatability of the study.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: And here's another line where you could either say Suon
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: is growing or that like you know, she's Brandon is
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: doing something that I don't think she would ever do.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: Or she admits that if she'd been more of a
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: mediator among the factions of the White Tower, she could
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: have pounded strength into the bones of these women, could she.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: Like she basically admits some fault for the White Tower
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: crumbling the way it is, which to me is just
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: like Suan would never. Suan would never.
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I really like the reflection, but I don't like
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: who it comes from. I mean, I kind of do,
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: because like it's a very true reflection, right, Like there
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: is no situation in which a single leader just comes
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: in and fucks everything up out of nowhere. They are
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: an emergent property of a system that has not checked
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: its worst impulses. Like that's how this sort of thing works.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: But it does. And I like the idea that Swan
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: is growing and realizing things, but it feels like a
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: big jump all at once.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: It does, and I feel like she'd at least be like, yeah,
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: I had something to do with it. But but the
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: White Tower is festooned with black, you know, and that's
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: probably has something to do with it. I feel like
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: she would I don't think.
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: She believes that, But I don't think she believes that.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: You don't think she believes that. I guess why would
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: she think that? Yeah, I guess she doesn't necessarily know
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: how many black well, I mean not at all. But
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: then I go back to New Spring, right, and just
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: like she was exposed to the black Aja being real
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: twenty years ago, and I just I do feel like
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: they sh should have done more. Again, I think Suan
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: and Moraine always thought, I think I still think the
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: Black Adja is like ten sisters total.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: Exactly exactly, and that's.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Back not that it's you know, a quarter of the existing.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so she so she why would she mitigate her
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: own failure to the black if she thinks that the
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: black is ten sisters?
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: It just I feel like this would have made more
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: sense if she'd had it, if she'd had this revelation
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: in conversation with someone who was also versed in the history, right,
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: if she'd been talking with Nana or something.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, maybe something like that wrong right, right then?
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: Maybe, But her just having that reflection internally with no
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: preamble and no follow up, it feels very like Sanderson's like, no,
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: she gets it.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, It's like she herself she.
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: Needed to justify herself to Leanna for several pages and
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: have them have a back and forth and then come
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: to the realization that like she is part of the problem.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: Like that would have felt believable.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: Right, right, instead of what feels like just a quiet
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: pondering and moment of realization.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Or she could have had this conversation with Agwayne,
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: because this is what Agwayne is doing, is like fixing that,
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: like it could have been part of that arc, but
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: for her to just think about it while staring at
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: the clouds is lackluster.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: We get more about Sharina, the old novice who's apparently
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: got more experience at organizing people than any of the
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: Eyes that I and is the best of the novices.
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: I dislike this gimmick so much that no wise did
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: eye has ever considered how to organize people until some
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: like a down country woman comes in with her common
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: sense wisdom. I just again, we're doing this trope again
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: for the Eyes to die.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: Really, I mean, I like Scharima as a character, Sharina as.
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: A character, Oh sure she's fine.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: But the reorganizing everybody. But what she's doing here, she's
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: showing her loyalty to a GWayne, right. She realizes that
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: Agwayne is the only reason that the older Offices have
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: been accepted into the White Tower, and if she loses
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: Agwayne as a leader, she loses that acceptance. And so
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: she's going out of her way to basically say, hey,
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: I've noticed that lee Lelaane is making a power play,
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: and I know that you're loyal to the Amberline, so
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: maybe you should do something about that. That's sort of
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: how the conversation goes.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and she's picking her side because Lelaane very deliberately
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: let the information about traveling get out right, break containment
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: right and everyone. I mean, Sharina knows that Lolaine doesn't
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: really like the older novices, but she's like, I mean,
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: as as Swan brought up to Agwaine previously, like the
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: balance of power has shifted. Lelaane is winning. Lelaane is
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: coming out on top, and Sharena is like, I don't
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: want Llane on top, and she keeps making moves, So
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: I'm going to go to like the closest person to
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: the amberline I can find and be like, please don't
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: with the Lalaine thing.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: Have we had the conversation yet where Agwayne says, well,
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: if I'm killed, she might as well be someone We've
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: had that conversation already.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she's willing to throw Sharena under the bus if necessary, basically, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: But I really like Sharina's arc. I like that she
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: comes and she's basically Swan's age.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: No, she's older, Swan's forty. Oh really, Swan and Marina
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: are both forty damn it.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: I really wish that Swan would think for one minute
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: about how Sharena is like older than her, not just
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: old in general, but like specifically older than her. I
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: really wish we could have one moment of saying, she's
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: literally older than most of the Eyes to Die who
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: think they should be in charge right now.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, because you look like Shariam is you know,
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: at the same age. Yeah, Like the whole group of
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: isaid Eye leaders are about forty years old because they
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: were novices in New Spring.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, like Romayne is much older. Both of those
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: are significantly older women. Many of the Sitters are older,
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: but all of our major power brokers are mentioned in
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: New Spring as either novices or recently raised Eyes to
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: Die or accept it, and.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: That puts them from thirty to fifty years old, right,
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: which is very young for I sid I incredibly young.
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: Sharina, a literal grandmother, is older than most of them.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: That should get mentioned once in the narrative because you
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: think of Isidi as all being older than normal mortals,
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: because that's kind of broadly as a class, but as
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: individual characters, that's so much.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: And basically what happened is all the the isid I
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: who were older than normal people kept dying because the
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: black Ajac kept killing them every time they got raised,
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: and so they went, well, let's get somebody younger in there,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: and that's how you end up with suan as Amulin
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: and then the whole Yeah, Agwayne, Yeah, absolutely crazy.
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: Agwaine's a special case. We can just eliminate her from
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: the whole data cent and I and you know, of course,
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: we imagine that Sharina will become the first advisor to
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: the Queen of Mal as Malkiir is reclaimed in the
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: fourth age. That is the obvious extension of what happens
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: after the books, based on Ninive's accepted test visions mm okay,
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: because she sees Sharina or doesn't see Serena, she hears
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: about Sharina in her vision with Land, Sharina is their
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: advisor at their court. So me and a lot of
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: other people in the fantom have concluded that that is
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: what's going to happen. Sharena and Ninive will be in
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: charge of handling malk Heir, especially after Land dies, because
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: they're both going to outlive him by a few centuries, right,
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: So like they're going to be making malc here go.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's my favorite thing about this is like you
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: now have a series of semi immortal kings and queens
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: taking over most of the world, right, Like, because if
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: two on ever learns channel.
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: She will live for a long time.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: She will live for a long time. Ninive who's going
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: to live for a long time. You have a Laine
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: who's going to live for a long time. Yeah, it's
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: just those and those are some of the most powerful groups.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's basically the East and the West, right
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: and the North way. You don't have is someone in
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: the south really in tier and stuff like that.
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which could probably get fixed in a generation or two.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: You could probably sort that out and.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: Maybe Empress live forever when she can channel. That's a
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: long time.
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: Makes me think too, about how much Robert Jordan was
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: irrationally in love with the concept of monarchy. He's like,
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: but what if they lived even more? Just like Jordan,
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: I don't want hereditary, eternal, semi divine monarchs. I don't
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: think the divine right of kings is a thing we
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: should be going back to.
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: But again, myths become legends. If you go back and
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: look at the Bible. The Bible has a bunch of
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: kings and you know rulers who live for three, four
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: or five hundred years, right, Like, this is the whole
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: idea that the Bible is kind of based off of
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: these people, and that the extended life that we see
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: in that book actually has to do with them channeling
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: the one power.
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: It has nothing to do with oral tradition and mythmaking.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: No, okay, that's no, that's not the part that became legend.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: That was the true part.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: Ah. No, that makes sense, That totally makes sense. Thank
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: you for explaining.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as a man, I like to explain things to you.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: So that's that to podcast a phrase called man explaining.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if you've never heard of that, but
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: it's when a man explains things to women that they
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: probably already know. But it's I'm going to be condescending
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: and let you know that I know what it is
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: by explaining it to you. And that's what man's plaining is.
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: It's funnier when you explained the ke. So I don't
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: have anything else with this chapter.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: No, just that she sends she gets nervous, so she
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: grabs a noviice and sends another messenger to Briton because
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: one wasn't enough.
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: Oh we didn't talk about the funny moment with the
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: messenger where the messengers like, oh, just so you know,
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: I'm like really good at carrying messages. We need to
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: repeat the message back and spawn like, shut the fuck
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: up and repeat it back. I do not care. I
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: don't care what your CV says. I don't care who
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: your dad is. Repeat the message.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: I don't if you carried this exact message a thousand times.
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: Repeat the damn message because it's code, and if he
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: gets it wrong, the code could mean something.
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: Else, exactly exactly. This is a nice to diet. She's
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: picking her words with precision, sir. But yeah, we end
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: the chapter with her thinking, agway, will you please come back,
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: like seriously, like we need you so bad, like get
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: get it over what you're doing in the tower and
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: come back.
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: It's like, no, you're gonna have to kidnap me. And
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: so this one's like fine, I will yeah, And it.
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: Would have been fine if she hadn't brought the boyfriend,
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: but we'll get.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: It ohen you get too much screen time in these books.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: So those were two relatively light chapters where those really again,
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: one point that happened in each of them. Maybe two.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it took us a whole hour to get through
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: two chapters.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Two chapters, so I say we bust into the third one,
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: which is a little more meaty than those two, but
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: still not the heaviest of chapters.
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: It reminds me a lot of the chapter we just
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: did with A Gwain, where we get a really good conversation,
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: but it's still basically an action scene that's very straightforward. Sure,
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: there's not a lot to talk about, even though it
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: reads really good.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: Right right, but before break into that, I need five
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: minutes because you know, Tea, are you ready to roll
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: the dice?
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah? And I will say for this chapter, I do
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: really like hess Anderson writes two On came out in
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: a big at an unreal narrators, but he is good
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: at giving people different internal voices.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah this is well written too. On the chapter
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: for sure.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: I mean as much as I hate Twuon on principle,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: I do like her as a character. She's very interesting,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: very fun, strongly opinionated, drives the plot on her own terms.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: She's good to read.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she's a strong character, and that's why I hate her.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: Right right. She's strong for the wrong things, and that's
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: the problem. Yeah, I will read us into chapter nineteen
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: Gambits and our symbol is the shan Chan helmet. Chaos.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: The entire world was chaos. Tuon stood on the balcony
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: of her audience hall in the Palace of Ebudar, hands
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: clasped behind her back. In the palace grounds, flagstones washed
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: white like so many surfaces in the city. A group
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: of altaar and armsmen in gold and black practice formations
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: beneath the watchful eyes of a pair of her own officers.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: Beyond them, the city proper rose, white domes banded with
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: colors spreading alongside tall white spires. Order here in a Budhar,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: there was order, even in the fields of tents and
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: wagons outside the city. Shan Chan's soldiers patrolled and kept
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: the peace. There were plans to clean out the Rahad.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: Just because one was poor was not a reason for
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: an excuse to live without law. But this city was
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: just a tiny, tiny pocket of order in a world
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: of tempest. Shan Chan itself was broken by civil war.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: Now that the Empress had died, the Koren had come.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: But recapturing these lands of Ardur, hawkwing progressed slowly, stalled
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: by the Dragon Reborn in the east and Domani armies
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: in the north. She still waited to hear news of
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: Lieutenant General Turan, but the signs were not good. Galgon
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: maintained that they might be surprised at the outcome, but
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: Tuon had seen a black dove the hour she was
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: informed of Turan's predicament. The omen had been clear he
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: would not return alive. I just want to keep reading.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: She's great, but.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: Turandurrak to come on. Okay, okay, I see, I see you.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: One of the reasons why I think the shawn Chan
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: will never be an effective force to take over the
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: rest of the continent is they were always going to
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: be distracted by trying to go back and take over
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: shawn Chan, and they will never effectively be able to
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: cross back over and fight effectively on the other continent
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: while maintaining a presence on this continent.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: Which is a great premise for an outriger series clearly
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: set up.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: The other thing I always have to talk about when
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: it comes to these omens is are the shawn Chan
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: omens effective forecast tools or not? Because here it seems
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: like they It is because she sees a black dove
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: that he won't return alive, which is what happens. Right,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: He is dead. He has lost his battle to the
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: Little General after the Little Wolf. Yeah, so again, this
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: is one of those things where the omens seem to
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: be telling the truth, but it's so hard to tell
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: if it's just quincid or not because they're so vague.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: They're so vague.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: Well, and she also has another one in this chapter,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: which says, you're going to have to make a difficult decision,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: and the fact that she's anticipating that like leads her
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: to consider her decisions better, and like it's it very
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: becomes a self fulfilling thing because it's good that she
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: saw this hawk that makes her stop and think for
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: twice as long on this important decision, right right, But
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: like was the hawk sent to control her mind or
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: was it just that like she was going to make
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: a bad call unless she had reason to stop and
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: think twice, Like it's and I so desperately want to
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: think that men's talent, once upon a time, did it
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: was manifest in like maybe the indigenous shan Chan people
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: like they had some like the doom seers are a
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: thing that men represents the return of.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: Right, clearly, they have a term for it, so they
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: must exist have existed in the population in the recent past.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: Right, there was something form of foretelling, a form of
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: doom seeing omen interpretation that did have real metaphysical meaningful
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: connections that like would create the great basis for a
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: superstition that persists for thousands of years and has great
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: confirmation bias and has a bunch of imperial weight behind it.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: But the predictions of these superstitions are less specific than
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: the local horoscope. Right, Like you will have to make
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: a difficult decision today, who doesn't make difficult decisions every
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: single day?
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: And that's what I'm saying about. Like the institutional weight
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: of it is like they they make these things real, right,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: they decide that this is what had to happen, Like
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: they essentially are doing real time retconning. And because they
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: are the institution, the founta of all knowledge and authority,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: and they can kind of shape reality to their will
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: as far as like the people who can call them
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: on their bullshit. So it's, uh, maybe you shouldn't give
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: prophetic powers to imperial forces. Maybe maybe that's just like
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: a really good way to get distracted for several thousand
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: years from doing the work you need to do, because like,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: how many things could they have done differently if they had,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: you know, looked at the facts of the world instead
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: of bird migration patterns?
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but how many times do they look at the
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: bird migration patterns they wanted to see to justify what
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: they were doing and got people unified behind them when
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: they otherwise wouldn't have, and that led to a victory
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: that otherwise would have been a failure because superstition, well,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: Siebo effect works for a reason, right, Like you know, it's.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: The myth of why Christianity became the imperial religion of Rome. Right,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: dude had a dream, had a vision, won the battle
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: on the strength of the actions he took from that vision.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: Clearly the vision was real.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: Then you start coming back to like just the power
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: of human imagination, right, Like if we can imagine something
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: and we can accomplish it a lot of times, that's
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: enough for us to accomplish it. And is that prophecy
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: or is that just doing what you imagine and plan
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: to do? And like how easy magic? Oh, it's magic, right,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: of course, that's magic.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: That is actually how magic was in a lot of ways.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: That is magic, right, because that's in a lot.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: Of being sarcastic, that's that's literally how magic works.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: What makes humans humans right is this idea that we
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: can plan something out and execute on that plan in
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: a way that other animals can't seem to do. Right.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: We can create these really complex strategies and other animals
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: can approach it maybe within simplistic ways, but you know,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: language and communication and all that kind of stuff seems
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: to allow us to do it on a level that
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: is unimaginable for any of the species.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: I was just tripping out the other day on how
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: a rocket launch is essentially like the most belief you
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: could possibly pile into a single moment here, Like I
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: believe that we understand how to make this explosion do
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: what we want, and that the structure on top of
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: it won't explode and the forces will maintain human existence
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: on the inside. And like, yes it's physics, yes it's science,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: but like you kind of are believing that you got
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: it all right, Yeah, you're believing that you understand these
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: principles and you executed them.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: And the way you're throwing a dart and hitting a
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: bull's eye millions of miles away, and like you really
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: don't have a lot of chances to correct that. You burn,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: and you use math and you figure out like, yeah,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: I believe that this math works. I believe in the
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: education that I've received. I believe. And that's where like again,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: where you stop believing because you hit the planet, you know,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: and then oh yeah, okay, that worked. You know, I
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: have proof that my beliefs were based in fact, right,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: because you keep hitting the planet over and over and
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: over again.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: Right, But if part of your path to that started
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: in a weird dream you had, you're always going to
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: carry a little mystical edge through all of your success, Like,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: well it was that dream I had that started all
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: this le So uh, it's fine for people to navigate
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: their lives. It's less great for governments to navigate continents.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: Like That's my real issue is It's like Tuon can
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: believe the weather report according to ants all day and
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: that's fine. But if she causes a famine because she
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: didn't send relief to an area because the ants told
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: her a monsoon was coming, well, now we have a
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: fucking problem, you know.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: And see now I'm just imagining newscaster aunt, do do
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: do do do this? Just in we have a robbing
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: buffalo on the horizon. The report robbing buffalo on the horizon.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: Please all hands on deck. We need to bulls meet
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: in quickly. It's not really weather, but you get my point.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right, So we get a timestamp. We
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: are the day after Tuon returned to Ebudar. It has
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: been a whole twenty four hours since she arrived.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: Here, twenty twenty four hours to go. I want to
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: be Slusha.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: And she thinks about how she's powerful because people have
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: tried to kill her, and I just I personally think
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: you can derive power without you can know you're powerful
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: without people trying to kill you.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: Personally, this is definitely the what doesn't kill you makes
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: you stronger attitude, which is like, yeah, no, no, it
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: doesn't kill you. It leaves you crippled, blind and missing
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: a hand.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: Actually yeah yeah.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: Tuon doesn't love her mother, just big shock. But she
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: was provided stability.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: Yes, this is a theme we see throughout the chapter
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: is Tuon thinks of herself as being the source of
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: stability and order and like that is what the Empress is.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: And again I understand that Robert Jordan believes in monarchy.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: But like I, and leadership matters. I'm not saying that
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: like pyramid shaped leadership is not a part of the
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: human experience. But I don't know that you need an
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: empress who is obeyed absolutely in order to have a
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: stables society. I just don't know that I buy that.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: No, But I do believe the Crystal Throne itself is
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: a source of stability because it's a compulsion device.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: Explain to me how a continent that is constantly racked
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: by rebellion is stable.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: It wasn't until the fucking what's her name?
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: No, Its entire history as a nation is constant rebellion.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, but not from within the hierarchy itself, of the
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: shawn Chan nobility. It's from the states they're taking over.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: Okay, sure, the Nazis obey as they take over Poland
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: they obey.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, it's that you have an internal power structure
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: where there is no internal rebellion you have. I mean,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: even here you talk about the Deathwatch guard, right, that
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: have been sworn to the empress on by the Crystal Throne.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: You have an elite troop of forces. And I believe,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: and I've talked about this before, but raising of the blood,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: I believe involves a ceremony where you swear to the Empress,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: and usually you do it in front of the crystal throne,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: which creates it's the compulsion device. All that kind of stuff, Right,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: Like the idea that your hierarchy and your elite soldiers
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: are sworn to the empress really prevents not rebellions, but
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: prevents your internal power structure from falling apart and creates
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: the stability to continue to conquer even if you do
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: have these rebellions.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: But you've also got constant assassination attempts within the ranks
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: of the nobility. That doesn't seem very stable.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: Not against the Empress. No one ever tries to assassinate
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: the Empress makes you live forever, but.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: They try to assassinate her air constantly.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: Sure, but that's fine. That just makes you stronger, It
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: I don't know that that's stability. I don't know that
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: I buy that that's stability. And I definitely don't buy
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: that the bureaucracy that is operating under those circumstances are
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: at all taking care of the stability of the common
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: people it is supposed to serve.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: Rand's experience tends to suggest otherwise, as he wanders among
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: the people and everyone's getting fed and everyone seems to
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: have a job, and everyone seems to have I mean,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: it's almost enforced. It's almost closer to walking the communists China,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: right and being like, wow, there's no homeless people. It's like, well, yeah,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: because they got hauled off and put in jail.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they got put in work camps, in work camps. Yeah,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: that's uh yeah. I just like And also that example
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: is like it was a city starving to death. The
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: bar was very for creating stability people, right, right, Yeah,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: like providing food was all they needed. And like, again,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: I don't think that Tuan wearing a small country's worth
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: of stolen regalia is really where that stability came from.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, of course no. I in no way
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: argue that the rulers. Yeah, Like, it's the bureaucracy that's
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: providing the stability. If there is any stability in the
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: shan Chan Empire, right, it's the bureaucracy, It is not
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: the empress.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And I just like it. I hadn't. I just
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: Robert Jordan likes monarchies more than I do.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: It's fantasy. Fantasy loves monarchies.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: I would disagree from all the canon of non white men.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: But all right, so here's the thing about fantasy fantasy.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: Here's where one of the fundamental difference between fantasy and
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: sci fi. Right, in my opinion, sci fi democratizes power
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: because in a good sci fi technology is where power
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: comes from. Technology is magic, right, and anyone can get
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: their hands on that technology. In fantasy, the chosen one
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: gets power and you are a special and so the
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: fantasy of being a special chosen one who gets to
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: rise up and do something that nobody else can do.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: M hm. So this is the argument for why Dune
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: is fantasy and not sci fi.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, if there's a chosen one, it's fantasy.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: This is a double layered fantasy because tu On believes
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: she's the chosen one, and that is itself.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: A fan exactly exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, no, that's that is internally consistent, which is
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: my one requirement of anything, is that it be internally consistent.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: That if you think you're the chosen one and better
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: than everybody else around you, that's a fantasy.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: You were also saying Star Wars is fantasy and Star
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: Trek is sci fi.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: Is sci fi? Yes, because anyone has access to the
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: technology on board the ship, and no one is any
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: more special than anybody else.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: I am going to have to think about this so
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: hard as I move through, like all the stories that
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: I'm ingesting now and in the future, like is there
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: a chosen one or is it a democratized access to tech?
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: And Oh, that's going to be an interesting lens to
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: take into my mediate consumption over the next little bit.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: And there's certainly the side story of there's a special
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: ancient tech that this person stumbles upon and therefore they
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: become special. But the idea that anyone could stumble upon
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: that tech is important, right m hm, you know, it's
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: the whole. For example, Bob's right, Bob's right.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: It could have been anyone. It just happened to be
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: Bob Johansson.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, anyone could have been become the artificial brain that
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: became the machine. He just happened. And there were several
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: other candidates that he happened to beat out right.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: And also, I mean not just anyone, could a bunch
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: of them went ins right, right right, that's beside the
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: point he was more or less a random person. Yeah,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: huh oh that that's a that's an interesting lens. I'm
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: gonna hold on to that this. The next thing I've
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: got is too on reflecting on how she felt safer
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: with Matt than she does in the heart of her power.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: That happens a couple of times in this chapter where
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: she's like, wow, I Matt felt safer with Matt, and
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, because he actually had your interests in heart,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: unlike most of these people. Your interests, not.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: The Empress's interest, not the daughter that nine moons, his
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: interest too, wants interests, your literal flesh and blood exist person.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: That's who he cared about. He could give a fuck
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: about everything else.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: Also, I mean, way better plot armor when you're hanging
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: out with Matt.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: Also that, yeah, that's true for sure.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: The caveress of it all right, like that, I felt
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: so safe when hanging out with the plot armor guy.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know why.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: I just thought nothing bad happened while I was with
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: the literal hero of the story. So when Faireness she'd
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: stay with him to Hinderstaps, she might have revised that hypothesis. Lightly.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: There's a line here about Suroth that I misread the
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: first time where it says Suroth was not among the
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: ducko veil, and I was like, oh, did she not
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: make her doc oveil. It's like, no, they're just waiting
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: for her hair to grow out, so she's not going
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: to be mistaken for a noble woman. Then she will
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: be among the doc oveil. Yeah, she has not.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: Yet prepared for public display as doc coveil. She's being
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: kept in the back rooms.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: There's a mention of Ural two on secretary, which to
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: me is just another Oh, I almost sid Patton, who's
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: Ballwer another ball War except.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's definitely a ball War type. Yeah, and he
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: never comes up as like a dark friend or anything.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: No, he's mentioned a competent secretary or four times. Always
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: is just too on secretary for way back when.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just kind of like every wealthy noble person
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: who does stuff like has a secretary who's also a spymaster,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: Like they all have one. We're just going to check
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: in with them.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: She kind of speculates on what's going to happen back
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: in seon Chan that somebody will probably rise up to
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: power and declare themselves emperor Empress, and then she's going
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: to have to go fight them, which we talked about, Like, yeah,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: that's going to be a huge problem for her in
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: the future. There's no way to go back and declare
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: herself empress without taking a huge chunk of her forces
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: out of the land she's conquered, which she's already admitted
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: she's overextended on because Suroth went too far too fast,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: So there's no way she can pull those troops out
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: to go back and have a significant, significant force to
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: take over sean Chan. So like, I don't see this
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: getting resolved anytime soon.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: No, No, this is this is either a sundering of
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: the empire or a multi generational conflict, one or the other.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: This is not going to resolve quickly unless sundering is
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: agree too quickly. But I don't think it will be
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: because she's territorial as hell.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: She talks about how sure or Solush is going to
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: make an excellent truth speaker, which she doesn't, right, she's
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: just not. She ends up having Tuon or she ends
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: up having men as her truth speaker because Solusha just
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: isn't that good at it.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: I thought it was more that Solusha had conflicting duties
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: than that she was good.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the being. Yeah, she's not good at it
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: because she has this other dude. She's like, I'm used
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: to being. I can't be your voice and the person
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: who tells you when you do something wrong. I can't
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: speak for you and against you at the same time.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's too many jobs to ask of her.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: And yeah, they do bring men in and min gets
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: given the title of doom seer and put into the
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: position of truth speaker because Sanderson likes titles.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she is inherently a She is inherently a doom
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: seer because of the way she sees prophecies. But then
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: to on to protect her and allow her to say
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: those prophecies out loud gives her the position of truth speaker,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: which maybe where the position of truth speaker comes from, right.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: I assume, So I assume that that is the traditional
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: place you put doom sears is at the elbow as
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: a truth speaker. That would make sense because they see
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: doom and they can't lie about it, So maybe just
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: put them in the position of speaking truth.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: In the classical meaning of the word doom in the
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: one way the Tolkien talked about it, right, these characters
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: will find their doom. He's saying fate.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: Oh I didn't know that.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, doom in this case isn't the bad connotation we
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: have put with It is something that we put on
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: top of the word later, the mountain of doom. It
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: just means the mountains of fate.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: I've always thought that was a weirdly on the nose
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: thing for someone to subtle as Tolkien, to say the
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: mountains of doom, but mountains of fate. Oh so, I
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: wonder if that means, if that's what Martin was going
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: for with the doom of Valeria.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: You will find your doom, you will find your fate,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: you will find your destiny. Those are all supposed to
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: be the same sort of thing.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: So Doom's here was fates fates.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: Here, Yeah, future telling, yeah, fortune teller.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: Huh. I never knew that about the word doom. Today
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: I learned.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: I only learned that recently. Someone was describing the mountain
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: of doom in Tolkien and they said, yeah, I used
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: it the old fashioned way, not not like your doom,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: but your destiny. And I was like, what, No, I
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: look it up and I was like, oh, yeah, that
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: makes sense, Thanks.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: For spreading the good. It's kind of like how awful
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: or and awesome have been very like split out into
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: value statements when they just mean intense as him doesn't
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: actually mean good or bad, It just means a lot.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, right right, you.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: Can have awful good things and awesome bad things in
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: the old uses of the word.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome is it falls in that category as well? Really, well, that's.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: Awful awesome and terrible power, isn't that?
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's full. I'm full of awe when I see you.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: That actually could have good connotations when I'm awful. But yeah, no,
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: that tasted awful, does you know? Not a compliment? Not
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: a compliment. Let me tell you. When my wife cooks
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: me something I say that tasted awful, it doesn't. She
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: does not take it as I'm full of awe.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: You need to use awesome, yeah to delineate that. Right, Clearly,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: both those words have a parent and they split and
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: like weste different directions.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: But but you would think full of awe would be
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: better than some awe.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: You know, since when has English made any goddamn sense,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: Like infamous and famous being the same fucking thing.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, come on, so deflammable and inflammable.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: Ah, very annoying.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: I don't like. I didn't write the English language, I
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: only speak it, and poorly at.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: It's terrible versus terrific.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The next little bit we get some I would
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: call it recap. Right, the whole Anoth was forsaken and
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: she was working with Surath and blah blah bah blah
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah blah. Right, she's The next little
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: bit is her thinking back through what's happened in the
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: Shawn Chann nobility. I don't know if you have anything.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: There not really, just kind of the part where Tuon
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: has to come into terms with understanding that the Forsaken
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: are in fact a hazard. She believes it, and now
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: she is very sure that she doesn't have one in
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: her retinue, and that's important to her. And also this
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: factors into how she's looking at the Dragon Reborn, right,
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: she is thinking about how like, well, regardless of if
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: I believe that Anoth were forsaken or not, either way,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 3: she imitated me and tried to kill the Dragon Reborn
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: at the meeting, and that has implications for when I
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: go to meet him. Oh, word discourse.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, don't don't buy. Don't buy things that are marked inflammable.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: If you don't because you think about it, like my
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: emotions were inflamed. That doesn't mean put out.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: It does not. No words are dumb. Let's go back
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: to reading one point for millions of them.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: At least we know, at least we know how Robert
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: Jordan was using them, right, Sure, sure, I'm sure we
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: haven't made any mistakes. Brasier.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: What was the one in the in the last Miraculum?
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, to say I was just editing that.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right, so book. Next thing I've got
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: is best lining. Yes, invited in, and we have a good,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: long pages long sort of interaction between Beslin and two on,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: or basically two one says, you're rebelling against me, honestly
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: and for good reasons, and so if I convince you
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: that it's actually in your best interests to stop doing that,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: you will in fact stop doing that and be a
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: loyal subject. And he says, yeah, yeah, you're right. I'm
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: actually a decent monarch, because Robert Jordan really likes monarchs,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: and I'm actually not a shit head, and so I
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: will be loyal to the Sean shann and he does
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: the collaboration thing right. You know, he's essentially saying all
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: of his channelers can be thrown under the bus and
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: all of his poor people can be put in work camps.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: And.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: He's going collaborator basically. But it's a good and noble decision.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: Scare quotes now, I mean, listen, when Brilane only had
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: power around his city and he needed to expand, Mussolini
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: made a deal with Hitler in order to wait, hold on,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: I got to describe sorry when Italy, I'm sorry when Altara.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: Damn it. I'm having a lot of trouble with this one.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: H It's not great.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: It's not great.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: It's not great. It gets presented as a very rational decision.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: And also, I hate, hate, hate how Tuon says you're
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: rebelling because you are ignorant. If you are provided with
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: the correct information, you will change your mind. And I'm like, oh,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: so you're going to doctor the max. You're going to
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: just tweak that data until you can propaganda campaign this
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: guy into believing that you're actually about Oh. I like
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 3: what he does with the numbers. I like what he
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: does with the economy, like a too much shut up.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: I don't care that she's obsessed ostensibly correct, you really.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: Don't like it when you point out like these characters
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: when like Graham looks at it, Beslyn looks at it
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: and goes, Listen, the shan Chan are providing economic stability,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: and I am not. And is the price that we're
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: paying as a society of losing those people worth it? Now?
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: The problem is here, that's a false equivalency, right, because
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: you can provide that stability without also enslaving those people, right.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: And so I think that's where the real the frustration
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: comes in, is like you need to be able to
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: replicate that. But I think I think the power structure
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: of the shan Chan comes from the enslaving of the channelers.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: And so the idea is the only way to have
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: this sort of authoritarian society is through the enslavement of
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: powerful people. Yeah, And what's the best kind of society
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: to have?
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: And I think that's an interesting question that he looks
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: that he's trying to address in these books, is he says, Okay,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: you have this group of inherently powerful people, channelers, how
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: do you structure it in a way that benefits society?
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: And isn't fair. We have the sean Chan who chose enslavement.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: We have the Mainland that chose essentially deification, right, But
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: then you have these all these other groups you have, Yeah,
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: and then you have all these other groups, right. You
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: have the the a Eel who have their wise ones,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: which seems like, you know, advisors without a lot of
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: inherent power, and yet seem to do a.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: Lot of those are warring, semi nomadic.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Then you have the the c folk, right, who
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: have a different way of doing it.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they have like byzantine bureaucracy at sea going on.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: That's yeah, that's that's the biocracy of rising and falling
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: in firings and hirings, and that's that's pretty close to
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: I think what we have in our modern capitalistic society
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: in terms of power structure. Right.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like that's kind of so the.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: Idea that you can start over again, you can rise
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: up and you can fall back down, although I would argue,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: I don't sure how much once you fall at the
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: top of the corporate power structure. I'm not sure how
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: much coming back you can do in that situation.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, a lot of that coming back has to
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: do with their long life spans. Yeah, right, right, yeah,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: I mean it is definitely a question that Jordan and
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: Sanderson both playing with, is what kind of authority do
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: you want running your society. I just don't think that
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: they're giving the systems that actually make sense a fair shake.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: They're just saying, well, how how would you like the
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: powerful men to be in charge of you?
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 4: And it's like, what if you're not?
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: Like, I'm feeling very like I'm being presented with two options,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: and so I'm going to pick a third, right, you know,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: Like I feel like they're saying, well, you can either
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: have the Nazis with the trains running on time, or
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: you can have absolute anarchy and lawlessness. And I'm like,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: what about communes?
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: Right? Should there should be a third option? Right? Yeah?
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: Or a fourth and a fifth and a sixth, And like,
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: maybe there isn't one way, and maybe it isn't just
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: like different despotic personalities clashing with armies. Maybe there's more
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 3: in terms of structure. I don't know.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: I'd say pick your Democrats versus your Republicans, but that
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: doesn't even make sense.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 4: It's because no, no, this is so much Roer's just.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: So much broader than that so so much. But you know,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: that is also the landscape that a lot of these
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 3: analogies are trying to talk about, so that is a
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: fair piece of the lens to bring into it. Is like,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: but really, I think that's more like the White Tower.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: I feel like this is more like capitalism versus communism.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly right, right with the White Tower, we're you're
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: talking about like which odd jaw is going to take over?
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: It's like, okay, yeah, they're all still going to support
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: the White Tower and into the policies of controlling governments
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: and influence and spies and everything that the White Tower does.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 3: Right where Sean Shan and all of the Randland nations
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 3: are much more fundamentally looking at the world differently, and
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: they are fighting it out for who's going to control
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: the world. I mean, that is ultimately what this is about,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: is who is going to be able to take over
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: everyone else.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: I'm just saying I don't think there's quite the spread
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: in policies between the shawan Chan and our mainland monarchies
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: that you may think there is. There's not quite. Yes,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: there's not the rampant collared slavery, but man, there's a
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: lot of indentured servitude in some of these other countries.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's feutile as hell. But like, there aren't work
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: camps for the poor either. There's not literal chattel slavery either, right, Like,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: there are some pretty important differences, and I like, I
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: want to like Beslin making the correct data driven choice
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 3: for his people, but also I just see collaboration. I mean,
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 3: and what's the point. I mean, is is fighting back
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: going to help him? Is going to the block to
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: be executed as a noble going to do anything back?
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: It makes sense that he chooses to stay alive and
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 3: try to work with his people but also improve the situation. Yeah,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, is he he proves to be a Yes,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 3: he proves to be a loyal collaborator.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But but but look at him, like as the
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: real that he was. Who else would you put in
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: his place? Right? Who else would you say, Yeah, you know,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: somebody who begs to be put in place so he
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: can put his boot down on the people of Altara. No,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: you want someone who is going to keep the Altaran's
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: interests in his mind and in the upper part of
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: his head when he's thinking about what he wants to do,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: and isn't necessarily going to acquiesce to everything that Sean
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: Chan say immediately because he did rebel. He did know
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: that this was wrong. He did have the idea that
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: something bad was happening, and so yeah, you have to
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: kind of ask yourself, like who would be better in
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: this situation?
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but still he did say, you can take all
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 3: my channelers and enslave them, and you can also put
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: all the poor people into work farms, and that's fine.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: He did agree to that. Didn't have a choice, but
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 3: also he agreed to it. Like both things are true.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: It upsets me, but I also do like that two
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: one does things like say, I am I will raise
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 3: no less than twenty of your people to the High Blood,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: And like, I mean, she is making a good faith
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: argument from the context of being an imperial superpower's she's
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 3: doing a good and she means it. I really like
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: that about her. Is that much like Matt, if she
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: promises something, she actually intends to hold to the promise.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: She's not just saying it for pr purposes. She's actually
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: trying to convince a heart and mind.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, that's one of the fundamental differences between
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: the shan Chan and the people that are coming back
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: to Honker is this idea that the shan Chin are like, well,
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: once you've said an oath, you hold to it, even
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: if it was said under duress. And so she is
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: all confused. She's like, I don't want to It's so
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: strange that these people would be willing to elevate one
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: oath over another. And it's like, well, yeah, they're willing
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: to not listen to the oath they had to say
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: with the sword to their throat. They don't consider that
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: an oath the way you.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: Do, right, because they come from a much more distributed
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: kind of power structure, much less top down, much more chaotic.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: Less about obeying authority, and more about obeying the spirit
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: and the nature of what needs to happen, right and so,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: and it was always very confusing. They came back and said,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: you know, swear the oath and then moved on with
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: their life. And I feel like this line kind of
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: helps you understand, like, oh, the Shawn Chain just have
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: a different culture where it doesn't matter if something if
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: an oath is said under duress, you are still held
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: to it, because all the oaths are held under duress.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: Because the freaking crystal throne is a compulsion device.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 3: Right, and because they're incredibly punitive and put people in slaves, well, yes,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 3: it's slavery if they don't obey, like there's a lot. Yeah,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 3: there's there's no sense of freely giving us.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, they reinforce the not freely given oaths in a
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: way that yeah, there's no one to reinforce that kind
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: of thing.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 3: Beslin also asks pretty bluntly about why his mother died,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: which is bold and brave of him.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like that for him, which we know it was
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: just the goal on trying to track down Matt.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah we know that. But I like how Beslin
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 3: and two on handle it because two one doesn't know
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: the neither of them do, right because and so seeing
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: how they handle that and give each other the benefit
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: of the doubt moving through that, I think is a
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 3: good bit of character building.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: So Golgin comes forward with the banner of the Dragon,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: which there's some confusion. The banner of the dragon in
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: this case is the ancient symbol of the Isidie on
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: the red background. It's also the gold dragon on the
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: white background. Both of those have been referred to the
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: dragon banner or the banner of the Dragon at various
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: points in time. Yes, but basically he's saying, hey, I
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: know you didn't actually try and kill me last time,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: so I'd like to meet with the actual Empress of
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: the jean Chan this time instead of an imbossor who's
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: trying to kill me, please.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: Right, And she has not decided about it if she
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: wants to engage with that or not, but it's being
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 3: presented again and she has a cool conversation with Gogon
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: where he's basically like, hey, you want to run home
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: to your mommy like a little bitch. She's like, no,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 3: I'm an adult, and he's like respect. So, you know,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: because he's he I kind of think of as being
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 3: like Gareth Brynn, old battle hardened, knows what he's doing,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 3: choosing to put his weight behind a young ruler because
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: he thinks she can actually cut it.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: Sure, Sure, a lot a lot of parallels between Elaine
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: and Gareth Brynn and Tuan Engalgun.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, exactly. There's there's something going on because he's
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 3: not a bad guy and he's not incompetent, you know,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: he's just doing his job and choosing like, yeah, you're
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 3: younger than me, but I think that I like how
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 3: the power structure has arranged us, and I want you
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: to just do well, do well with my war, with
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: my with my armies.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: So this basically comes down to him saying, we've got
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: two obstructions. So we're trying to take over the whole continent,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: and there's two big problems we're dealing with. One is
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: the dragon reborn, right, and this this banner, you know,
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: brings that up, and we have to have a discussion
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: with him, like he has reunited, he has united a
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: big chunk of this continent, and we will have to
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: defeat him or comes to some sort of arrangement with him.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: The other big problem is that we have all of
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: these eyes to die, these marath demani, and we should
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: deal with that. And so basically Galgun's saying, I am
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: bringing up this plan of and this is where the
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: plan eventually comes from, of doing a air raid strike
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: on the White Tower and to try and take take
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: about three hundred people and do as much damage as possible,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: take as many captives as possible, attempt to cripple them
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: or at least do some damage while strengthening ourselves. And
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: built into that is this assumption that the White Tower
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: and the Dragon Reborn are close allies, and any weakening
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: of the White Tower is going to be a strike
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: on the Dragon Reborn is going to be a problem
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: for the Dragon Reborn, which it's not really at this
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: point because they're not allies at all. But they assume
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: the White Towers manipulating randolphor or.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 3: That he's manipulating them. Either way, they're working hand in
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: love is and they say, well, maybe they're not, but
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 3: odds are they are, so we should operate as exactly true.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly, And so she eventually makes the decision like, hey,
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: I'm going to prepare for the strike, but not pull
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: the trigger on it. What I am going to do
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: is try the diplomatic route. First meet with Rand and
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: once she meets with him, he scares the living pants
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: off of her, and because he's in Darth Rand mode,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: and so she pulls the trigger on the raid. So really,
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: her meeting with Rand is what triggers the raid to
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: happen on the White Tower. But this is where that
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: plan is hatched and where they basically prepare for it.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think we did see the plan get
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 3: floated earlier. I think there's a scene where Yulon we're
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 3: in Ulan's POV or we're in a different USPV and
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: he's talking to Ulan. Ulan's like, yeah, I've been asked
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 3: to sketch out this ridiculous campaign because I've flown rock
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 3: and I guess and that's this. But I think as
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 3: interesting is that she almost pulls the trigger on doing
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 3: that raid at this point. And the reason she doesn't
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: is so she can meet with Rand first. And I
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 3: gotta think that's got to be some of Agwainne's tavern, right,
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 3: because if Agwaine's not ready yet for the attack, right
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: at this point, Agwayne is still dealing with whatever she's
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: dealing with. She's not positioned back in the novice's quarters
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 3: up on the twenty seventh level. That hasn't happened yet,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 3: So the raid can't happen because Agwaine's not ready to
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 3: fight them off. So sure, we'll choose that we need
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 3: to talk to Rand first. Well, we'll need to clear
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 3: the dragon be Born off of our calendar before we
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 3: can get to that. That gives Agwayn the time she
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: needs to get in position. And also the reason why
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 3: they're doing this raid is because they're afraid of how
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 3: the Isidie could turn the tide of battle. But it's
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 3: like kind of embarrassing for the Isidaie. How barely true
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 3: that is. They're so bad at being used for weapons
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 3: that like they're not nearly the weaponry potential that the
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 3: shan Chen are calculating for. So I'm gonna say, I
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 3: think that the Shonchen we're always going to raid the
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 3: White Tower. Mm hmm, I think that was inevitable.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: You're saying. Sorry, I'm just I'm looking at the comment
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: where you said the person to suggest it is the
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: same one she's controlling. Later, do you know who is
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: that Uln?
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 3: Is that you for? Gal Gun thought was a totally
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: different play, but I don't remember.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay. So in the Meaning of the blood
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: Yulan argues that Matt has proven himself reckless. Min sees
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: a chain above Ulan's head and realizes he's been using
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 2: his spy under compulsion. So we don't know at what
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: point Yulen got put under compulsion.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 3: I always assumed it was kind of contemporaneous to when
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 3: he gets discovered, Like in those few days. I kind
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 3: of thought Maki showed up and just started slapping compulsion
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: down like in the war tent. I didn't think it
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: was a long term plan, but I guess I don't
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: know that I can prove that.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't necessarily know when when he got compelled.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: It's possible that she has him under compulsion now and
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: is pushing this idea.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 3: But I just I feel like it's really obvious that
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 3: the shan Chan would want to attack the White Tower.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 3: I don't feel like you need compulsion to.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: Explain that same. I agreed, agreed. It's just we do
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 2: know that Eulan was at some point under compulsion by Grendall.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: So and then you have to look at everything he
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: says and be like, well, at what point is he
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: saying it? At what point is Grendall saying it?
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 3: Da So I thought it was. I don't remember either way. Yeah,
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 3: that is an interesting question, sort of a precursor to
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 3: the Great Captain's getting corrupted.
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: I'm just reading reading up on him a little bit. Kay. Oh,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: it's Mugeddian, not Grendall who's compelling him, and that's only
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: after Mgeddion is It's I don't think he's being compelled
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: until Mugeddian is among the sean Chan, which is not yet.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 3: Okay, so that's what I thought. It's a good it's
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 3: a good question though.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, no, No, I had to do some real
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: serious research on that one because I was like, oh, yeah,
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: he is the one who is compelled later, so then yeah,
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: we have to.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 3: Really and probably the reason why he's come held is
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 3: because he's highly ranked in their decision making tree, because
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 3: he was so successful at planning and executing this raid
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 3: right exact, but target for compulsion later.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: Just looking at mcgeddeon's timeline here, yeah, it really feels
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 2: like mcgeddeon is not among them until the last battle.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree with that. Okay, this makes sense
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 3: because the sean Chan had been Semmerarrog's turf up until
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 3: like five minutes ago.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: Up until exactly yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah totally.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: Part of the reason why Tuwan knows that her generals
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 3: are serious about this and not just blowing smoke up
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 3: her ass is because they want to commit suicide troops
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 3: to it. She's like, oh, are they just testing me?
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 3: Oh no, they want to commit suicide troops. This is
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 3: they actually mean this for real, for real.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: Well, and they can take a bunch because they're not
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: flying back and they want to leave space to bring
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: I said I back, right, so they can no, Yeah,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: take up a few seats because it's a one way
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: trip for them. That'll leave more plenty of room to
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: bring back the I sid I that we need to
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: bring back.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they talk about going with a force of three
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 3: hundred and the capacity to bring back as many as
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 3: three hundred people. Like it's a big it's a big
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 3: transition of bodies that they're talking about. And the blood
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 3: knives are like not just sent to kill people, They're
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 3: sent to disable and destroy everything, right, infrastructure, bureaucracy, power structures, trust, documents.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 3: Whatever they can destroy they will destroy.
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: Which I don't understand why they're so bad at it.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: When they actually do get unleashed, they don't do shit
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: for like days and days and days until Gowin finally
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: like takes them down.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 3: So you don't think murdering lone sisters counts as doing anything.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: Not on the level that you're talking about. That's because
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: that is their job, is to assassinate. And then you said, oh,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: they're supposed to all this other stuff, and I'm like, eh, did.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 3: They I know, it's weird, how they they I think
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 3: it's a shan Chan bias because they're so focused on
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 3: the Marath Demani of it all, and they really like,
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, they might be blood knives, but they're also
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 3: shan Chan, right, they see Marath Demani as the most
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 3: existential threat, So why would you waste any energy on
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 3: anything else? But like, from where I'm sitting, the best
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 3: way to take the eyes to die apart would be
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: to just like burn the records.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, right, like do a little more destruction, right, like,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: And also the rate at which they're killing sisters is
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: pretty damn slow for a couple of blood knives. Like
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: they kill like one every couple of days, and it's
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: like mmmm right.
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 3: Like get the flower from the pantry, blow up the
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 3: kitchen during breakfast ship just like annihilate one of the kitchens.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: Right, and like you're dying, what are you doing wasting time?
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: Like you think they'd be slaughtering people, you know, sister
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: after your sister after sister.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 3: I assume that they're trying to get to Agwain. They
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 3: assume that they're trying to like test the defenses and
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 3: figure out which eyes to die they could kill to
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 3: make the most because again they looking at Tuon right,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 3: They're like, the leader is where the order eminates. We
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 3: can get rid of the leader. Like, I just think
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 3: they're really narrow focused on how the Imperial Sean Shan
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 3: world looks at everything else, and they're not They're not
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 3: doing great like field research for the situation they actually
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 3: find themselves in.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: I'm just saying that their praises get sung, you know,
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: to no end, and they basically don't do much. They
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: get taken down by Colin right, like.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 3: Granted, after he's weaponized some of their own technology against them.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: No no, no.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 3: No, he doesn't get the ring. He doesn't know how
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 3: to use the rings until a.
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he kills them.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 3: No no, he does put the ring. No, no, because
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 3: he's because because he doesn't initiate.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: Death timing and Demondred.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 3: He learns what the rings are and then zips home
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 3: and doesn't use them for that fight. So yeah, it's
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 3: they get taken out by Gawen.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: He doesn't know what the rings are until after he
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: kills them, takes the rings off of them and goes,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: what's what are these? I mean he knows their blood knives,
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: but like.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 3: No, he finds out what the rings are five minutes
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 3: before he says that that's right, that's right. That information
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 3: is what triggers him to zip that and get into
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 3: that situation. But he doesn't have time to activate them,
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 3: right like that that doesn't happen. But yeah, the bloodknives
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 3: should have been way cool.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah they should.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 3: All they get presented is like an all purposeless army
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 3: knife of destruction and instead they're just in ninjas.
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: And stead they're Harry Potter with an invisibility cloak and
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: a knife.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 3: God, and the blood Knives is such a cool idea,
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 3: like rings that give you like properties akin to how
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 3: a fade can operate in the light. Like that's super cool,
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 3: little like temporary warter booze, Like what a cool assassin tool.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 3: And then yeah, gawin is what it all? Wet farts
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 3: on my lord? Anyway, Tuan says, do you think that
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 3: this is all worth the risk? And they say yes,
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 3: and she's like all right, dope, And then so there's's like, wait,
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: you have a difficult decision to make. Maybe fucking sit
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 3: on your hands and think about that for a good
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 3: thirty seconds.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 2: I have a question here where she said, as I said,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: I so far had proven useless as weapons, But was
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: there some way to twist their supposed vows. Something mattrom
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: had said in passing made or suspect they could. What
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: is she referring to? And I don't remember anything that
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: he said in passing that could get around vowels about
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: is said I doing violence.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: I think he said something sarcastic about how like they
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 3: can get around their oaths to maybe the throwing things
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 3: at him with the with the medallion, or like the
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 3: way that they can twist their oaths against line. He
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 3: said something sarcastic about Joelene, and she decided to like
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 3: extrapolate way too far. That's what I think happened.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: I would just I wish there was a quote or
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: something that, like some way to relate, like what what
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 2: what quote are we talking about there?
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 3: That's I think we're just talking about Matt's general sarcasm
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 3: and callous flippancy around the Isidai and their oaths. That's
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 3: all I can think of.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: I was thinking of something strategic he said when passing,
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: you know, one of his like military quote things where
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: he's like, well, you could use them for traveling and
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: healing and all that kind of stuff, right.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 3: Like maybe it was the third of the fact that
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: there are exceptions in the do not use the power
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 3: as a weapon. The fact that exceptions exist is like
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 3: enough of a door for her to be like, oh, well,
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: what if we like put their water in danger, then
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 3: they'd have to kill them or something like that. Right,
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 3: maybe that's where their mind's going.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: Maybe if I put them in danger, they can be
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: used as weapons, because that's the one way he does
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: is basically they're like, do I feel in danger enough
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: to attack? Yes?
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 3: Now I do, okay, yeah, which I mean argue that
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 3: it is twisting your oath. If you put yourself into danger,
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 3: then you've chosen to use the power as a weapon
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 3: and gotten around your oath against doing that.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: And of course they say traveling is worth it, you know,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 2: even if we get nothing, but traveling that's worth the risk.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 3: Which true. They also want the atom bomb that doesn't exist. Yeah, right,
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 3: they're like, oh that that being explosive, it'd be so cool.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 3: And they figure out it's not real, but traveling they
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 3: make the very correct gamble that traveling is or fit.
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 3: I don't know that we really see them utilize traveling
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 3: in a way that makes it obviously worth it in
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 3: the books, but like when it comes time to retake
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 3: Sean Shan, that's going to be an absolute game changer.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: So I'd also like to point out this moment that, like,
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know if this ever happens at any other
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: point in the series, but a character actually turns to
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: another one and says, I have not been able to
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: sort the lies from the truth. Instead of instead of
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: asserting that they can know exactly what's happening based on
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 2: rumors and hearsay, he goes, I don't know. He says,
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 3: The is a beautiful humility of saying seems like legend's
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 3: fade to myth and I don't know what the fuck
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 3: is happening.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 3: I love the humility of like, now I'm a military man,
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 3: and I'm going to accurately assess, not propagandas not blow smoke,
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 3: not do false flag, no accurately no, which makes sense
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 3: because Rand has an isidye on every tier of friendship
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 3: ten right, there is no one answer to how Rand
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 3: feels about the eyes. So a good intelligent person who
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 3: has that evidence would say, eh, shrug, emoji.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: Perhaps the raid will enrage him, but will also weaken him,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: neither of which is really true. It doesn't enrage or
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: weaken him in any way, shape or form. He basically
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: doesn't care.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 3: Well, that's because they didn't realize that there's actually two
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 3: dragons on this continent and one of them is named
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 3: a Quain. Mmm right, because it does enrage and weaken
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 3: a Quaane to have this raid happen, and it does
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 3: bear on her military decisions moving forward.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then here's the the The Altarnans have not
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 2: made any objections tomorrow off THEMANI you being collared. It
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: seemed they had little trust for those who can channel.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: They're pretty racist, so they really didn't really mind us
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: coloring the people who were othered. They didn't outlaw them before.
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: But you know, they didn't like him very much, so
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: that works for us.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they were kind of undesirable, so everyone was fine
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 3: throwing them under the bus. You know, we all don't
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 3: like them, like, oh my god, it's so cringey, it
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 3: makes my skin crawl.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: It's really under the groal keeps saying, under the bus.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right, I should adjust.
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: My throwing them under the yeah, yeah.
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, in walks the difficulty, the difficult
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 3: decision actually presents itself and it is our friend, Tily
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 3: fucking Kirgun, love her so much. And she walks in,
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 3: bloody and exhausted from the surprise ambush that we last
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 3: saw her in and brings the evidence that trollics exist
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 3: and says, uh, we we got to think about this.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 3: And two one in Solution are like, oh fuck, if
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 3: trollics are real, what else that Matt told us is
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 3: real that we've been writing off as superstition, right.
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: Because they dismissed a lot of what he said as
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: superstition because he said things like trillics are real. Yeah, look, God,
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: what a superstitious, superstitious idiot, right, Like, let me.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 3: Go count the birds to decide how superstitious I should
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 3: be today.
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 2: But my superstition is real?
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 3: Right? But then Tylie walks in with like physical, disgusting, stinking,
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 3: bleeding evidence, and that, you know, two to two to
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 3: one in Solution's credit makes them revisit old assumptions.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if someone's like, you know, hell is real and
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: there are devils flying up to this earth to attack us,
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: and I'd be like, okay, right, whatever, Boddy. But if
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 2: someone put like actual devil heads on my desk, I'd
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: be like, okay, so hell tell me about hell?
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 3: Right, Okay, yeah, for sure, when you have physical evidence
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 3: on your desk, you should probably hear.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 2: Them out, physical bleeding evidence of yeah, weird distorted heads.
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 3: And it might be a hoax, but it at least
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 3: deserves further investigation.
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: Well, and coming from Tylee recently, you know, honored all right,
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: this is not someone who's going to start making shit up.
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 3: No, I mean, she's the reason why got that huge
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 3: infusion if I yield wise ones into the ranks of
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 3: the Domani right, Like, she has a lot of social
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 3: capital to burn right now.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: She just brought the biggest influx of Marth Demani into
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: the Sean Chan that they've ever had.
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Ever, that's the biggest single infusion of people to
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 3: the leash in centuries, if not ever. So yeah, when
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 3: she comes in and says, hey, I think I found
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 3: a problem, everyone above her is like, no, you should listen.
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 3: You should definitely listen to the junior office or she
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 3: definitely has earned being listened to.
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: And then and I love her a little. If I
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: may be so bold, I believe that the dragon be
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 2: born and those associated with him. Parrin maybe may make
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: better allies than enemies, and I would have I wanted
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: more of that, more of that, please, yes, yes, Like
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: let's get these people united in a way that helps
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 2: them ally, and they just did that. We don't see
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: much more of Tylee. I don't think we ever see
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 2: Tylee after this chapter or like what we do we
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: do we see one time, like in the battle under
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: Matt's command in the Last Battle, right he says she's
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 2: leading some shan Chan forces at one point, so she's
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: in the Last Battle fighting, But there's no more of
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: this convincing. You know, I wanted her to be by
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 2: two inside, convincing her that she should be supporting Matt
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: and Paren in the Last Battle. I wanted her to
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: lead a contingent of Sean Chan under parent in the
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: Last Battle. I wanted Parrien at the Last Battle. Okay, anyway, yeah, no,
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: but yeah.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 3: It would have been great if Galgon had been like,
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 3: I need her to be my attache, second in command,
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 3: like person, and then she's just there in the tenth
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 3: the whole time and gets tapped at some point to
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 3: do it, because like her and Eggie Annan are the
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 3: two shan Chan characters who start out stock shan Chan
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 3: and then move into like starting to unpack right all
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 3: of their societal bullshit and starting to question if maybe
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 3: the Empire is wrong and starting to question it's chattle
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 3: sleay of magic people is wrong, and like you see
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 3: the beginnings of that changing perspective, and like we need that,
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 3: we need to see people go through that process. And
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 3: we get these two little hints from these two strong, competent,
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 3: military minded women, and then it just kind of like
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 3: fizzles well in the.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 2: Same way that we saw like Inktar and Asmodian showing
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: different levels of coming back to the light, right as
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 2: moodyin kind of doing it involuntarily, and you might say
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: not at all, ink Tar doing it, you know, in
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: a moment of death. Do you see Varren making the
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: willing decision? Right? I feel like he does a pretty
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: good job of doing that with dark Friends, and I
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: would have loved to see a little more of that with.
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 3: The shan Chan exactly exactly. And it's harder because the
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 3: shan Chan are an analogy for Americans, and so like
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 3: dealing with our legacy of slavery and all that is
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 3: like messier than having you know, supreme evil having a
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 3: redemption arc. Like, it's messier, but it's still a little
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 3: bit nice to see because the first few steps were
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 3: being taken. We have two different women with two different
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 3: tavereran into different parts of the continent, with different conflicts,
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 3: going through the same huh are we the baddies kind
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 3: of moment? Might we need more oxygen on that?
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 2: So and then we get this the title right, Perhaps
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: in this case, a difficult decision is one that is
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 2: right but requires an implication of fault as well, which
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 2: I don't fully grasp.
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 3: Mm hmm, yeah, it totally makes sense with two on.
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 3: Two On can't admit she's wrong. Everything right, so it's
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 3: difficult for her to choose to admit that she's wrong.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 3: It's so like self aggrandizing and like I dislike the
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 3: idea that you need a whole ass omen to tell
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 3: you to be humble about not knowing everything, Like you
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 3: aren't that important.
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: No, just because you're the a. I mean, she might
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: not know everything I do, but that's just because I'm
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 2: a podcaster and we know everything.
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 3: And in fairness to the omen, it is difficult for
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 3: too On. It shouldn't be, but it is so you know,
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 3: it's the Omen does its job forgetting her to accept
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 3: that maybe she should do something slightly.
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: Uncomfortable, and Solusha is, you know, reproving her. She's like, listen,
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: you actually have to make a bad decision. And two
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 2: one's like, wait, why are you saying that? Oh right,
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: you're much with the speaker.
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 3: Because you gave her too many jobs. Solushah should not
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 3: be your secret cohort and your public No.
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: But I think the only reason they do that. Did
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: that is because he knew he was going to set
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: men up as her truth speaker later.
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, for sure, And like I get it
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 3: like from her, tuo On's coming from she can't trust anybody,
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 3: so put all the jobs on Solusha. But like I
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 3: would like Solusha to yell at her in private and
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 3: be like, I don't have that many hours in the
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 3: day to do all these jobs. But yeah, she tells
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 3: Tuon to sit down and think about it and be humble,
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 3: and too On goes, all right, fine, I guess I'll
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 3: like talk to raid.
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: Right, I'm going to prepare to do the raid, but
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go talk to the dragon reborn first,
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 2: and his scary ass makes her do the raid.
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 3: Right, and she's like, I guess I'll lower my eyes
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 3: to deign to talk to literal Jesus. And then after
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 3: the meeting with Rand she's like, well, now that I'm
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 3: done talking to Jesus, I can take my full authority
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 3: as queen, because the Empress could never have talked to Jesus.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 3: But like the Daughter of the Nine Moons.
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: Can, so one thing one can. Actually, I think we
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: don't talk about because we do. We emphasize how much
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: shawn Chan really is, you know, imperial America, but how
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: much it also is imperial Japan, And how much sure
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: you have this Empress is god warship of this person
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 2: who is divine and speaks divinely, and this inheritance that's
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: going on for a long time, you know, generation after generation,
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: and the atrocity atrocities they you know, perpetuate and the
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 2: islands and everything like that. Like, I think there really
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: is a lot of Japanese imperialism in the Shawn Chan.
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I get that vibe too, I just don't know
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 3: enough about it to like point to the specific things
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 3: and be like definitely, but no, I think you're right.
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 3: There's definitely a vibe of Imperial East Asia on top
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 3: of America in all of it's, in all of its messiness,
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 3: because that's what Robert Jordan did, right. He took the
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 3: whole world, threw it into a bag, shook it up,
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 3: and pulled out the person on it, like that's what
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 3: he did. But no, yeah, you're definitely right. It's not
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 3: entirely America. There are some very non American flavors thrown
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 3: into that mixed.
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: And that's all I have until the reno.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, same, I guess I will read us out.
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: Then sounds good to me.
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 3: Order must be brought to the world. If she had
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 3: to do that by lowering her eyes slightly and meeting
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 3: with the Dragon Reborn, then so be it. Oddly, she
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 3: felt herself, wishing once again that Mattroom were still with her.
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 3: She could have put his knowledge of this randolphor it
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 3: to good use in preparing for the meeting. Stay well,
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 3: you curious man, she thought, glancing back at the balcony northward.
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 3: Do not dig yourself into trouble deeper than you can
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 3: climb to freedom. You are Prince of the Raven. Now
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 3: remember to act appropriately wherever it is you are, she
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 3: misses him.
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: I almost have sympathy for her, And.
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 3: Then I don't it's hard not to like Matt and
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 3: two one as a couple. It's really hard not to
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 3: like them.
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I this is where I think, I think
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 2: Matt and Elaine would have made a really interesting couple
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: if we wanted it very similar. Yeah, absolutely, you know,
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 2: and I really think, you know, if you take away
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: the relationships that Rand has, like he doesn't need three right,
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: like him and Elaine, they can be colleagues without being
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: lovers easily. Yeah, And I think Matt would take the
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: place of you know, sort of that imperial trickster who
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 2: you know, Tom's place if you will, Yeah, total, And
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: then yeah, I don't know. I just I think that
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 2: an Avienda could be also Elaine's lover.
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 3: But Matt and Auvienda are like constantly trying to kill
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 3: each other, and it's.
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: See, I can have them having more of a relationship
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: the way Matt has a relationship with Brigida. It's just like,
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: I'm not in any way attracted to Avienda whatsoever. But
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: I'll drink I'll drinki with her and throw daggers at
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 2: poisonous lizards, and you know, and we'll both have sex
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 2: with Lane and that works for us, right, and then
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 2: it works better with Elaine having as queen you know,
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 2: and her arrogance having multiple lovers a supposed Rand who.
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 3: Rand does not have the emotional bandwidth for three people,
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 3: but Elaine.
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: Does exactly exactly. That's entirely what I'm saying.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and then two On could just.
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 2: Like I don't know, I don't know whatever, he's.
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 3: Like twice her age if you're a creed, her literal
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 3: adopted dad.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: Get Welts in her life.
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 3: God, nobody, there's nobody else she could, you know, she
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 3: can just be Ace. She can just be our or
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 3: Ace columnist. It'll be fine. Or maybe she could. I
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 3: don't know. I don't know. We don't get enough good
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 3: characters from the shan Chan to even.
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: Like that's true, have fodder for this Yan.
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or some random sold All I know is that
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 3: Matt and Tuon is one of the most believable courtships
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 3: and relationships in the books. Like I actually see them
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 3: growing together and gaining attraction in a way that none
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 3: of the other relationships really do. For the most part,
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 3: So I like them, even though I don't like them.
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: Min and Rand spend time.
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 3: Together, not with the same changing dynamic. Fair Like, I
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 3: just I don't know. I see the most relationship development
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 3: along normal relationship lines with Matt and tuon. Even though
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 3: it is very Taming of the Shrew. At least they're
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 3: both equally participants in the.
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 2: Game, right right, because they're both being and because teaming
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: of the true in a lot of ways, they're told
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 2: by their friends that they love each other even though
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: they don't, and that's kind of how the whole relationship starts.
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: And here it's not friends, it's prophecies, but it's basically
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 2: the same idea. It's like, if you're told you're going
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 2: to fall in love with these if both people are
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 2: told they like each other, how does the relationship progress
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 2: from there when neither wants to give the other one
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 2: the upper hand?
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 3: Right right, Yeah, there's a lot of prophecy relationships in here,
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 3: But I just I like Matt and two on most
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 3: and I think it's cute that even as she's planning
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 3: to do like some serious war crimes, she's also like,
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 3: he missed my boyfriend. He made me feel safe.
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: And this is where I actually think Land and Nini
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: works really well because just the respect you see them
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: developing respect for each other and their skills over time
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: as they travel.
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't really see it like kind of but
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 3: I believe it more with Matt and two on pair.
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 3: You know, whatever, relationships are not the Wheel of Time
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 3: strong suit.
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: I even really like uh, Tom and Moraine, even though
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 2: most people are like, what where did that come from?
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: I know most people think it's the worst romance in
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 2: the world, and I think it's one of the best.
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 2: I think it's so because it's so subtle, but it's
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 2: still going on there because neither one would admit it
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 2: for a second.
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 3: Oh, I don't like it. I don't like it. I
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 3: don't like that the canonical lesbians get a boy is
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 3: their reward for doing.
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: Well, that's that's just very nineties.
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 3: Also, I just I liked whatever.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: Well, you don't want to talk about relationships in the
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 2: Wheel of Time for another couple of hours.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure my internet connection is getting a little worse.
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 2: This conversation another time.
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 3: Recording, but suboptimal audio. I mean it might be better audio,
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 3: and I can see the waveforms are bigger than usual,
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 3: so we won't have to get bumped up so much
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 3: in post. So that's going to be interesting.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: All right, So we are recording with a radio on
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 2: the road.
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 3: I mean I'm in a house and not literally on
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 3: the road.
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: No, we actually put your desk out in the middle
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 2: of the street. Random extension cord.
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Fine.
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 2: The car is actually a pretty good recording spot. It's
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 2: got nice soundproof panels, padding on the inside.
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 3: Glass walls.
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 2: They're small, there's a lot there's a lot of headrests
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 2: in the way.
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 3: Sure. But yeah, if I if I sound different than usual,
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 3: it's because I'm in a different space on different equipment,
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 3: because life has multifaceted components that must be juggled. That's
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 3: all I'll say about that.
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, we're we're doing recording and the backup zoom recording,
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 2: and hopefully part of it comes out sounded pretty good.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see. I have a better internet connection than
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 3: I did a week ago at the same location, and
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 3: so it shouldn't be too choppy. But I've also never
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 3: recorded off of my Bluetooth headphones, so this will be
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 3: a first.
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 2: Gosh an any life updates we need to share with
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 2: the crowd, we should probably do patrons, but we did
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 2: not prep for that. So I've seen some activity. So
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: we should put that on the to do list.
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be good. I know you said that
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 3: last time, and I just have been lifing too hard
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 3: to have followed.
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 2: Up on the same same that's just been crazy.
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 3: We will do that at some point.
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 2: Oh my life update. I'm settling into the new house,
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: mostly unpacked at this point. I've had a new dog, Harvey,
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 2: for a month now, so he is finally getting past
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 2: his like first three weeks so just crazy behavior, and
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 2: we're starting to like get to know him, and he's
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 2: settling it a little bit and he's cuddling instead of
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 2: chewing on my face. Oh my god, he was. He
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 2: just he would come home and he just lick my
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 2: face and then nibble on my ear lobes to the
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: point where it was painful. It was like, and then
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 2: he'd nip my ankles and my wrists to get me
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 2: to let him out to go to the bathroom. All
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 2: that went just you know, before we had him for
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 2: a couple of days, obviously he had not been let
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 2: out easily by his last owner. So but now with
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 2: regular taking out and him settling in, he's just he's
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 2: a much better dog, and we're starting to finally meet him,
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 2: I would say for the first time, because it's it's
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 2: the three three days, three weeks, three months, right that
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 2: you hear about with the dog, right, three days is
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 2: basically trauma. Three weeks they realize they're going to stay there,
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 2: and then in about three months you actually get to
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 2: know them.
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's awesome. I've been hanging out with my dog
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 3: in law and he's a big old cuttlebug. He's been great,
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 3: definitely making you want a dog even more, but a
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 3: dog with less hair. This dog is so hairy. He's
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 3: a Golden Retriever. So he just has yards upon yards
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 3: of long white hair and it's just too much. I
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 3: need a short haired talk.
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 2: Oh man, I'm discovering Harvey as a shudder. He has
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 2: short hair, but it is I mean, you rub him
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 2: and it comes off, and he's got an undercoat that's
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 2: pretty thick and it you know, we bathe him and
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 2: brush him, and it's just that there's more. There's more.
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 2: The more you take off, the more it freeze up,
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 2: more hair to come out.
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 3: Right, right, Yeah, and then yeah, My other update is
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 3: just the support group continues to go great. Every week
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 3: a handful of people show up and this last week
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 3: was the first time that it was all people who
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 3: had shown up at least once already, So that was
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 3: kind of fun to feel like we've actually are gaining
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 3: like momentum and like group report to some extent. So
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 3: I'm continuing to get a lot out of that. I
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 3: hope that people continue to join us because it's a
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 3: good time recording on the computer.
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 2: Aradi, this is pretty bad hard and so they may
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: just have to postpone recording if it's that bad, because
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 2: I can't listen to that for two hours. I could
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 2: barely stand up for thirty to thirty seconds. So yeah,
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: Aradi has dropped out of the project and replaced her
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 2: with Ai. Oh yeah, no. I feel like we could
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 2: definitely train AI on the podcast to be like make
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 2: a podcast episode about chapter twenty five or something like
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 2: that that and you know, feed them the chapter, feed
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 2: them the podcast audio, and the AI would just be
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 2: like it would sound really confident about asserting things that
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: make absolutely no sense. Connect two characters that are not connected.
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 2: I feel like we'd have to like type out a
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 2: script and then just have or maybe like have somebody
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 2: else do that other side of the podcast and just
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 2: Rea have AI make the audio sound like a radio,
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 2: but then it wouldn't read like her.
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 3: Well, I have no ability to control what's happening.
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 2: Okay, it sounds good?
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 3: Now great?
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know right. I was just saying, how the
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 2: second you disconnect, I realize I'm in a closet talking
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 2: to myself. It's very weird. It's fine as long as
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 2: you're here, but the second you're gone, I'm like, what's
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 2: going on? This is very weird? If I take it
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 2: up context? All right, well, are you still recording? Recording?
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's cool. Should I start over?
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 2: You're the editor?
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 3: I'm just tired.
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, as I can understand. Are you sure you
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 2: want to record today? Are we with technical problems and
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: exhaustion in the chapters? Is this going to be a
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 2: pointless recording or a port recording?
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 3: We'll find out if the internet cooperates.
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 2: Let's give it a shot.
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 3: All right, we at least can get through floor beans.
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 3: I bet we can at least get through beans.
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: Please, let's get through floor beans.
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 3: The least anticipated chapter, the most negatively anticipated chapter of
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 3: this entire read. Thank you for listening to the Wheel
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 3: of Time Spoilers podcast. Please rate and review us on
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 3: your podcast app, and consider supporting us on Patreon for
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 3: ad free episodes. Watt Spoilers is a production of Fox
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 3: and Raven Media. For more podcasts from Fox and Raven Media,
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 3: visit our website at foxendravenmedia dot com