Latest / WoT Spoilers / Attending Elaida - Knife of Dreams chapter 25 - EP498

Transcript

Attending Elaida - Knife of Dreams chapter 25 - EP498 · WoT Spoilers

0:12
This is the Wheel of Time spoilers podcast. Well, welcome back, Margo.
0:19
Introduce yourself again again. Yes, I am Margo Graybello. Margot has
0:24
to die on the Discord and I've been here since twenty eighteen following the podcast
0:33
bound y'all damn, because I was scrolling the Wheel of Time hashtag right after
0:39
I found out there was gonna be a show on just on Instagram, and
0:43
I was like, ooh a podcast. Wheel of Time podcasts, I'm gonna
0:47
follow them. I'm gonna listen to that podcast, And you guys were not
0:51
very far in, so it was very easy for you to catch up and
0:54
then also do a re listen at the same time that I was doing the
0:58
podcast. And of course I'd going Discord immediately and was like, yeah,
1:00
I gotta be involved in the live recording. It's just so fun. So
1:04
yeah, it's been a long time. It's been. I was just looking
1:10
at my new analogy and I was like, dang, I need another spoiler
1:12
sticker for this one, because that's my work cup. But yeah, I
1:19
got into Wheel of Time because somebody give it to me for my for Christmas.
1:23
My first year away from my parents at college, I read the first
1:27
one, and I was like, holy shit, and powered through the neck
1:32
arrest and I was able to read them all straight all the way through.
1:34
This was in two thousand and nine. Damn. Yeah. Well I almost
1:40
was able to power all the way through. Something waylaid me for a little
1:44
bit and I had to go back and start the Dragon Reborn again from the
1:47
beginning, and then I went all the way through. Sure, well,
1:52
well one false start, we won't blame Yeah, yeah, that happens for
1:55
sure. I have to ask everybody because I didn't experience that. But what
2:00
was the quote unquote slog like to you reading it straight through like that?
2:06
How was it a problem when you you didn't have to wait for books.
2:08
I didn't know about the slog. I didn't know about it being a thing
2:12
until I joined the online community and I was like, oh yeah, I
2:14
could see if you had to wait for those books. Like but I just
2:17
was able to go, I'm gonna go buy Barnes and Noble on my way
2:21
to the job at the furniture store and grabbed the new book because I'm almost
2:24
done with this one. So I just powered through it. We're at a
2:27
furniture store. I could just sit around comfortable couches testing this share. Okay,
2:34
somebody came in, I got up, I sold them whatever. But
2:37
the rest of the time I could sit on the most comfortable couches and read
2:40
power through reading Wheel of Time. All right, So those places are fronts,
2:45
right, there's no one who actually like most furniture and mattress stores have
2:50
to be fronts for either a drug company or that. Yeah, or the
2:53
owner of it has to have another very lucrative business, which was the case
2:59
with the owner mind. But he did end up closing the furniture store after
3:02
I'd already moved away from Richmond. So yeah, I mean it wasn't making
3:06
money, no, but it was a really fun place to work, very
3:09
comfy. I have a friend who has definitely made a recreational habit of just
3:15
like checking out furniture stores and just kind of like, so spending half an
3:19
hour just like running around like sitting on things and like sitting on couches.
3:23
You could never entertainment. They're so comfy. Looking at weird lamp designs,
3:29
being like, I don't want what you were smoking when you designed this lamp.
3:32
This is a bad lamp. Oh yeah, right right, And I'm
3:38
like pieces of twisted metal on the walls that are like art or they're like
3:43
three thousand dollars, but it comes from a magazine. You can like mass
3:46
order them. It's a very strange environment. Indeed. Indeed, I remember
3:51
going into a mattress store when I first moved to Portland and I needed a
3:53
mattress, right, but I'm sure as hell was gonna buy one from there,
3:57
because good god, the prices are absurd and oh so much, it's
4:02
insane. And just when I was sitting on a couple of couches and just
4:05
having like four people stare at me at all times because there were so many
4:10
employees and I was the only commission Yeah, yeah, but I wasn't gonna
4:15
buy anything, So you know, it was but it was. It was
4:18
a weird, almost real experience because I think it went like kind of late
4:23
at night too. I was like, why are y'all even open? I
4:26
don't understand open till eight? Yeah yeah something like that was like seven thirty
4:31
later and start closing at seven, but still like a wintertime, they're way
4:36
after dark and everything. Yeah, you know what I want to do after
4:40
dinner in January is go spend five thousand dollars on a new piece of furniture
4:45
that I'll have to love years upon years. That's totally what I do.
4:48
I use furniture that my that was my grandparents. That. Yeah, mostly
4:56
all the good furniture I had was my grandparents. And like this random table
5:00
that my parents friends gifted to me when I moved into my house that I
5:06
have. Now, we're heavily into rebuying from people, Facebook, Marketplace,
5:11
through story. I don't think I've ever bought anything new because there's the rich
5:15
people who can afford the five thousand new thing they need to get rid of
5:17
the old thing, and if you'll come get it, they'll basically give it
5:20
away for free. They don't even need. They might put it up for
5:24
a hundred bucks or two hundred bucks or three hundred bucks because they want to.
5:26
It'll make they need out of house, and they want someone who's willing
5:30
to pay a little bit of money. But yeah, and my parents downsized
5:32
a couple of years ago, and they had a pretty big three bedroom house
5:36
with tons of stuff. My brother like helped them selve so much stuff on
5:41
Facebook Marketplace, and I'm still a big Craigslist user. I know mostly so
5:46
I can say off Facebook. I but occasionally I do turn to Travis,
5:53
my old roommate, say, he's on Facebook a lot, right, and
5:58
so I'm like, hey, I need something up. I get on it
6:00
Facebook Marketplace and I'm like, can you can you help me out? And
6:01
so he's he's got a nose for the deals. He's he's helped me buy
6:05
a lot of stuff. Yeah, it's honestly, people go there first now
6:09
instead of Craigslist. I would have gone to Craigslist before, but I've tried
6:14
to do that before and it doesn't work nearly as quickly. Yeah, just
6:17
throw a good fuck Zuckerberg out there. Yes, I got a Facebook,
6:21
I'm off Instagram. I'm off Facebook. It's so funny because like now my
6:26
mom's on Facebook and stuff, and like she loves posting pictures and it's adorable.
6:30
But yeah, I don't have it on my phone or anything. M
6:34
M. But I also like like to have Instagram because I can save like
6:40
all the freaking videos I took this weekend and not have my phone. I
6:44
can just have him uploaded somewhere. I took a lot of ideots. Well,
6:48
it's like I know my coworkers have Facebook. Which is just a great
6:51
reason not to get on there. Oh yes, my boss, the owner
6:56
of the company I work for, he's not only on Facebook, but he's
6:59
probably followed me since I was like a teenager on Facebook, and he posts
7:03
a lot, and he asked me how to do stuff on Facebook. And
7:05
it's just like, yeah, it makes me just never want to get on
7:09
it at all. All the people I work with her on there, it's
7:12
Oh, I work in Southwest Virginia in a car dealership. Can you imagine
7:15
this stuff? My face? Yeah, it's rough. I mean, in
7:20
some ways, I'm kind of hypocritical because obviously I put so much of myself
7:25
out there in this podcast. It's a different thing. It's so different.
7:28
It's different, and the volume of audio people would have to wade through in
7:32
order to find out things about me. I'd like, you, really,
7:36
you're really gonna have to listen to Time Ship. I'm like, you're gonna
7:40
You're gonna have to, Like, it's almost worth it to me to get
7:43
someone into that into time exactly. You're gonna end up being a van in
7:47
d Yeah. It take a lot, all right, It's being a Vandon
7:56
dread truth. Vandon dread Truth that is not an easy h common. I
8:00
thought I was able to say it sound like it was nothing, So you
8:05
know, you made it look so easy. I walked into it like face
8:09
first, thinking it was just going to be no problem. What's I walked
8:13
into a thinking it was going to be hard. So that maybe as that's
8:18
what they're all about, so Van and Dred. I think there's some really
8:20
good evidence in this chapter. And uh, it's just a fun chapter overall,
8:24
and I'm excited to have Margo here with us. So do we want
8:28
to dig into it? One last question? Oh, okay, one last
8:33
question. Margo, remind us when you were on last oh, because you
8:35
are a returning guest, but I have no memory for toting. It was
8:39
I don't know when exactly, but it was springish of twenty twenty two.
8:43
I was on for the chapter the Road to Camelin. I think that was
8:48
the name of the chapter where Elaine and her whole crew are actually riding to
8:54
Camelin and the murder had just happened and they're trying to figure out who what
9:00
it's like. Yeah, so basically when this current plot line started. Now,
9:07
wow, nice timing. Then we like to book we did that totally
9:13
because of my job schedule or any any other weird thing. Yeah, no,
9:18
definitely definitely super on purpose. Well excellent, I'm glad to have you
9:22
back. And yeah, I guess digging into this chapter with yeah, falling
9:28
apart Alida. Alida is so like spiraling around the drain towards the air a
9:35
hall. Eventually it's become to the point where she gets drunk in front of
9:41
other sisters. But but I like that you mentioned air it Hall, right,
9:46
because I do you have to talk about Fane's influence are influence in this
9:50
section? Yeah? Yeah, her her mind is crumpling, and I think
9:54
that the initial impact of Fane is really showing in that crumple. But yeah,
9:58
we should actually get into it chronologically. So Margaret, do you want
10:03
to read us in and you want me to do it? Yes, I
10:05
can do it. I read it to my dogs last night out loud to
10:09
get a little practice. Excellent, excellent, But it still probably won't be
10:13
very good. But let's it'll be fantasy. It's a long one, like
10:16
the whole first paragraph. Yeah, even just as long. We'll fix it
10:20
in post, don't worry. Yeah, okay, gold embossed leather folder under
10:26
her arm. Tarna kept to the central core of the tower as she climbed
10:30
towards Elida's apartments, although it meant using a seemingly endless series of staircases twice.
10:37
Those stairs were not located where she remembered them, but so long as
10:41
she continued upward, she would reach her destination. Rather than the gently spiraling
10:46
corridors. On the stairs, she met no one but the occasional liveried servants
10:52
who bowed or curtsied before hurrying on about their tasks. In either of the
10:58
spiraling hallways, she would have had to pass the entrances to the Aja quarters
11:03
and perhaps encounter other sisters. Her keeper's stole allowed her to enter any Ajas
11:09
headquarters, yet she avoided all except the Red, save when duty called among
11:15
sisters of the other Ajas. She was all too aware that her narrow stole
11:20
was red, all too aware of hot eyes watching her from cold faces.
11:28
They did not unnerve her, little did. She took the shifting interior of
11:33
the tower in stride. But still she thought matters had not gone so far
11:37
that anyone would actually attack the keeper. Yet she took no chances retrieving the
11:43
situation was going to be a long, hard struggle, whatever Alida thought,
11:48
and an assault on the keeper might make it irretrievable. You think that shit
11:54
may have sailed at this point. Nice, nice sentiment. Yeah, I'm
12:01
glad you are so bold that you think you can actually turn the ship around.
12:07
I mean, right, she's confident in herself. I'll give Tarna that.
12:13
Yeah, Tarna, I looked her up and it was fun realizing that
12:20
she was wilder that came to the tower and Galina beat her block out of
12:28
her? Right, that who this woman is, who's now trying to keep
12:35
the alight at heart? Yeah, this point later where she compares Elaine's punishment
12:41
to her getting the block beaten out of her, and how it's actually worse
12:43
than that. Wait sorry, yeah, yeah, no, it's it's an
12:48
interesting line of like, oh, no, I had my block beaten out
12:50
of me, because I feel like it's been euphemistically referred to. Bye,
12:54
but Galina Caspin like the worst, right, yeah, like it's been euphemized
13:01
and like hinted at that, like the some sisters have done that to some
13:03
other sisters. And now we're having a woman saying a woman you all the
13:07
readers know is black Auja as fuck beat the block out of me, who
13:13
is empirically evidently not a black Aja person, And you're just like, whoa
13:18
this is. We've been hating on the reds this whole time, but it's
13:22
like, how many of them were actually doing black Oja stuff? Like this
13:26
is a moment of realizing, like the Red are in their own way on
13:30
microcosm of the Tower being riddled with black Auja, like the Red are equally
13:33
riddled with black Auja. The Red is really yeah, I would say that's
13:39
got that has the most right. I'm pretty sure I've seen that somewhere exactly
13:43
exactly, Yeah, that's in Varren's book that the Red right has. Yeah.
13:50
Yeah, proportionally, if you do the math, a third of the
13:52
Red are black, whereas only a quarter of the rest of them, right
13:56
right, which it Yeah, that can't be just explained by the fact that
14:00
the Red Auja is the biggest. It's also like, no that they attracted
14:05
the nasty people unfortunately well, and the people that want to hunt down other
14:09
human beings and like still or kill them like that's their thing too, So
14:15
of course its people. Also they're looking for men who can channel which of
14:20
course are include the Dragon reborn. So the Dragon reborn, the dark One
14:26
is going to have a focus on finding men who can channel, right,
14:28
that that was a big part of what I mean. Let's look at look
14:31
at who founded the Black Aja Right is Shamayel singularly focused on the dragon singuely
14:37
focused on finding right, Like, so you know, obviously there's going to
14:41
be a big black a presence in the group of people who are trying to
14:45
find rant. Yeah, you've got a whole ajah dedicated to finding all of
14:48
them just in case. Yeah, yeah, your mission statement makes you bad.
14:54
Yeah, but like a semi like legitimate reason, right, you know,
15:01
people go into it for they could really mess some stuff up, stuff
15:05
up if they were allowed to channel. But like, was there really no
15:09
other way to deal with male channelers, I don't know, And like being
15:16
militant and mean was also not necessary in order to do the merciful thing.
15:22
Exactly, Yeah they yeah, exactly that this was not the right way to
15:28
do it. But it was a shot my ol self. But yeah,
15:31
but Tarna, as I recall, she gets turned during the confrontations at the
15:37
Black Tower, I believe that Pavara, like looks in Tarna's eyes and is
15:43
like, oh no, that's not Tarna anymore. I am disturbed, and
15:46
then goes to Andrel and was like, oh yeah, like I believe that
15:52
seeing Tarna's dead eyes is part of it. Oh yeah. She shares a
15:54
room with Pivara at the Black Tower. Yeah, exactly exactly, and she
16:00
changes her mind and she comes back and she's like we should totally stay.
16:04
Right after she was really really rare and to go and it's it's yeah,
16:08
she's like the final the final red flag, red, final red flag in
16:15
Pivara realizing that everything's going to ship right. So again proof that she's technically
16:22
okay as reds go. She's not a black Auja. She's not a bad
16:25
person, she's just yeah, and she even likes men. Yeah, and
16:30
she likes men, which is like controversial to not be there for women.
16:36
Yeah, whoa red So like, what's wrong with you? The group of
16:40
people that were like we know, we know for sure they're not black a
16:44
jab because they got turned into black aud jaw, so they couldn't have started
16:48
out that way. And it's like, oh, good for you, you
16:52
know. It's like uh yeah, it's like, well if she floats she's
16:56
a witch and we burn her and if she drowns, then she wasn't a
16:57
witch, and we don't write exactly right, right, great, awesome,
17:03
so cool love that for me. Okay, So she's thinking about a mental
17:08
list of people who she can share the idea of bonding men over right,
17:15
right, the thing that will lead to her ultimate demise. Yes, that's
17:17
right. So she thinks she can only still think of a single name,
17:22
and that one was impossible for the task. Who I could. I did
17:27
a little research, and I couldn't figure out. You know, there's a
17:30
list of people who end up in that group, right, But I don't
17:36
know is she thinking about Pavara. I think she's thinking about herself, because
17:41
yep, she's like, I can't though I'm the keeper she ultimately decides to
17:47
because so few people can. But that was the best I got. I
17:49
have no evidence for that my own logic. Yeah, except for the fact
17:53
that she was already talking about how she's like okay with the idea and Likesmith
18:00
anyway, So yeah, I can see that. I thought it was Yeah,
18:03
I thought it was Pavara, just because I know what happens in no
18:11
you know, actually looking it over a radio, she thinks herself, who
18:14
in the Red could actually be trusted with the task? And she is in
18:18
the Red, right so, and she can't trust anybody else. That makes
18:22
sense that it ends up being just herself. Well at this point, I
18:25
mean, she does ultimately get Pavara and whoever else. I forget who else
18:32
goes on that mission, but she clearly she figures out. I guess it's
18:34
because she's starting with the Red at this point, she's still not expanding her
18:38
search to other No, she brings all reds No, but she's talking about
18:41
who in the Red could be trusted with this task? Yeah, no,
18:45
I think they do. Sue Tama ultimately has to order some other sisters to
18:49
join the mission. As I recall, there's a later POV where Tarna thinks
18:55
that ultimately Sutama simply told some sisters, Hey, you're gonna go bond order.
19:00
I don't care what you think, because this list never expands beyond the
19:04
one impossible name. And I guess maybe Pavara. I like how she's taking
19:10
the changing of the tower in stride, like, I'm sorry, I don't
19:14
think I could do that. Reasons to like her, right, it's like
19:18
you're chill in the face of transsubstantiating tower. Like she's just like, I'm
19:23
just gonna take the long way. That's you know. I know it's gonna
19:27
take me there in the end. No, as long as I keep going
19:30
up, I'm gonna get there. And I'm just gonna not deal with this
19:33
right now because I can't change it. By the way, final group of
19:38
six who will be our Pavara, Tarna Jezreel, Deslana Moulane, and Javindra
19:48
Jezreel. We saw in just a previous chapter. She's the one who stops
19:52
Katherine from beating Agwayne as she's going down the hallway. Right. Yeah,
19:56
I listened to that one too. I like to do before and after you
20:00
get all the chapters around it. Desla is one who capt one of the
20:03
ones who captures Leanne. Okay, yeah, they the Reds really lose a
20:08
lot of uh not black Acha members on this mission. Yeah, they do.
20:15
That sucks, like a lot of the actual Reds go down and the
20:19
ones that I truly think there's a reason behind it and or taking interesting but
20:26
reasonable than the rest of the Reds steps. Yeah. Oh and I said
20:32
mulane, I meant malaire Ah Malayer, thanks Jordan. Yeah, and then
20:37
we have them. We have may Donnie in this chapter too. Yeah,
20:41
that's the next paragraph. Is may Donnie doing like seduction at ten am?
20:47
Yeah, she was garbed for a ball or seduction, a lad us already
20:52
sip and wine. We've got like jewelry and exposed bosoms, and it's just
20:56
it's a whole situation. And like Tarna repeatedly mentions, it is early in
21:03
the day. It is like she is bringing the morning reports, like this
21:07
is coffee hour, Like what are you doing drinking wine and looking at this
21:11
woman's cleavage, Like this is way too early. I feel like a light
21:15
has gone like drunk with power king on their throne, hairm around them at
21:21
all times, drinking constantly, that level of just like indulgence mediation. So
21:26
yeah, they're so disconnected from reality. She's so disconnected from reality that there's
21:32
no you know, They're like, everything's going great now that I have the
21:37
power back from Alvar and I'm in charge, so nothing can go wrong because
21:41
I'm doing the orders right. And then that plus gross misinterpretation of the information
21:47
being fed to her just keeps her, you know, totally disconnected from what's
21:51
really going on in the world. Yeah, she feels like her brain's been
21:53
a little bit broken, and like, yeah, she can only respond like
21:59
in a tropized kind of way like to that. And then of course you
22:03
got a factor in the patent Faane factor, right, the Fain factor,
22:07
Yes, you do. The way she's behaving here is so bad, even
22:12
compared to the Alida we've seen in previous books. She's so short tempered and
22:15
irrational and angry and paranoid. And it's like that's those are fault lines that
22:22
Faine put in her mind that she's collapsing along at this point. And I
22:26
think that the whole Odja, right, like, is being affected, the
22:32
whole tower is being affected by the Feine influence. Right. This turning on
22:37
each other is just a very typical Arid Hall reaction. You just keep splitting
22:42
your groups into smaller and smaller groups, chopping them up and having them be
22:47
suspicious of each other. Right. We even have here Alida being like,
22:51
no, I want you to spy on your own ADJA. Right, She's
22:52
turned off the ad jaws against each other. Now she's trying to turn people
22:56
within the adjaws against each other, and I think that's all a Feane influence.
23:00
Yeah, that's totally what happened to her at all. It's why it's
23:03
shut our logos. Not surprised that the leader who was strongly influenced by him
23:11
would end up creating the same mess. And Tarvalan is such a mess too,
23:17
and she's just ignoring that, and everybody's just like, we know what's
23:25
going on here. And of course they talk about trying to get people fed
23:30
now that they have the whole Queen dr chain across the river, or half
23:34
of it is Queen dr. But I think Elia even says something about how
23:38
she wants to get people back to like building her palace too. So she's
23:41
just like, not no, no sense of priority that, like people are
23:45
starving, but build my palace, right, And you've got two quindiar chains,
23:49
right, You've got one that Aguayne did that blocks the whole South harbor,
23:55
I believe, right, and then half of the North harbor was Leanne
24:00
before she got captured and knocked out because she was lower, So they got
24:04
half a harbor, and so that would that would definitely slow down bringing in
24:08
food and everything a lot. But that should probably be your priority, not
24:15
maybe letting me Donnie sleep with you and get some secrets from her. That's
24:23
like mm hmm. And basically torturing her, right, like mentally torturing her
24:27
every day, just fucking with her for the helmet. That's like her priority
24:30
right now? Okay, Savannah, right, like what are you doing?
24:34
Yeah? Right? And it doesn't It feels so inconsistent from like early a
24:40
Lighter, where it's like, yeah, she made flowers bloom instead of making
24:42
farms bloom. But also she was facing Elane with that real, real question
24:47
of like I can't do this for the whole kingdom. You can pick one
24:49
farm, or I can just do the garden for the royal family. Like
24:52
that was cold, but a reasonable calculation. This is cold and completely unreasonable.
25:00
Like Elida, what happened? Where are you come back? I mean?
25:03
But no, no, she is she is gone. She's gone.
25:07
Elida's gone. Yeah, Jesus is beyond Yeah. Alida is as far beyond
25:12
redemption as the situation in the Tower under her leadership is, like just no,
25:17
you need to go take a very long sabbatical, which we saw last
25:21
chapter when Queene was meeting with people and making really good points, and they
25:25
were just like I couldn't say anything, or like like some one didn't even
25:30
like assign her to go see Sylviana, and I was like, Okay,
25:34
yeah, you're fucking right, and I'm just gonna pretend like I didn't hear
25:41
it. Also notice costume design. Here. Elida is wearing a dress that
25:45
is covered in so much intricate red scroll work that the embroidery all but hides
25:51
the gray underneath. It's like she's trying to be conciliatory, but she's absolutely
25:57
not not trying an effective way. She's got the gray, tidy of it
26:03
of gray, but Tarna is picking her battles and wardrobe is not one of
26:07
them. She's like, yeah, what did she say? Suggested less flaunting
26:14
of re former a She had phrased it more diplomatically, but that was what
26:18
she meant and might help bring the ajas together. Yet a light is eruption
26:22
of fury had been sufficient to keep her quiet on the topic, since yeah,
26:26
Tarna's a picker battles type. Yeah. There's a line later where she
26:30
says she had learned to avoid subjects that only resulted in shouting advice and suggestions.
26:36
Unoffered were no more useless than advice and suggestions untaken. I was like,
26:42
that is truly an applied version of pick your battles. That is the
26:45
applied way of saying pick your battles. I like that. I think I
26:49
highlighted that because yeah, Tarna's smart and in the way that I cannot help
26:56
but compare Elia to Trump. The way he's like ignoring all his life lawyers
27:02
stuff, like exactly how I think about him, and like all of them
27:06
just like we have to pick our battles with him, Like yeah, Tarna
27:08
is just like we're we're gonna tell him the stuff where he's just gonna shout
27:12
and do it anyway. There's no point because he's stubborn and pig headed,
27:15
and it's just there's just so many Yeah, it's like, yeah, yeah,
27:22
I guess it's Yeah. Weekly Wheel News has made so much hay out
27:25
of that because it's so real. OK, So I need to go back
27:27
and the recent ones. I haven't looked at those in a while. Oh
27:30
man, Oh yeah, No, Weekly Wheel News continues to be a delight
27:34
of skewering everything. But yeah, the the Alta Trump comparison is just too
27:41
too apt. It's just too apt. And I think that vg Ugi makes
27:45
a good point here that it's it's just narcissism, right, That's what it
27:48
is. Right, Like, Jordan is writing a narcissistic personality, and when
27:52
you see that in somebody, it's very easy to like, those are the
27:56
sort of things that that align between the different characters. Is this sort of
28:02
selfish tendency to ignore evidence that it does go against your narrative. Yeah,
28:07
she's become a caricature of that at this point. She used to just be
28:10
an interesting villain and now she's completely gone full what the hell is happening?
28:15
I think it's interesting that she has been demanding that the talks for negotiations end
28:21
and they keep happening. I think that that's a very interesting side detail that
28:26
I don't even know if Agwayne realizes that the negotiations are continuing, or that
28:30
they're continuing against Alight as well. I don't know how much she's aware of
28:34
the full depth of that dynamic, right, because well, she also doesn't
28:40
want the talks to go anywhere. Timber Bark in frame too, so they
28:52
can both be podcast dog used. Today I'm feeling so left out, not
28:56
having a dog. Yeah, you should get a dog. And you see
29:00
him, yes, oh yes, a little bit. Oh yeah, it's
29:04
kind of hard because I have my computer. Hey, bar he's out.
29:10
He's getting older. Oh there he goes. Good to see you. I'm
29:15
glad you're he came in for a little role and now he's gone. They
29:23
just felt each other through the to the cam. Yeah. Uately the puppies
29:30
have to stay outside because they are not conducive to podcasting. No, but
29:36
you know, sometimes they're fun to have. Timbers just so funny. His
29:38
vocals are so funny. Yeah, it's Barren. I've never had a German
29:42
shepherd before, and she makes the craziest noises. She like sounds like like
29:47
a chimpanzee. Sometimes she's like it's crazy, and didn't know German shepherds made
29:55
like such weird noises. Timbers a mix of like pit I did the name,
30:00
but he's got pit bull husky, a little bit of German shepherd and
30:04
no wonder that's why those noises are coming, and they're all they're both small
30:10
percentages, right, so genetics being what they are. Bark, despite being
30:15
named Bark, is very quiet. Still. It was too good just live
30:19
up to your name or whatever. Non Barkie bark is honestly even better.
30:25
That's hilarious. Yeah, I thought it was interesting that word is coming that
30:41
the Shawn Channer reasserting their grip on Terra Bahn, right, so because that
30:48
was the place where Rand drove them back. Right, So this basically that
30:55
one sentence undoes path of Daggers. It's all the Yeah, yep, it's
31:02
like, okay, nope, they have terr Bon. There's no they were
31:04
stalled for a while. Yeah, for sure. Man, I didn't even
31:08
realize the implications of that. All of that was for nothing. Oh my
31:12
gosh. And that was some crazy Darth ring exactly him like bombing the whole
31:18
forest and all that kind of stuff here and killing his own people. Holy
31:22
shit. I didn't even realize. Yeah, oh yeah, that was for
31:26
nothing. Just they got it back. It's like Varren says, it's almost
31:32
like the wars don't really change anything in the end. No, when you
31:36
read the histories, it's like and then they retook after all that heroes and
31:40
they retook it. Like you know, I'm not saying it, I'm just
31:42
saying Varren said it, and I'm agreeing with Varren, We'll be all right.
31:47
So Chat's calling me out. Chat's calling me out. Real time correction.
31:52
Ram beat them back in Abu Dhar, not Terrbon. Okay, yeah,
31:56
Terrbon's where it's been, right, Okay, I'm like, why did
32:01
they lose the grip? That's that I guess is what's the missing link?
32:06
Like I was wondering what the rebellion was that they were talking about in Terrabon.
32:10
Yeah, right, because where's he right now? Yeah? Because he
32:16
still went because he went into Terrabon to kick them in the face and then
32:22
is running back to Eradomon to the north, shedding Terra bonners along the way.
32:27
That was kind of his whole Okay, so the rebellion is that,
32:32
So it makes sense that he's so he started a rebellion, it's not necessarily
32:38
sticking as he goes through. So we're not undoing path of Diggers. No,
32:43
No, we're almost immediately neutralizing it Toeraldo's campaign as he moves through,
32:47
almost immediately. Right. It's just like a lot of death and carnage and
32:53
pissing off the Sean Chan I guess, and showing that it can be done.
32:57
Well. So you two were both wrong. But my point about agreeing
32:59
with Varn's stance, ha wars are that was a you know if very if
33:05
you say Varen knows, you're probably gonna be right. Yeah, it's come
33:07
on, It's like one of our catchphrases. And it is true. And
33:13
she's Brownnaja and I'm brown Naja. So I shouldn't have named my dog after
33:20
her because she is very sneaky. But I know she did that to yourself.
33:28
Everybody thinks she's just a perfect princess, but no, no, she
33:30
is. That's so Varren, debious and the best way. That's so raven.
33:37
Oh my god. It's like one of the three TV references from the
33:42
two thousands, I know, Like that what you get out of all the
33:46
TV references I make all over the blade, that's the one you're like,
33:52
oh, oh, that guy. I know, that's so raven. I
33:53
saw one episode and imprinted on me extremely strong. Apparently it was a fun
33:59
one. It was in San Francisco. I like the intro to it because
34:04
it was fun San Francisco views. I don't remember much about it, but
34:09
the catchphrase and the weird absurdity of the plot points of the two episodes.
34:15
I somehow randomly watched like it was a weird time. Okay, the transition
34:20
from private school to public school was a weird cultural adjustment. I tried doing
34:24
home school to public school. This was not that far off. That was
34:30
the level of insular how yeah, I was it. It was not far
34:32
off from home school. It was more rigorous than my parents probably could have
34:37
managed. But like tiny community, tiny groups, tiny little family, insular
34:44
CULTI vibe very unc Yeah, but you know, I also passed my GED
34:52
without help from we were schooled in the same way. But yeah, I
34:57
got really good grades once they actually did throw me in public schools, so
35:00
I didn't. Yeah, yeah, I bounced out of high school after two
35:04
years. And spoilers. Nothing on the GED was was anything that I learned
35:07
in high school. Everything that I did on the GED was stuff that I
35:12
had gotten by eighth grade in my little little culture school. Oh, I'm
35:15
sure I graduated high school with like, with like a three point nine,
35:22
even though I didn't start going to public school till ninth grade. Because it's
35:25
just like, oh, I already know like all this stuff. I feel
35:28
like most of it because I'm interested in learning things. Yeah, dare you?
35:35
Yeah? Pretty much anyone, anyone who read The Wheel of Time,
35:37
even if we didn't do well in the school system, which is off for
35:43
various reasons. Because we were off reading the Wheel of Time, we got
35:46
borded with school. True, it was a fellow Walldorf kid that gave me
35:52
for the first time. I got my hook up in little There's there's only
36:00
three kinds of people I've met who have fallen in love with Wheel of Time,
36:02
and they all have a lot of extra time on their hands, which
36:06
is prisoners, people in the military, and kids in high school. I
36:12
think that furniture then because I was in college. Yeah, I don't know
36:15
if I don't know if I would have been able to read it all in
36:17
a year if I hadn't had that job. So, God, what an
36:21
amazing year. Yeah, it really was. It was so crazy. I
36:28
remember reading the scene the last or the chapter the last battle, and like
36:31
I didn't know how long it was. It's like not like I checked ahead
36:35
of time to see and I was like, oh yeah to my boyfriend.
36:37
I was like, yeah, we can go out and do something as soon
36:39
as I've finished this chapter. And I said that like so many times.
36:45
Yeah, And it really happened to me because I did not know all day
36:50
long. He's like, are you done, I'm like, actually no,
36:52
and then it looked like, yeah, it's actually novel length. So sorry,
36:54
I think I need to who I've been reading a lot of books to
37:00
get to this chapter, and I think I just need to finish it now.
37:04
The thing I always tell people when they're like, how long is it,
37:06
I'm like, it's longer than the first Harry Potter book. Uh huh.
37:08
Yeah. Yeah, that's that'd been a fun little little nugget to put
37:13
out there. It's like, you know that that Harry Potter series. Yeah,
37:15
the first book is comparable to the conclusion chapter through the climax chapter of
37:22
the fifteen book epic. Yeah, which is when you have to say,
37:28
like, it is its own little mini book, I think inside because it
37:31
has a bunch of breaks. It has. Yeah, it could read the
37:35
whole thing, the whole rest of the end of this book. You could
37:37
read it in isolation and it would make sense. There would be a beginning,
37:42
middle end, you would fall in love with characters, you would go
37:45
through all of the emotional arcs that a story needs to have. You'd hit
37:47
all the beats. You could just read that chapter as a not short story.
37:52
But yeah, as a standalone novel, yeah you could. I never
37:53
thought, be like, well it'd be a lot. But and the crazy
37:58
thing is it only takes you about half way through the battle itself, right,
38:00
I think it only takes you up to Yeah, it's not even the
38:04
whole thing by any means. Right, That's that's about. That's about when
38:07
things turn around, is about what it takes you up too. Yes,
38:12
you probably need to want read the next chapter to to get the absolutely two
38:15
of this weird little experiment. I guess I want. I want to make
38:20
somebody do that he's never read Meal of Time and get their opinion. Should
38:24
find someone in the first time reader, book reviewer, creative space and be
38:30
like, do you want to do an experiment? Are you? Are you
38:32
looking for something interesting to do? Are you bored with your current pattern?
38:36
We've got a random duology we just sort of yanked out of another book for
38:40
you. I wonder what other where I can suggest that, And then I'd
38:45
love to see, like what there takes on who the characters were and what
38:47
the relationships were to each other and why they were doing the things they were
38:51
doing based on just that information in the last chapter, right, Yeah,
38:58
that would be interesting, be very interesting. So if anyone out there can
39:01
think of any any social networks they can rattle to find us this person you
39:07
do that, you let us know, please and thank you. Maybe I
39:10
can ask somebody from my book club. Hell yeah, because none of them
39:14
I've read the whole thing. Well, I've made Wilson listen to the whole
39:16
thing my boyfriend and well, yeah obviously he had to and yeah listen.
39:25
But nobody in my book club's read it because they're not all super fantasy like
39:30
oriented, Like, we're all really different tastes in books, but we've read
39:32
some good ones sometimes. We've kept a book club going since twenty twenty two.
39:37
I don't know. It's like the only social it's the only social thing
39:38
I do basically other than dog training. But anyway, I bet I could
39:43
get one of them to read just the Last Battle, like from start to
39:46
finish and get their opinion on it. I'll ask them because that would be
39:52
fun, very fun experiment to run. Yeah, yeah, you have to,
39:58
and they won't. Yeah, they don't want to read the whole thing,
40:00
so okay, just do it. That's fair read a novella. It's
40:05
fine. Yeah, Next thing I've got is a time drop. Right,
40:09
Alida had asked after the young woman. This was the first time Alida had
40:14
asked after the young woman since her capture nine days ago. So we have
40:17
a time stamp of nine days since Agwayne's capture. It has been almost a
40:23
rand Land week, most of a rand Land week, because their weeks are
40:29
ten days, stupid nic And we can kind of match that up with the
40:31
like the amount of work she was doing in the kitchens and all the things
40:36
she was accomplishing, Like, nine days was a while into that process,
40:39
right, Yes, this is quite the she hurt. That montage felt fast
40:44
when we did it, because it was kind of like is it one day?
40:45
Is it three days? What's happening here? We're getting a solid number
40:50
nine days. That's a while. That is a while to fall into a
40:52
routine, to establish your baseline relationships and standards and expectations, and like,
40:59
you know, it's been a short definition of a while at this point,
41:02
right right, And we can see from the report that basically where we left
41:07
her is where she is. She is being stubborn, she's getting beat on
41:12
a regular basis by Sylviana, and it's just a matter of time dot dot
41:16
dot until she you know, falls in line or whatever. And but yet
41:22
nine days is a long time to be beaten black and healed twice a day.
41:28
Yeah, yeah, Elias like, I don't want her broken. I
41:31
just want her team to the Tower's harness. What is the difference? I
41:36
know, right, especially when you are the tower, I know it's exactly
41:40
it's that gas lighty double speak nonsense of authoritarians. You're beating her that much?
41:46
Why that's the same thing? Yes, deeply frustrating. I think she
41:53
just she's worried about leaving her with no willpower whatsoever. She doesn't she wants
41:59
someone who will eventually be a good isidie, at least in her mind.
42:01
Right, this is the whole thing. This is why she's not killing her.
42:05
This is why she thinks she's just novice that needs to be persuaded to
42:07
come back to the Tower and then this will be another good isidie in support
42:14
of her. Because she's delusional and she just doesn't get it. She just
42:17
doesn't. Yeah, she's totally delusional. But yeah, this idea that all
42:22
she needs to do is put Agwayne into line like the other novices, because
42:27
she's just a novice that ran away, right, that's all that Agwayne has
42:30
become in her head. This is like ABA or conversion therapy. You're just
42:37
gonna beat a different mode of being into you. We're just gonna abuse you
42:43
until you completely change who you are at a fundamental level. And it's down
42:46
to a contest of wills if your identity is going to override their like violence
42:52
enforced narrative like this all this is the difference. Is the Sean Channer way
42:58
more effective at it? Yeah, the only difference is that the Sean chin
43:01
like, it's not the will. You can't break the collar with the will.
43:05
No, I wasn't talking about Seawan Cha. I was talking about in
43:07
the real world. I was, Yeah, but I was comparing the two
43:12
her two captivities one with oh and now it's it's a battle of wills now,
43:19
but it's still similar. It's still similar because they're still like torturinger technically
43:23
it's it's the same motivation, but the Adam provides like an unreasonable power up
43:28
to the thing that like changes it. But they're doing their best with the
43:32
tea And yeah, it's the same motivation they would use an if they had
43:37
one without hesitation. It's absolutely Oh yeah, eli would have no problem putting
43:43
every calcult on a nation. So right, that's horrible, but well,
43:47
but she doesn't believe in those things yet. She don't believe in it until
43:51
she's on the receiving end of one, so that'll be a little late.
43:55
Meanwhile, Gwaen's like I faced an a dom and I overcame it. You
43:59
are an nothing, right, But it's well, but there's still the same
44:02
It's this idea of like, you're getting this damage free pain, right,
44:07
we're gonna heal you up at the end of it, right, whether it's
44:09
administered by Adam or through beatings and then healings. Right, we're doing the
44:14
same thing. We're inflicting pain for pain's sake until you act the way we
44:19
want you to act. Yeah, m hmm. But I think the the
44:23
ADOM was much more effective because it could police your thoughts, yeah, in
44:28
a way that Elida cannot. Right, Right, Agwyn is facing only normal
44:34
human abuse with magical healing as an augmentation. The ADM just gets in your
44:38
head in a way that's very sci fi futuristic. Weird shit. Yeah,
44:43
and they definitely don't even like no healing. Most of the souldom do,
44:47
right, Yeah, they don't even know, but they don't because they don't
44:50
have to cause literal pain. Sometimes they'll like remove a hand or a tongue
44:53
or whatever. I got more dogs. You know, they'll probably lie down.
44:58
Though. I imagine that Shancha has very good traditional, like normal healing,
45:01
with like actual medicine. They must well. Later Tuan has it's that
45:09
bunch of vials and creams that she had because she knows it, notices that
45:15
Matt doesn't want actually doesn't want you know I healing either, and she also
45:20
talks about being excited that that isaid I are being captured to have healing because
45:25
she's going to teach it to her. So she's very jazzed about that.
45:29
Yeah. Yeah, well but just not none of my servants or even the
45:32
blonde one probably want it. I didn't just think you would be the same,
45:37
Tai. But also I mean I figure, you know, they don't.
45:43
They don't have probably anything like a hippocratic oath in Shawn chance, so
45:46
they probably have very effective surgical methods because you know, they got to practice
45:51
on however many prisoners they wanted. Yeah, oh, you're right, isn't
45:54
that just the weirdest contradiction in medicine is like some of the unethical practices have
46:00
taught us the most. I mean, I know someone that's been debunked,
46:01
where like a lot of the information wasn't very good to begin with because whatever,
46:06
I mean, some things are definitely helped along that way. Yeah,
46:08
but a lot of early medicine is fucky. Yeah. Yeah, you had
46:14
you had to kill a lot of people to figure out, like how the
46:16
circulatory system works, right, like and like disrespect a lot of corpses also,
46:23
like yeah, cadavers, Like a's a lot of people who were doing
46:29
good things with bad steps along the way to create. Like that's a very
46:37
real thing. I've read Mary roach books, and we can look back and
46:40
be like what were you thinking? Why are you trying these absurd things?
46:45
And they're like, we didn't know. We had to try everything and then
46:49
see what worked and what didn't, and then once you saw what worked,
46:52
you could come up with a theory it kept working, right like. Man,
46:55
The problem is when they were thinking scientifically and they're like, well,
46:59
we just balance the humors by letting blood surely man's wait wait, letting blood.
47:06
That's so bad for like almost everything, literally like all but like two
47:12
things. Ever it's bad for right, yeah, anybody who was a doctor
47:16
before like nineteen, like I don't know, the forties fifties was just very
47:23
sketch and just what I could just make up whatever, truly that salesman.
47:30
I also listened to way too much Behind the Bastards. I was like,
47:35
I recognized for that arguments around in their weird car. These are this is
47:44
the only two podcasts I listened to. Now, Oh wow, that's it's
47:47
weird. That's really weird. That's weird. I just like listening to so
47:52
many I know it is. And I was just like, well, and
47:55
sometimes a funny Harry Potter fan fiction podcast, but not like every like these
48:00
two. And I'm just like, I need to stop listening to news because
48:02
I was listening to so many news podcasts, and my current Events podcast is
48:07
like I need I know, it's like so privileged to be able to do
48:09
this that I need to step back and not have this in my ears every
48:14
day, like for my own mental health, right yeah, but I definitely
48:17
still need to listen to Behind the baskets, and obviously real time is just
48:21
fabism, so I can keep that, and I can keep the Harry Potter
48:23
fan fiction podcasts. But yeah, I just yeah, I did the same
48:29
thing when I started my job. Is I was just too Also, I'm
48:32
surrounded by people who are too concerned for me too, and so if I
48:36
engage with it, Yeah, if I engage with it at all, it'll
48:39
just it. I'll be in way too many conversations. So I had to.
48:44
I really, I've gotten much much more into audio books than I ever
48:49
have been before, in away from podcasts, which is ironic considering what I
48:52
do. But podcasts have just they were making me too up here when I
49:02
needed to be down here. Yeah, yeah, I was way too anxious.
49:07
I had like a couple of podcasts that I really liked, and I
49:08
loved the host and I love the information they provide. But I'm just like
49:13
it's too much. Yeah yeah, And I've started this a lot of the
49:16
science stuff. I've started to like really look at how much like replicating,
49:22
how important replicating studies is, how little we do of it, and how
49:25
much science news is based on non replicated studies, and it makes me just
49:30
really skeptical of the news about yeah, yeah, it could be just it
49:37
could mean anything. And so I've really come to this point of like,
49:40
there's very little sources I trust not to overhype the science news and get me
49:46
legitimate information unless it's like a dinosaur fossil, because dinosaur news, well,
49:52
yeah, I still definitely still like that news. And I mean the nature
49:58
of archaeology is like, yeah, you get one sample, yeah exactly,
50:01
that's yeah. In my space news, I'm like pretty pictures, count oh
50:07
yeah, pretty pictures and still lots of whale pictures. But yeah, yeah,
50:15
anything about James Webb, I will follow. Yeah, oh god away
50:20
all of the things that they're like, well, simple, simple, Joy,
50:23
All everything we thought before is not true because we now have this one
50:28
way better picture and we've got a whole bunch of new things we need to
50:30
think about might be the possibility for this happening because galaxy these were around way
50:36
before we thought they were. It's just them that we did not believe they
50:39
could have been into that time, So we need to rethink everything. Simplest
50:44
Joy, it's just so beautiful, it's so cool. But yeah, well,
50:47
because because that's that's what scientists are looking for not the thing that confirms
50:52
their theories, but the thing that disproves their theories, because then all of
50:55
a sudden you have to figure out there's there's another underlying right, that's the
51:00
whole thing. And you know, Einstein's relativity didn't disprove Newton, it just
51:06
proved that there's a deeper layer. Right. The Newton laws still work right,
51:10
just incredibly well. Edge cases where really you need to account for the
51:17
curvature of space time, right, and the same thing is going to be
51:22
true whenever we figure out what the hell's going on with the early universe is
51:23
like, Einstein's still going to be right, right, that nothing's going to
51:27
change. We confirmed shit too many times. But there's some edge cases like
51:31
black holes where we get singularities, where in the beginning of the universe,
51:36
where we get singularities where we're just like, yeah, there's something not quite
51:40
right. There's an edge case there that we need to figure out what the
51:45
underlying truth is. And so exciting, that's exciting, that's exciting. Yeah,
51:50
that's why following, you know, astronomers is so fun because they're all
51:52
about, oh, what I thought was completely wrong, and that's fine,
51:57
I can't wait to figure keep flooring the sneaper fantastic. Yeah. That and
52:04
DNA stuff, right we're doing so much with right now with crisper and that
52:07
and that technology. So those those are sort of the two places where I
52:10
still see a lot of exploration going on, but less so, Like I
52:15
really feel like the computer areas computer science area is really sort of plateaued in
52:19
terms of, I mean, what it's been doing lately. Other than like
52:22
the camera being better on my iPhone that I just had to get because I
52:24
dropped my iPhone eleven in a hole by accident. The camera's better, but
52:29
other than that, it's not that much better. Yeah. Yeah, listen,
52:35
listen to a podcast about why that is just the other day. Yeah,
52:37
yeah, I dropped my I phone in a hole and I couldn't get
52:39
it back out. What hole? What kind of hole could eat your phone?
52:43
Yeah? Okay, So underneath my backyard, it's some sort of foundation
52:47
that was probably like a septic tank or something that got like crushed, and
52:51
then they went over with dirt to make my backyard. So then the groundhogs
52:55
and stuff that crawl around in there made a bunch of holes and a sink
52:59
hole develop and accidentally threw Barren's tennis ball into the sinkhole, and I leaned
53:06
over to see if I could see it, and my iPhone was in my
53:08
hoodie pocket. It slipped right out into the hole. I did not get
53:15
it back. Literally, like the whole top half of my body was like
53:19
in the hole and just my legs sticking out, and I had a head
53:22
lamp on it. It was just gone. It's just gone. Wow.
53:25
I guess sometimes the earth gods need a phone. I know, like,
53:29
well, that's gonna be some really interesting archaeological information, like why are we
53:31
finding this phone in betwe of these two cement block or slabs of concrete.
53:37
What could this person have been doing back in twenty twenty four? Could be
53:45
or skunk, I've had those around two one or the other. It could
53:50
just be like having a blast on TikTok famous. Yes, the grounds,
53:54
I'm here for it. Probably, So let's finish up this line of a
53:58
POV right or the tarn up eov. Basically, she says, Agwayne's being
54:04
stubborn. It's been nine days, she hasn't been broken yet. I'm gonna
54:07
have dinner, send her to attend me at dinner tonight like a little peasant
54:10
novice, which we all know leads the spilling, which is such a fun.
54:20
And then she also talks about the wards, how they're keeping the rats
54:24
out of the food, but there have been ravings sighted in the tower grounds.
54:30
So those wards on the walls are crumbling. And I bet the wards
54:37
in the tower are all deteriorating. Right. They might redo them, they
54:40
might work for a little while, but like a week later, it's gonna
54:44
be like, Nope, they failed again, right, Like they're not holding
54:46
up, and you're gonna have to redo them more and more and more often
54:49
to the point where it's pointless. Yeah, and you're always going to be
54:52
finding out they failed by virtue of seeing spies in the tower. Right,
54:55
you're gonna have to shoot them out. They're gonna get intel. So yeah,
55:00
things are crumbling. That's great. So can I be honest? I
55:04
was reading the Redone wards and I read that word as the red one wards
55:08
the reds Yeah, what's red one? You know? I think I did
55:14
too. I had being like like, y uh, but that's why I
55:24
hesitated when I was reading that. I was like the red one, even
55:29
when I just glanced at it, I was like, yeah, red one,
55:30
that's that's a word. We're talking about red as right now, so
55:35
obviously that's just a word. Yeah, Yslexia has entered the chat and then
55:44
we switched to Matt's bov. Anything else say about Eli and uh, she's
55:51
she is a completely massive a drunk. Now. Yeah, how long exactly
55:57
do we think it is before the attack? How many more days if she
56:00
have to enjoy just like Jesus, let me pull up the timeline. Oh,
56:07
that's a good question because that's a ways off, because that's the day
56:13
after she lets Agwayne get pulled back out of the cells, after everything seriously
56:19
goes to shit. Mm hmmm, it can't be long. So the raid
56:23
on Tarvallin is in the middle middle of Towers of Midnight, right, and
56:29
it's about three Oh gosh, I forget what the timeline is, but it's
56:34
about I think like three weeks. Yeah, we need a timeline of Agwayne's
56:39
time at the tower specifically, can we get a graph please? Yeah,
56:45
probably about two or three weeks. I don't know, No, maybe a
56:51
little longer than that because she's there for a while. Yeah, per Skyla
56:57
says, what timeline has it updated through memory of light, so they should
57:02
have it. I think it can't be more than a couple of weeks.
57:07
So I'm just wondering, because it's timeline so condensed right now, is it
57:12
like quite close? I'm thinking her entire captivity is like close to a month
57:21
of Randland time, so it would be two or three weeks from now.
57:27
Yeah, that that makes sense. Yeah, if she's been here for a
57:30
week, and she's been there for a week for weeks, then it would
57:31
like three or four hot you don't have much longer. Yeah, yes,
57:37
all that enjoy drink a lot of wine, because I don't think they're going
57:42
to give you that as a demane. No, No, I don't think
57:46
that demane need need their sweet release of being drunk for a hot I wonder
57:52
if she would have withdraws. Wonderfuy said, I can get addicted alcohol on
57:55
that hard. I don't know. They don't get morning sickness because reasons,
57:59
so I probably don't get addiction for you probably don't except for to the one
58:04
power obviously. Oh there's the life. Okay. So according to the timeline,
58:10
Agwayne is taken away on March twenty ninth, and then May thirty first
58:17
is when she's rescued two months. Oh wow, that's longer than I thought.
58:22
But that's it's forty days of Randland. So yeah, one one month
58:29
for them, so four weeks yeah what we Yeah, I mean depending on
58:34
how you count weeks and months Roberts. Yeah there month about yes, yes,
58:40
yeah, okay, cool, So she doesn't have even a whole month
58:44
left, it be good. Yeah, that was my main point is you're
58:46
going down and I hate you know, Suldam and Demani. But like I
58:53
didn't hate when that scene happened when I first read it. I hated how
58:58
little I hated it. Okay, with this, it's horrible, but like,
59:05
fuck you, Like seriously, when you condemn other people to a fate
59:09
worse than death, it's kind of hard to feel sympathy when you also receive
59:15
the same fate, especially when she's like, if you let me go,
59:16
i'll give you ten women in my place. I was like, and now
59:21
I don't have complicated feelings right now you have to stay there. Yeah,
59:25
but like knowing she's telling the truth, right because she is under the oaths,
59:30
right, Yeah, it's just like or she would. I was conflicted
59:34
right up until you said I am worth ten other people. No, no,
59:37
no, you're not. You are You are worth yourself. That is
59:38
what you are. Yeah, worth ten other people? Fuck all the way
59:42
off. Go. I guess I don't just have to go bea the money.
59:45
But I wish I knew how that situation worked out. Speaking of poorly
59:51
Matt, who should have been able to Matt, I know, Matt,
59:57
Matt and his bitch ass flavor girlfriend. Yeah. Shall I read us into
1:00:04
the Matt section? Yeah, Like I want to start pitching about Matt already.
1:00:12
I'm like, gim me, let me, let me read it.
1:00:16
She wants to stop start talking about mountains. That's true, you have a
1:00:23
one track mine. I'll tell you what. Just always thinking about those ginormous
1:00:28
tracks of land. I'm not even in jelish, and I think about mountains
1:00:32
a lot too, so you know, I get it. The midday sun
1:00:50
casts dappled light through the leafy branches of the tall trees, mostly oak and
1:00:54
leather, leaf and sorghum, with a smattering of cottonwoods and massive pines.
1:01:00
Apparently there had been a fierce windstorm some years back, because fallen timber scattered
1:01:04
about here and there, but all stretched in the same general direction, provided
1:01:07
good seating with only a little hatchet work to hack away a few limbs.
1:01:12
Sparse undergrowth allowed a good view in all directions, and not far off a
1:01:15
clear stream splashed over mossy stones. It would have been a good campsite if
1:01:21
Matt had not intent been intent on covering as much ground as he could every
1:01:24
day, but it did just as well as a place to rest the horses
1:01:28
and eat. The Demana Mountains still lay at least three hundred miles to the
1:01:31
east, and he intended to reach them in a week. Vannon said he
1:01:35
knew a smuggler's plat pass purely by hearsay, of course, just something he
1:01:39
had overheard by chance, but he knew right where to find it. That
1:01:44
would have put them inside Murandy two days after that, much safer than trying
1:01:49
to go north into andor or south toward Illian. In either direction, the
1:01:52
distance to safety would be further and the chance of encountering the shan Chan greater.
1:01:58
But yeah, so that gives us a background of what he's doing and
1:02:00
where he's traveling. They end up not being able to get through the pass
1:02:04
right, Yeah, collapses. It had collapsed and killed some of tom Anis
1:02:07
and some of the Band of the Red Hand. Yeah, like in a
1:02:10
page we hear that, Nope, that's not gonna work. Yep. So
1:02:15
my question is, and I couldn't figure it out very quickly even when reading
1:02:20
forward, where does he end up going? It's he has to go up
1:02:23
the main road. And that's why he attacks the shawn Chins because they're blocking
1:02:28
the main road. They were gonna go sneaky sneaky through a smuggler's pass,
1:02:31
but the smugglers pass got cut off, so instead they had to take the
1:02:35
main thoroughfare. So they're going through the mall the Narrows, which is the
1:02:39
five mile wide pass that everybody knows about. That's like the main way through.
1:02:45
Yeah. With the road, that's where they have to go. I
1:02:46
guess uh huh. And it's blocked by Sean Chan And that's what he's like,
1:02:50
I'm going to make them pull the plug. That's the plug is on
1:02:53
the main road to get out. And they've got all the maps. So
1:02:58
and Matt has a way bigger army. Now he had no idea about,
1:03:01
right, Matt doesn't even know the size of his own army at this time.
1:03:05
He doesn't they brought a good chunk of it, but like, yeah,
1:03:07
no, not even all of it. So then my question is here
1:03:10
where he says going north into and Or or south towards Ilian. Which of
1:03:14
those two directions does he go? He heads north into and Or. He
1:03:20
runs into Varren along the way, and she hops skippity jumps into Camlin the
1:03:25
rest of the way, but he heads towards and Or. That's his goal.
1:03:29
Thank you for That was the question I had as I was like,
1:03:31
there's going to be one of the other. But yeah, yeah, but
1:03:35
I don't I genuinely don't remember what he decides in the immediate term direction wise,
1:03:40
but I know that he's trying to get to Andor, and that's where
1:03:43
he ends up via Varn who just gateways him there. But then she makes
1:03:47
him stay there with the letter that she's sure he's going to open blah blah
1:03:51
blah. Brandon Sanderson, why you got to do that to us? Et
1:03:54
cetera, et cetera. But and Or is the goal, and that is
1:03:59
what ultimately, so I assume he chooses north when he gets on the road.
1:04:04
Yeah, there's just a couple of sentences here, like the bossomy one
1:04:11
woman two unfolding her arms beneath her breasts. It's just Matt's very focused on
1:04:15
boobs in this chapter. He is, Yeah, look, Matt, we
1:04:19
all like mountains, but like all the mountains huge tracks. Yes, yeah,
1:04:34
there's there's just yet a very very domestic, like comedic kind of like
1:04:40
interactions between the characters. And they're like flirting and teasing and interacting and being
1:04:45
friends and being enemies and just doing their thing vibe. And it's fine,
1:04:49
just don't wipe your greasy hands on your hands on your pants. That's what
1:04:53
napkins are for. And then he does it deliberately just to piss. They're
1:04:57
getting dirty eye contact like a cat not locking something off of the counter,
1:05:00
just like I was gonna say, your dog shitting on your car, right
1:05:03
like just making contact while he does it, like you can't stop me.
1:05:06
I'm doing it right here, right now. It's a whole thing, very
1:05:12
frost very frustrating. But I mean, you know, I find the entire
1:05:15
dynamic frustrating. Like, first of all, that's gross. You're going to
1:05:18
have like you're going to stak like chicken in a way that you didn't have
1:05:23
to. When there's literally a napkin right there, and also too on stop
1:05:27
trying to control other people. Just because you're a slaving empire person doesn't mean
1:05:30
you have to micromanage literally everybody all the time. Like just stop. It's
1:05:35
probably pretty hard for an impress to or well a princess whatever she was before,
1:05:41
to stop that. But I mean in waiting basically, yeah, in
1:05:45
the wings Huon is something else. Yeah, yeah, I love the first
1:05:51
moment of Matt lighting the pipe with a mask. Yeah, right, this
1:05:56
is the first moment a match gets used a light of pipe, which I
1:05:59
mean just because I know Jordan loved pipes, and I know he likes smoking
1:06:01
a pipe, and I know he probably had books of matches, right,
1:06:04
he probably cared quality of his matches. Yeah, exactly. It's such a
1:06:09
good collection thing. My granddad had a huge collection of them. And then
1:06:12
it just like those shouldn't be wasted and like that's like the thing that they
1:06:15
are going to be used for, or like avenues for our guests in the
1:06:17
previous age. Sorry, but that's what they're used for, Like yeah,
1:06:24
sorry, that's it. Lighten pipes and cigarettes occasionally, a cooking fire occasionally,
1:06:31
yeah, yeah, but also as advertisement too. That's a good thing,
1:06:35
right, you know, matchbook makers are going to pop up in like
1:06:39
the year after the last battle is over, like immediate, yeah, immediately,
1:06:43
there's going to be little logos and yeah, like you're in could give
1:06:49
out match books. Yeah, so since we are, my wedding is going
1:06:54
to be a camping wedding. One of the things we're giving out his matchbooks
1:07:00
branded match books, which yeah, sorry, firesticks, but yeah, that's
1:07:04
exactly what we're doing, which is I thought it was kind of funny,
1:07:06
is like, yeah, it's part of the plan. Is one of the
1:07:10
things we're giving out. That's a good that's a fun thing. I have
1:07:13
a match book from my granddad's collection. It says King's Landing, which is,
1:07:17
you know, a game of the Game of Thrones. And I have
1:07:19
no idea where this actual King's landing that my granddad plan was, because that's
1:07:24
all it says on it, but I'd assume it was like a hotel or
1:07:27
something like there are kings landings out there. Yeah, fifties. Yeah,
1:07:31
it's really old. That's great though, but yeah. I also like the
1:07:35
little note where he's like, and you have to let the sulfur burn off
1:07:39
before you draw the fire into the pipe. That's a very important technique,
1:07:44
or else it's going to taste like that. You know, I have to
1:07:45
learn that lesson once. But everybody just does it once and then you're like,
1:07:48
oh wait, wait, wait a second, because yeah, those chemicals
1:07:53
on the end do not taste good. That smoke is a special kind of
1:07:57
nasty. Even it's secondhand. You don't want that. No, no,
1:08:00
no, But once it burns times of the wood, then you're just burning
1:08:01
wood and you got good old fire. That's that's not a big deal.
1:08:04
Wod smoke not, not in the same way that burning sulfur is, right,
1:08:12
And I do like that these like I take no chances of fire in
1:08:14
the woods only, yes, yes, I just like yeah. And he's
1:08:23
like, I've seen just the villagers trying to fight forest fires in the two
1:08:27
rivers back home. We're not. Yeah. I very much appreciated that.
1:08:30
He was like, no, you don't just drop it to the ground and
1:08:32
assume it's fine. You grind that ship to death, think you, Matt,
1:08:36
If I remember correctly, Illus one of the few characters who doesn't get
1:08:40
paired off with anyone, Is that right? She doesn't. Yeah, she
1:08:45
is delightfully unpaired, Like it's one of the Mainer characters, right, yeah,
1:08:49
Like it's a bit of a bummer that she lost Matt to tub On.
1:08:54
I know they would have been such a better couple, but but I
1:08:59
also like this thing here where she's like men find ways to make work for
1:09:01
women. Yes, like this is Yeah, there's a certain amount of I'm
1:09:04
not sure Eludra would ever put up with all of Matt's bullshit, Like,
1:09:09
as much as they work together, I think she'd love to be fuck buddies
1:09:13
with him and work together professionally, but like, we're not doing anything more
1:09:17
complicated than that. No, yeah, yeah, no, I do like
1:09:21
that. I wish we got more characters like her that were able to be
1:09:25
paired off, We're able to not be paired off or like pair off with
1:09:28
their work, you know, because that's basically what she does. And she's
1:09:30
like, I have my work, My work is going to take up my
1:09:32
energy, And I just wish we got more of that. You know,
1:09:36
this was like overbearing amount of pairing off of people. Yeah, yeah,
1:09:41
exactly. Now, you know, reading back, you can kind of see
1:09:44
even the beginnings of some of the relationships, and you get it, but
1:09:47
like I was just like, whoa, everybody's just gonna end up married by
1:09:50
the end. I think they basically like everybody. It was like the not
1:09:57
obviously not nearly as bad the Harry Potter epilogue anyway, super unrelated to Wheelow
1:10:03
time. Yeah, wow, sorry, big tangent. That that friends.
1:10:10
We're having friends. Okay, we're talking. We've got Lylewin. We have
1:10:14
Matt finally admitting that Lylen's name is Lylewin. Yes, stop dead naming her.
1:10:19
Yeah, we're respecting people's chosen names. Thank you, Matt. Julian
1:10:25
is vibe and he's feeling comfortable. Okay, I have some questions about Luca.
1:10:29
Right, So Luca rushed into town to take care of the bargaining himself
1:10:33
once he heard about a merchant dead in the streets. What merchant dead in
1:10:38
the streets and what bargaining? Why is he rushing in down to do this?
1:10:43
I'm very confused by that statement. Remember when Matt got attacked in the
1:10:46
street after taking it too onto a hell? Okay, yeah, a merchant
1:10:51
led that gang got it okay, and Matt said, there's no way that
1:10:56
the city magistrates will believe that a respected merchant just attacked us for no reason.
1:11:00
We have to bounce right now. And the circus was like, agreed,
1:11:04
we will get lynched if we're around when this gets discovered. So you
1:11:10
know, I'll get the horses. Yeah, so okay, So Luca goes
1:11:13
into town to get the horses because Matt can't because he got Luca wasn't at
1:11:17
the helm because the merchant was a dark friend who had seen who had had
1:11:21
gotten orders that he needed to murder Matt. And you know, Matt was
1:11:26
unwilling to be murdered for reasons that he should be obvious, and that was
1:11:30
we saw that in the prologue, right, the orders to murder Matt,
1:11:33
And yeah, I believe so m yeah them too. You can't kill Rand,
1:11:38
but you can kill the other two that that will be acceptable, and
1:11:41
the other two were like nah. I also like Matt slipping a purse to
1:11:45
Petro and Chlarine for their rat so sweet. I was gonna say that he
1:11:51
like he talks about not spending money, but he's so nice with giving it
1:11:55
out to people like them. We get there in started and yeah, here's
1:11:59
your down payment. Yeah right right. I love that Lywn is still making
1:12:05
a point to not avoid two on or solution or lower eyes when they meet,
1:12:12
She's like, I'm done being a sunshine and like, yeah, this
1:12:15
is her new name and for she accepted, but not the rest of it,
1:12:18
right, And that's yes, Lylin She's an interesting one. And Ama
1:12:25
Farrah is like basically hero worshiping her at this point, Like it's more it's
1:12:31
it's on another level than a crush, Like she's just like, I just
1:12:34
want to be you when I grow up, you know. Like that's where
1:12:38
Ama Thera is with Lylewood and that's an interesting relationship to track. And I
1:12:43
love thinking about Lylewin being on the path to becoming Igwayne's warder. And I
1:12:46
know that was just just for a second at the end of the books,
1:12:49
and I don't think it really got the time it deserved because I would have
1:12:53
loved to see her be the warder earlier that like just this shit with Gowin.
1:12:59
She finally goes you, I don't need you. I can will bond
1:13:02
this person who saved my life right and not deal with any of that crap
1:13:06
with Gowain. Yeah mm hmmm, yeah. I like because it it was
1:13:12
hinted at so so long ago when she had that dream of the light getting
1:13:17
knocked off and like the shan chin like reaching a hand down to save her
1:13:21
or something like that. It's a long time ago. She had a dream
1:13:25
that was she knew as prophetic and she was like, why would a sean
1:13:28
chan be saving me? And it was books ago. Yeah, I just
1:13:32
yeah, I wish that had been more. I wish I knew what was
1:13:35
planned there exactly it was. It felt it felt like it was going to
1:13:42
be so much more than it ended up being. Like, yeah, he
1:13:45
said that they needed more airtime. There was, everything was there, it
1:13:48
just needed more space to breathe less gowain more lilin less golly right, and
1:13:56
like, let's let's give a GWayne. Let's have her grow and come to
1:13:59
try us a shan chan and realized that yes, the shan chan did bad
1:14:03
things to me, but it doesn't mean everybody in shawn Chan is a bad
1:14:06
person. Let's have Lylewin grow and realize that Agwayne is this incredible person and
1:14:14
that channeling isn't a bad thing and that she really needs to understand that people
1:14:18
who have power can rule themselves. Like and let's have them save each other
1:14:24
a lot each other's lives and grow in mutual respect. And then you know,
1:14:30
maybe have Lylewn sacrifice herself right because she made the sin of turning over
1:14:35
the sad bracelets right like, and then Agwaine feels actually sad because she actually
1:14:41
came to care for her and it's this healing thing. Yes, yes,
1:14:45
yes, that's okay, we can we can believe in stuff. It's yeah,
1:14:56
when she could be banging Gowain and like, that can be fine.
1:15:00
But he can go off and sacrifice himself and she can be sad about that
1:15:02
without sacrificing herself. Why doesn't he go to sacrifice himself or his sister?
1:15:06
He's the first prince of the damn Sword exactly, yeah, then he can
1:15:11
do that job. Seriously, you have one job, but two like you
1:15:17
had to pull me out of the dream to take your place, yeah,
1:15:20
exactly exactly how much is that the pattern going? All right, Golwin,
1:15:25
if you won't do your job, I'll get a hero of the Horn to
1:15:30
horn, like, how much you have to a hero of the Horn has
1:15:33
to clean up your mask and Gowin. Maybe Gollwin could have been become that
1:15:39
hero right if he'd been in that if he'd been literally anything other than who
1:15:43
he was. But listen, I love everything about you. I just need
1:15:48
you to change just one little thing. What's that? Everything and where you
1:15:54
are and the way you talk, how you act and you talk, and
1:15:58
the way you walk, and yeah, that's how I feel about going.
1:16:00
Yeah, basically, so glad I've never been on for his chapter. It's
1:16:03
just such a betrayal because we all liked him in the beginning. He was
1:16:08
the fun one that ran, that helped Rand. He could have been a
1:16:11
cool character. He was supposed to be a cool character who thinks he's cool,
1:16:15
you know, but if you look at the I was gonna say,
1:16:18
Shakespearean the Arthurian legends, right, Gowin was a bit of a dick,
1:16:23
Right, This is the whole betrayal thing. And like there's there's some basis
1:16:28
in the Artherian legend that I think Jordan is trying to stick to that turns
1:16:31
going into you know, an awful, awful person gownd Speaking of which,
1:16:42
right, isn't that coming up? I? Uh, yes, what idol?
1:16:45
The deadline for what Idol got extended to the twenty sixth I think yeah,
1:16:51
would still be after this comes out, but cool after this comes out?
1:16:55
And then the show itself supposedly is going to be the second and third
1:17:00
of July will be the two preliminary rounds, and then the sixth. I
1:17:06
think that Saturday is going to be the finals. I would not be surprised
1:17:12
if they had to add another day, because, like, they're already up
1:17:15
to fifty submissions. Last year, I guess it was seventy eight was how
1:17:19
many they got and two days was it was really really long or really long
1:17:24
two days to do the preliminary things and then the finals. So if they
1:17:28
get more than last year, it's gonna be some real long days. But
1:17:31
yeah, set aside some time on July, second, third, and I
1:17:34
believe sixth. Links for that will be in the description because it's gonna be
1:17:40
a good time. As a reminder, I have an entry that I made
1:17:44
all by myself without sass help, and just for you guys, I'll give
1:17:47
you one little hint about it. Gowen is the central character Emmy Gowen,
1:17:55
Gowen the character of mine. Yeah, we just love to hate on knowing
1:17:59
he's not even getting on him like extensively. No, I was just gonna
1:18:03
say, I'm really glad I've never accidentally gotten on for a Galwen chapter because
1:18:06
none of the might have been played. But honestly, it's the worst thing
1:18:12
about the Last Battle. It's a fucking Gwin chapter. Yeah, it opens
1:18:19
up as a Gwen POV and you're like, wait, wait, yeah,
1:18:23
that does It was fine for do as Wells. I was totally fine to
1:18:26
accept it. For do as Wells to be a Gowen POV, that's fine.
1:18:29
That's a trash chapter where everything goes to hell in a handbasket. It's
1:18:31
fine for him to be in it. But the last battle, the last
1:18:35
battle, the last battle, in the last Battle, that's a Harry potterbug
1:18:42
length. Yeah. Oh well, we get a lot. At least we
1:18:45
get a lot of POV's throughout. But yes, the start doesn't matter.
1:18:50
The start does matter. Here, speaking of things that are not starting,
1:18:55
we get yet another mention of Shara, very subtle little highlight that foreigners were
1:19:01
not allowed to leave except my ship, and the inhabitants were not allowed to
1:19:05
leave at all. Sounds very Dutch trading port in the shuttered island of Japan
1:19:12
sort of energy, and just not even mentioning the name Shara, not mentioning
1:19:16
Silk, not mentioning the the weird channeler stuff, just the weird port city
1:19:29
and as usual coming from Nole, because nol is also here in this domestic
1:19:32
scene playing Snakes and Foxes with Oliver while Eludra, I also don't want to
1:19:36
point out Alutra is playing Stones with Tom and she has won two out of
1:19:42
twelve games with Tom, and Tom is like, oh, you are something
1:19:46
that I didn't catch that whole Yeah, that's crazy. I need to highlight
1:19:53
that. How did I miss that? It's very quick and subtle, but
1:19:57
yeah, Tom is very impressed with Illudric because she's actually beat him more than
1:20:00
once. At all. I am impressed. She invents gunpowder and cannons all
1:20:06
without on paper, on paper, right, like her canons that she invents
1:20:13
on paper work. She has the engineering skill to just do that in her
1:20:15
head she has on all those models. Incredibly smart. Yeah, yeah,
1:20:19
she's brilliant. She is the Illuminator's guilt in a lot of ways. She
1:20:24
doesn't do battlefield stuff, she doesn't do political stuff. She does engineering,
1:20:28
and yet the intelligence required to do that sort of modeling in her head is
1:20:32
sufficient to allow her to actually compete with Tom on a Stone's board, which
1:20:38
we know is a barometer of your overall like strategic intelligence and four dimensional chess
1:20:43
tomfoolery, and Matt's like, can you just please play a different game?
1:20:47
I promise I would go. Well, he doesn't want to see the snakes
1:20:50
and foxes, right because that just reminds him of the you know, went
1:20:56
back to the knowle Oliver playing Snakes Foxes mash Like, damn it, will
1:21:00
you just play another game? I don't want to think about that promise that
1:21:02
I made them definitely gonna keep because I'm Matt, but I really don't feel
1:21:05
like it, right right, Yeah? And then all the Suldom learn need
1:21:12
a channel yep, sort of the resolution of their storyline, right like this
1:21:16
is an ending, another ending, right they they got captured by like all
1:21:21
the way back when Matt captured them to now basically we get the story of
1:21:29
the Suldom where they're captured, dragged along, realize they can channel, fight
1:21:33
against it, are convinced that they can't channel and that they should learn.
1:21:36
And now they're going to be learning how to channel and basically become Novice is
1:21:41
in the White Tower, except Tesling won't teach them. But I understand Tesla
1:21:46
has her has good reasons I would not agree to teach them either if I
1:21:50
were teslaing. Yeah. I think it's interesting how the suldom when they capture,
1:21:58
in all of their propaganda, they are constantly saying, you have to
1:22:02
accept who you are. You'll find peace with the leech, You'll you know,
1:22:08
you need to accept that you're not a woman, you're a tool.
1:22:11
All of this stuff. All this propaganda that they tell people to on says
1:22:15
all this stuff. Then they get captured, they come to this place where
1:22:17
they're discovering that they can channel. They're fighting against it, blah blah blah.
1:22:21
Eventually Bethamn asks to learn, is told no, and manifests the ability
1:22:29
so that she can learn. And now her face somehow seems seems strangely calm,
1:22:34
and Matt is going, why is that? Why would you be calm?
1:22:40
And I'm like, that's the acceptance that they were making propaganda about,
1:22:44
except that they were again doing some kind of like conversion therapy, applied behavioral
1:22:49
analysis bullshit to try to convince themselves to be content with being slaves, when
1:22:55
the reality is you need to be content with the fact that you're a channeler.
1:22:58
Accepting yourself does bring contentment. They were just trying to force a definition
1:23:03
of self that was not true with all of their training. But the contentment's
1:23:08
real, and it had to be not that hard to real to get it,
1:23:13
like when you've been a suldan for a long time and you obviously have
1:23:15
this affinity with knowing when your suldan's channeling what you know. And even some
1:23:21
of them say admitting to be able to see it, you know, but
1:23:26
for really trying to tell themselves they're not. But like, it's not like
1:23:29
these were inexperienced saldan. They must have brought their best from chan Chin.
1:23:33
Really, I would think to be in the return. So they've been doing
1:23:38
it for a long time. And yeah, uh, Matt is convinced the
1:23:46
behind his yep dropped it for a few days. He's like, I should
1:23:58
feel content, and he's like, I should be content, but I'm not,
1:24:01
partially because I refuse healing and I have a bunch of inflicted, infected
1:24:06
cuts all over my body. Yeah, that's not great. It's like the
1:24:10
first time anyone's ever gotten an infection in this entire book series, which seems
1:24:14
very unrealistic, but hey, it's Matt always getting infected with things. First
1:24:17
Shadow alga. Now, now you should get your immune system checked out.
1:24:23
You seem very infectable. Well, everybody else lets themselves get healed. Even
1:24:27
if you have a wound, right and it takes a couple of days to
1:24:30
get healed, it's still not going to get infected. I know you don't
1:24:33
want to take off the medallion. I wouldn't either, but like if I
1:24:36
broke my leg like that, I would take it off for a minute and
1:24:40
get healed, right, I think. And like paren gets really badly infected
1:24:45
with the arrowhead before he gets healed. Oh yeah, never mind, he
1:24:48
does get infected too. Oh that's true. But it had like trollock poison
1:24:53
on it or whatever or no, no, yeah, no, it just
1:24:57
it was like caught on the rib and it got But no, you're right,
1:25:00
this is like one of the only times we've had in infection. We've
1:25:02
had a lot of wounds, but you're right, most wounds get healed right
1:25:05
away. But they didn't have an ice to die. Parent didn't have an
1:25:10
ice to die to healing right away. Yeah, and parent had to wait
1:25:13
for two days with it like cracking a rib. Yeah, and then he
1:25:15
did get ice to die healing after that, So I feel like Jordan makes
1:25:19
a point of saying like, yeah, if you don't get the icidi healing
1:25:23
or at least and I think he also says a healer also can provide antiseptic
1:25:29
like that that seems to be something they have, you know, clearly that's
1:25:31
what gets applied to his wounds here eventually. But there seems to be some
1:25:36
sort of antiseptic that they can use, some sort of neosporin or whatever that
1:25:41
they can fight the infection, so witch hazel or something, yeah, yeah,
1:25:45
whatever whatever they know how to use. Right, It's clear that,
1:25:49
just like birth control. Jordan's like, yeah they got that, I gotten
1:25:51
earlier, yeah, yeah, yeah, it moved on right yeah yeah yeah
1:25:58
yeah. And then Matt getting sewed up, and two on's watching him like
1:26:04
property, oh yeah, making sure they sew him up correctly, talking about
1:26:12
the healing like, on the one hand, she's showing concern, which is
1:26:16
good. On the other hand, her proprietary air is deeply problematic and not
1:26:23
at all someone I would want to marry. I don't want to marry someone
1:26:27
who looks at me like I'm property to be repaired. No, yeah,
1:26:30
And then that's when she brings up the healing, right, and sort of
1:26:34
how wonderful it is that the demani are gonna learn Yeah, and she's gonna
1:26:38
pass it on. Yeah, and then a snake. Yeah. Well,
1:26:42
the two on in solution are talking first with their hands. But before that,
1:26:46
there is the line the bloody dice drummed inside his head for two days.
1:26:49
So in the last two days he's had the dice. And do we
1:26:54
know how those dice stop? Do we know what they stop for? Matrim
1:26:59
Cothin is my husband? Yeah, these are the marriage dice. These are
1:27:02
the marriage dice. These don't stop till he's married, because there hardly seemed
1:27:06
any way they could stop here in the forest. Well, oh well then
1:27:11
I guess it's probably gonna be in a forest, right right? Yeah?
1:27:15
What kind of momentous event could happen in a forest or the woods? And
1:27:19
I was I caught that line too, and I was like, well,
1:27:24
what about that awesome forest that ran makes like after the big meeting, I
1:27:29
was like, yeah, what kind of momentous stuff could happen in a forest?
1:27:32
Let's wait in a few books and see. Also those dice, I'm
1:27:36
pretty sure they're in a forest when she leaves. Well, yeah, well
1:27:41
it's yeah, totally, and it's tied to the foretelling, right her,
1:27:45
Beware the fox that makes the ravens fly, for he will marry you and
1:27:47
carry you away. Beware the man who remembers Hawking's face, for he will
1:27:51
marry you and set you free. Beware the Man of the Red Hand,
1:27:56
for him you will marry. And none. So the Man of the Red
1:28:01
Hand is a really important clue that she will marry him. Yeah, She's
1:28:05
seen a lot of her clues, but she hasn't seen anything that confirms it.
1:28:12
And then she sees good old Tom mony's the only thing he has on
1:28:17
his coat, doesn't have any of his kyrine and stripes, just the red
1:28:21
hand, and she's like, oh shit. I mean, obviously that's her
1:28:25
point of view next chapter, but yeah, and so then there's only one
1:28:29
thing left. He has to set her free. Once he does that,
1:28:31
every bit of the foretelling has been fulfilled. That's a fun foretelling, like
1:28:36
fulfilled in fun ways. That's one of things that's a good one. I
1:28:41
enjoy this prophecy, and I'm not a huge enjoyer of prophecies, even though
1:28:45
obviously I love this whole series more than anything, and it's all about the
1:28:47
prophecy of the dragon Born, but also how wrong it is and how many
1:28:51
interpretations there are. But yeah, okay, no, yeah, I love
1:28:56
this And honestly I think, at each line being fulfilled, the dice stop,
1:29:01
right m hm, Yeah, when sees his ring, his dice stops.
1:29:05
That's the fox that makes the ravens fly. When she asks him about
1:29:10
hawk Wing's face, don't the dice stop? I mean, yeah, it
1:29:13
has to be. Yeah, it's everyone. And then when he sets her
1:29:16
free, Yeah, everyone is a dice stop. Every fulfilling of a line
1:29:19
of the prophecy, Jordan emphasizes, has a dice stop to it. I
1:29:24
mean not surprising, of course, but yeah, that's what kind of momentous
1:29:28
event could happen in the woods. Yeah, well he sets her free is
1:29:32
basically what it boils down to. Yeah. But yeah, now the snake.
1:29:36
I love the snake. Matt. First of all, he's making sure
1:29:41
he's not setting forest fire. Then he's letting wildlife be when it's like,
1:29:45
dude, that was probably that snake's din and you're just sitting on it like
1:29:48
no, you're not gonna go kill it, Like it's not attacking you.
1:29:53
Matt is like a nature warrior right here in this chapter, and I am
1:29:57
loving that aspect of him. Yeah, yeah, like it. I was
1:30:00
trying to tie it to some prophecy, but I couldn't. No, I
1:30:03
couldn't either. I just he's just him being a good country boy that knows
1:30:06
that snakes are important for a ecosystem. Yeah, yeah, truly, he's
1:30:12
he's having a moment of multi classing as a druid and a rogue. Yes,
1:30:15
And I love that, And that's how I grew up and think you,
1:30:17
Matt. I don't know, just one of the other reasons I'm always
1:30:20
drawn to him as a character. Yeah, No, it's nice because you
1:30:24
do think of him as being very blase and casual about death and violent and
1:30:29
all these you know, just good with the sword, and he's like,
1:30:30
why would you kill this creature? It's completely blameless, like silly, silly
1:30:35
Magolin. That's literally your house. You're you're probably silly in the house,
1:30:40
and we just stopped here, let it go. And it just it's a
1:30:43
different side of Matth than we used to see because we usually see him doing
1:30:45
political, military, people city stuff. We don't usually see him interacting with
1:30:50
wildlife, and one of the only times we do he's stolen a badger from
1:30:54
its home for some reason, so well, yeah, you know, but
1:30:58
also he was but he lets it go free. It's not he eases it.
1:31:01
It's not like he does let it go free. It probably had a
1:31:05
traumatizing day, but yeah, got out of it alive. We get the
1:31:11
interaction where again Matt learns about names because he tries to call too on Precious
1:31:15
and she's like, ah, I won that game she did. I'm not
1:31:17
responding to Precious anymore. I love how that implies that she actually was accepting
1:31:21
it, Like she could have stopped that game at any time, but she
1:31:25
just let it go. And it's like, no, like this really is
1:31:28
all about mind games. This isn't there's nothing being hard and faster. This
1:31:32
is all mind games, every last bit of it. Which is like,
1:31:35
I don't know if it makes me hate or like their courtship because I'm not
1:31:40
a mind games person, but it is kind of fun to watch people who
1:31:43
are mind games people like doing it with each others. It's like, oh,
1:31:45
look, the cultural safari. That's something I have no interest in.
1:31:49
Yeah, I would not enjoy experiencing it. But I definitely enjoy reading about
1:31:55
it. Yeah. Yeah, well, we enjoy studying human interactions, like
1:31:59
we're as who uh, what's what possible? Are you wrong with us?
1:32:02
Nothing's wrong with us. We're as part of the normal diversity of human brains
1:32:09
and bodies. Actually, So apparently that being merciful to poisonous snakes is enough
1:32:26
to really get too on turned on honestly would be for me, which I
1:32:30
feel like should be a turn off to Matt. That is a weird reason.
1:32:33
Yeah, kiss out of everything else, He's done everything else. Yeah,
1:32:42
but okay, So here's where I think the parallel is. She often
1:32:45
compares I said I to poisonous snakes. Oh my god, right, and
1:32:51
so his mercy right with venamous venomous? Thank you. I apologize. You
1:32:59
are correct that it was an appropriate correction, you pedantic so venomous snakes,
1:33:12
But I think she calls them poisonous. So I think I'm okay in using
1:33:15
that. Yeah, she's poison There we go quoting. I'm not wrong,
1:33:24
I'm quoting. Okay, So it was Jordan being lazy or was he making
1:33:28
two on wrong deliberately? Let's go with the second? Oh why not?
1:33:33
Yeah, I just don't think that became a real debate that people cared about
1:33:38
until the Internet became a thing much after these books came out. It's always
1:33:41
been incorrect. Well yeah, but it doesn't mean anything, but people used
1:33:46
it incorrectly commonly. People are wrong. You're calling Robert Jordan wrong. Is
1:33:51
that what you're doing? Yes, yes, hey, look people pay me
1:33:56
the big bucks for that. That's true. That is what we're here for.
1:34:01
But yeah, that that comparison right that he's he what is his whole
1:34:05
arc bin right? Letting the eye said, I go freeing the I sid
1:34:10
I, And here he is letting a snake go a poisonous, venomous snake.
1:34:15
I like it because there there's a lot of even outside of Shan Chain,
1:34:18
there's a lot of association between Isidaie and snakes, which I mean,
1:34:23
honestly goes back to like Saint Patrick's I mean, which is out of Ireland,
1:34:26
right, like yeah, the Great Serpent. Yeah, there's a lot
1:34:30
of snake imagery with the isid Eye. So I never thought of connecting on
1:34:34
those things, but I like it. And now the kiss makes sense because
1:34:38
everything she does has layers and meaning and has analogies in it. And I
1:34:42
wasn't seeing that in this interaction, so it felt nonsensical. But ah,
1:34:45
now it ties together. And the hard argument about why would you let a
1:34:49
venomous snake go? Is why would you let an? I said, I
1:34:53
go And he's like, they're they're not attacking me, they're not causing any
1:34:57
harm, they're fleeing away from me. Why would I attack them? Right?
1:35:01
Like? Why? And I think that can go even into like Tuon's
1:35:04
rationale about attacking the White Tower, which Brandon should have fucking changed her character
1:35:12
after her interaction with Matt should have made her see that something. Okay anyway,
1:35:15
yeah, okay, So no, this idea that like, oh,
1:35:17
maybe I shouldn't attack the snakes in their tower, that's their home, and
1:35:21
yet he does attack the snakes and the foxes in their tower. Now okay,
1:35:27
so then there's another layer to it, right, I Mean, he
1:35:30
doesn't burn the house down, he just steals their prize. But still he
1:35:33
Yeah, it just breaks the rules they're holding up. They're holding a prize
1:35:38
from him, they're not inocuous going about their own business. Yeah, yeah,
1:35:42
it's a little different. It's not like he's stealing something that's indigenous to
1:35:45
their environment. He's stealing a human back who's been taken. I honestly don't
1:35:50
think. I think the analogy is applies to Isidai, not to the snakes
1:35:53
and foxes here. Yeah if yeah, I think. And this is like
1:35:57
I said, really glad I got to hop in one little chapters of this
1:36:00
book because Robert Jordan wrote this book, and that was a whole scene like
1:36:05
check how snake something mattered there? Yeah it wasn't just there for no reason,
1:36:15
right right, it can't be. And Chat has informed me that in
1:36:18
finish there is no distinction between poisonous and venomus. Okay, so speaks finish,
1:36:26
Okay, all right. I thought it was Texas or like deep south,
1:36:30
deep Southern. Well, apparently they're using finish rules. So kind of
1:36:33
an accent. You may kiss me now, toy. I don't know.
1:36:41
I just thought I try out my Texas accent, even though I live nowhere
1:36:45
near there. Yeah. So, yeah, she invites a kiss. He
1:36:54
gives her a very chaste kiss, and she calls it out for being way
1:36:58
too PG you your mother, and she folds her arm under her breasts.
1:37:02
She's deliberately being like, no, check these outing I'm not. I am
1:37:09
not an innocent little girl. Kind of like when mendaes the thing where she
1:37:13
suddenly stands differently and like turns her wrists out and like cocks her head and
1:37:17
like suddenly Randa is like, you know, produced to stammering. She's sticking
1:37:20
out her ass and tits right, like that's basically what she's doing in that
1:37:24
stance, and she wears high heeled boots. Yeah right, Yeah, she's
1:37:29
standing like a boy to standing like a seducy woman. And Tuan is basically
1:37:33
doing her best attempt at that. But you know, she's no Domani.
1:37:38
She doesn't know how under Leanna, but she tries. And then Matt shows
1:37:43
her how kissing works, and she's a very quick stit study. But she
1:37:49
uses that opportunity to test his teu and tell them he's running a fever.
1:37:55
She manipulates him. The kiss is still even the first is still a manipulative
1:38:01
reason she really enjoyed, Oh absolutely, she didn't. Her next perspective that
1:38:06
was fun like but still she's like, yeah, you're feverish. I knew
1:38:09
it. Give me my give me my potion, yeah, Solusia, Yeah,
1:38:14
it just like pretends it didn't happen. Basically, like there's air standing
1:38:17
around, watching, whistling, clapping, and she just pretends it didn't happen
1:38:25
because she's so like shocked by it. She's just like, we'ren't going to
1:38:28
pretend that didn't happen. Or maybe that's how she goes, you know,
1:38:31
it's sort of cooking or like she's pretending like she was so flustered, she's
1:38:35
like, oh God, I have to do something. Oh you're feverish.
1:38:38
I'm taking my power back or I'm taking taking That's how I interpret it is
1:38:43
that that's her covering for how flustered she feels by her like Matt is expecting
1:38:47
her to like respond directly, and she's like, way too exactly, she's
1:38:53
way too controlled to do that. But she's also very flustered, so she
1:38:56
resorts to a pretty ham fisted I was doing that to test your temperature.
1:39:01
I not take your clothes off right right for science, It's it's for medical
1:39:06
safety. Yeah, thankfully. That's when Van and Dread and tell me and
1:39:19
my time to shine. Van and Dread walks up. I have to read
1:39:25
this this paragraph. Writers are coming Handon announced one of them as vanon Matt
1:39:30
swung onto pips for a better vantage. A pair of horsemen were approaching it
1:39:34
a gallop, dodging around fallen trees when they had to. Aside from recognizing
1:39:39
shell Venin's done, there was no mistaking the man himself. Nobody else who
1:39:44
was that wide and sat his saddle like a sack of suet could have maintained
1:39:48
his seat at that pace with any without any apparent effort. Clearly, he's
1:39:54
not actually that heavy. The man could have stayed in the saddle on a
1:39:57
wild boar, because he's channeling his way on that. Then Matt recognized the
1:40:01
other writer, whose cloak was flailing behind him, and felt as if he
1:40:04
had been punched in the belly. He would not have been surprised in the
1:40:08
least had the dice stopped then, but they kept bouncing off the inside of
1:40:11
his skull. What in the light was Telmana's bloody well doing in Altara?
1:40:15
But yeah, just that little bit, right, Okay, just obviously shel
1:40:19
Vannon running I highlighted that hole, that whole part that you like emphasized.
1:40:25
I was like so much van and dread in this chapter, just like it.
1:40:30
It's there, like so obvious, so obvious, and especially because we
1:40:35
just you know, because we did have the Kylie back in the day and
1:40:41
how she moved and that just that when we first when you first made that
1:40:46
connection, I was like, oh my god, yeah, like I know
1:40:49
how these books in and I know it's not but it is, But it
1:40:55
is. He just didn't put it in the notes. Yeah, Like if
1:41:00
it's not, then what's going on here? Right? Yeah, that's all
1:41:03
I'm making. So this let's talk about tell honest. Then we'll come back
1:41:06
to the van and dread. So tell honus he's got a small red hand
1:41:11
soon in the breast of his dark coat and that's his only decoration. Right.
1:41:15
So then too on seeing the band of the Red Hand, and she's
1:41:17
getting all excited. She's already excited, well different kind of different kind of
1:41:25
excited, and ran saying like, at least tell me you have you haven't
1:41:29
brought the whole bloody band three hundred bloody miles into our Tara and Tom I
1:41:32
was like, no, I brought that many people, but it's not the
1:41:36
whole band, so you're not mad, right, it used to be the
1:41:40
whole band. And I didn't bring the Masons and I didn't bring the mamony.
1:41:45
So you know, I mean, you really can't blame me for not
1:41:46
for for overpacking when I left the Masons at home. You never know when
1:41:50
you're gonna eat a bridge. Yeah, he brought three brand He brought three
1:41:56
banners of horse and four thousand mounted crossbowmen. He left three banners of horse
1:42:01
and five of foot. So that's eight plus three. It's eleven banners plus
1:42:09
four thousand mounted crossbowmen. When he left there were two banners. Has a
1:42:15
big change. Yeah. So, and most of them came when Matt wasn't
1:42:19
there. They came until Monus was in charge. What does that say about
1:42:24
Tommnus's leadership? Exactly right, Tell, Manus in a lot of ways,
1:42:29
really is the instrument in which Matt gathers his army, right, tel Monus
1:42:33
is the leader of the band in a lot of ways. Very true.
1:42:36
But also the time period where Matt was gone was a time period of huge
1:42:42
major up people in all of these countries around where they were too. True.
1:42:45
But like even though Matt, I mean, people immediately needed new work,
1:42:51
So it wasn't a hard time to build up a huge army. I'm
1:42:56
not saying Tommy's didn't do a great job of doing it. Isn't a great
1:42:59
leader. I love Tom Annis, but because remember they were trailing after the
1:43:03
Tower, and they were collecting all the same people that Gareth Brynn was collecting,
1:43:08
going through all those war torn worlds lands, like there's just a lot
1:43:13
going on where they can pick people up and we're recruiting, and they had
1:43:15
the whole Like, the whole reason Agwayne was wanted them there is so that
1:43:19
people would have to choose between the two armies, right, because they thought
1:43:23
that there would be a battle any moment. So that's forcing people to join
1:43:28
up. Yes, more joined the White Towers Armies. But Matt got a
1:43:32
lot of people out of that. Oh yeah, Agwayne did a lot to
1:43:34
build up the band. Yeah, totally. And now Matt learns that she
1:43:39
is actually dion Mere lind Seat because I was like, no, no,
1:43:42
he's got all She's got all those eyes to die by the scraps of their
1:43:45
neck, even if they don't know it yet. Yeah, catching Matt up
1:43:47
on like two books worth of Agwayne plot, yeah right right right, he's
1:43:53
like, why aren't you hanging out with a Lane? And he's like,
1:43:56
what that ship sailed? So long ago, Like that's a plot point from
1:44:00
book five. Shut up, Like what are you talking about? Like you
1:44:04
were under a book the last time that we checked in, Dude, Like,
1:44:08
nah, under a wall, yeah, under wall. Yeah, I'm
1:44:12
under a book. You know. I know the books are the size of
1:44:15
the walls. It's an easy mistake to make the book. Matt's seeing Rand,
1:44:24
so he sees Rand talking to cod Swain twice. That's all I really
1:44:27
pulled out of those Yeah, cod Swain, that's what I wrote. Has
1:44:30
to be. That's relevant to the fact that a plain wood box is coming
1:44:35
up for episode five hundred, we will be having a very cad Swain centric
1:44:40
Yeah wow episode five I know. I also like how Tomnas has like a
1:44:46
whole deal with King Rodrin to pay everybody, because that's like, I don't
1:44:48
know how I'm going to pay those people. It's like, no worry,
1:44:50
I got a king to do it for you. No, I've got I've
1:44:53
got a year's worth of pay so we're good. Yeah. Matt's like,
1:44:56
I can't dice for that much gold. Tomas is like, no, I
1:45:00
I brought enough money to pay them, don't worry. Like I'm a good
1:45:03
second in command. I got this, He's like, I'm a noble I
1:45:06
understand how to pay armies with kings, Like I understand how that works,
1:45:10
and I we did. This is basically my job. Yeah, yeah,
1:45:14
it's basically my job. This is what I used to do, Like I
1:45:15
got this. Yeah. How lucky was Matt when he pulled Tilmanus as a
1:45:18
second in command right in levels of lucky? Yeah, exactly. Congratulations to
1:45:24
tillmanas you needed tevere and to pull you into the plot. All right,
1:45:26
So then Soelushah and two on right up, and Solusha does the very very
1:45:30
obvious throat clearing it Matt until he remembers to introduce tu On to this man
1:45:36
who is clearly important, and Matt uses the introduction to lay out what he
1:45:41
thinks the power dynamic should be. And then Tamanus betrays that Vannon told him
1:45:45
what the actual situation is and he Matt can't use Tilmanus to disrespect two On.
1:45:51
Tamanus has already been told who she is, and did you catch that?
1:45:56
Tuon gets super pissed at Matt here in the beginning, So she uh,
1:46:01
Tuon was so straight in her marisadle, so cool eyed, cold,
1:46:04
face and regal that he expected Solusia to start proclaiming her titles. She did
1:46:11
nothing of the story. Instead, she shifts on I'm done and scowled at
1:46:14
him, eyes like blue coals and a fire. She's pissed because she caught
1:46:18
him in a lie. Telmanus rides up and says, oh, the dragon
1:46:23
reborn is gonna give you a state. He has raised menual nations and so
1:46:28
I hear you grew up with him. Meanwhile, Tuon's like, you told
1:46:32
me you never fucking met the man and you grew up with him? What
1:46:38
like? Meanwhile, So Tuon is livid right after that statement. I just
1:46:44
thought it was about being snubbed in the introductions. I did not even connect
1:46:47
it to that being the moment that she came that out, because I remember
1:46:50
that she gets to mad about it later she thinks about it, But this
1:46:54
is the moment when nice catch nice you. Oh yeah, no, wonder
1:47:00
she's pissed. She's like, you are such a better liar than I thought.
1:47:05
And not just that he's a liar, but she thought she knew what
1:47:10
his taels were, and now she's learning she doesn't know his tells, and
1:47:14
that's unsettling. She's like, oh, I thought I knew when you were
1:47:16
lying. Yeah, she doesn't. She does not like that feeling at all.
1:47:20
Vandam pulled the second rim of his hat lower, hiding half his face.
1:47:24
He still avoided looking directly at Matt. So I've seen the man had
1:47:27
already told tom Onis exactly holds who Tuan was or or no, no,
1:47:33
don't weaken Van and Dread with spurious evidence. Okay, yeah, fair enough,
1:47:39
fair enough, fair enough, that's all right. So then we get
1:47:42
to talk about the problem of the landslide. Tom Honess is like, so
1:47:47
I got through, but on the way through something and tavern uh knocked down
1:47:56
the mountain behind me. And even when I sent men back through to check,
1:48:00
some of them got hurt. So like, we're not getting back through
1:48:03
the way I came in. See that I do think is Van and Dread
1:48:06
evidence. Vanna goes out to scout and the one place he knows he can
1:48:14
get through he knocks it down. He's trying to Yeah, a random landslide.
1:48:19
How hard is it for him to channel a landslide? Right? Just
1:48:23
knock over? Yeah, for the only path that he knew, and he
1:48:26
was the navigator so even if there is another path, he's not telling him
1:48:30
about it, right, And like Matt's luck tends to work in the preventing
1:48:33
landslides direction, not in the causing right clostuction. He doesn't need this battle.
1:48:39
This battle is not necessary for his plot, right, And they lost
1:48:44
people, right, that's not lucky for in no way. Like sure,
1:48:47
if they couldn't go through the pass, it could have landslided afterwards. But
1:48:51
they killed the rear guard and some of the pack horses, like the whole
1:48:55
rear guard, Like that is a very unlucky. Maybe they just hadn't passed
1:48:59
through. But he says he lost them, and that's assumes that the slide
1:49:01
came down on them as they were coming through the Yeah, he genuinely like
1:49:05
they were swept away. Yeah, that is deeply unlucky. The band is
1:49:09
lucky. And you know who would do that, A forsaken who was like,
1:49:13
I need to block the pass. I'll let most of them go through
1:49:15
and then just kill the last few through. Yeah, and some of the
1:49:17
pack animals just to take a few more supplies out of the picture. Like,
1:49:21
yeah, no, I think that that solidly fits with Van and Dred.
1:49:26
That is not spurious evidence. That's good evidence. Okay, no,
1:49:30
it looks like one just brought well okay, just one broke his neck and
1:49:32
another his leg when he sent people back to check it out. Yeah,
1:49:35
so he lost people coming through. He lost people trying to go back through
1:49:40
to So yeah, that's not man to the red hand type luck man in
1:49:44
dred manon dread Man Indred. Yes, somebody is there making sure that they
1:49:49
die if they try and come back. That's what. Yep, they didn't
1:49:53
just break their neck and fall because it was a rockslide. No, those
1:49:57
men can climb. Yeah, Vandon dread wants them to get in trouble and
1:50:01
fight on the road mainly. And so first he has to diffuse Matt's request
1:50:09
to find another pass through the mountains. It's like, well, you just
1:50:12
find another way, and and maybe there could be other ways. He could
1:50:15
be lying about it, right, And then he says, well, and
1:50:17
I said I told me once that that's not possible, right, Really,
1:50:23
Vannon, really, you you hang out and talk with ice to die and
1:50:26
take them seriously? Really? Yes, that's about as likely as Matt reading
1:50:30
a book. When Matt says I read it in a book, was right?
1:50:35
If he were just a horse thief that they picked up off the side
1:50:40
of the road. When has he been hanging out with? Is toda right?
1:50:44
And this is like not just like a casual comment. He may have
1:50:46
overheard this whole yeah, sorry about how how the continents work and why these
1:50:53
mountains work this way and those mountains work that way, and it's got like
1:50:56
science behind it. He didn't just like overhear this or make it casual a
1:51:00
passing comment. Yeah. No, you know who would know this, Demandred
1:51:05
who studied the mountains after we woke up, Because he's a fucking geologist and
1:51:10
knows that shit from the age of the legist. He used to live here
1:51:13
before the breaking, so he recognizes the mountain ranges every year before, even
1:51:15
if they may have been underwater. I'm sure they had underwater mapping technology and
1:51:20
knew about like the seafloor. Yeah I don't. I don't know about de
1:51:25
Madrid being a geologist and take issue with that, but no, but he
1:51:30
would know about what the land looked like before. But yeah, he would
1:51:33
understand the geology was a thing that existed right in the same way that I'm
1:51:36
not a geologist, but I understand like because it talks about some of the
1:51:41
mountains having been on the ocean floor before and those are old and now they're
1:51:45
the world's broken in there the land, but some are from the breaking,
1:51:48
so those are just like a maze. Yeah, and yeah that's a who
1:51:54
knows that even if the eyes to diet, who knows that much about like
1:51:57
the geology of the old mountains that were around before the breaking, well and
1:52:01
like okay, maybe a brown, but definitely some of the browns, and
1:52:04
like even if yeah, definitely some of the browns, and like if you
1:52:08
compare it to the real world, like obviously we don't have mountains that have
1:52:12
been thrown up over the course of like ten years or a year or a
1:52:15
day or whatever the breaking was, like, but we do have mountain ranges
1:52:18
of very very different ages, right new versus appellations versus rockies or yeah,
1:52:25
yeah, really good examples of the Appellations versus the Himalaya. They are extremely
1:52:30
similar. Just many, many millions of part tell me about how old my
1:52:34
Appalachian mountains are. They're so cool and old. So the Appalachian Mountains were
1:52:41
once upon a time formed during the formation of Pangaea, when Pangaea was coming
1:52:46
together in the thirst place. That's when the Appalachian mountains were getting formed,
1:52:51
and they looked like the Himalaya. That's what they looked at. That's they
1:52:57
were ginormous and jagged, and you know what was happening like after that time,
1:53:03
the evolution of bones. I know that all the time. I'm like,
1:53:11
our mountains are older than like the spine, older than bones, older
1:53:15
than yeah, and people are always blown away when I tell them that fact.
1:53:19
I'm like, yeah, these mountains they've been around, they have seen
1:53:24
so much. They're older than trees, older than it's so, older than
1:53:29
sharks, older than the North Star. Like, they're just older than everything.
1:53:34
And the really cool part so so so when the Himalayas form, right
1:53:41
as they're forming right now, their roots go down really really far into the
1:53:44
earth, right like super super far down. Like the crust is extremely thick
1:53:47
under mountain ranges because it's oh, yes, yes, we like big crusts
1:53:53
and we cannot lie. But it's it's like how icebergs sit in the water.
1:53:57
They have to rotate and roll and shift in order to create the equilibrium
1:54:02
that they sit at. Well, continents are like that too, obviously they
1:54:05
can't roll, but they do have to sink down deeper if they get taller,
1:54:11
and they have to rise up if they get lighter. It's called isostatic
1:54:15
rebound. And so when mountains are being uplifted, the crust is thickening,
1:54:20
when they're getting eroded away. That means that the roots are coming up.
1:54:26
As the overlying mountain gets removed, the roots have to come up, and
1:54:30
so in the appellations, the roots that are exposed today are rocks that formed
1:54:35
deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep deep down
1:54:39
in the Earth's crust. They are deeply metamorphosed, twisted, gnarly amazing rocks,
1:54:45
and those rocks are currently forming under the appellations today. They are currently
1:54:49
at ridiculous plastic rock folding nice making insanity pressures right now. They won't be
1:54:59
exposed for many, many millions of years. But if you go to the
1:55:00
Appalachians, you can see what they look like. You can. We can
1:55:04
see them. It's so cool. I get to see it all the time.
1:55:09
I love living here, God, I like it, really love.
1:55:12
I couldn't. I couldn't live somewhere without mountains. I couldn't. They're so
1:55:15
cool. Oh yeah, It's one of the reasons I love living in Oregon,
1:55:19
right is because we're like, you can drive one way to the tropical
1:55:24
forest, one way to the beach, one way to the mountains, and
1:55:27
one way to the desert and like subtropical forest. But yes, sorry,
1:55:30
yes, thank you rainforest. But I do love that you can get mountains
1:55:35
and beach and stuff like that. One cool thing about Virginia it has the
1:55:40
most salamanders of any state, which I never figured out. So cool.
1:55:45
Yeah, and I love salamanders. I didn't. I never figured that out
1:55:46
till I was doing the salamander hunting with Bark, But I was like,
1:55:50
that's awesome. I'm glad I ended up here because I've like been, you
1:55:53
know, obviously finding salamanders my whole life and they're so cool. And I
1:55:57
didn't know we were a hot spot for him in North Carolina. Apparently that's
1:56:01
super neat. And with respect to the finding pathways through the mountains, I'm
1:56:09
not much of a mountain near mountain navigator type person. I assume that the
1:56:15
rationale that new mountains are harder to navigate than old mountains is true, but
1:56:18
I also feel like Appalachia is known for people getting lost like after two seconds,
1:56:24
so oh, very easy to get lost. Like everything looks identical in
1:56:30
every direction. It's amazing if you can't, if you can't figure out the
1:56:35
direction you're trying to go. And also that's really steep, like just because
1:56:40
they're really old, really round, worn down mountains. There's a lot of
1:56:44
really steep places that are just not passable. That's why the Mountain Valley pipeline
1:56:47
is so controversial and horrifying, because it's going over terrain that high pressure gas
1:56:56
has never gone over before in a pipeline. All those gas pipelines are straight,
1:57:01
long across flat areas. They've never done it up and down and over
1:57:05
and across this type of topography before. And then you know it's just accidents
1:57:13
happen out where it's just going straight. But if there's an erosion and landside
1:57:16
and the pipe breaks, i mean you're talking huge explosion also out in the
1:57:21
middle of nowhere on top of one of our mountains probably, or I mean,
1:57:26
actually that's the best possible thing. Or else it's right next to somebody's
1:57:29
house, because it's like going through people's you know, property and close people's
1:57:32
houses and stuff too, and that's been so stupid, like it's just gonna
1:57:39
break. But I do feel like the erosion kind of equalizes everything, right,
1:57:44
It makes everything look very like one hill kind of looks just like another
1:57:48
hill. And then you combine that with the fact that like the valleys going
1:57:54
through or kind of twisty based on the way the hills interact, it's very
1:57:57
hard to walk straight in one to at all, You're always going to end
1:58:00
up in a valley like it's it. I just I can't imagine a place
1:58:04
that's more designed to be maze like, you know, once you get into
1:58:09
those rolling hills of like West Virginia. Definitely, I feel like water navigation
1:58:15
is one of the best ways to get through mountain ranges, yes, right,
1:58:17
Yeah, And I feel feel like since the breaking was only three thousand
1:58:21
years ago, Yeah, a lot of water erosion can happen in three thousand
1:58:27
years, but not as much as could happen in a real mountain range that
1:58:30
had been experiencing it before it got moved or whatever. So maybe that has
1:58:34
something to do with like the pass as being easier because they used to be
1:58:38
a giant river through the mountains and now it's just a pass yeah, so
1:58:46
I I maybe Vannin's just overestimating how easy it is for people to not lose
1:58:51
their heads and keep keep navigating, just keep navigating in the right direction in
1:58:56
older mountains. And it's just one of those like most people aren't as a
1:59:00
van and is navigating, and so that's where he's like, Nah, it's
1:59:02
fine and other mountains, but these mountains you can't do it. And it
1:59:06
seems to be like all mountains are difficult to navigate and and they're just all
1:59:12
scary and deadly. Yeah, I think they're all pretty hard. I guess
1:59:15
maybe if some mountains came during the breaking, and you know, some crazy
1:59:19
mal channeler just whoa up a whole mountain range and there'd be a lot of
1:59:25
broken, crazy fallen pieces like like wreckage like after a building is demolished or
1:59:30
something like that, that would be a lot harder to figure your way through
1:59:33
than a regular old mountain created. Sure, a mountain that actually follows predictable
1:59:39
natural patterns instead of the chaos of magic destruction. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
1:59:45
it's just shrapnel of a mountain basically, that's super valid. At least
1:59:49
there's some kind of dendritic pattern in the old mountains. Yeah, exactly,
1:59:55
there was water erosions still happening. There was. Yeah, it wasn't just
2:00:00
explosion because yeah, like even out here in the Pacific Northwest, like it's
2:00:04
not maybe quite as rolling as the Appalachians, but also we have that same
2:00:10
like every valley looks the same, every ridge looks the same. It's all
2:00:13
super steep out here. The rocks are very crumbly rather than very hard welded.
2:00:18
But like there's these are very young mountains out here, like we're dealing
2:00:23
with like not even a million years old in some cases, Like these are
2:00:27
just sand piles that have been sluffed up recently and they're still super confusing,
2:00:30
and people get lost in them and die all the time. So it's it's,
2:00:33
yeah, just don't get lost in the mountains kids. Oh yeah,
2:00:38
I think he's got a good point that mountains are hard to traverse, and
2:00:42
maybe that's maybe not part of his dark friendury, but everything else is yeah.
2:00:47
Yeah, but yeah, so that this basically ends up forcing them through
2:00:53
the Maldi Narrows later on, Yeah, because because Vannon says people will die
2:01:00
before another pass is found, that the loss of that pass guarantees that some
2:01:05
enterprising mountain men are going to die figuring out where the alternative pass is and
2:01:12
all, and he Matt looks at Oliver and at tu On and is like,
2:01:15
well, I gonna have to figure out an alternative this right, Yeah,
2:01:20
all these people he's supposed to be protecting, and so they just keep
2:01:24
writing down the road, being like all right, I just got to think,
2:01:27
and I think better when I'm on the move, So we're just going
2:01:29
to keep writing. Yeah, it turns into a major military assault ultimately,
2:01:34
but that you know, the death Watch guards have to catch up and it's
2:01:39
a whole the whole thing. So I cannot wait for that part. I've
2:01:43
been That's one of my favorite battles, Like I know, it's so fun.
2:01:47
There's obviously a lot more battles once once Brandon Sanderson takes over, or
2:01:53
more like description of battles because he's good at that, but like this was,
2:01:59
but the tactical thinking that goes into this one, and like the one
2:02:03
around Tyri in when Rand comes back in the first and Matt kills cool it
2:02:10
in like the tactics on that one. Like those are some of my favorite
2:02:13
battles because they're just so like whoa, oh, that's like kinda I love
2:02:18
the series. Super skyl like is saying people are gonna die while we find
2:02:24
a new pass, because I'm going to kill them if they actually find a
2:02:27
crossable pass Van and dread probably okay, I yes, yes, And next
2:02:36
next week's a long one. We've got three povs two on Power Fayel and
2:02:42
just just page count wise. This chapter was in my digital book eight pages.
2:02:46
This is a short one. Next chapter is fifteen oh my, so
2:02:50
expected to be about twice as long in terms of words. Okay, okay,
2:02:55
Well, I'm glad we don't have a guest schedule for that one because
2:02:57
that will take for ever. And then and then after that is episode five
2:03:03
hundred, a plain wooden box. We're close again. Glad I got to
2:03:09
be on near five hundred. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad we're able to
2:03:11
get you in here before this book ended, because I was like, you're
2:03:14
like, oh, I want to be a guest, and I was like
2:03:15
looking at the schedule of like when we're doing stuff and events, and I
2:03:18
was just like, uh uh uh here fit in here. So I'm really
2:03:23
glad this timing worked out. That's when I that's why I asked right now,
2:03:27
asked right now because I was like, oh my god, we're getting
2:03:29
close to the end of Nights of Dreams and I need to be on one
2:03:31
more time before Brandon takes over. Like, I love this book and it's
2:03:35
one that I often forget about it being in my top favorites until I'm reading
2:03:41
it or listening to you guys talk about it over the last since you started,
2:03:45
I'm like, oh, yeah, this book is great, and and
2:03:48
I do I do think that I felt when I was originally reading it.
2:03:53
This slog a little bit because I remember coming coming to this book and it
2:03:56
being so fast paced, and I was just like, like, this is
2:04:00
like I guess I did kind of feel it now that I'm thinking back to
2:04:03
that and like, how much this one was so much fun. Yeah,
2:04:10
it's like being set free after kind of like dragging weights behind you for three
2:04:13
books. You're like, Okay, let's cut those lines and go. Yeah.
2:04:19
Not that I haven't had fun the last couple of books with you guys
2:04:23
too, and this one's been awesome. Yeah, it really is. It
2:04:26
really And one of the things that it was for me is, you know,
2:04:29
after three books where I really felt like Jordan was I'm not gonna say
2:04:33
lost his way, but was wandering a little bit off in the beside the
2:04:38
path. It was nice to be like, Okay, Jordan can come back,
2:04:41
and like there is a plan, there is He is going to finish
2:04:45
this. He is wrapping up storylines, he is closing things down, he
2:04:48
is creating, you know, setting up for the last battle. We're not
2:04:51
just going to fuck around for an of the five books before the last Battle,
2:04:55
right, Like, So for me, this book is a very good
2:05:00
book on its own, but in terms of what it communicated to me as
2:05:03
a reader of the Wheel of Time series is that there is a good ending
2:05:09
to this series that can happen. We're not just going to spiral off into
2:05:12
politics that never get resolved. And so this book means a lot to me
2:05:15
on I feel like both of those levels, right and then also as a
2:05:19
farewell book right from Jordan, which I obviously didn't attend, but like as
2:05:24
his final book, being a really fun, good, well written book means
2:05:29
a lot to me me too. And on that note, thanks for listening
2:05:34
and we'll see you next week. We're just like, oh, and everybody
2:06:19
married their high school sweetheart or everybody married who they were fighting this war to
2:06:26
say, the fabric of time, which I guess, you know, I
2:06:29
get it. That probably makes you want to get married. Yeah, it's
2:06:33
it's the one you look back and you're like, oh, Harry Potter was
2:06:35
the trust fun jock who married his high school sweetheart and grow up to become
2:06:39
a cop. Right, well, given the way that author has chosen to
2:06:46
be an absolute fuck face with her with her public clout hashtag trans lives Matter,
2:06:53
Yeah, that kind of all tracks. It was one of the early
2:06:58
signs. That one in the description of the Gobbets. Yeah, you know,
2:07:02
I loved Harry Potter, but I haven't read the books in a long
2:07:05
time. I spent all of my time that I would have spent on Harry
2:07:08
Potter in the fan fiction world of Marauders and mostly just remiss and serious are
2:07:15
in love And JK. Rowling wrote them that way and didn't even fucking realize
2:07:18
it. But the phantom all saw it as soon as I read book three,
2:07:21
but it was confirmed in book five. They give Harry a joint birthday
2:07:26
present and then she's just like, oh no, he's marrying Tonguks series his
2:07:30
cousin fuck you. You wrote a gay relationship. You didn't realize it.
2:07:31
And I've spent all my time in that part of the Harry Potter fandom because
2:07:38
I still love that world, but I refused to actually like listen to the
2:07:41
books or anything anymore. So I love that I remember reading them, but
2:07:45
having already been a huge fan of Wheels time, I was like, these
2:07:47
are pretty good children's books. Yeah, seventeen when the last Harry Potter book
2:07:54
came out, so the same age as the character. So it was like,
2:07:58
that's what got me into reading. And I think that's really valuable.
2:08:01
And I think it did a lot. That did a lot for people my
2:08:03
age, especially, you know. I was like, got read to them
2:08:07
the first two and then because I you know, and learned how to read,
2:08:11
because I was like, I can't wait to know what happens next.
2:08:13
I need to read. And so if it hadn't been for me reading a
2:08:18
whole Harry Potter book in a twelve hour drive to Michigan, I don't know
2:08:22
if I would have been like, sure, I can take on a fourteen
2:08:24
book series. That sounds great. Give me the first book for Christmas,
2:08:26
you know. So I thank it for that too for my ability to just
2:08:31
not at all shy away from big books, because when I was twelve,
2:08:37
I was like, sure, I'll read Prisoner or Order of the Phoenix,
2:08:39
the longest Harry Potter book. No, and it did get a lot of
2:08:43
people in the longer fantasy books. But you know, I'm actually the same
2:08:46
age as Harry Potter. We were both born in nineteen eighty one, the
2:08:50
fictional character, right, but the books were written, yeah, around ten
2:08:54
years after they put it. They were written to take place in the nineties,
2:08:58
but they're actually written later, right. The first one came out in
2:09:01
ninety seven, ninety yeh right, yeah, right, but then because it's
2:09:05
so long, right, more more than seven years? Like that interesting?
2:09:09
Yeah, so I was much older than Harry Potter was when the books came
2:09:13
out, even though we were born in the same year. Yeah right,
2:09:18
Whereas yeah, I was like very much the right age to be. The
2:09:22
first few books, my dad was reading them to me as I was roughly
2:09:24
the age of the protagonists, and so like, yeah, my dad had
2:09:31
such a great reading has such a great reading voice, and like, yeah,
2:09:33
so all of that is just wrapped up in like great memories of like
2:09:37
my dad reading to me, not because I couldn't read, but because that
2:09:39
was like part of our family, like ritual and same. Now those books
2:09:43
keep my computer from sucking in too much carpet and suffocating. And so I
2:09:48
can say that the JK. Rowling is supporting trans people, Oh they're doing
2:09:52
good. Then well I'm been, you know, writing some fun Wolfstar fan
2:09:58
fiction and reading and promoting a lot of really awesome queer artists in that land
2:10:03
of fan fiction. So I've been enjoying being back in that world in a
2:10:07
very fun corner of it. So I just left. I left it for
2:10:11
just like such a long time because I loved it so much, and I
2:10:13
was like, I can't this sucks. Then I was like, that doesn't
2:10:16
mean I can't go back and enjoy some fucking Wolf Star because I used to
2:10:18
read fan fiction in nineteen ninety nine. Like that was. If I hadn't
2:10:24
been reading Harry Potter fan fiction in the entire time I've been reading the books,
2:10:26
I don't think I would have liked that world as much. Honestly,
2:10:31
I've never taken out a lot lately, and like so many writers can do
2:10:35
so much better with what she with the world. She hinted at, like
2:10:39
they can actually flesh out the magic system, they can give it rules,
2:10:43
they can like be do better character development, like thank you for making that
2:10:48
world for us. Go die in a house. And apparently she's been like
2:10:52
living alone, not even seeing her kids, like locked up an house for
2:10:56
the last ten years, so she's been totally like boomer fed, Like that
2:11:01
has happen. Yeah, that's I was, like, that makes so much
2:11:03
sense, Like, look what happened to so many boomers during the pandemic,
2:11:05
And if she's been doing that for ten years, because I'm sure it was
2:11:09
exhausting to be that famous. But like, no wonder like she's that that's
2:11:13
not a healthy environment for anybody, if that's true. Just take your money
2:11:18
and run away from the internet forever, Like just run like Georgia har Martin.
2:11:22
Yeah, just leave the internet behind. You have your money, just
2:11:26
abandon ship, get out. Yeah, don't don't spend your energy being the
2:11:31
actual worst. Don't prove a whole like Harry Potter series that's gonna come out
2:11:35
on each of you. Just be chill, Just go be quiet and chill.
2:11:39
Don't put your energy into being the worst. So done with boomers anyway,
2:11:45
super yeah wow, Sorry Big Tangent. Thank you for listening to the
2:11:52
Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast. Rate us in the Apple Podcast app, or
2:11:56
support us on Patreon. Is like good enough.