Latest / WoT Spoilers / Doses of Forkroot & Your Neck in a Cord - A Memory of Light ch14-15 - EP602

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Doses of Forkroot & Your Neck in a Cord - A Memory of Light ch14-15 - EP602 · WoT Spoilers

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: This is the Wheel of Time Spoilers Podcast. Doses of Forkroot.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: And your neck in a cord. Lots of very threatening
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: overtones in this set of chapter titles. Not even overtones,
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: they're just tones.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: But I would say the action is kicking off, right?
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Things are starting to feel faster. Battles are starting to happen.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: We've got multiple Forsaken popping in and out, doing things.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: This is really past the setup phase of sort of
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: establishing where everybody is, reiterating what the plan is, putting
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: people in place. Now it's like things are happening.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now we have stuff happening in the dream and
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: real life more or less at the same time. We
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: have Perrin moving through the same space as Andral and
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Pavara are navigating and having their battles intersecting each other.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: We're getting into that sort of flickering amongst the POVs
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: and guessing how they're interacting sort of thing. Like, yeah,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Rand is still working on powering up, but Perrin is
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: in it. Perrin and Gaul are fully both feet in it.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And a lot of the battles are fully ongoing, right?
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Matt's not quite in it yet.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: He's about to get in it. Bomb chicka wow.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, that hurt.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Someone had to say it.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some boobies in these episodes.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: But yeah, we're really picking up steam now that we're
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: 300 pages into the last book.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's how this goes, right? Like, there's always
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: that pickup in the beginning of a book. And no
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: matter how much it feels like you can pick up
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: where the last book left off, there's always a little
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: bit of maneuvering of characters into, okay, what story am
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I telling here?
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Beginning. Beginning. 300 pages. But remember, this book is, my
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: version of the book is 1,006 pages long. So, it
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: is the beginning. But also, beginning.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Beginning.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: There's entire children's trilogies that are less than 300 pages.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I guess I should read us in then.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, do it. Chapter 14.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Doses of forkroot. Light, Perrin whispered to Gaul, looking across
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the landscape. It's dying. The boiling, thrashing, churning black sky
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: of the wolf dream was nothing new, but the storm
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: that the sky had been foreshadowing for months had finally arrived.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Wind blew in enormous gusts, moving this way, then that,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: in unnatural patterns. Perrin closed his cloak, then straightened it
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: with a thought, imagining the ties holding it to be
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: fixed strongly in place. A little bubble of calmness extended
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: out from him, deflecting the worst of the winds. It
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: was easier than he anticipated, as if he'd reached for
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: a heavy piece of oak and found it as light
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: as pine. The landscape seemed less real than it usually did.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: The raging winds actually smoothed out the hills, like erosion
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: at high speed. In other places, the land swelled up,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: forming ripples of rock and new hillsides. Chunks of earth
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: sprayed into the air, shattering. The land itself was coming apart.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: I think that's the key phrase there. The land itself
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: is coming apart, right? This is the The world of
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: dreams close to Shale Ghoul where you can see it
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: disintegrating because it's the Dark Ones prison. I think it's
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: the Dark Ones prison. Yeah.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: It's also made of people's dreams. And people are warping
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: and coming apart at the seams because the world is insane.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: The waking world is insane and slipping into their dreams.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: And yeah. Absolutely. Everything is falling apart. The most everything
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: of all being the Dark One's prison itself, which is
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: the dream, which is all people's dreams, because the Dark
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: One and dreams are just manifestations of human consciousness and
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: so on and so forth.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: And Teleron Riad is the spoke around which the wheel turns,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: which is why, of course, the Dark One has to
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: be at the center of the axle. That's why we
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: all contact him in different ages. And it's always the
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: same last battle in every age. It just works too well. Right.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: It works too well. The Telerun Riad sort of sits
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: at the center of the wheel and the pattern turns
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: around it. The wheel turns around it to create the pattern.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: And yeah, Perrin and Gal are here in the flesh
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: while everything is melting and dreamlike to the point of absurdity.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: They're like, we have a week's worth of rations and
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: we're going to do this in the flesh.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Do you think they could eat rations in the world
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: of dreams? No. You think they'd just starve?
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. If you can't eat food in a dream,
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: then you shouldn't be able to eat food in a dream.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: That's my logic.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: That's actually pretty good logic, yes.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, even though you're there in the flesh, it is
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: still the dream. It is still an alien landscape to you.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: It is still dream food.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Then, what's up with Brigitte's silver arrow that later becomes
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: an Adom? Because that was a dream arrow that was
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: pulled into reality.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: That always felt like a weird anachronistic thing that doesn't fit.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: I don't know how to make that fit. She comes
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: out without her clothes, right? She shows up naked. I'm
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: guessing it has something to do with how the bow
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: and arrow is so integrally tied to who she is
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: as a hero, right? When her whole hero-ness got ripped out,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: that came with it? Hold on, this isn't my end.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Kind of sounds like wind whistling, maybe? Oh.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Hold on, I'm getting called.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Oh. Hey, dude. And now I get to listen in
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: on a radio's phone call. Everybody hush. Yeah. I'd like
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: the idea that you can eat. You just wouldn't get
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: any nourishment, right? Like it would fade away in a dream, right?
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: You can, you can create stitches for yourself, but the
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: stitches only last as long as you're in the dream.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: The second you leave the dream, the stitches are going
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: to fall right apart. So I think, you know, I
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: think it's interesting because if the food is real to
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: you while you're in the dream, Could you digest it
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: and turn it into molecules and part of cells and
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: then when leaving the dream then cause like that stuff
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: to evaporate and when like cells in your body die
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: because they're made out of dream food? Could you then,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: is there such a thing as like dream sickness? Maybe
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: that's one of the dangers of going there in the flesh.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's one of the things that makes it evil
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: is you go there and you eat and you leave
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: and it creates this incredible sickness of like essentially your
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: flesh evaporating into the dream. I'm very curious for a
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: radio to discover all this on recording and see if
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: she has any feedback. Yes. The difference between imagining your
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: body being healed and stitches, right? Like you can imagine stitches,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: which isn't healing, but in a way it's like you
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: can treat your wounds and you can also imagine yourself
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: taking substances, right? So there is a period of time
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: your body can take in fork root, ingest it and
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: react to it as though it's real. And it doesn't
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: just go away. when the dream ends, right? Because if
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: it did, then Magedian wouldn't have stayed asleep once she
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: exited the dream. The forkroot wouldn't have been affecting her anymore,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: which kind of contradicts everything else we know about it.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: But yeah, a little inconsistent. If the food is turning
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: to energy. I mean, if it's just energy, sure. But
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: like your body's turning food into a lot of things
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: other than energy. Like we need nutrients. We need all
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: sorts of things. Let's see, a radio appears to be
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: photocopying things on her phone, sending stuff to somebody, and
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: it's coming back. All right, do we have a radio back?
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: She's taking off her other headphones, putting on her regular headphones.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: All right, we have a radio back. All right, so
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: if you can't eat the food in Teleron Riad, and
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: you can't process it in your body, or even if
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: you do process it in your body and it disappears
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: once you wake up, how did Mogedion stay drugged? Put
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: the fork root.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's even more inconsistent than the arrow. That doesn't
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: make any sense. That's just inconsistent. If you can't eat food,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: you can't get high. That seems like that should be
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: locked and loaded. If you can't get nutrition, you can't
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: get psychoactives.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Or my other thought was, what if part of the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: reason going there in the flesh is evil is if
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: you eat something that gets integrated into like your body
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: and cells and then you leave the flesh and like
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: that all dies and you end up like pox and like.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: boils and like random parts of your flesh are just
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: dying off.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Or is it like a fey thing where you get
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: kind of like cursed to be forever in the dream
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: like in a destructive way.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Right yeah what if you could never like you could
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: never leave or you would die so you're just stuck
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: there in the flesh eating fake food until your whole body.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's how you become a hero of the horn
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: That's the real reason you didn't eat a cupcake.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: You're bound to the wheel. That's how you get bound
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: to the wheel.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Oh man, that's messed up. Yeah, there are some real
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: straight up holes in the canon as far as I understand.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Or you can just eat food there and I'm wrong
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: about you can't eat food there. But I feel like
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: if you can't get nutrition while you're there dreaming, being
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: in the flesh shouldn't change it. But I don't know,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: maybe I'm just wrong about that. Because if that fundamental
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: assumption is wrong... Then all the rest of it is consistent.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'm wrong. I couldn't be wrong. I'm never wrong.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: I've never been wrong in my life. Certainly not about
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Wheel of Time lore. That's never happened.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Me neither. Do not listen to any of the previous
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: episodes of this podcast.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Do not roll the tape. All right.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So we've got.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Perrin hanging out with Gaul. We've got Perrin giving Gaul
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: the least adequate education in how to deal with Talaeran
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Riad ever. It always frustrates me how much he just
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: does not explain anything about Talaeran Riad to Gaul. He
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: doesn't explain that shifting is a thing. He just shows him.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: He barely explains that your imagination is dangerous. Gaul figures
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff out intuitively because he's a smart cookie,
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: but there is so much information Perrin could be imparting
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: to him that he just doesn't.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Just figure it out. There's also just a little bit of, well,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: it's the instinct, I think, right? Perrin's like, oh, you
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: should have the instincts. But he had to be taught
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: by the wolf, right? That was the whole point, is
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: he had to, like, beg the wolves to teach him.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Where's him, like, protectively looking out for a literal newbie? Like,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Gaul's just the goat, so it's fine, but that's not
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: a fair assumption.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he says this place is being consumed slowly, as
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: was the waking world, but here it's simply easier to see.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: I think there's just something a little more going on.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: then just it's easier to see.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Because it's literally the Dark One's prison, so it's actually
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: being consumed.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: That's my thought, yeah.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean, that's where Perrin's coming from, right?
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: He's not privy to your personal headcanon. He's just like, oh,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: the world outside's being consumed and the world in here
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: is being consumed. Seems like the same thing.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Why isn't he? Why isn't he? My personal headcanon should
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: rule all, let's be honest.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: It's a very reasonable expectation.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Extremely reasonable, yes. Appreciate your going on with me.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: I love Gaul's... humor here when he laughs at Perrin
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: saying you know oh you'll you know you have to
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: be really careful otherwise you'll die and you know you'll
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: be trapped if someone slits your throat and Gaul laughs
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: and Perrin's like but why is it funny and Gaul
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: says you act as if this is something new in
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: the first dream wherever I go I am surrounded by
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: women and men who could tie me in air with
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: a thought and kill me at any time I'm accustomed
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: to being powerless around some it is the way of
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: the world in all.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Things I like that he calls the real world the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: first dream.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: I love it. It's such a... This is completely something
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: I could see Gaul in that first scene in the
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Dragon Reborn saying. This just feels like such pure and
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: quintessential Gaul. Like, you think that being around powerful people
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: who could kill me is new? You're silly. And yeah,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: the first dream. We've never heard an Aiel call the
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: waking world the first dream, but we've never had one
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: awake and in the flesh and into their own regard
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: of course that's what he would call it.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah i wonder what well we could have seen the
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: um wise women call it something they've been in the
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: aeol dream.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah we could have we could have but even then
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: they weren't there in the flesh they were but yeah
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: calling it the first dream and this the second dream
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: it's almost like an inception kind of thing i enjoyed
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: it and then perrin tries to get gall to commit
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: to like Follow his lead. And then Gull's like, sure,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: I won't attack unless you tell me to. And Perrin
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: has to roll his eyes and say, you can attack
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: if it's an appropriate time to attack. Like prickliness.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: I think that I yell no, not to stick to
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: the word of their oath like that.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: I think it's joshing from Gull to Perrin. I think
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: it's jibing. It's a yell humor, essentially. That's what I'm
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: calling it. Is this not him actually being prickly and
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: honor bound? It's him poking a little fun at Perrin.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Because that's the kind of thing I would think is funny.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: He calls Lord Luke a loping genie, which is, I guess,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: kind of bird that flees when there's any danger.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: I hear bantam rooster right there. Just a little itty
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: bitty tiny rooster with just all that chihuahua kind of energy.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: And so then they're traveling to the Black Tower, right?
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Because that's where the danger is. And he knows there's
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: no traveling through there, so he's expecting to see what
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: he does finally see, which is the Purple Dome of
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the Dream Spike. Because he's already destroyed the other one.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Right. We get to essentially speedrun the approach and the
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: transition into it, right? We've dealt with far worse, right?
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: We had the first one going all the way through
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Tar Valon and stuff. Surely this one will be less dramatic.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: And Gull... calls the whole experience a good he says
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: this is going to be a good experience for building
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: our G right as he goes through like learning how
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: to get through the dome and all the numbness and
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: he's like this will be a good experience for.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Building G I wanted to ask you about that sentence
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: because in my book it says this is going to
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: be a good experience for building our Gaul said G.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: A good experience for building our G the humility we
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: will be forced to endure as we go through this
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: obstacle course will build our honor No toe is going
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: to be gained here. Only honor if we survive, because
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: this is hella difficult.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Gaul went boss mode. Completely boss mode.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Basically, you're throwing me in the deep end.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the deepest of ends.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: And then I like this little interchange. Interchange? Exchange. Thank you. Yeah,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: what did I do to deserve your loyalty, Gaul? It
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: is not anything you did. What do you mean? I
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: cut you down from that cage. That's why you follow me.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: That's why I began following you. It's not why I remained.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Boom.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: That says so much about their whole relationship in a
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: way that is canonical and a yield and succinct and
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: to character. It's why I started. I owed you a good,
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: fair trial run. I owed you an internship worth of energy.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: And then I decided I wanted you to be my
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: career after that.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: It has the same energy as my wife being like,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: did you start dating me? Cause I was hot. And
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: I was like, it's cause I, that's why I started
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: dating you. That's not why I kept dating you. So
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: we were married, you know, I mean, sure. It doesn't help.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Like it doesn't hurt the relationship that you cut me
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: down from the cage. And like, that was a good reason.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: To, that was a great starting basis for our friendship.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But that's not why we're still together.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's, I mean, that's the basis of
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: so many good relationships is we were thrown together because
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: of random circumstance. We hit it off because of another
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: more or less random combination of factors. And then it
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: was a conscious choice. Like the idea that someone just
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: blindly follows you forever because of a chance interaction.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: That's why they give you a shake to see if
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: they want to make a more conscious choice to keep
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: having interactions with you.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: And on the outskirts of the Black Tower, we encounter...
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Land fear.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Moon hunter. I'm not moon hunter. I already own the moon. Okay,
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: moon predator.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Whatever that means.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: It means absolutely nothing other than that you're just a
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: colonizer on literal wolf territory. Oh my god, Muji, yes.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: The Calvin and Hobbes panel where the dad is saying
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: it builds character, keep at it, except character has been
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: blanked out and it just says G. It builds G,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: keep at it. That is 100% what Calvin's dad would say. Definitely.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Calvin's dad is Rourke.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I love Calvin and Hobbes. My stepdad is a huge
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Calvin and Hobbes fan. I have all of the collected books.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: I have read them a bajillion times. That is one
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: of the best comics ever. I've seen a fantastic in
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: the style of Calvin and Hobbes that is Carl and
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Donut in.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: The style of Calvin and Hobbes.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: It is fantastic. It's Lassie and Levy in Finnish. Oh,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: that's cute. But yeah, running into Lanfear here is very
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: much like, oh, and she's fully gone off the deep
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: end of being a psycho ex-girlfriend.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Like this whole interaction is like, oh, Lanfear has lost
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: the last remaining screw that was keeping her brain remotely
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: attached to anything at all.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Well, there is this moment where she says, I think
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: you're going to win. I think she's trying to play
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the sides, right? She's trying to have the good guys
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: beat the dark one. But she's like, I don't know.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: The interaction is so weird. Her popping in and being like,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: I'm going to help you out just does not make sense.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it always has felt anachronistic. It's like a whole
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: other character and the way that Perrin just gets sucked
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: into accepting her at face value. Oh, it's actually her
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: doing really subtle compulsion and that's why she's alive at
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: the end. I just don't like it. It doesn't feel satisfying.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: And yeah, her whole thing here of like, oh, I've
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: decided I want vengeance and the best vengeance is to
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: undercut the dark one. And I'm going to do that
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: by helping you the most accessible of the Tavirin three.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Just feels very, I don't know.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: And she says the one who caused my imprisonment. And
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: is that the dark one or is that Louis Theron Telamon? Right. Right.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Cause she's, he's the one who actually sealed the boar
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and caused the imprisonment. And when has that ever been a,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: one of her issues and one of her like, I.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: Mean, unless she means the imprisonment of being tied to
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: the Dark One, and she chose that because of Luz Theron,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: so it's still his fault. Or maybe she means Moradin,
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: who has forbidden her from using her name and has
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: the Corsuvra to deal with. Maybe she blames Moradin, and
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: maybe she blames Rand. Honestly, the Dark One makes the
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: most sense because it all comes back to the Dark One.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: And if the Dark One hadn't been there to tempt
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: her with non-binary, power in the first place, then none
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: of this ever would have happened.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: My running theory, you know, irrelevant of what the author thinks,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: is right. She hates Rand right now. Right now, Rand
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: is the one who's really, you know, she went into
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: that doorway hating him. You know, who is Avienda? I'll
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: kill you, you motherfucker. I'll kill your mother. You know, she.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Keeps threatening to kill my dead mother, you know.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And then to be rescued by being killed and murdered. Right.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: That's going to piss you off. But like you're still
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: being focused on the person who put you there and
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: force you to be killed, to be rescued. And the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: one who caused your imprisonment in the first place. Right.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I just I don't know. I feel like Rand is
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the obvious target for her at this point.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, especially because she just got the ultimate Smackdown by Rand.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: The ultimate Rand loose there and I literally forgot what
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: your name is, Smackdown. And so yeah, it does seem
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: like she is reeling from that and going to Perrin
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: almost like a rebound. Like, well, I'll go find one
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: of your friends and he'll help me.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: It's like she's trying to be manipulative or trying to
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: be written as manipulative and it's just coming off as like,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Is she just stalking Perrin now? Like, what's going on here?
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: And the whole thing where she keeps looking at the
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: sky and vanishing and then reappearing. And it just feels,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: it so feels like Selene in book two. It just
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: feels so like early 90s cartoon logic for how a
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: bad guy should behave.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: All right. So they're continuing into the Black Tower. We'll
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: come back to them. We're going to head into the
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Black Tower in the real world.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Pov switch over to the real world and to andrel
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: where we're picking up where they've been for a long
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: freaking while you know trapped and with no options and
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: ever closing loop around.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Them they've turned to vain they're trying to turn um
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: low gain.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: And we keep getting more exposition about how it's all
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: about the gender balance and that's what makes it harder
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: or easier and that's what makes it easier for low
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: gain to resist and like After all the bitching we've
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: done about it, it all just feels like retconning backfilling
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: and I don't even want to accept it.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: And there's no new information there that we haven't already
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: seen in other sections and already talked about. We do
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: see that Taim has been brought aid by Grendel or Heslam. Yeah.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: And so now things are speeding up because we have
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: women in the mix. But yeah, Heslam is in the room,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: in the mix.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: So lots of Forsaken. We've got Lanfear and Heslam now.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: To say nothing of Maheo, you know.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Technically, right. Also Forsaken.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: I really don't like giving him the Forsaken because, no,
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: you're not one of the 13. But, like, in terms
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: of how he looks at himself and how he stands
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: in their hierarchy, he is technically legally a Forsaken.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: So during all this, Andral is plotting, like, how do
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I get away, right? And he spots a weakness in Evian,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: who's been turned, but is basically still suffering from the
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: taint and insanity and paranoia. Right.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Not only does it not change your intelligence or your
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: fundamental personality, it also doesn't change your insanity. Turning just
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: changes your allegiance. That's all. And yeah, he's able to
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: use that, manipulate that, weaponize it against not just Evan,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: but against all of them.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: And it makes sense, right? Getting paranoid people who have
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: betrayed everyone around them to be paranoid and betray each other,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: even without magic madness. That's a pretty solid move.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Right. Right. Pretty solid prisoner move, right? If you can
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: turn the people against each other, that's how you get out, right?
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: They create chaos, they create the problems, they create the rifts,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: and you take advantage of it. Right.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: If they didn't want you to break up their organization
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: with a little bit of lying, they should have worked
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: on having more team solidarity.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is, and it takes a couple of pages,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: but eventually he sort of says, Evian, you know, Ebor
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: might be planning to kill you.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he goes with a, be careful, that guy's out
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: to get you. I hope that you're going to be okay.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, of course, that turns into a
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: preemptive strike.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Which releases the shield on Andral. Right. So this is
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: a very sort of action-packed, like, you know, bang, bang, bang, like,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: this happens, which leads to this, which leads to that, right?
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: So Evian barbecues Abors.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Right, who is the one that was holding Andral's shield,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: which allows him to, you know, do the, like, little
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: wick of fire so that way he can cut everyone's
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: bonds and they can start moving and having a little
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: bit of agency in the battlefield, even though, you know,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: the larger issues are still there.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: And so he starts making gateways or trying to make gateways, right?
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: But he's inside this barrier, but he's got the talent.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: And we have this sort of struggle between the power
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: of the dream spike and Andral's ability to create dreams.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: And there's this moment where he tries to make one
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: to a closer destination, perhaps the He can make a
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: gateway into Canlier's store above them. And here he strained,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: including inching it closer. He could almost do it. He
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: felt as if something was happening. And he does. He
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: opens up a microscopic gateway that basically sound can go through.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He's just sort of like praying for it to
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: happen as a means of like giving himself a little
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: more oomph. But the sound actually does get through and
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: lets the others know, like, if you're going to come
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: get us, now's the time. Please, for the love of
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: the light, come get us. But yeah, it's literally just
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: enough for sound to get through. It's not enough for
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: light or a hand or anything.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: And we get the classic argument between Taim and Haslam
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: where he's like, you gave me crappy tools and being like,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: work with what you've got. That's your job. Every conversation
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: at every office job ever. Do more with less. I
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: fail because you gave me shitty tools. Those are the
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: tools you got. Do the best you can.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want to be in this elite group,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: then you have to just suffer the way we suffered,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: except actually you have to suffer worse because, you know,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: shifting goalposts and mission creep and greed.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Is it kind of amazing that the Dark Ones organization
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of every office that I've ever
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: worked for with the Dark One at the top?
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, Robert Jordan dealt with the military.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: So I imagine that the bureaucracy and the Abdication of responsibility.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Contradicting orders for no reason. People of equivalent rank coming
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: in and snatching you away. Like Slayer's complaints. Why would
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: you leave me alone so I can just hunt one
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: person down? Jesus Christ.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel like Jordan definitely knew where he saw
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: the most banal evil and it was in organization. There's
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: evil evil. There's violent evil. And then there's just sheer
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: incompetency evil. And yeah, it always makes for a good
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: fight between bad guys while the good guys are sorting
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: themselves out for one last desperate move that actually gets
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: them out of the situation. It's a great scene to
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: have Tayim and Hazalem snipping at each other while Andral
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: and Pavar are getting their stuff together.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Athlon says he thinks the little sound portal has to
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: do with them messing with the gateway, but the timing,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it doesn't really seem exact like that.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: It's for later.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it does seem like that happens later to me.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like to think of it as almost like
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: the way that the gateways with the window covering on
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: them get sorted out later. It's almost like that, but
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: for sound. Like he thinned the space not enough for
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: material to pass through, but enough for vibrations to pass through.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Like the gateway just didn't fully pop through, but it
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: still like thins the space enough for the sound to
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: get through to someone whose ear is right there.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: There's like a membrane that's able to vibrate air on
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: both sides, but no air is actually passing through the membrane.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. But a vibration doesn't need literal air particles
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: to pass through. It just needs motion. The next thing
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: is Taim revealing that he's got the seals, right? Telling Heslam, oh,
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: by the way, I've got the seals. Aren't I? Coo, coo, coo.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: I have already provided a gift to the great lord himself. Beware,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: I am in his favor. I hold the keys in
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: my hands. You mean you actually did it? You stole them?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: He smiled.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: We saw them earlier, but this is him showing us
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: that he has been very sneaky about this, even to
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: the point that Heslam is surprised to learn that this
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: is a thing. And then, yeah, Andral reaches for the
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: power and madness is coming for him. And it's all
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: very tense.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: I guess we kind of assume that Taim was able
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: to steal the seals because he gave Rand one with
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: a tracker on it.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you proposed that a while ago, and I see
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: no reason to doubt that. That seems like the logical way.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: He put an AirTag seal into the mix, and it
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: was very simple from there.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: And that's why he gave it. A lot of people
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: are like, why would he give him a seal in
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: the first place? So he could track down the rest
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: of them. Totally.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: I see no holes in that.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Every bank robber movie ever where they deposit money to
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: track down where it goes to so they can find
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: the vault. Right.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: And then, yeah, we get the ultimate Sanderson desperate moment
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: where Andral is actually able to literally break magic physics
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: and manage to make a tiny little gateway just enough
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: to catch a stream of balefire.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I'm still convinced the balefire would burn the threads out
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: of the pattern rather than passing through the gateway.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: You don't think you can balefire through a gateway?
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: No.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: Even though it's clear air, even if the weave doesn't
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: touch the gateway at all, if it just passes through
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: the clear space.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: It has to touch the threads of, like, it's very
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: clear that when you touch a gateway, you're touching the
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: threads of the gateway. And that's what's causing you to
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: pass through them.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Is it? I thought it cut a hole in space
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: and you walked through. the open hole.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: But no, but it's shimmering from the back, right? Like,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: and you can't pass through on the back.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's true.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: So it's not a two-way hole that you can pass
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: through in either direction. It is literally a one-way gate
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: from the front only. In my opinion, that's what makes
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: this very Sanderson, right? Is because Jordan would never put
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: his characters in a situation where you're bail firing through
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: a gateway so that he would never have to answer
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: that question. And Sanderson will just pick one side or
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the other and do it and say like, well, okay,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I'm going to assume that bail fire passes through a
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: gateway and just move forward with that information on the
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: table from now on.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm fine with it. If you can shoot a fireball,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: why not?
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Balefire. Because Balefire is fundamentally different. It interacts. We see
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: it cut through weaves, right? It doesn't... Right? Haven't we?
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Have we? Actually, that's a good question. Have we seen
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: it cut through weaves?
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: Actually, yeah. Have we?
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: No.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: It only ever destroys the thing making the weaves. So
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: we don't really get that. We haven't seen, yeah, an
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: arc of Balefire cut through a line of approaching fireballs
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: or something like that. Or take out a series of
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: shields that were being thrown... At people. Hmm. That's a
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: really interesting question. Does balefire work on something as ephemeral
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: as weaves? I mean, I guess it would work on
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: like a fireball once you have a literal ball of fire,
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: but would it work on the weaves forming the fireball?
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. And then, okay, let's talk about Natram's Barrow,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: which was balefired, right? Right. And none of that balefire
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: came through the gateway. She jumped through the gateway.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Right. And the balefire existed all around the gateway.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Did it or did she close it before the bale
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: fire started.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah she sees the light through it like as she
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: like right there's like the glow and she sees them
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: vanish behind her as the gateway closes so at least
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: the ambient glow of the bale fire does get through
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: and like that's a hole in the middle of the
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: house right it's not like she was at the edge
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: of the cone of effect right right she doesn't describe
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: it as like erasing her gateway she describes it as
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: closing like normal But she struggles to dismiss it, right?
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: She jumps through and she's trying to get rid of
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: the weave as fast as she can. So maybe it
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: does melt the weaves.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. I almost want to reread that.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Because, yeah, I think that's the only time where we
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: know definitively that there's a weave in a stream of
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Balefire where the weaving source is not also being annihilated.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: All right. Here we are. It was coming up. Grendel
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: leaped for the gateway, rolling through it, tumbling and ripping
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: her dress off. on a branch. A blinding light rose
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: behind her. This is still Rand embracing the source and, like,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: gathering his power.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: This is a Chodan call being all glowy and stuff.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. She had struggled to dismiss the gateway and caught
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: one glimpse of the horrified Arngar before everything behind was
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: consumed in beautiful, pure whiteness. The gateway vanished, leaving Grendal
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: in darkness. Hmm.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: It does kind of sound like it melted her gateway.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: It does sound like it melted her gateway to me.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: That she saw that brief light for a second, and
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: then the gateway's gone. Like a light bulb overloading with power.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: And I really would hate the idea of Balefire being
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: able to take away everything except weaves. Like, Qandiar, I'm
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: willing to allow Qandiar to be the one exception, because
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: you're allowed one exception. But two exceptions is a bit much.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: And it's a weave. It's not made out of something strong.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Balefire on Balefire can have a canceling effect, but regular
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: weaves versus Balefire? Yeah, okay.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: So.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: That means then, but also in that case, the weave
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: was physically touching the outside of the gateway. Whereas in
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: this case, the gateway is completely encompassing where the Balefire goes.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Sure. Right.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Natron's Barrow, obviously the whole building got vaporized. So the
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: whole doorway of the gateway was getting hit equally. Whereas
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: in this case, the edge of the gateway is not
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: being touched aside from the membranous back. to whatever extent
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: that that's true. But the edges, the square edges, are
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: not being physically touched by the Balefire.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: I'll give you that. I'll give you that as the
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: difference that we can headcanon and move on from this discussion.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: We definitely haven't wasted enough time on this yet.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: So we're heading back to Perrin and Gaul, back in
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the dream.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: I love how Gaul barely has his clothes change in
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: response to his thoughts at all. Until it comes time
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: for camouflage and then he just automatically camouflages.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: It's like instinct like a lizard. He just blends right in.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, literally Perrin says hunt by instinct and Gaul
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: says I will hunt like a lizard. And then he
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: goes camouflage and it's like, well, I guess he spent
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: a lot of time studying Gaara. He must have just
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: spent many an afternoon as a child studying how Gaara
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: moved because he went camouflage real easy, real fast.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: So Perrin finds two Oshaman there in the flesh. And,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: of course, then Lanfear stumbles in, and we have this
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: moment where he realizes she's being actually very skillful.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she looks very casual, but actually she's being quite masterful.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: She's, like, masking her scent, her noise, her clothes rustling, like,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: basically making herself completely invisible to the guards and to
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: him until she wants to be seen. It does lend
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: some credence to she is one of the best... masters
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: of the dream, unlike Mogedion, who just hid there. I
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: don't feel like Mogedion ever mastered the dream.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Mogedion mastered her specific ecological niche of hiding from everyone
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: in the dream. But yeah, Lanfear actually, I mean, Lanfear's
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: a research scientist, right? She's going to explore and manipulate
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: and experiment and figure things out, whereas Mogedion's just about
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: finding people's weaknesses and taking people's slack. And, you know,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, she was a freaking scam artist or whatever before,
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: you know, like very different approaches to even this wondrous
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: landscape that is the dream. But yeah, they're basically guarding
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: the space in the dream that everyone is down in
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: the real world, right? Taim, and presumably it has Salam's suggestion,
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: has set guards in both the waking and the dream worlds.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Because this is a very serious situation with all the
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: turning down in the basement.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: And this is not what Slayer's task is anymore. His
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: task has never been dream spikes. He was just using
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: that one for his task of hunting down Perrin. He's
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: on a different task now. He has been set on Rand,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: on 100%.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a necessary goose chase. We needed someone
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: to go manipulate this dream spike to get it off
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: the Black Tower. And so we have to... have Perrin
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: just literally goose chase over here. He thinks that it's
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: going to get him to Slayer. It doesn't, but it
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: does do important other things for other characters. And so
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: it's fine if he's a little distracted with a side
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: quest because someone had to go do that. And he's
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: like the only one who could.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: So yeah, here's the thing. Lanfear puts Forkroot in the wine.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: So this is them. It's fake Forkroot in the real
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: wine that causes them to then consume it and pass out?
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she just decides that there's forkroot in the wine
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: is how I interpret that. She just like mentally manipulates
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: it to become forkroot-laced. And that's where the title of
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: the chapter comes from, right? Doses of Forkroot.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Right, right. And what do you think about her saying
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: she's no longer forsaken, that that privilege has been removed
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: from her?
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: That sounds very dramatic. Like so overly dramatic. Like, I
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: don't think that you get cast out of being forsaken
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: because that um easily i.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Don't think you stay alive if you become cast out
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: as forsaken.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Right right i just like i see i could see
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: her being like well if he's not going to honor
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: his promises to me then i quit i'm not forsaken
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: anymore i renounce my citizenship in forsaken land like that's
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: not how that works.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: But isn't her name literally last chance.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah and she still says i'm not allowed to use
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: the name land fear.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: She doesn't say what her name is though.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: But she appears in her Sindane form. She's wearing her
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: Lanfear outfit, but she's got her Sindane face.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: And she smells like Lanfear.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It feels very overly dramatic and exaggerated to me
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: for her to say she's not forsaken anymore. I think
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: she doesn't want to be forsaken anymore. And in her
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: heart of hearts, that's all that matters. No one can
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: walk so long in the shadow. They can't return to
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: the light. She's changed her mind. So that counts. But
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: I don't think that that's literally how that works mechanically.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: I think she's still very much a Forsaken, and she
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: would fold and come back into their embrace in a
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: second if the Corsuver got invoked or if the right
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: prize was held out.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: They never do explain what happens. Does she get her
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Corsuver back at the end of the books? I don't remember.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, probably not, right?
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Mogedion has hers at the end. Landfear doesn't. I guess
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: it just sits in Moradin's backpack at the edge of
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: the cave for all of time.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Which means Rand has it?
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: I guess. But since she dies at the end, it
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: You know? Right.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: Which does mean that that's probably a weird artifact that
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: folds forward into the fourth age. It's a very strange,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: creepy piece of jewelry. Doesn't quite do anything, but there's
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: just echoes of a very tortured soul lingering about it.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Very evil soul.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: And tortured. Haunted. I think the thing's going to feel haunted. No,
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: I think her soul evacuates from the soul trap once
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: she dies. I think when she dies, all the parts
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: of her get to, you know, meld back into the ether.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, I don't think so. I think the dark one
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: has control over them.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: But not via the Corsuvra.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Like, the Corsuvra doesn't hold anything of her once she's dead,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: I don't think.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: And once he's imprisoned, they're probably out of his reach.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he can't touch the world anymore, and she's properly dead.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: So that means that she gets to go back to the, like,
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: primordial ooze of the Nirvana chain, of the, you know,
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: great chain of cycling life. She can go, like, do
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: a few million years as a plankton. It'll pay off
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: her debt.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. So he finds the other dream spike and pulls
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: it out. And Lanfear basically says, here's how you turn
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: it off.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: She shows him how to turn it off, how to
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: change the size if you turn it back on. She
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: gives him perfectly accurate information, no strings attached. really trying
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: to get his trust right just giving him a completely
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: useful piece of information with no expectations such that hopefully
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: his opinion of her changes ever so slightly and probably
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: this is when she's trying to throw a bit of
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: that like compulsion onto him like in this moment of
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: trust right when she she gives it back to him
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: with him now knowing how it works like in that
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: moment of slight disarmament maybe that's when she's like throwing
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: a little dream manipulation on him Hey.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Perrin, if you run your finger through your thumb from
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: tip to mid-length and something clicks inside, then you can
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: reach up and twirl the head about. The size of
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: your dome will change. I was reading that off the page.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: I didn't make up any of that.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: Sigh.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Sigh.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: I did kind of notice that when I was doing
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: my notes, and I was like, I'm not going to
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: read too much into that. That's not a thing I
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: need to read too much into.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: I read too much into it.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: Apparently it is a thing to read too much into,
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: because it is overly erotic. It shouldn't be. That choice
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: of words could have been a different choice of words.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: This is your dream spike, baby.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: Okay, and then Lanfear tells us the ultimate... People could
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: choose not to get turned if they wanted. All they
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: have to do is choose to be gentled. That's a
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: choice that people can make.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can either commit suicide or be turned. What? Okay, great.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not helpful.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: We find out that the spike, that you can use
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: a key, right? It basically works as a lock on
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: your house for the dream world, which is you put
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: it up, you give it the distance around your home,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: you give the people you trust a key, they can
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: come and go as they please. Right. It's sort of
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: an artificial ward around your dreams.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And then, yeah, Lanfer says, Oppressed at Olympics.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: Boo hoo hoo. I've suffered so much worse than you.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: And so that's why you should feel bad for me
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: for being evil for all that time. Definitely. You can't
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: understand how much I've suffered after having made bad decisions.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: The leopards ate my face and you can't imagine how
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: terrible it's been. And then she skedaddles again. And Perrin
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: goes back to Gaul, who was like, do we need
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: a secret handshake? Because you could be anybody. I'm learning.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: And Perrin says, well, I know who you're going to marry,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: and that's apparently sufficient as a handshake.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: I can make fun of your choices in women, and
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: random people can't do that, so ha.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: More like women's choices in him, but yeah.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: And then, yeah, we switch back to Andral, who is
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: being surprised by a team of... allies bursting in through
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: the door because they heard him whispering a prayer up above.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: And probably heard a lot of Taims ranting and raving
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: based on what was said after he opened up the portal.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Sure, sure. And then Andruil goes to make another itty
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: bitty tiny little gateway and instead gets to make a
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: massive gateway because in that moment Perrin and Lanfear have
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: removed the gateway dome and Now Andrel feels powerful and
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: he kicks ass quite aggressively to wrap up the chapter.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: This is where the Sanderson power dynamic of like, let's
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: take one weave and turn it up to 11. Someone
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: who can do it better, faster, quicker than anyone else.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: And that's his only option. What could he do with it?
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: And it's, oh, well, he can. turn your weave against yourself,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: or just drop you off a fucking cliff. Because once
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: we have established horizontal gateways, the ground you stand on
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: is no longer safe. He can just drop you off
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: a cliff.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: Or into a safe space, as he does with Loghain, right?
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: He drops Loghain down into a room that's far away
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: from the Black Tower and thus safe. But yeah, you
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: could drop Taim and others into the ocean if you wanted.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Which isn't what he does here for some reason, which
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: he totally should have done. That's an option now. And
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: Hesalam Bounces.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dumping somebody randomly in the sea and hoping they
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: can swim to shore. Good luck. Mm-hmm.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. So yeah, Hesalam and Tayim get away, but he
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: does drop the others into the sky, I guess, rather
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: than over the ocean. Because the last line is that
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: drop the other women and Ashaman threw it to plummet
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: hundreds of feet. So I guess it could be over
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: the ocean. I actually don't know where he throws them.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Could just be straight up. They could just be coming
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: right back down on the Black Tower. Yeah. Yeah.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: In another minute and a half, we hear some thumps
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: on the roof. Yeah.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: I've been falling for 20 minutes. Splat, splat, splat.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: That's all I've got for that chapter.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. I think that
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: is one of the cooler moments of Andral, where all
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: these people are making fun of him, and he just
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: does the, like, oh, you're going to punch yourself in
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: the back of your head with a gateway. It's very
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: thinking with portals. Oh, right, yeah.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: Before he drops everyone into the thing, he has them
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: all shoot themselves in the face, which is great. Which
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: is fantastic.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: You do love to see that. Yeah. Yeah. That's when
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: bullies have to hit themselves. And it's also a good
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: way to take out a bunch of bad guys with
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: one gateway. Yeah.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: It's one of the parts of Sanderson OPing gateways that
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: I don't mind because that's just clever. That's not turning
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: them horizontal or min-maxing the size and power. That's just
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: clever timing and placement.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Agreed. Agreed. That is the one I think the shooting
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: yourself in the back of the head is the best
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: earned usage of the gateway so far. All right, chapter 15,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: your neck and a cord.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: With the Sean Chan helmet as the symbol.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Because Matt, the only way to get out of being
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: a Sean Chan for Matt is to get his neck
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: and a cord.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: Basically, yeah.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: There's no divorce in the Sean Chan world.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: At least not for the royal family. Maybe for commoners,
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: but not for the royal family. And this is a
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: chapter in which Matt is irritatingly Sandersonian and Tuan is...
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: Not a completely lost cause, but seems to be indicating
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: she will be a lost cause. I don't really like
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: this chapter. I don't really like any of the plot
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: or character or anything developments that happen in it. It
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: just kind of is sand under my skin all around.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: You don't like the way Tuan's plot goes in these books,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: in this book.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: To want to walk over yeah no i don't i
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: don't nobody who cares about resolving issues of slavery in
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: the american empire uh should like how to one just
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: completely whiffs on that but uh this is a chapter
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: in which she's like i don't love you because it
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: wouldn't i don't care i just do this for the
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: empire but i kind of like you a little bit
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: and it's like that's how she's gonna be about everything
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: is i'm not actually gonna change but i'm gonna pretend
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: that i care slightly And Matt's just going to be like,
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: but she's got boobs. And it'll be fine.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: They do manage to bring up Matt's trauma. For a moment,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: it felt like a ribbon that felt like a chain.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like how Sanderson, after completely ignoring Matt's trauma
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: last time, last chapter, is like, oh, yeah, no, he's uncomfortable.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: He always brings it up once. He always definitely like says, oh,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: he's uncomfortable once and then moves past it. Yeah.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: I find Matt to be unbelievable and irritating throughout this chapter.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: The one thing I like is when he throws the
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: knife at Tuan and she assumes that he's throwing it
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: at an assassin. That's the one thing I like because
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: I feel like that is true to the relationship that
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: they've got, but it's just buried amongst so much annoying
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: character development that it's not worth it.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: It's like that's what Sanderson was trying to convey, but
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: it took so much setup to get there on the
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: front end and the back end that it feels like
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: it's a minor point lost in... everything else that's going on.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: Like his whole crawling up the side of the building
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: thing just feels like another one of his stupid backstory
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: plots it's like this is so not it's slightly more
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: like matt to crawl up the side of a building
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: instead of to go in on the inside but all
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: of his like griping to himself and internal monologue is
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: like oh my god just go write another shitty backstory
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: that would be less painful.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: It kind of reminds me a little bit of avianne
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: sneaking into elaine's tent it's just like why is everyone
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: sneaking in everywhere to see each other.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is. It's totally that. Unnecessary sneaking.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like, just walk in the front door. You're fine.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: You don't have to hide your presence from people anymore. Like,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: we're past that.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: And then he does the whole thing where he's like,
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go explain to Tuan in very rational
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: tones that her general's betraying her, and then I'm going
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: to go find a game of dice. And it's like,
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: that is so not how you think anymore. That's not
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: how you navigate the world anymore.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: I also have to take issue with him saying the
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: guts of a building were always better guarded than the skin.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: Best to go up the outside. Usually there's a barrier
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: on the outside. People guard the outside. Once you're in,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: then you can move around freely. There's very rarely locked
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: doors inside a building. Locked doors are on the outside
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: of the building. Once you're in, then you just have
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: to look like you know what you're doing. This is
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: a principle you've demonstrated time and time again. The outside
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: doesn't make sense.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: No, someone crawling up the outside of the building is
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: never not suspicious.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Right. Someone walking up the stairs inside a building carrying
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: a fucking tray is the opposite of suspicious. Yeah.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: And more annoying Matt stuff. He's also reverting back to
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: like Eye of the World Matt or Great Hunt Matt. Like, oh,
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: I got to get away from Rand. Rand's just so
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: scary with all the Dragon Reborn stuff. So any sane person...
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: would go away and leave him alone and it's like
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: first of all no second of all you literally have
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: done so much realizing your other reasons like that's not
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: the only reason why you're here but sure let's just
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: yammer about that while you do unnecessary parkour he should
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: have gotten shot by solution i wish he had pinned
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: his ear to the damn.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Door I do like the interaction with Solution, though.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: No, Solution is believable. Yeah, for sure. I do like
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: the Matt and Solution are like getting a little more
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: comfortable with each other as two months intimates.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: He's like, oh, so you are a bodyguard. She's like, no,
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not. And she like puts away the crossbow. I
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: don't know what you're talking about.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: And the interaction where. He's like, listen, I'm not trying
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: to assassinate her. I'm her husband. She's like, well, you
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: convinced me you weren't trying to assassinate her, but then
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: you said you were her husband. And that's, hmm, actually,
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: that does not work in your favor. It makes me
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: think you want to kill her again.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: I like that interaction.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: I also love how she looks at him and says,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: what happened to your eye? And he says, blah, blah, blah, blah, bullshit, bullshit.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: And she says, it was a bet, wasn't it? Like,
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: I just, she's got his number. I like it.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Frankly, I like Solution Matt better than I like Two-On
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: and Matt as a couple.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: For real, though, a snappy older woman who doesn't take
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: any shit from him. That's like, I mean, that gives
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: me a Ludra energy.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Exactly. She says, don't worry about Galgan. He's just
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: hiring locals because they're no good. You worry about Krissa,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: who I think this is the only mention of this person.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: There's never any resolution on this plot line about like
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: Krissa or anything like that.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: The whole plot line is just for this chapter, as
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: far as I can tell.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: But Krissa is named after Chris Ring, a fan of
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: The Wheel of Time. Oh, nice.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: Because, yeah, it's the they brought in three assassins from
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: Sean Chan and Solution assumed that Matt was the third
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: because they've already gotten the first two. And then when
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: he goes down to the garden, the one that he gets,
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: I assume, is the third. And they're gray men, which
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: makes me assume that Carissa is a dark friend. Either
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: that or it's not the third assassin. This is a
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: separate plot.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: I think it's a separate plot. The third assassin ran away.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: Tripped and fell.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: Broke his neck.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: Broke their neck.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's a Tavirin in the city. That's an option.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: And yeah, basically we learned that Tuan is doing a
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: little midnight moonlight sparring in the garden. And this is
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: frustrating to everyone who cares about her security. And then
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: Solution sends Matt down the stairs and he just trusts
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: her because, you know, she's his wife's bodyguard. So he
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: forgets to be mistrustful of her.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Question. When he asks, my title hasn't changed, Solution says,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: not yet. Do you know what she's referring to of like...
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: I assume there's a level of some sort of ceremony
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: they have to go through when he goes from Prince
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: of the Ravens to, like, King of the Ravens or whatever.
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm assuming he has to declare himself Emperor as
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: opposed to Prince, right? The way that Tuan, the formal transition,
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: was her declaring, I am the Empress. I'm guessing that
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: Matt has to do something similar, declare, I am the
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: Empress's adult consort or whatever you know the term it
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: wouldn't be emperor because she is empress but i'm assuming
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: that there's yeah some sort of formal ceremony he has
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: to consent to it doesn't just happen automatically we.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: Get more story about how tuan never sleeps there this
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: is just a trap set up for anyone who might
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: want to take her down matt says don't you know
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: don't call me highness and she's like this then this
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: is where we get the title there's only one way
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: to stop being the prince of ravens and that is
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: to find your.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: Neck in a cord I'm thinking, like, and that's how
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: he got into being Prince of the Ravens.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, basically.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: He got hung for his answers, which included, you will
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: marry the daughter of the Nine Moons. So really, Matt
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: and Cordage and his marriage, like.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: And Pink Ribbons. Don't forget the Pink Ribbons and Cordage.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Bondage?
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of bondage. A lot of bondage in
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Matt's plotline.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: And over to the colors that Matt was always trying
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: to dismiss, Rand Althor and Elaine's camp.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, again, this is where you can really tell that
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: Elaine's battle is taking a lot longer than Rand's, right?
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: He's popping by fairly frequently in terms of his experience
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: of what's happening, and it is taking a lot longer
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: for her. At least that's my understanding of it. I
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: could be totally wrong about that, but that's how I've
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: always interpreted this.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: I just, I don't... see a lot of the time
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: distortion happening yet I don't see it really happen until
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: after Rand enters Shale Ghoul yeah maybe.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: I've been overextending that vibe.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Maybe not though I thought we still found evidence for
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: it in the last episode I.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: Don't know but Rand is here not to see Elaine
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: this is a quick little trip to see his dad
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: But he also does not go super sneaky. He's being quick,
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: but he's not being subtle, right? Because Elaine, you know,
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: was like, hey, so I kind of told everyone that
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: you're like the father of my child, like, and it
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: helped everyone. So maybe you should like let them see
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: you because they're fighting for you.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Like, she told him about previous visits. And what were
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: you two doing on those visits? Making a baby?
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: And then, yeah, he thinks about how the secret to
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: being the proper dragon reborn had not been to become numb,
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: but to walk in pain. And accept the pain as
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: part of him, which is like, yeah.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: It's a very land lesson to take.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: It's how you got to be a stoic warrior. If
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: you want to be both flexible and strong, you're going
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: to have to accept that discomfort is part of being
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: a warrior. I mean, discomfort is part of life, right?
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Like people who can accept that discomfort is a thing
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: that happens tend to be a lot less emotionally reactive
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: and immature than people who insist on being comfortable at
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: all times.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Hey, I like my comfort. All right. Give me a break.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: I am a creature of comfort, but, you know, there's
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: accepting that life isn't fair and there's making it everyone
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: else's problem that you're having a bad day. So Rand
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: is here to replace Tam's sword, right? He says, I
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: can't use this sword. It's justice.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: It was found under a rock after a thousand years
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: and Rand recognized it because he saw Ardor Hawkwing being
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: called back by the horn. And so he recognized the
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: sword from his own memories from the Eye of the World.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: Great hunt, but yeah.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Great hunt, yeah.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: And he has multiple awesome swords. And he's like, hey, Dad,
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: remember how I burned up the first one that you
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: gave me in the flaming heart of Forsaken? Well, I
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: have this other really cool, historically valuable magic sword, and
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: I literally only have one hand. So having two swords
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: is ridiculous. So here, how about you have one?
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: And there's always, so apparently, and I don't know if
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: I'm new to this or something, but I guess the
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: sword and the stone and Excalibur are actually two different swords, right?
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, you've mentioned this before.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Excalibur comes from the Lady in the Lake, and the
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: sword and the stone obviously does not. But in some legends,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: they are the same one, just comes out of the
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: lake first, then it gets put into the stone, or
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: vice versa, right? So there are multiple swords, and I'm
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: not sure which one Justice is supposed to be, if
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: Justice is supposed to be Excalibur, or if it's just
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: one of the many swords of historical significance.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: Epic magic swords are a pretty common symbol. We know
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: that Kalindor is the literal sword in the stone.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: Because of the stone of Tyr.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Which makes sense then that this would be more like
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: a scalabar, which is not the sword in the stone. Right. Right.
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: And this one came out of a lake. Remember, it
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: wasn't just under a rock. It was under a rock
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: in a lake because underwater archaeology during the apocalypse is
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: apparently a thing. So it very much is from a lake.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Listen, women in bodies of water distributing swords is no
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: way to rule a nation.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: Be a king just because a watery tart threw a
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: sword at you it would be better than our current
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: system everyone make sure you register to vote.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: At least the watery tart can have discretion.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: I know right And then we have a cool discussion
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: about the flame in the void where Rand is like, ah,
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: it's so cool for different kinds of archery and swords.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: And Tam says it's about center and about peace. I
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: would teach it to every single person in the entire
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: freaking world if I could, not just soldiers, which I love.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: I love that. It's the core of it is so
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: much more than being better at battle. It's being better
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: at everything, better at life, better at having equilibrium, better
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: at just existing in a stable way as you move
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: through the world as a person.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: And also really important for the last battle, right? That's
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: the thing he has to realize is like it's about balance.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: It's not about it's about finding center. It's not about
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: extinguishing the evil. It's about living with the pain. All
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: these lessons that we're talking about right now is what
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: he needs to take into the last battle to realize
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: that you can't kill the dark one. You have to
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: actually imprison him, but still make him potentially there for
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: people to make bad decisions about.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Right. It's the yin-yang symbol. It's the dynamo that makes
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: all things work. It's the non-binary nature of a spectrum.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Siding, sider.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: You can't just have one or the other. You have
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: to have both. You can't max out just one. And
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: then Tam says, okay, is that too esoteric for you?
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: Let's go do a little sparring. Maybe then I can
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: make the point come home.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: And Sam and Sai is backing up that Justice is
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Excalibur and Kalimdor is the sword in the stone. Yeah.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: And then, okay, so Rand watches Tam doing a bit
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: of shadowboxing, shadow sparring. And he says he had never
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: seen his father fight. And I'm like, what the fuck
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: was Winter Night then?
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: Highlighted that too.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You saw him fight once in a very epic
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: and traumatizing moment. And it's weird you're not thinking about
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: it right now.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: Agreed. Agreed.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: Only one of the most formative scenes of the entire
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: first book in your entire introduction to this adventure. Come on, Sanderson.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, in fairness, I'm not sure he saw him
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: doing the fighting though, right? Like, wasn't he like outside
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: of the cabin when he was fighting in the cabin?
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: Because the door got busted in and like... Doesn't he like.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: See Tam flowing from one to another? All right, go
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: get Eye of the World.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, but doesn't he have like the poker or no?
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: You know, because he brings the sword. Yeah, he brings
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: the sword down. He has the sword before the Trollocs
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: bust in.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: Remember as Rand is like settling down with dinner and
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: a book and he like hears the chest scraping overhead.
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: And so Tam has the sword just sitting there when
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: the Trollocs bust in. I'm pretty sure that Rand sees
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: him cut down one Trolloc and then he tells him
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: to run.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that's how that happens. I'd have to
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: go grab my eye of the world to be sure.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: But I agree. I agree. Yeah.
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: I thought that was a weird little omission, but whatever.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: I'm willing to move past it.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: I also highlighted it for the same reason, because I
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: wanted to say the same thing.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, Rand feels, you know, envy, jealousy over
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: Tam's ability to smoothly use the sword. And then Tam
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: takes a couple of pages to prove to him that
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: that is all just a headspace change, basically.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Also, I love this. Beautiful. Is it power forged? I
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: don't know, Rand said. We found it in a river
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: after a thousand years and it wasn't rusted to pieces.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: But I have no idea if it's power forged or not. Really?
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Like, we didn't even have to sharpen it after a
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: thousand years. It's just a sword.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's power forged. Dingus.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: And I feel like he said that it was before
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: that the blade was a power forged blade.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He totally did. He totally did. This feels like
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: a kind of rushed scene in a lot of ways.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. So you sort of get this whole adaptation moment
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: where he decides to spar with his father. And, you know,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: he's sort of having trouble because he's used to having
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: another hand. And he hasn't really done the practice to
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: rebuild his muscle memory. His sword fighting muscles still try
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: and do the two-handed fight. And his dad's, you know,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: kicking his butt because his dad has clearly practiced. Because
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: he's been a swordsman for 50 years, whereas Ran's been
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: a swordsman for 50 months. You know, like it's... Not even.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: And then Tam gives himself the handicap, takes one of
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: his own hands out of the picture with putting a
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: kerchief around it, and is like, there. I also only
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: have one thumb to work with. And he transitions into
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: that really smoothly, and Rand's sitting there being like, I
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: And he's like, oh, but Tam's doing it. It's a
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: headspace change. It's about the flame in the void. It's
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: about letting go. It's about getting out of your own
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: head and into your body and then it clicks and
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: it works and i think that's a really important thing
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: for how he's able to get catalyze everything and get
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: it through into his head and be ready to face
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: the dark one he needed this somatic putting it all
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: together kind of thing you know and.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: A little bit coming for a full circle on losing
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: the hand because he never really acknowledged it when he
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: lost it so now this is sort of his acknowledgement
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: of like yes i cannot fight the way i used
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: to and i have to sort of mourn that way
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: of fighting and learn a new way of fighting the
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: hand's not coming back. Yeah.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: And it's, again, it's the, it's okay that things aren't okay.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: That's what Tam says at the end is like, it's
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: been quite the, the weight you've been carrying that hand
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: that you've lost.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: Rand has been walking around saying, it's okay for me
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: to feel pain. It's okay for me to feel pain.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: I'm fine about having lost my hand. And it's like, no, Rand,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: you're not fine about having lost your hand and you
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: need to work through that not deny it and then
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: you can actually let that weight go and actually move
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: forward with the discomfort instead of just pretending it's not
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: there because it won't go away the pain won't go
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: away and the loss of your hand won't go away
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: all you can make go away is how much you
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: are bent out of shape.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: About it so once again important lessons from tam to
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: rand which are nice to get after all this time
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: because we've come full circle from Rand leaving the two rivers,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: becoming his own man, becoming king, to going back to
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: taking advice from Tam again, his father.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: And also like transitioning from the leadership, father mentorship of Lan,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: who would say don't get into sword fights as a
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: one-handed man, back to Tam, who says the exercise and
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: the focus is the point, not the swordsmanship. Because that's
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: what Rand discovers is that he missed the focus.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: Although I do think that's underselling land just a little bit.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: It's underselling land, but it's not underselling what Rand got
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: from land. Let's put it that way. And he gets
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: applauded by a couple of warders and some maidens. It's
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: a very small, intimate audience, but there are still expert
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: warriors who say, aha, yes, we see you coming back
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: into concert with your body. It's not about your technical skill.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: It's about the fact that you are whole. Mentally and physically, again.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: It's like someone juggling a smooth rhythm versus expecting a
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: ball to be there when it's not. Right.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: Back to Matt for the final passageway and Tuan's boobies.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah, Matt's going to go make the most unfortunate
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: saving of someone who was about to get assassinated. Like,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: how much better would the world be if she'd just
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: gotten assassinated?
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. Because who knows what Sean Chan
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: world would have descended into. The chaos.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: It's a slave society. Burn it down.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: After the last battle.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: No, right now. So, yeah, Matt. discovers that if he
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: had just hunted through the shrubberies a little bit more,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: he might have found the secret passageway in, which I
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: don't think it would have worked. It's probably locked from
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: the inside, but whatever. The passageway spits him out very
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: close to where he started climbing, which is funny.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: It's like you could have avoided all that if you
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: just knew where 2-1 was in the first place.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: Which you shouldn't be able to find that out if
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: you're an assassin, which he's essentially following in the footsteps
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: of an assassin. Yeah, Fuji, that's a good point that
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: Avienda's vision has not gained confidence that 2-1 is the problem.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: but I'm mad at her right now. So there it is.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: I think she might be the moderating force. Like we
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: see in the vision that like things were going okay
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: until two on one away.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's not her fault. She's not the problem. I
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: think it's interesting that Matt notices that Moss still lives
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: here because Rand was just thinking about how Moss still
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: lived back with the interaction with Tam. Moss is on
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: the brain.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: It's, enough rain like we're killing all the big things
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: but the basic life form still exists maybe it's like
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: a more primitive life form maybe it's just like moss
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: is harder to kill permanently.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: Moss is very hard to kill permanently moss is a
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: very poorly understood realm of life actually there's a bajillion
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: more types of moss than science has even begun to
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: try to come to terms with it's kind of like
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: fungi There's just a lot of like, well, we have
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: some vague ideas about moss, but if you actually pay attention,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: it's like, oh, we mostly don't know what we're talking about.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: Because isn't moss like a colony of different plants, including fungi?
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: It's a symbiote. It's a symbiote of the algae and fungus.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: Like lichen? No, mosses are plants. Thank you, Vigi. Yes,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: lichens are the symbiotes. Mosses are plants. But mosses are
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: kind of like terrestrial algae in a lot of ways.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: They have the lingon and structure to grow up. But
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: their original planty selves are very different from trees or flowers.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: But yeah, lichens are the symbiotes. And they're the hardest
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: to kill. Lichens can really go full tardigrade levels of
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: impervious plants. indestructibility but moss is pretty down there on
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: the difficult to kill scale and Matt says he's never
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: heard of moss being used in a garden I have
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: a family member who has a lovely rock wall covered
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: in outdoor cold resistant succulents and moss that was very
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: deliberately both things were planted there you know 40 years
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: ago and have made a lovely coated stone.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: Wall oh yeah moss is very useful in gardens so
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: that's just Matt being ignorant.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah What are these lanterns that Tuan has that glow
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: with a strange, steady blue? That sounds like a Fourth
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: Age One Power kind of thing, or like a propane lantern.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: One or the other.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: The propane glows yellow, so.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. Is it some sort of gas
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: they're able to produce through Grolem manure?
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Grolem fart lanterns. That's what's happening, for sure.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: That's my best guess, is that they have access to
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: some sort of gas that's being piped into these lanterns
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: that's burning. Because I do think that the term gaslighting
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: comes from having gas lanterns in your house, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: And we used to have gas streetlights. The lamp lighters
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: would go around and light the lamps on the street.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: Those were gas-powered from sometimes just the sewer.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: So that's sort of what I'm imagining that this stuff is.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah. Again, usually that stuff actually glows a yellow
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: light because that's, you know, the color of fire, even
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: though there's a blue component to it, but whatever.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: Well, because the blue lamps never make sense because blue
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: light doesn't give off much light. You always generally want
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: a yellow flame that actually incandescents to produce the light, right?
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: That's the part of the flame, like of a candle,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: that's brightest. Yeah.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: So this feels like a lazy gas lightning gas lit
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: candle situation and yeah he matt shows up and watches
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: her doing sexy acrobatics in the moonlight basically she's doing
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: like a martial arts routine because she couldn't sleep or
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: whatever and She's in a nightgown and he's like, she's hot,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: but do I love her? I don't know. Oh, there's
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: a gray man. I'm a stab. And now I do
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: love her because, you know, the threat of danger always
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: makes people feel more intense about things.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: You know, there's, there's that moment. Why do you think
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: he can spot the gray man? Is there any, like, just,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: just plot armor? Yep.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: It's plot armor. It's partially practiced, right? He lets his
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: body act without thinking about it too hard, right? With
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: moving the, to get the knife, right? There's a certain
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: amount of, leaning into his Taviran-ness, letting his instincts and
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: past experiences guide him and not fighting the plot armor.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: It's weak.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: It's weak. I don't particularly like it. But it makes
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: for a very romantic moment where she sees him throwing
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: a knife at her and goes, oh shit, who's behind me?
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: And it just continues the path of Grey Men being
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: just the most ineffective assassins, despite being unstoppable or unspottable,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: which you would think would make them incredibly efficient. But
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: they only ever try around Taviran who can spot them.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we never see an effective gray man assassination or
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: if we do, it's like such a fifth tier character
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: that we don't even care. And then we have the
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: really hilarious two on insisting she's always right thing where
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: she says, oh, a gray man. That's a myth come
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: to life like Trollocs. Trollocs are real. She's like, did
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: I ever say Trollocs weren't real? Like, yeah. Yeah, you did.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: But she's just giving him the I dare you to
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: call me out on my hypocrisy bullshit. He happy wife,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: happy life sit and just lets it go.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: Well, this was one of those moments, too, when like
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: when they were traveling and he told all the stories
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: about Trolloc, she thought they were complete myths until they
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: actually showed up for real.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: Which didn't happen until long after she had come back.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: Like that's a whole thing that happened when they were
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: not together. So she's just trying to save face with
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: him now. And it's hilarious.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: So they sort of had the conversation of like, you're
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: trying to be assassinated. Yeah, but you're off rescuing women
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: and giving up your eyes, you know, betting your eye
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: on the The women.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: Look, you're both idiots who are taking unreasonable risks. You're
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: a great match.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: Won't last long, but you're a great match while you're
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: at it. Yeah. One of you is going over the edge.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: For sure. And then he does some very crude flirting,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: and then the Death Watch guards show up and say,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: we'll kill ourselves for you. And she says, no, I
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: own your lives. You don't get to kill yourselves until
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: I give permission. And also, here's Matt. He's going to
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: teach you about gray men and how he's going to
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: be giving master classes on spotting Shadowspawn to... The Secret Service.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: And let Solution know that, you know, we're not tricking
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: them anymore. They know where we are. The assassins came
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: for me here, not you there. Right.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: And then Tuan says, now go secure perimeters so I
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: can get knocked up. Prince of the Ravens has a
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: marital duty to perform, and I would like a secure
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: perimeter while that happens.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: And he's especially hot because now he's missing an eye,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: and I think that's hotter than someone with both eyes.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you were too pretty before. The missing eye suits you.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: And then she says, I'm not going to sit on
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: your knee, though I may allow you to sit on mine.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, first of all, to what? I think
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: you're probably physically too small to enjoy having Matt sit
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: on your lap.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Right. Crushed.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: I think you probably weigh like half of what he
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: weighs because you're a tiny person and he is... tall
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: and wiry. So I don't, I don't know if your
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: literal leg bones will appreciate that.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: That man is a bony, is bony as fuck.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And she's, she's just tiny. So anyway, I think
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: it's funny though. It's like a show of domination of like,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to be subservient to you, but you
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: may be subservient to me. I will allow it. I'm like, okay, Empress,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: go for it. This is, and then, and then Matt's like,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to be your toy. And she was like, no,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: you're going to be something much worse. You're going to
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: be my consort. And Matt's like, you know what? There's
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: naked boobs out at this point. So my brain has
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: turned off. Let's go.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: Whatever you say, man. Yeah, there is that that moment. Yeah, no.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: And then they're they're doing romantic things without any real
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: concession or discussion or conversation about anything important at this point.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: He says, do you love me? And she says, an
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: empress does not love. I'm sorry. I am with you
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: because the omen stated so. And so with you, I
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: will bring the Sean Shannon air. but I can admit
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: it is good to see you. And Matt says, that's
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: good enough for me because you literally already took your
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: shirt off. And I just, I hope that he takes
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: his kid when they divorce.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: I hope he gets half the empire. Yeah.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I hope he takes all of the servants and
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: their children and half the empire. And, you know, just, I, I,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: I want to like them. I want to like their
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: antagonists to lovers, slave empire to slave destroyer. I want
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: that arc. I want that outrigger arc to like be,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: it's just like with Egean and Egwene, Lyle and Egwene.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: If it went somewhere better, I would find this irritating
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: stuff a lot less irritating.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Right. But it kind of just dead ends, just like
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: their relationship. Yeah.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: And I don't want their relationship to dead end. I
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: want it to go amazing places, but instead everything fizzles
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: and yeah I hope he takes the.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: Kid when he leaves and I think that's where we
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: can leave this episode on I hope he takes the.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: Kids yeah that was the episode for today.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us some fun stuff in there but
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: yeah there was some some annoying Matt stuff as well.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah and next week we're gonna continue on with doing
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: two episodes yeah we're continuing.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: To plow forward We are making it through this book.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, we are, like you said, about 300 pages
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: into a 1,000-page book, so we're not quite a third
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: of the way, but we're getting there.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: We're getting there. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. We will
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: see you next week. © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: for listening to the Wheel of Time Spoilers Podcast. Please
• 1:15:40
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• 1:15:43
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• 1:15:48
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• 1:15:51
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