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The Choice of an Ajah - A Memory of Light ch2 - EP595 · WoT Spoilers

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: This is the Wheel of Time Spoilers Podcast. It's, yeah,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: it's echolalia. Like, okay, I've recently.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Rumination is my word for it.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for me, it's very much more of like a, well, actually,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: technical term is echologia, if it's echolalia, but on the inside.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Echolalia is specifically making the noise, but turns out echolalia
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: on the inside has a word and that's echologia. So yeah,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: I find like I literally sing along with music and
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: it helps me keep track of where I'm at in
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the song because otherwise I'm hearing all these different parts. Like,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It's my actual sense of the present
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: is actually encompasses a whole chunk of time. So it's
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: like I'm hearing backwards and forwards in the song because
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I know it so well. Like at the same time,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: unless I am singing harmonies to it, in which case
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: seeing that bird's eye view thing is actually helpful. And again,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: when I'm doing that while also washing my hair, I
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: have some incredible personal insights. Physically engaged, mentally, like somatically engaged,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: doing a physical task, paying attention to all this other stuff.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: And then it's like, ah, that's an important thing I
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: need to think about that I'm now processing constructively.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: I think if I was writing a book, I'd have
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: to have an audio book playing at the same time.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: And that just sounds absolutely insane to me.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Oh my God, right? Yeah. I have learned that I
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: cannot listen to vocal music while I'm writing show notes.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I'm almost there. I'm almost there, but not quite. The
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: music I'm listening to generally has to not have too
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: many lyrics in it while I'm writing my show notes.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Even though the show notes, I'm working off of notes already.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I already made notes in the documents. It builds itself,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: but still, constructing words is... Constructing sentences, I end up
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: transposing slightly too many words when I'm Too many different
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: word inputs. But I can listen to a podcast and
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: navigate the alphabet quite successfully. I got really good at
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: that at the library. I can alphabet and listen to
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a podcast. But yeah, five radio stations all overlapping each
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: other constantly. It's not a productive way to exist in
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: my head if I want to think. It's like, no, no, no,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: turn on one real radio station so I can actually
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: hear anything productive.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: For me, I'll get stuck on a single thought or
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: a single lyric. And I can't move past it. And
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I'm just like, God, I need something. It's like I
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: need a rock to throw in the wheel that's stuck
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: in the rut.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah. Stick a stick in the spokes and just
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: flip over the damn handlebars. Do something different! Yeah. Yeah,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: good rumination spiral. Once it gets ironclad, it's like, just
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: stick a crowbar in my brain and yank me sideways.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Speaking of sticking a crowbar in your brain, you want
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: to talk about Andral and Pavara? Sticking crowbars in each
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: other's brains? Seriously.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Mutual crowbarring.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: That's what happened.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: It's an interesting little feedback loop with the double bond.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Which, honestly, I feel like is kind of logical,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: a logical outcome for a double bond. It's not quite
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: what Rand has with his wives, even though they do
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: all share contact with each other. It's different than literally
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: circling back on itself. But as much as this is
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: a thing that only happens in a Sanderson book, it
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: does feel like it was predicted by Jordan's rules of bonding.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: The men and women working together has always been this thing,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: but the bond never existed before. So now you've got
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: this men and women working together at an even higher
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: level because they have this double bond.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like kind of the ultimate synthesis.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. No, but it is so Sanderson. It is
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: a hundred percent like this is Sanderson to a T
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: taking and Andral is his character that he's doing it on.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: We'll see it later with the gateways, but right now
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: really saying like, I'm going to take this character and
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: push some of the rules of channeling as they exist
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: to to their limits and see what happens. And, you know,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: the talent, although I do think he, he may, I
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: think he makes talent an extreme in this case, you know,
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: talent in, in other cases is like, Oh, I'm a
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: little bit better at this weave than I am at
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: other weaves with Andral. It's like, Oh, he doesn't even
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: need the power that he would normally need. And it's like, no,
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: that's not, it's like, what? No, that's not what a
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: talent is. Talent is you're better at making the weaves.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Not that you don't need the power that you would
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: otherwise need to make those weaves. You know, that's I
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: think where I disagree with the whole Andral able to
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: make gateways at low power thing. It's like that was
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: never like it's almost the other way around. The reason
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: that Nynaeve is talented is because she's powerful.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Right. It feels like both things shouldn't be true in
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the same magic system.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: And there is some level of like if you're really
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: good at healing, you can use less power because you
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: can direct it exactly where it's needed. That's because the
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: body is a complex thing. I don't see that working
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: with gateways in the same way.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's and it feels too like gateways should have
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: a really high power threshold just because it's literally folding
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: space and time.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: I see the woman. OK, but the woman who could.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: So here's the argument in chat is there's a woman
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: who could shield any person she wanted, but she made
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: a unique kind of shield that flexed instead of being hard.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: It wasn't that she was, you know, randomly was able
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: to come up with a more powerful shield. She was
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: talented enough that she figured out a different way to
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: weave a shield.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: It was stretchy.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can make a stretchy shield at low power
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: when maybe a hard one was not going to cause
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: the problem. Or not going to cause the power draw, right?
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it would have made more sense if Andro had
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: been like, well, I can't make gateways, but I can
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: make telephones. I can make really cool video calls or
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: something like that.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Some sort of, like, yeah, he's so much weaker that, like,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: he only gets halfway there, but that turns into, like,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: really important communication tech or something. I don't know. But, yeah,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: we aren't quite to that level of extreme androling yet.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: For now, we're playing with the concept of what if
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: men and women worked together?
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah. What if men and women did the same
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: things to each other? And a little bit of, like,
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: the Red Aja isn't as bad as... Some may claim
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: like Bavar is very much a redemption arc for the
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: red Aja. Right.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And that's why this chapter is called the choice of
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: an Aja is Sanderson's literally like, I'm going to explain
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: reds in a whole new way. Okay. Okay. Everyone just
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: sit down and let's just re-examine everything we know about
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: why someone would choose red.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: If you look at the meta purpose, right? Their purpose
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: is killing men who can channel, but why are they
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: killing men who channel? Well, they have to deal with
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: men who can channel. Why do they have to kill them?
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Because they're going insane. Well, if they're not going insane,
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: but they still have to deal with them, how do
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: you go about doing that? And that's sort of her
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: argument to say, oh, I'm not just dealing with them
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: by killing them, I'm dealing with them by bombing them.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: And that's the purpose of the Aja.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Right, which I am not sure that that kind of
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: reform is necessarily the best way to deal with the
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Red Aja. I kind of do think maybe... taking it
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: apart starting over rather than yes anding what they're doing i.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Mean i'm definitely in the the defund the police i
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: mean the red aja camp you know and break it
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: down and start over rather than reform it but you
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: know i can see where try reforms first i guess well.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And i particularly see it from her perspective of as
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: someone who believes in the first principles of this aja
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and who believes that I'm a good person, how can
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I reconcile that with the world? How can I return
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: to the first principles? Strip out the traditions, strip out
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: the mores, just return to those first principles that got
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: me into it in the first place and really unpack
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: those and examine where they're at. I see where she's
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: coming from. I don't know that I agree with that
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: for everyone collectively, but from where she's sitting, it's totally
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: the logical way to make that make sense.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Right, but isn't Pavara's origin story not even that she
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: wants to deal with men who can channel? Wasn't it
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: that her family was killed by the Black Aja?
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's why her friend is like, why didn't
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: you join Green or something? And again, that's what I'm saying,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: is that Pavara joined the Red Aja for very specific reasons.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: And she's like, those reasons still apply.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Fighting the dark one, fighting the shadow, making the world
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: a better place. That's why she joined the Red. It
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: might not be what the Red stands for, but it's
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: why she joined the Red. So she can do that
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: brain pretzel. But I don't know that that's necessarily going
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: to translate into the Red Aja collectively following her. I
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: feel like that's a very unique to her story kind
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: of solution to that. And I don't know that the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Red Aja is fundamentally redeemable without getting completely defunded, dismantled,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: and rebuilt. Because the concept of an Aja that focuses
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: on magic threats is not inherently without merit.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: If there's going to be people with magic, then maybe
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: some people with magic are particularly on the lookout for
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: helping people with that. Helping them not hurt others, protecting society.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: That is not a baseless concept. But I don't know
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: that you can build a productive version of that out
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: of the Red Aja. Because the Red Aja is pretty punitive,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: just fundamentally. One of the things I liked about the
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: show was that they reframed the Red as a bit
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: more of just policing everyone. They tried to make that argument.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: And I think that that's also what Pavara is arguing
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: for a fourth age version of it here. It's like, yeah,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: there's an argument there. I don't know if I agree,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: but I'm at least willing to entertain it, you know?
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: And I mean, I guess once you get rid of
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: the black Aja influences in the red Aja, which we
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: know is a huge percentage, right? A third of them,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: which is more than the quarter that's in every other Aja. Yeah.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's when a third of your people are just.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Black Aja.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Right. When half or more of the people on the
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: force are like going home and doing domestic violence.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Can you really trust them to be protecting society? If
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: a third of the so-called Red Aja are actually Black Aja...
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Do we even know what the Red Aja is, truly?
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Have we ever even seen the Red Aja doing its
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: job as intended?
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: At this point, you could probably say that about the
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: whole White Tower.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, also fair. The entire institution might be corrupt,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: not just particular beat cops. It might be like the
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: whole concept.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: When you have a quarter to a third of your
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: population supporting a dictator, no matter what he does in office,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: that I can't get away from real world politics.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Building a ballroom. I mean, a palace.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: An unfinished one that remains on construction to the point
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: where she's out of office. Yeah.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: It's one of those things where like the difference between
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: what we say we want, the ideals we hold, the
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: things we wrote down and worship versus the actual emergent
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: phenomena of what we're doing and what is happening on
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the ground right now in our white tower. That is divided.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a good point. Yeah, Elida focusing on
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: her ballroom really did distract her from doing some more
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: horrific things. Anyway, do you want to read us into
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: this chapter? Now that we've discussed the whole thing already?
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Chapter two, The Choice of Anaja, and our symbol is
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the dragon's fang. Pavara did her very best to pretend
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: that she was not terrified. If these Ashaman had known her,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: they'd have realized that sitting still and quiet was not
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: her natural state. She retreated to basic Aes Sedai training,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: appearing in control when she felt anything but. She forced
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: herself to rise. Candler and Amaran had withdrawn to visit
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: the two riverslads and make sure they were going about
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: in pairs. That left only her and Andral again. He
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: quietly tinkered with his leather straps as the rain continued outside.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: He used two needles at once to stitch, crossing the
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: holes on either side. The man had the concentration of
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: a master craftsman. Pavar strolled over. causing him to look
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: up sharply as she drew close. She smothered a smile.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: She might not look it, but she could move silently
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: when necessary. She stared out of the windows. The rain
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: had grown worse, splashing curtains of water against the glass.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: After so many weeks of looking as if it would
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: storm at any moment, it finally comes. And I thought
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: it would close there because that felt like meta-commentary on
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: after years of waiting, after years of anticipation, we're finally
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: here reading this book.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Right. And both years in terms of writing and years
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: in terms of the podcast.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: That is meta meta.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Meta meta. Meta meta meta. So there's been a bubble
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: of evil, right? He talks about you think it's one
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: of those, right? This is just the fact that they're
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: worried about the bubbles of evil constantly because the world
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: is falling apart. Right.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: They had people doing spontaneous combustion last week and now
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: the storm doesn't feel natural. So we're accepting that bubbles
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: of evil are everywhere and constant. And then in this chapter,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: we see some of the dead walking.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: So, you know. You know, it's, yeah. The world is
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: falling apart is basically what it boils down to.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Unraveling is one of the words used here, which... Because
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: it's a pattern. And like sewing.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Stuff. Turns out sewing metaphors are kind of constant throughout
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of things if you really start paying attention
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: to it.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Ha!
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Unraveling.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it's the fundamental sort of aspect of
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: the world he's built, right? Like... The wheel weaves. What
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: is the wheel weave, right? It has to come unraveled.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Something that can be unraveled.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, we see they notice that there's a parade
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: of dead people because they're not getting wet and they're
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: towing animals that aren't there. And it's, you know, very
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: clearly if you interact with things that aren't there and
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: those are dead people. But it's almost nonchalant. Like, oh, yeah,
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: there's another group of dead people.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: It's been happening for a while and they don't generally
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: cause harm. Right. Right.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: So people are just like, okay, ignore it and keep
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: fighting the last battle. The real threat is, of course, Taim,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: who's taken all of the Aes Sedai except Pavara.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, I return to my question of why are
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: they nibbling at them one by one instead of just
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: taking them.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: All at once? I mean, because it's working, I guess.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: But yeah, she's the last one. So she's like, that
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: means we can predict what they're going to do, which
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: means we can try to lay a trap.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: And we know it's been easier for them to turn
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: the female Aes Sedai because we know it's Easier if
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: you have the opposite gender, which I do wonder if
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: that's like that feels new to me because I never,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: ever suspected. So so here's the question. You can't get
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: 13 men into a circle. So how do you get
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: 13 murder all and 13 men into a circle together?
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: That to me feels like it shouldn't be possible.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: If you have one woman, though, you'd still have the
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: power of a circle, a full circle of men. Even
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: if you had a 14th person who was female to
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: make it possible, right? Or do you need more than
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: one woman? I mean, still, like.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: I forget how many men you can, yeah.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: If you have just a few female dreadlords, dreadladies. If
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: you have some dreadladies.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe. You certainly don't have female Mergerall, right? They're
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: all male. Because they're all identical.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: To me, that says that that means that Mergerall should
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: be entirely genderless.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Hermaphrodites, maybe? Yeah.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Or just like Barbie dolls, you know?
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Right, right. Except then they can't rape, and they very
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: clearly rape and enjoy doing so.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe they're just that sadistic that they don't even
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: need anatomy.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: I don't like this. Back away. Back away quickly.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is an interesting thing because we talk
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: about the fact that the percentage of murdrawl match the
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Chandler population, but we know there are female Trollocs. So
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: are there no, if there's no such thing as female Murdral,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: then like.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: There should be female Murdral.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: There should be. There should be.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: There should be. That's a logical inconsistency.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Because where's the, then how do the percentages match up?
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: They can't.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: That's weird.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's just, just, just a thought. And then, so then,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: then for me, what that means is that The circles
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: in my head have always been 13 male Mergerall and
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: 13 female channelers. And at no point were male channelers
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: ever involved in this process. And so this whole like, oh, well,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: we put male channelers into it and that makes it
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: easier to convert the females. And that's why we're concentrating
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: on the Aes Sedai. I don't like it. I don't
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: think that makes a lot of sense.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing about this really makes sense if you scratch it.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: But it provides good reasons for our heroes to go
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: through a trial and bond process.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: And I think that's really what it is. It's just like,
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: this would be a lot easier to do. I mean,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: they're like, oh, well, we only take a certain number
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: of people at a time. And it's like, I don't know, man.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: It feels very much like because of the plot to me. Yeah.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: The Tavirin is strong with this. The Tavirin, I mean,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: it's for the plot. Not anyone's getting protected.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: That I think is, yeah. The internal logic doesn't feel
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: fully rounded out to me. Yeah.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: But again, I think Rand and Jordan kind of just
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: forgot about the Black Tower and left it hanging to
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: just sort of spin on its own devices. And Sanderson
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: came by and was like, I'm going to do my best,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: but this is not going to be like the top
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: shelf work I do on these books because I got
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: other shit that I have to really make perfect. And
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: this is going to be kind of just a place
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: to play and figure it out and shore up random
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: stuff that I feel like doing for plot.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Because there is this mirror of like the White Tower
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: and the Black Tower are both split and need to
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: be reunited. And Egwene has already done that with the
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: White Tower. So now it needs to be done with
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: the Black Tower. I get that.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: But mostly it's here to serve as what if we
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: double bonded?
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yes.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, really, I think that's the mechanic. He truly
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: wants to get out of this whole mess is what
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: if we had double bonded Aes Sedai Ashomon.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And I would say such a cool concept. I'm not
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: sure it gets paid off as much as I would
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: like it to.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: It has such great promise. And then just kind of. Yeah.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: And, like, the payoff is Andral's gateway thing. And, like, yes,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: he's bonded to her, but that's just circles, right? He
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: just uses a full circle.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the bond wasn't necessary to deliver one miracle as ordered.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Right, right. That miracle is entirely just Andral and then
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: just a full circle behind him.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's him being a leader of men and women
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: and being a gateway master and having the full... committed
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: support of several people from both genders but he doesn't
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: need a double bond with pavara for that but it's
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: still a really cool mechanic and offers a lot of
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: potential for this is how fourth age eyes to die
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: can do something new rather than trying to return to
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: some age of legends like you can't go backwards but
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: you have to go forwards and this is such a
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: cool way to move forwards.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: And a cool way to move forward with the technology, right?
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Because it's this idea of, oh, how is this age
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: going to be different? How are we going to improve
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: the fourth age over the age of legends? Because it's
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: going to be a technological age. It's going to be,
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of promise there, you know,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: once you deal with the Sean Chan and figure out
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: what's going on with them.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: But right, it's not going to be an age of utopia.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: It's going to be an age of innovation and war.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: And it's going to be really, really exciting. It's not
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: going to be drugged down with chora trees that make
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: everyone complacent. Or whatever, you know? So then we get
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: into Pavara trying to talk to Andral and learning a
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: bunch about him as a person, which is mainly that
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: he is curious. to the point of insanity.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: And of course, you know, you have to jump off
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: the highest cliff. The Seafolk challenge you to jump off
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: a cliff, right? That's the kind of person he is, right?
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: He's not going to jump off. If he's going to
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: do something, he's going to do it all the way. Yeah.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: And I just love her whole like, well, other people
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: are jumping off a cliff and you wouldn't jump off
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: of a cliff. He's like, I have actually. That's specifically
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: why I jumped off of a cliff, actually. Not only
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: have I jumped off of a cliff, that's why.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: If other people are doing it and surviving and turning
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: out fine, that's more reassurance than just jumping off a
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: random cliff, you know, with nobody else doing it.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: And his whole story arc is about, I haven't done
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: it before, therefore I want to do it. He's a
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: serial new time experiencer type person. That's all he wants
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: to do with his life is stuff he's never done before.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: That's why he came to the Black Tower. That's why
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: he's obviously jumped off of cliffs before, right? This is
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: curious to the point of having no sense of self-preservation,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: which means he's going to be a great subject for
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: this new experimental double bond. Because, you know, I mean,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: we even see when they bond, like his second reaction
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: is curiosity. His first reaction is to feel invaded and
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: his second reaction is to be curious.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: There's a little discussion here. The next thing I really
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: have is about the Red and whether they all hate
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: men or if that's just like one of many reasons.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: It's an interesting discussion between, you know, I feel like
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: we've had it before, but they're having that discussion about
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: like what makes a Red sister a Red sister.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we kind of had this large chunk of this
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: conversation before we even started the chat.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we did.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: So we can kind of skip that again.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Just because the thing has to be done doesn't mean
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: the one doing it is a friend. You know, that
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: level of just like, I think it's the same thing
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: about cops. Just because that job does have to get
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: done doesn't mean cops are our friends.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: It would be better if cops were our friends instead
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: of from the city over and seeing us as enemy combatants.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Friends would be actually an improvement on that relationship.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: The Red Ajaan, the police analogies are just too easy
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: to make, right?
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: The line that I thought was really interesting in this exchange,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: because she's trying to convince him that she's one of
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the good ones, right? That's essentially what this whole conversation is.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: I know you have generations deep institutional mistrust of me
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: and my uniform and my training and everything I've ever
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: stood for, but I'm one of the good ones. Trust me,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I pinky promise. And he says... I don't really trust
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: that you're one of the good ones because you're still
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: literally in uniform talking down to me with the language
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: of oppression that you've been using to harm me and
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: mine for generations. And Pavara found her annoyance rising. She'd
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: almost had him. She liked men. She had often thought
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: warders could be useful. Couldn't the fool recognize a hand
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: extended across the chasm when he saw it? Aren't you
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: grateful that I tried? This is why nobody likes you.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: This is why no one's fixing the institutional problems is
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: because you're not grateful enough that I tried to show
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: you I'm one of the good ones. I love that
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: she pulls back on that impulse. But still, that line
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: has always stood out to me is like the second
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: that he rejects her because of a very real historical reality.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: She's like, what an idiot. Can't he recognize I'm I'm
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: lowering myself to his level? Isn't he grateful that I
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: would try?
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: And then there's a bunch of quotes. I sent you
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: a list of a bunch of them at this point
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: forward that make me really go, Pavara is approaching the
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: bonding of a man the way someone who is racist
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: is approaching interracial marriage. And, like, I'm going to read
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: a few quotes with some words blanked out, right? Some words,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: very few words blanked out. And take that into consideration. Pavara.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: I feel this way because it's been ingrained in me
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: over decades of life. What you do is terribly unnatural,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: but you yourself don't disgust me. You're just a man
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: trying to do your best. You're just a blank trying
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: to do your best. Andral. You're trying to engage me
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: in friendly conversation to prove that you don't feel awkward
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: around me, but I've seen how you blank look at
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: people like me. Pavara. I've never actually done it with
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: a blank, of course. I did some reading before coming
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: down here, but much of what we have is heresy. Heresy.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Hearsay.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Heresy.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Hearsay.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Hearsay.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, weird. That's one of those words that I definitely
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: mispronounced in my head reading it, and I have not
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: been able to adapt it.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Because heresy is a word. Heresy and hearsay are both words.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Damn it.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: They're different words.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Damn it. They're not the same word? No. But they
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: mean the same thing.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: No, they don't.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: No, you're right. They don't.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Hearsay is gossip, and heresy is countered.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Or a doctrine. A doctrine, yeah.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a doctrine. But they are really similar words spelled
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: out and spoken. They're really, really similar.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: So anyway, it was just those quotes that are just like, oh, man,
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: that that sounds bad. That sounds really bad. That sounds
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: like someone struggling with a prejudice.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Struggling with a prejudice in a way where they know
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: that it's a thing that they want to work on,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: but they haven't yet actually figured out where the prejudice
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: is coming from.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: They're going through the motions, but they haven't actually done
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the internal work to like figure it out. You sent
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: me that list and there was one other line that
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I had picked out in the same kind of vein
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: that is more in line with being antagonistic and phobic
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: about queer relationships.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: The categories definitely are similar.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Close yeah well i mean it's that whole like normative
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: priority of just like i'm gonna vilify anyone who doesn't
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: subscribe to this very narrow definition of of normal and
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: but she has this line that she reached out to
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: him just like a woman but it was different because
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: it was a man and i'm like this sounds like
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: someone trying to experiment with being bisexual and really not
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: not sure that like they are not clearly definitely queer
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: they are trying it out because they want to try
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: it out for whatever reason like it just and yeah
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: you sent me that list and that it all fit
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: it all clicked together of just like oh yeah she
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: is very conscious of her biases but has not done
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the internal work at all but she is on a
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: path where she might decide to do the internal work
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: at some point right her heart is in the right
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: place it's just Her mind needs to follow. So yeah,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of one of the good ones posturing
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: here and a lot of, I accept that you're human
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: despite what you do, despite who you are, which is like, no,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: that's not what we asked for. I'm not asking to
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: be accepted despite being autistic or, you know, someone else
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: might be like, despite being black, you know, I don't
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: see color is like, I see you as human despite
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: the fact that you're black, right? It's that kind of like,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: She's coming at it with that framing. And it's like,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: there's something to work with here, but you're not nearly
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: as far along as you think you are. You really aren't.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: But also, you know, she is, what, 100 years older
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: than him? I mean, we're talking about a lot of decades.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Big age gap relationship.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: A lot of decades in these biases, right? She's spent
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: a century saturating in this. Most of us don't get
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: to live a century period, right? So she's spent a
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: century of adult life living this stuff. So, you know,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: points to her for trying to be one of the
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: good ones. Yeah, think about how that sits with Andral
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: and then expand that to the real world.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: She's no Dolly Parton. R.I.P.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Dolly. Today is the day that Dolly Parton died that
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: we're recording this.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Just found out before I sat down to record and
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: was like, I wonder what the news is. Oh.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like the third thing I saw on
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Facebook this morning was, I didn't want to have today
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: be the day I learned Dolly Parton died until I
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: go to the Googles and I check it. And it's like,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: I am glad she made it to 80. But goddamn. Goddamn.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: So they link up. She links to him.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Pavara suggests, guides, initiates, consents to this, and then immediately
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: has a panic response.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Like, girl, yeah, you are great at a lot of stuff,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: but controlling your panic response in this moment? Not one
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: of your finest.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: And he's all freak. He's all like, oh, my God,
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: power for the first time ever. Right. Like he's he's
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: a bit overwhelmed because this is the first time ever
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: he's had access to more than a trickle.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Right. He's distracted from her asking to be released because
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: he's never felt power on this scale before.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Men don't link because they don't have women. So he's
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: never felt what channeling is like for an ordinary strength channeler.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: He's always been holding down that faint little tail. And
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: so she asked to be released and he doesn't do
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: it immediately because he's literally overwhelmed and distracted.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: And that, you know, turns into her spiraling into like
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the deepest, darkest panic she's ever felt. And that goes badly.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: And the second he notices that she's in a panic,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: he releases her. You know, it takes him a second.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: He's not paying attention. Right. Which is, you know, he's distracted. Right. Yeah.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: He's a he's a gentleman. He's a very conscientious gentleman.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: He was just overwhelmed for one second. And that was
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: one second too long.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: It triggers her to go all the way back to
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: like the worst panic she's ever felt.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: And she dies.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Is very emotionally reactive from that place.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: And lashes out and bonds him, which, okay, that doesn't
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: seem like the reaction that, but like, I guess how
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: else is she going to control his channeling? She can
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: control him physically, but the only way to control his
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: channeling is with a bond.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Ironic that she would think that, given what we know
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: about controlling men who can channel with the bond from
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Alana and Rand.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Right, it doesn't work.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: But yeah, as far as reactivity, to feeling out of
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: control i feel like adding to your responsibilities is not
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: perhaps the best reaction right but that's how eyes to
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: die are. They're like, I'll put a leash on something
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: and that'll make me in control. And I'm like, honestly,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: if that man is going to be that scary, maybe
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: you don't want to be in that close of association
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: with him, but whatever.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: And of course, Andral takes that and goes, oh, you
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: bonded me without my permission. I'm bonding you without your
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: permission to regain some of that power.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Which like, fair.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: Right? Like, yeah. I mean, that is in self-defense, right? Like,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: If someone comes up to you and... It's weird, right?
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Because the double bonding doesn't necessarily make sense in terms
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: of self-defense, but like.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Well, it does mean that she has a vested interest
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: in being nice to him, right? There's an equality in
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: their power dynamic that means that any abuse from one
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: can be counterbalanced by the other. Not that it's punitive.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: It does seem like a weird reaction, but I can
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: see being like, oh, no, no, no, no. I am
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: not going to be your permanent subordinate. Absolutely not.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. I guess that's, yeah, it's a way of equalizing
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: the relationship a little bit. But in that moment, there
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: is this thing that happens, right? His self melded with
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: her for a seeming eternity. She knew what it was
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: like to be him. Think his thoughts. She saw his
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: life in the blink of an eye, absorbed his memories, right?
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Like there's so much going on there where she basically
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: does a whole mind meld and gets to experience his
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: entire life.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: And presumably he's experiencing hers as well. He understands the
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: depth of her story and why she's not a dark Aja,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: a black Aja, a dark friend, you know, like all
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: of that.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: And so there is this moment of like complete understanding
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: undoes the prejudice that they've been experiencing early on, where
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: it's like, I see you as this separate sort of
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: alien thing. And then we mind meld. I get to
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: experience all of your experiences and suddenly nothing about you
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: is alien anymore.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: And now there's proof that she is one of the
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: good ones, right? Like as loaded as that sentence is,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: he's seeing the truth of her intentions, the truth that
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: she is one of the ones who's holding down the
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: good part of the Aja, right? It's not like the
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Aja is just nakedly evil through and through, right? It's
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: a third. The other two thirds are some degree of ignorant, complacent,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: or fighting back, right? Just by definition. And he gets
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: to see the truth of That for her. And she
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: gets to see the truth of his humility and his madness. And,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: you know, it means that they can start to operate
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: with each other as trusted individuals rather than as stereotypes
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: and symbols, which is what they had before.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: So she's like, okay, cool. Just, just release me and
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: we'll go back to normal. He's like, can't do it.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Don't know how. Not part of the training. Sorry. No
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: one's ever gotten divorced in the black tower, apparently, because
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: this is for wives normally. Right.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: People who you were already married to before this whole thing.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Women who decided to stay after they knew who you were.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: So yeah, divorce in the, what, four months that they've
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: been doing this? Yeah, seems unlikely. Over years, sure. But yeah,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: not in the time that this story's been taking place.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Which is not to say someone couldn't figure out
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: how to break that bond, because you certainly can do
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: it with women.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a matter of sitting down and thinking
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: it through, doing a little reverse engineering experimenting. Like, it's
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: totally feasible. It just would take time and energy that
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: they don't have.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and what are they going to do? Go to
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: somebody and be like, hey, so we bonded each other.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: Help us out. It's like, no.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: That's a fourth age, slow Tuesday morning kind of visit
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: to the doctor's office.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: God damn it. Teenagers bonding each other again. I told
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: you guys, you wait until you're 21 for the double bond.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: It's not OK. It's not OK.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Your brains aren't formed yet.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Did you at least use channeling protection, the Terran Grial,
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: to make sure that your minds don't completely meld together?
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: Or are you guys just stuck with a mind meld
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: for the rest of your life? Jesus Christ.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: You could have burned yourselves out.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: You need to use protection.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: God, that'd be funny.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Always use a Terran Grial to limit your power intake. Jeez.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: No, and there's definitely the, well, yes, obviously there's the
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: bonding each other to feel each other's sensations. It's like,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to feel what he was feeling.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: During?
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: During what? When? What were you doing?
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but before we can get too deep into the
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: weeds about the potential for that, young Evan comes bursting
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: into the room by himself, which is a big no-no
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: because we are in buddy system horror movie time.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: You don't know if you're going to go back and
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: your partner's going to be mind fucked by the channelers. Yeah.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: But it was important enough to split the party because
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: apparently Waylon and his eyes to die are back, supposedly
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: bringing news that Loghain and Taim have patched up their
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: differences and Loghain's going to come reconcile everything. Everything's fine
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: and good. For sure. For sure. And Nalam and Evan
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: had kind of been like, you know, Andral needs to
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: know that this is not what's happening like right now.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: because Weyland's eyes are wrong, right? He doesn't know about
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the eyes to die, but he's like, Weyland's definitely been turned.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: So let's assume, you know, Loghain is in trouble and
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: we have to make a move now.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: Also, just by the way they're talking, right? They're pro-Taim
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden. Right. Doesn't make sense, right? These
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: are clearly turned people. They've added to the list and
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: they were with Loghain, which means Loghain must have been taken.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: And the way they're talking, it sounds like Now, we
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: know he's not turned yet, but they think they're going
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: to turn him, like, overnight.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Right, because most of these guys are turning, like, in
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: a few hours. They figure Loghain can't take more than
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: four times that long, right?
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Loghain's like, hold all of my beers.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: It is sort of the, like, Loghain's being badass, right?
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: He's holding out against torture. He's holding out against whatever.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: I think the problem is we don't know what they're doing.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Our impression was always like, oh, well, once you get
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: the 13 Murdral and 13 Aes Sedai, they just, you know,
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: flip a switch and you're fucked. There was no concept
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: of it was a torturous process that you could hold
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: out against.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was very much presented as the first way
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: in the visions that we get in book two.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Right?
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: That it's, you don't get a choice. There is no
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: free will if 13 are involved. So the fact that
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Loghain is able to hold out makes no canonical sense.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that feels like a big change from what it
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: was presented at as first.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: But if we just sort of imagine that 13 isn't
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: a thing, and that's why it's not happening instantly, if
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: we just pretend that's a thing, why is Logain able
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: to hold out for so long? I think it's because
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: he had to live without the power for so long.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I think that's what makes him able to withstand all
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: that torture is because he's been through something worse.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Being stilled and coming back.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: He did that for months upon months upon months, right?
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Like he's been through a deeper level of hell than
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: any of his torturers have ever gone through. So it
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: makes sense that he's able to be like, I mean, yeah,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: this sucks, but, you know, it still hasn't hit the
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: threshold that I already know I can survive.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: That makes sense to me, maybe. I mean, I still
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: think he's just, I still think it has to do
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: with how powerful he is. Well, no, because supposedly, isn't
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: it like the more powerful you are, the more more
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: vulnerable you're supposed to be. And he's so like, shouldn't you?
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't like it. I don't like it.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: I don't like the whole delayed. I mean, it's again,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: it feels like it's there for the plot. So Andral
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: can go rescue him after he's been taken captive.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's entirely for plot. I think the only thing
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: that fits canonically is that if there is a choice,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Loghain would be able to make that choice for longer
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: than anyone else. That's the only thing that feels canonically correct.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Everything else just feels for plot.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And again, because of his power level, I don't
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: even think necessarily he'd be better, right? Because the whole
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: thing is, if you can channel, you are vulnerable to
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: this invasion. That's that hole that lets the power in.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: That's why they can't do it to non-channelers.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's because he was healed from being gentled.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: That that's like the barrier.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe the fact that he was gentled, like that scar
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: tissue on his psyche or whatever, like actually negates that
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: backdoor or something. Negates that cheat code into the free
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: will zone. Maybe the fact that Nynaeve healed.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: Him, like, doesn't... You're saying because he has a colostomy bag,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: his back door isn't available?
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: I guess so. But, I mean, that is something that
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: he doesn't share with anyone else who goes through this process, right?
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Swan and Lyanna don't get subjected to turning, so we
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: don't have any other data points to test this against.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: No, that's a good call. I do like the theory
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: that the healing from gentling is what's making it harder
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: to turn him.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: We got to patch this giant gaping hole in the
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: can somehow. I found some bubble gum in a corner,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: It's like pulling a string through a hole and then
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: there's a knot in it and you really can't get
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: the knot through, you know?
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: I've been obsessed with doing embroidery lately. Yes, this happens
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: a lot.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: And it goes with the whole weaving thing and the
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: whole like tying it back together using the other power.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: And because it's the other power, not just, like, she's connected,
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: she connected those two with Cydar, not Cydene. Right. Right.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: The only problem with this theory is that he is
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: as powerful as before, so you'd think that, you know,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: he'd have to have some other downside to pay for it,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that's because the Cydene passes through, is repelled
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: by the Cydar, right? And that's why the pathway is open.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: It's like, think of a tunnel, or like a pipe
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: that's hydrophilic on the outside. The water can still pass
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: through it, you know? And the other thing, yeah, we
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: do see the, the merge all as, as me office
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: pointing out in a vision. I don't know though, to
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: me that, that feels like the vision divisions feel very
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: accurate in terms of the mechanics of things.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, because it's book two, right? So it's when
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: RJ is still figuring stuff out.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: It's not an eye of the world-ism, though.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: But also, the testing is based in the dream, right?
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: The testing world is clearly riffing off of Teller and Riad.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: So to a degree, potentially the beliefs of the people
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: powering it could influence what's true in the visions.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: I could almost buy that. But then there's a bunch
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: of information they get that they don't know that they
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: learn by having the visions that's true to real life.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Well, what I was saying is like the Aes Sedai
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: powering the thing, like their beliefs about it might inform
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: the world building of the vision. So their biases and
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: beliefs are going to be what the thing can draw from.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: So knowledge that the Aes Sedai have could be communicated
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: to them, but misinformation that the Aes Sedai have... Again,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: I'm finding chunks of bubblegum stuck under a desk and
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: trying to like paper over a hole you could drive
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: a car through. But like it's what I'm here for.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: I'll buy it. I'll buy it. And Waylon and all
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: these names are pre-Sanderson.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we don't have to look them up as fans.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: No, Weyland was the Path of the Daggers, Jannar Sedai
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: was introduced in Winter's Heart. These are all just like
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: previous existing Jordan, you know, were part of the group
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: that were in the Black Tower, part of the group
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: of Aes Sedai that went to the Black Tower that
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: were Elida's Aes Sedai.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, cool, cool. So yeah, on that cliffhanger of, oh no,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: they have Loghain, we have to admit that, we have
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: to do something, dawning horror. That's where that POV ends.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: And then we pick up in the next POV with Avienda.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: And her just like... casual violation of security.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: I honestly really liked the sequence. I liked being in
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: the head of an Aiel casually strolling through a camp
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: of wetlanders and seeing that mysterious ninja ability from the
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: other side and how casual and workaday it is. Yes,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: it's super Sanderson. Yes, it's obviously just the most Sanderson
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: Sanderson-ing that has ever Sandersoned, but I liked it. It
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: felt very true to how the Aiel has been presented
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: throughout the books as being able to just appear out
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: of nowhere and it's like she takes a bunch of
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: very logical steps and it's all perfectly there's no magic
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: right she doesn't use the power she doesn't use supernatural
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: abilities she's just very observant very quiet and very knowledgeable
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: about where she exists in space and i enjoy it.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: And it shows her like dodging warders dodging soldiers like
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: she's just not hard for her to to escape notice.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: And then also, like, not eavesdropping, because that would be rude.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Sneaking through the camp is fine, but eavesdropping, that's rude. That's, again,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: giving us a sense of how the Yael are so
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: alien to the Wetlanders, right? She breaks their security, but
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: doesn't break their security, right? Because her sense of security
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: is all different.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: I think my only criticism is her not being aware
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: of what she's doing. What? Oh, like it's hard or something?
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: You know, like, it's... That part was weird. I didn't
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: like that part.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I feel like she understands security. She's been
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: with Rand long enough. She understands guards. She understands someone
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: not approved sneaking into a tent and being there and
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: how that does violate security and why that's a worry.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Her being ignorant as opposed to her being like, oh, well,
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: then maybe you should get better security guards. That's what
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: I would have loved to see out of her. If
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: I can get in that easy, maybe you're not being
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: guarded by the right people. I'd like to see her
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: more concerned that she got in that easily.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels like the kind of regression you've talked
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: about our other characters experiencing like this feels very like
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: a book eight kind of Avienda. Like this is her
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: and Ibu Dar being like.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Like an Avienda who's just starting to hang around Rand
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: and just like who hasn't been in the wetlands at all.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Right. This is someone who barely knows the land. But,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: you know, empirically, she's acting like she knows Elaine really well. But, yeah,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: that part felt a little bit weird and regressive to me. But, yeah,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: if she had just said a few different things in
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: this whole sequence of her sneaking in, it could have
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: been her being like, Elaine, will you please let me
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: assign some maidens to guard you?
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not comfortable with you only having wetlanders.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: The wetlanders suck. Like, you need better guards. Like, that's
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: what I wanted her to say.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: But as she's sneaking through the camp, she's also doing
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: what we were talking about at the beginning. She's having
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: some really good internal processing. while she is, you know,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: fiddling essentially with breaking security. She's doing that as a
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: distraction while she's thinking about all the Sean Chan stuff.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: And do we attack them now? Why didn't they attack
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: First Century and My Visions? Like she's processing while she
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: solves a puzzle. Very relatable.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: And I think the best of Wheel of Time is
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: scenes written like this, where there's something going on physically
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: and something going on mentally, and they are only vaguely related,
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: but they do sort of come together in the end. Right.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is all about security and who acts
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: first and who's going to be infiltrating whose territory. Like,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: that is kind of all integral to her visions of
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: the Sean Chan conflict.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: I also don't think she would leave her dagger in
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: the dirt for someone else to find as a distraction.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: That seemed like a very weird choice. Like, I feel
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: like It almost could have been like an Aiel like
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: signaling thing. You know, it's like a particular kind of
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: I bite my thumb at you, sir. But we never
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: saw that any time before with the Aiel. So it
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: can't be that. It's just her making a strange choice.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: It does feel like, oh, just a knife. I'm going
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: to leave one of my knives that I care a
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: lot about. First of all, I'm going to drive it
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: into the dirt, which no one who cared about the
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: knives would do.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Like, we see her sharpening that shit all the time.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Is it because she keeps sticking it in the ground
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: all the time? Yeah, exactly.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: And then, like, she's not going to get it back, right? So, like.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: She does zip around and grab it, though, doesn't she?
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: No. Oh, yeah.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: She doesn't.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: Maybe on her way out.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: But she has a different knife that she uses to
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: trim her nails. It's like, why, Avianda? You could have just...
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: thrown a rock blown a raspberry like apparently I don't
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: know it's yeah the jamming it into the dirt I'm
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: like isn't that bad for blades.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: Though maybe it's a power but and it can't be
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: a like a power rod dagger or anything else like
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: that she would never give that.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Up right right yeah very silly very strange and.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: It doesn't say she took out one of her knives
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: she took out her knife singular.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming it's like the big knife as opposed to
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: her little pocket nail trimming knife because obviously those are
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: different knives I don't know. It feels weird. I like
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: the sneaking. I don't like the knife stabbing.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I just want another pass on the editing. Just
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: one more pass on the editing.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: I kind of feel that way about all of Sanderson, though.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Going back and reading it, that's just a Sanderson style
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: where I'm like, ooh, there's just a couple of things
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: there that I feel like you're moving just a little
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: too fast with your stories.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: So yeah, she gets to the tent and is sort
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: of eavesdropping it not eavesdropping she just ends up in
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: the room where the discussion is happening right and listening
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: where elaine is essentially saying my priority is getting out
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: human refugees i do not give a fuck about the
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: city and her lord's being like oh but the city
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: is important she's like bitch it is literally made out
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: of rock i do not care i only care about
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: the people the people are the only thing that is
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: worth risking our lives for.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: And trying to take the wall, trying to take the
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: city back just means the walls work against us with
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: the defenses like we wouldn't be coming at it from
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: the inside. Although, I mean, I guess with gateways, they
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: could be. So I don't really know the whole thing like, oh,
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: the walls would be hard to assault. Just gateway inside.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Well, getting them off the walls from either side is
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: going to be equally hard. They're going to have the
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: high ground regardless unless you gateway onto the wall. that's
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: a whole different kind of challenge. Like it's just, it
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: makes sense to just abandon the city for the time being, right?
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Elaine even says later, like, I've got a plan. It's
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: just going to take a minute. It involves drawing them
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: out of the city. Like we can rebuild the city, right?
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: That's the thing is you can't, I mean, you can
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: rebuild people ultimately, right? I mean, give it a few generations.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Ultimately you do technically rebuild people, but you know, she's
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: got people trying to tell her that the palace is
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: worth throwing away lives. She's like, no, no. The people
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: who are going to give birth to the new Andorv,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: are who I need to be worrying about.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: And I should say, one of the reasons we're just
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: doing this chapter is I do really like this chapter.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: I like the Andral Pavara double bond. I like Avienda
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: sneaking into the tent. It's just some, I don't always
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: want to point out the flaws, but sometimes I feel
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: like that's all I focus on.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: Oh no, Avienda looks up from trimming her fingernails with
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: her second knife. It does acknowledge that she was carrying
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: multiple knives.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, second, third, fourth. We know the girl carries
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: a lot of knives, right? Like, I think even Matt
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: says he carries almost as many knives as Avienda does, right?
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: And he carries a lot of knives. So she's got
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: more than just one or two. I think that's my
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: criticism unnecessarily that, oh, she's got multiple knives, but that
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: earlier it's like she pulled out her knife.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: It should have been her stabbing in the ground knife specifically.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, her spare knife or her extra knife or her
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: dull knife or, you know, one of many knives.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Right. Pulled out a knife that was basically useless anymore
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: and so wouldn't be harmed by being used as a distraction.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: A knife she was going to throw away because it
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: was falling apart. You know, like something like that would
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: have been a fun little line.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: A broken knife she had picked up off the ground somewhere.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: And then we get a great quote from Elaine when
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: she sees Avienda. What in the name of a bloody
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: goat's left stone?
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: By his right tit.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: By stone, we assume testicle.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. God damn it, prepopente.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: What in the name of goat balls are you doing? Oh, pony.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: And then, yeah, the whole, like, she sneaks in. She's like,
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: I just didn't want to make a fuss. Wetlanders can
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: be so touchy. So nobody saw me.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that does not feel like an Avienda who has
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: come to understand wetlanders.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: No. No, it doesn't.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: Like, literally, this is the Avienda who has been in
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: the wetlands for all of three days and still thinks
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: that baths are going to make you catch sick and die.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: This is not the Avienda who has graduated from Wise
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: One School.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: And kind of, you know, I mean, she was Elaine's
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: companion for, I forget what the timeline, months and months
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: and months. She like converted to baths and silk dresses.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Like a month in Abu Dhar, a month on the road,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: a month in Camelon. Like, yeah, no, the concept that
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: she didn't know that this would cause a fuss is laughable.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: It would have been so much better if she was like,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: I thought you would have had better security given that you're,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: you know, pregnant and the queen.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: If she acknowledged the fuss, she was like, yeah, you know,
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: thought I'd get caught, but clearly not.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: But the whole point of her going over there was
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: to talk to Elaine. So clearly she can't have been
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: going over there to get caught by the cops. It's
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: just the whole premise of this is silly.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: And then the whole, like, light, Avianda, if people who
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: wanted me dead had half your skill. I mean, they do.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: They've got Slayer. They've got Grey Men. They've got, you know,
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: it's like.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Don't say that shit out loud.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They have Dark Friend Aiel. Those exist.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: Dark Friend Aiel are, like, literally in the mix.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: We've had them since book five.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: You know? Like, what did Melindra do? Try to kill
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: one of our main characters, right?
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Right, right. Matt.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, the concept of, ha ha ha ha, it's
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: so cool, you're the only person with those skills in
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: the whole world anyway. Like, I'm sorry, what?
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: Wait, no. Protect yourself, please. And then Elaine, in what
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: is my least favorite line, probably in the entire series, says, Avianda,
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: you're a gem. A complete and total gem.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Not An Elaine Turner phrase.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: No. And also a very like internet phrase from the day,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: from the time this book was written. It feels very
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: much like an anachronism to me.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't. A treasure? I totally could have seen
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: her saying treasure. Alvienda, you are an absolute treasure. Totally
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: would have fit. But gem?
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel right. And then
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: we get a bit of explanation about the way gate.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: Remember when we had been doing Talmanis, we had been
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: kind of like, what the hell's up with the Camelon
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: way gate? What was going on there?
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: Was she not guarding it?
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: We get an explanation here. She thought it was safe.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: She had it all but bricked up with 50 guards
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: at the door and the Avendasura leaves taken and put
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: on the outside. So it was only unlockable from the outside.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: She actually had taken various contingencies. I would argue that
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: taking the leaves away.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Would have been smarter. Maybe like putting them in a
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: lockbox in the basement of the White Tower or something
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: where they really aren't close to the way gate that
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: they're attached to. But yeah, it was not completely unguarded.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: She just didn't believe that dark friends would be able
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: to get at those people. Because she's like, these were
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: men who specifically didn't go with Gabriel's White Lions. So
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: I assumed that they weren't dark friends. And it turns
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: out that they were.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: But there's a dozen dark friends and 50 guards.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: Even.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: Poison, I guess.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say maybe like a here
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: to have some wine. Oh, now you're paralyzed and I
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: get to stab you.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Kind of deal.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: Right. But yeah, I don't know. Again, that just feels
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: like that many guards. It doesn't feel like they should
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: be able to have been taken out by a handful
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: of dark friends.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why the Aventus Orlies were still there. Period.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: Like I would have taken those and shipped them to
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: another country.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: You know, or put them in guard somewhere else, you know.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: I would have taken the leaves out, put them in
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: a sealed box, and then, like, taken them through three
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: different double-blind couriers to just plant them in a completely
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: different country. Like, absolutely the fuck not.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: No.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I don't actually know, though. Are Avendasaur leaves coded or
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: keyed to the gate that they're from? Or could you
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: get leaves from a different gate? Because it seems like
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: they would.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Be, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We never see any.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, because I think when Loyal says, if I
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: destroyed the key, the gate would never open again, right?
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: Like, Yeah, like that's what I would do as a
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: lane is I would get rid of them permanently. I
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: would take them hundreds of miles away. I would not
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: leave it as a potential that if someone can kill
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: the guards, they can open the gate.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is the maybe like, what if
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: we need it type situation, but you have gateways.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: You're not going to need them during the last battle.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: Maybe someday in the future, but not during the last battle. Yeah,
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: I just, I find the entire, it was cool that
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: she took steps, but I just, she does not take
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: security nearly seriously enough with herself or her city.
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: What was Loyal doing? Wasn't he just putting all the
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: leaves on the outside or was he actually destroying them?
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: He was warning the settings they were attached to and
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: the cities they were attached to. He was not destroying them.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: But what about the isolated ones?
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: I don't think he was supposed to destroy them. I
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: think he was, maybe he was moving the leaves to
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: the outside. I'm pretty sure that we would have heard
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: about it if he'd been asked to destroy a series
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: of way gates.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: I know he couldn't destroy them, but how was he
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: sealing them? That's what I'm asking.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I never really thought about that. I'm
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: assuming he was just putting the leaves on the outside.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: But again, that's just such weak security because anyone can
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: wander by and open them up.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Crossroads of Twilight, Chapter 2. Let's see. Because he seals
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: the way gate in the two rivers, but then it
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: gets opened again. So then he's like, oh, I'll seal
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: it right. That's the shadow rising. Yeah, I guess it's
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: just guards.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: That seems like under assessing the threat.
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: It seems like the only one he really seals is
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: the one in Emmons Field. And I think the one
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: in the two rivers, he just takes both leaves with
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: him so it can't be opened up again.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: Why not just do that?
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: Shadow rising, chapter 53. I'm sorry, I'm going down a
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: deep hole on this one. It's good, though. All right.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: The quote in the Shadow Rising, we did it, Perrin.
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: We closed the Waygate. It will take the Elders or
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: an Aes Sedai to open it again.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like given that Elaine has access to
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: a bunch of Aes Sedai knowledge, she shouldn't feel like
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: she needs to not take that same extreme on her Waygate.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: Think about what they're talking about going to close the Waygate.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Here we go. I did not believe a Waygate could
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: be destroyed, Fahil said. I did not mean destroy exactly, Loyal.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: leaned on his long-handled axe. A way gate was destroyed once,
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: less than 500 years after the breaking, according to Damel,
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: daughter of Ala, daughter of Surafel, because the gate was
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: near a steading that had fallen to the blight. There
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: are two or three gates lost in the blight as
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: it is, but she wrote that it was very difficult
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: and required 13 Aes Sedai working together with a Sawang Rial.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: So that's actually destroying it. Another attempt she wrote of
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: by only nine damaged the gate in such a way
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: that the Aes Sedai were pulled into, blah, blah, blah. Yes,
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: I cannot destroy it, but if I remove both Avandasura
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: leaves completely, they will die. The gate will die. If
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: you remove both leaves. The only means of opening the
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: gate again will be for the elders to bring the
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: Talesmen of Growing. Although I suppose an ice die could
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: cut a hole in it. That, I feel like, is
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: the relevant information I was looking for.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Okay. Dying is definitely more than just being unworkable.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Dying is... Okay. But so couldn't you take one leaf
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: and ship it off to another country and not kill it,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: but also keep it locked? Wouldn't that be an option?
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: I would think it would be.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: Interesting, the dying terminology.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like if you collar a tree, right?
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: You don't have to do it for very much, but
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: it'll still kill it.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: It's like the leaves are part of the living being
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: that is the way gate. Because the way gate is grown.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: It's a living thing.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a necessary connection thing. in order for
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: the life force to keep flowing through.
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: Because I kind of think of the ways as a,
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: like a tree that grows between different locations. It's just
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: growing through a different.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: They were grown into existence. The black wind is presumably
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: some kind of like emergent parasitic life force, right? Like
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: life is definitional to the things. Okay. You can't take
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: the leaves away without killing the gate.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: Fine.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: Could you take one leaf away and just have it
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: get kind of anemic, but not die?
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But then you could always still open it from
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: the outside.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: Not if only one leaf was there.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: I think that if you move the leaf from the
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: outside and put it in a different place, it opens up, right?
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: There's no... Oh, right.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: That would be kind of priming it to be open.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: Well, that's no good then.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Having two on the outside just means you can't open
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: it from the inside ever. But you're not preventing anyone
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: from the outside from opening it back up.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know. Maybe she needed some Ogier guards
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: to back up the humans or something.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: The Ogier wouldn't have been dark friends for sure.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: No, no. The Ogier are notoriously lacking in having dark
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: aligned members. Anyhow, back to Elaine and Avienda. Elaine says
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: the worst thing about being queen is not the things
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: you must do, but the things you cannot do.
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: The necessity of delegation is sometimes a bitter pill to swallow.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: And then she checks in on, oh, you went to Rewidia,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: and that's pretty cool. That means you're a wise one now.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: I really want the Aiel to be with me when
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: I reclaim Andor, right? Because she knows that getting Camelon
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: and Andor back is going to be a long, drawn-out process,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: and having the Aiel to help with that would definitely
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: be a significant edge.
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: Avienda graduating college was definitely sort of long overdue at
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: this point.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she took an extra couple of years.
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: You know, she spent a lot of her time dating, okay?
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: She found the love of her life. She had to
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: be on Rand's shoulder the whole time. It made it
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: hard to progress in her studies. And then she was
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: with Elaine a big chunk of the time. Although Elaine
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: was teaching her channeling that she couldn't learn from the
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: wise ones. So that was more of like a foreign
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: exchange student situation. Yeah.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: It still delayed her graduation by a bit, though.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Just because of the way the credit schedule works.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: You know? I mean, she had most of the credits
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: she needed to graduate before she went away, but she
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: just needed those last, you know, the punishment one. Right. Exactly. Exactly.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: The you're a piece of shit, stand up for yourself one.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: Such a necessary class. Everyone should take that.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: It's like public speaking, you know? Very similar.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: Stand up for yourself. Believe in yourself. Don't be nervous
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: in front of other people. Believe that what you're saying
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: is the truth, no matter what other people are throwing
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: in your face.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: It's just most public speaking education doesn't involve so much
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: like abject humiliation.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: OK, well, then you have not seen me public speak
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: because it's it's bad. It's bad.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying your teachers probably weren't telling you you
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: were a piece of shit the whole time.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Well, that sucks. My teachers weren't.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: You went to a nice school.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: I did. I did. They made us do a lot
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: of public speaking. They wanted us to be very capable
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: of doing that. That was a big part. They wanted
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: that right up there with neat handwriting. It was a
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: really high priority for my school.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: They made us do a speech in front of the
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: entire school twice, once in ninth grade and once in
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: twelfth grade. which meant you spent every day listening to
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: people give their speeches. But there's no practice and there's
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: no class around it. It's just like an extra credit
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: you have to do. So you have to write and
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: give your speech in my high school. I froze.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: You see, that's not a class. That's not a class
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: at all. It was just part of my education. Like
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: every day, every week for 10 years, it was just
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: part of what we did.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I was told... In three years, you need
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: to go up in front of the entire school and
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: give a five-minute, or I think it was like a
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: five to ten-minute speech. Good luck. Start writing now.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: That's a woefully inadequate way of teaching someone how to
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: do that.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Did not go well for me. Actually, I did
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: better in ninth grade than twelfth grade because I believed
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: in my subject material better in ninth grade. I think
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: I was talking about black holes in ninth grade. In
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: twelfth grade, I think I did something dumb like Paul.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: I don't even remember what it was anymore.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Waldorf, they had us do all kinds of group
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: recitations and short personal recitations and do stage productions. And like,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: they were just like, yeah, the concept of speaking in
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: front of others in a group setting, like we're going
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: to just desensitize you to that through so many different
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: little aspects of life that like.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: That was the worst part because they didn't believe in
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: teaching kids to read young enough. So once they finally
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: got around to it, it was like just so painfully
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: slow and awful. But that was more about the reading
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: skill and less about the people listening to you aspect
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: Well, for me, you know, it took me a long
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: time to figure out how to read. I was so
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: used to everybody being so slow and talk that I'd
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: try and read faster than I could talk.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Same. Yeah.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: And that really led to me stumbling and, you know.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: Even now when I read out loud, I constantly have
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: to slow myself down because I'm reading so far ahead
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: of where my words are verbally.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was something that I really enjoyed learning from
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: the stage aspect of that was like people do not
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: hear near as fast as you think they do. If
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: you talk way slower than you want to talk, people
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: will actually catch what you meant to say. And that's
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: the point of doing this soliloquy, doing this poem, doing
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: this presentation of whatever it is. And the same has
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: been very true of podcasting. Like, as the editor, I
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: can tell. Like, oh, yeah. Yeah, talking too fast is...
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: Some people can keep up with it, right? The ADHD
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: brain definitely likes going really fast. But the way that
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: microphones and computer processes, like, blunt things and the fact
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: that you can't see my mouth while I'm talking because
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: it's a podcast... All of that adds up to the
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: slower I talk, the clearer the communication, even though to
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: me sometimes I feel like I am talking so slow.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: Glacially, yeah.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: Doesn't sound like it in post. It just feels like
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: it in my head.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's worse with reading. At least I think slow.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: Normally it's– but with reading, I read much faster than
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I wasn't sure I had dyslexia for
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: a long time. Because I'm like, well, I just read
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: too fast for my own good. It's not the same thing.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: And that is kind of part of.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: It, actually. And then someone pointed out, like, but you
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: can't spell. So that means you see whole words instead
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: of individual letters. And that's because you have dyslexia and
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: you're looking at the shape of the word instead of
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: trying to look at individual letters. And I went, oh,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: that makes sense.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've always been a terrible speller. I learned spelling
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: by rote force, not by no... I read the words.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know how they're spelled.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I know the word is, I don't
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: know how it's spelled. And people are like, wait, but
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: that doesn't, what?
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: In what world does looking at a word mean I
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: remember the order of the letters? That makes no sense.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: And then you get those cool little memes where it's like, oh,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: did you know that actually people can read any order
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: of words of letters that they want? As long as
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: the first and last letter are the same. And it's like, oh,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: I'm so clever.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: Then you're reading it and the letters are all out
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: of order, but you can still read it just fine.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: It's just fine. Absolutely fine. No problem.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: I think it's as long as the first and the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: last letter are the same and all the rest of
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: the letters are there, you can pretty much read them
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: in any order.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. I'm like, yeah, that's how my brain works anyway.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: This is like very, very similar to my reading experience anyhow.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: So then the letter comes in from Rand and Elaine
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: reads it after the sort of catching up with Avienda. Right.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: Guard comes in. Rand drops off the letter. Rand is,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: you know, reverse psychologizing Elaine into being there so he
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: can convince her to support him so that when he
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: convinces her to support him, everybody else who's on her
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: side will have no choice but to come along. Right.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: She doesn't know all that, but she's like, this feels
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: very days. They are. And it's like it is if you're,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: you know, Sanderson. Yeah.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's writing it so that Elaine can see her
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: own education in Rand's choice of words.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I do feel like she's pandering
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: to him just a little bit or he's pandering to
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: her just a little bit.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: But it works.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: It works. Yeah, it absolutely works.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: But also he's telling her to do something she was
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: going to do anyway. So of course it worked. Right.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: The barrier to entry is pretty because she's not so
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: petty that she's going to do like an oppositional defiance disorder.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: Like I just like, well, now that you've asked me,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not doing it. Right. She's not going to be
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: that little claymation penguin. She's she's going to still do it. So,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's like he really couldn't have fucked that
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: up enough to make her not come. But yeah, it's
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: it's a moment for Sanderson to show, look, this is
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: how Elaine's feelings towards Rand are.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: Right. And the confrontation to me is just silly because
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: it's like, I want to break the seals. And she's like, yes,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: you should break them just later. And he should be like, oh, yeah,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: that makes sense. And I think he's like skeptical. And
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: I'm like, wait, why are you skeptical? How do you
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: not understand that the timing is important?
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: Well, he does as soon as she presents it.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: I feel I'll have to go look at that confrontation again.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because he gives Egwene the seals and says, all right,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: you want the timing to be right? You do it.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: And then they're not the actual seals. And then we
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: have the whole.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: Right, right. But like, as soon as she presents that argument,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: he's like, well, that's a really convenient argument because I
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: was hoping you would be the one to handle it, actually.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: So it's, yeah, Rand has built this up as a great,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: huge confrontation. And it turns out to be a nothing
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: burger because as soon as they both explain their positions...
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: everyone's on board and it's fine. But no, they have
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: to do this whole great big chessboard setup thing beforehand
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: because of course the other one's not going to understand.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: And that's what this is all about, is Rand not
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: believing that Egwene will listen to reason.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's the thing that really is like
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: this whole like, how do I convince him to listen
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: to reason? How do I convince her to listen to reason?
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know, try reason. It works. It works really well.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: And even Perrin says it. He's like, oh, Egwene's a
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: smart girl. She'll, or Elaine's a smart girl. She'll figure
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: it out.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, everyone that they both bounce their ideas off
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: of is like, well, why don't you just talk to
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: him about it? And then like, well, that won't work.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: And then they go and talk to him about it.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: And then it works. And it's like all of your
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: friends were correct the whole time.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: Also, you two are married. Talk it out like a
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: married couple.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: It's it's very silly. But, you know, he feels the
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: need to manipulate her at arm's length, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: And she's like, well, it makes me mad, but I'm
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: also proud of him. So I guess I'll continue to
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: do the logical thing, which is be a queen about it.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: And then Avienda says, so cool. As long as you're good,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go fuck Rand tonight, right? Peace.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: But then she's also like, could we get Min in
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: here so that we can all, the three of us,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: just agree that I'm going to go fuck Rand tonight?
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: Can I get permission from both of you? Because, like,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: I don't really feel like I know Min that well,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: even though we're, you know, it's like, and we're just
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: going to have to, like, wartime say, like, you know what? Whatever. Whatever. Yeah.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Avienda says, I need to sleep with Rand tonight. And
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: I know you're cool with it, but could we please
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: get Min in here? So that way, like, this is cool, cool.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: Because I need to get knocked up with quadruplets. And
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: this is my only chance.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: And I mean, Min had plenty of opportunity.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: Right. But, you know, it's one of those she just
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: wants to talk to Min, like, and have at least
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: a superficial nod to the fact that we should get
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: to know each other better before this boundary gets crossed.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: But we can't.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: So.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: They get to have a conversation about it before she
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: gets knocked up with quadruplets.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: Although, in fairness, Avienda doesn't bring it up. It is
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: Elaine who says, have you spent time with Min?
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: And then she says, not enough. And I would remedy
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: that lack immediately. And then she's the one that says,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: I would speak to her together with you if there
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: is time. And Elaine says, all right, I'm going to
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: arrange that. So it's communication. In my wheel of time.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: It's weird. It's unnatural.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's the three women making arrangements without Rand involved, but,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: you know, pretty close.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: Well, we know that he's going to be down.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, there is that point where I think Avienda
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: shows up later and he's like, I'm never going to
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: choose which one of you I see, am I? And
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: they're like, nope, you don't get to make that choice.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: That's on us. Right.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: Because Jordan was, you know, quoted as being like, yeah,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: that was an arrangement I was in and it was cool.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: I just let them decide. And that was great.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: He's like, if my dumb ass could get two women,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: then surely the hero of my story can get three.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Right. And he's like, yeah, Rand isn't going to care.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: Rand's in love with all of them. So whichever one
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: comes to him, he's going to be pleased as punch
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: about it. Marzipan, I just don't like that.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So we're going to talk about that later for sure.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: But men's viewing and Avienda's kids... And the fact there
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: are four of them, and there's something weird about them.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: And in Avienda's vision, the weird thing is that they're
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: holding the power the whole time. But there's a lot
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: of people who think, oh, well, the first two maybe,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: or maybe she has twins with Bran's body, and then
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: he comes back and bangs her in Moradin's body, and
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: then she has Moradin's kids. Genetically. Because it's not even
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: his body, right, originally. Whoever that fucking tall, dark, and
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: handsome dude was that he stole the body of.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Whoever that guy was.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: Poor dude, right?
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: That's why I don't like the idea of Moradin's body
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: being the father of any of her children. Because I'm like,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: that guy is so dead. Like, he shouldn't be having
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: his genes reproduced just because someone else is driving his body.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: That's just necrophilic. I don't know.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: It just bothers me. Yeah, like, where does the body
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: come from that Moradin inhabits? It's not, I mean, it's
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: probably a Borderlander body, but you're always like, is somebody
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: going to recognize that body? Is it a dark friend
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: who was raised up in the town? What, like, what
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: happened to that body before? Like, it's, it's, that's weird.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: It's uncomfortable.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: Or is it some rando from, like, Sean Chan or
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: Land of the Mad Men? You know, where is he
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: pulling these bodies from? We don't know.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: Still weird.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: Chances are it's a Borderlander.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: I assume it's a Borderlander. but I don't like it.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that's how the chapter ends, is them conversing
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: about needing to arrange a three-way conversation that does not
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: include the fourth, because he's Rand. He'll be fine. He'll
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: be happy with whatever they give him.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: He's busy, too.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: Also, he's busy. Yeah, this is not a conversation he
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: needs to be involved in. This part of the conversation
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: does not involve him. And yeah, that's the chapter.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: It's a fun chapter. And I think... There's a good
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: amount in there with the bonding, but I'm also, we're
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: doing two chapters next time.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: Yes, we are doing a double header next week.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: Which makes sense because I think they're just one's continuation.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: It's one of those chapters where they're, you know, the
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: events don't actually break. It just continues from one chapter
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: right into the next through the events of both. But yeah, that's,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to be like into the final book. We're
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: just like, things are happening. Planning is happening. We're on
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: the field of Marilor, which is where the last battle
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: will take place. I always think that's kind of a
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: cool detail that you come back around to this field
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: of Marilor that was just the planning field. I think
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: making it the final battle place made a lot of sense.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: It was nice and symmetric. I was very happy with
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: that choice, I think, when it happened in the books.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: Because there's that first half where we are in the
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: four different battles, and that's kind of cool. But then
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: to bring it together into one climactic battle, even cooler.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: The last battle of the last battle, right? It has
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: to all come down to one thing.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: It's a good symmetry.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: Stuff is spinning up real fast, right? Sanderson's not going
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: to take too long to get into the action because
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: there is so much action to get to.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: Right. Right. Because, yeah, you want most of the last
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: book to be the last battle. Right.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: It's been built up for decades and tomes, dozen tomes
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: have been building this up. You're going to need a
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: whole book just to make the payoff real.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: Right. And so, like, there is a little bit of
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: buildup in this book just to make the book structure work.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: But for the most part, like, the last battle is happening, right?
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: The Battle of Camelon, you know, he even says it
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: in this chapter. Like, I consider the last battle to
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: have begun the moment Camelon was invaded.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Absolutely. I totally count that as the opening skirmish
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: of the war.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: And not Lan's charge, because that hasn't happened yet.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: Correct. Lan is very much building towards it, but it
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: hasn't quite pitched off yet.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: Because I would say that's the first, if the skirmish
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: in Camelon, the battle in Camelon is the opening battle
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: of the last battle, I would say the attack on
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: Tarwin's Gap is the opening of the war.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: In a way that like, you know, you can always have,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: there's always that moment where like, oh yeah, there was
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: a skirmish over here and there was a battle over
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: there and these people got in a bar fight and like,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: but then there's the moment where it's like, we are
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: at war and we are fighting a war. Right.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: Right, totally. Yeah, and Tarwin's gap is so symbolic from
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: book one, right?
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, that's kind of got to be
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: a really central, like, and now here we go. There's
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: no arguing about it. It's happening now.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, they must be running over all the bodies
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: buried under the avalanche that Rand created in the first book, right?
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: A whole two years ago. They're not even going to
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: be all rotted and just bones and blown away yet.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: And there was a lot of Trollocs in that.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: A lot of Trollocs. He destroyed a significant army up there.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: Is the last battle at Tarwyn's Gap? There is a
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: certain amount of just like, that's the border between our
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: world and their world. So it makes sense that that's
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: where the battle would be.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: Almost like a physical bore.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. But then strategically, it's just a pass. Right.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: But it's a pass that's very relevant to how humans
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: have set up where their cities are and where their
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: trade routes are. And that's all that Trollocs want, right?
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: Is to destroy the human world.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: And because they can't go through gateways, but then you
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: have the way gates. Yeah. Yeah. That's the other thing
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: that I often think about, though. Like, how did the
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: dark forces get all their forces to Marilor? Like, why
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: was all of the dark Trollocs and everybody? How did
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: they gather at Marilor that quickly? That's one thing I
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: don't really I'm not really sure I understand from having
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: read these books because I thought they were a little
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: more scattered. And then I know how all the good
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: guys got there. Right. They have gateways. But how did
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: the bad guys get there?
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of way gates and portal stones
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: and just the few places where people aren't looking can
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: just be constantly pouring shadow spawn out, right? If you've
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: got even just a couple of gateways or portal stones
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: that you can consistently use and then sneak those forces
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: out of the sight of the human population.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: The numbers of the last battle don't always make sense.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: Voogee is asking... Was Tarwyn's Gap, you know, what side
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: of Tarwyn's Gap is Merilor on, right?
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it does kind of get presented as
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: like Malkir was north of everything and everyone.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: It does. And if you look on the map, I think,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: let's see, it does appear... Malkir is north of Faldara,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: and Tarwin's Gap sort of goes up the side of Malkir,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: like the mountain ran down the side of Malkir and
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: dumps into Faldara.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, so the gap is kind of at the corner
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: between the two countries.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: And the Blight? Like, there's an L border between Faldara
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: and Malkir, and it's like the only way to get
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: to Faldara from Malkir would be to go into the
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: Blight and then back through Tarwin's Gap.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: Well, that seems inefficient.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. It seems a little weird. It's the
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: mountains looking at just the map. The mountains are kind
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: of just squiggly in there. It's hard to really tell
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: what would be passable and what's not just based on,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: you know, the hand-drawn map. Sure. Yeah, that's a weird one.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: Because it appears that he put Malkiar. I mean, Malkiar
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: is clearly in the Blight. It's been taken over by
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: the little Blight. We know that for a fact. But
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: then what good is Tarwin's Gap if you had a
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: civilization on the other side of Tarwin's Gap this whole time?
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like, are all the Borderlands just fake Borderlands
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: until Malkir falls? Is that what Shiner's doing? Is being
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: like a pretend thing? Like, did they have to step
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: up just 20 years ago to become a Borderland? Like,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: that's not part of their lore. They've been a Borderland forever,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: Right. So it is that weird, like, Malkir is really
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: drawn like it's always been in the Blight. Yeah.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: Kind of funky.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: Because you can't have a pass that is the only
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: pass between the Blight and the regular world. And have
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: Malkir be on the other side of that. Or be
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: on this side of it and be taken over by
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: the Blight, because then the Blight would be on this
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: side of it.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: Right. It's like Malkir was almost like the good town
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: or something. Like living in the Blight.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: Because in Eye of the World, don't they pass through
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: Tarwyn's Gap to go to Melk before they get to Melkir?
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: Do I remember that correctly? Right. They're in Faldara. Right.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: Because the soldiers are coming up to the Gap.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Right.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: Like they just poured out of their home castle and
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: went to the Gap. Like they didn't travel across a
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: whole other country.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: So they went through the Gap and only after they're
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: through the Gap do we see the lakes of Malkier. Yeah.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: And that's in the blight. So this whole time Malkier
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: had to be on the other side of the gap. Yeah.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: Which meant that Malkier was just exposed this entire time
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: to the forces of the blight. It's like, why the
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: hell didn't it fall earlier?
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, seriously.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: So Rand and company did not go through the gap
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: because they were traveling to the gap. See, I'm so confused.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: He looks down on the gap when he's doing his
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: whole vision in the sky Hulk smash thing. The gap
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: figures largely into the experience at the end for Rand,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: but yeah, not for anyone else. Right. That's where the
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: soldiers were mad because they were getting sent. They wanted
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: to go up. They had to escort them up to
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: the edge of the blight instead of going to the gap.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: That was specifically, Inktar was all grouchy about it.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: So the only way this makes sense to me is if,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: The Blight is on the other... It has basically gone
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: over the mountains at this point. That, like, the Trollocs
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: and everybody living in the Upper Blight, there's, like, this
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: sort of semi-Blight area that a lot of things aren't
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: inhabiting because they can't get over the mountains, but it's
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: still blighted plants. But it's not, like, a land of
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: Trollocs or a land of Dark Friends. Yeah.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: That's what makes sense.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: That Malkier being in the Blight doesn't mean that it's on... Because...
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: They went to the Blight. They passed through Mal'kyr.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: Well, they passed by the lakes anyway.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: And the gap has... The only way for the gap
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: to be effective is if it's the only way through
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: the mountains. The mountains have to be on the other
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: side of Mal'kyr. But the Blight has to be on
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: this side of the mountains. Yeah, that's, I think, where
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: I'm getting confused. Because it feels like the mountains should
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: be the border between the Blight.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: But it's not.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: But it's not. Yeah.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: You just have to accept that the Blight is creep
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: crawling over the mountains.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: But the mountains are still a barrier to the armies
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: of the Dark One.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: Right, right. Because obviously there's other ways through the mountains
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: if you're like a goat or a small group of adventurers.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: It's moving armies that the gap is really critical for.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: Moving masses of people and carts and wheeled things and
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: all that.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: Got it. Okay. Okay. I'm willing to concede this paradox
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: if the Blight gets over the mountains and the armies can't.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: No, but Marzipan is like, no.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Moraine said she'd only ever get to the
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: eye on the other side of the mountains, but the
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: blight was on this side of the mountain. So the
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: blight has to have crossed the mountains.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: Well, and they talk about how the blight used to
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: be like 20 miles away at this border post. You
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: couldn't even see it, but now it's here. Like the
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: concept of it advancing very rapidly in the last, well,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: since Malkir fell is very real.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: But that just means Malkir must have been exposed so
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: badly all of those years.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: Like Malkier feels in a lot of ways, like not
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: like a borderland town, but like a town that's in
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: the other country. Right. It's not along the border. It's
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: like poking out into and like, you know, is almost
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: defending all of its borders.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's almost like a colonial outpost instead of holding
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: the line border town.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: And if you look at the map, right. The Blight's
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: pretty much a straight line, and then Malkir's, like, way
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: up into... Yeah.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: But also thinking about the way that the world has
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: evolved over the last 3,000 years, presumably there were other
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: nations like Malkir who have all fallen over the last.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: Hmm, that's a good.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: thousand years, and Malkir's the last one to get, you know,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: its bubble popped, essentially.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: That's a good question.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: Right, as humans retreat and the Dark One expands over
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: centuries upon centuries... Otherwise, it feels weird that Malkir is there.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: That feels strange. But if it's like the Blight has
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: been slowly chewing them up from west to east.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: Well, and don't forget it's reversed in Sean Chan, right?
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: The Sean Chan have beaten back the Blight and taken
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: and completely eliminated it from their continent. Because they have
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: the animals.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: From other planes.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, through the portal worlds. Yes.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: I really want to know more canon about Sean Chan.
• 1:22:56
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• 1:23:49
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• 1:23:52
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• 1:23:57
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• 1:24:01
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