Latest / WoT Spoilers / To Make an Anchor Weep & Call to a Sitting - Knife of Dreams chapters 22 & 23 - EP496

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To Make an Anchor Weep & Call to a Sitting - Knife of Dreams chapters 22 & 23 - EP496 · WoT Spoilers

• 0:12
  This is the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast. Let's take into the chapters,
• 0:18
  because there's there are two long ones today. Yeah, double header, Yeah,
• 0:23
  we got a double header. A lot of names in this double header,
• 0:27
  a lot of names, a lot of descriptions of interpersonal dynamics, a
• 0:33
  lot of names, so many names. I did not look them all up
• 0:38
  because there's too many. Name Salad, because first we get the c folk
• 0:43
  name salad, and then we get the rebel tower name salad. This is
• 0:47
  so much, so much. We looked up the important ones. That's it,
• 0:52
  Yes, and the then chat will keep us on us if there's anyone
• 0:55
  we should have looked up that we didn't. Hopefully, but just because there's
• 0:59
  so many description, because there's a lot of we're covering a lot of territory
• 1:03
  we've covered before. You know, there's there. I don't have a lot
• 1:07
  of highlight density in these chapters, so that we may skip a few pages.
• 1:11
  Yeah, well we'll see, but uh it's gonna be, you know,
• 1:17
  an episode. We're gonna find what we can find. Chapter twenty two
• 1:23
  to make an anchor weep, and our symbol is the sea folk seagulls.
• 1:30
  It's the birds together despite the pitching induced by the long blue rollers. Hareen
• 1:37
  Dintogara sat very straight alongside her sister, just ahead of their parasol bearers and
• 1:42
  the steersman at his long tiller. Shallon seemed intent on studying the twelve men
• 1:47
  and women working the oars, or perhaps she was deep in thought. There
• 1:52
  was plenty to think on of late, not least this meeting Hareen had been
• 1:56
  summoned to, but she let her thoughts drift, blindly, composing herself every
• 2:01
  time the first twelve of the Atha Amir met since she had attained Ilion,
• 2:07
  she had needed to compose herself before attending. When she reached Tyr and found
• 2:10
  Zaida's blue gull still anchored in the river, she had been sure the woman
• 2:15
  was in Kainlyn yet, or at least trailing far behind her own wake,
• 2:19
  a painful mistake that though in truth, very little would have been altered had
• 2:23
  Zeida been weeks behind, not for herrine at least, no no thoughts of
• 2:30
  Zida. And I'll cut it there because it the next paragraph is very long
• 2:34
  and just gets us into description weeds. So yeah, I mean, basically
• 2:39
  this is all about there's a bunch of ships at anchor. That's you know,
• 2:43
  that's that's what I take about this beginning is the Athon Miir have completely
• 2:47
  crowded the harbor. There's not really a lot of a lot of places for
• 2:52
  many others. Yeah, what's happening is that the c folk are congregating to
• 2:55
  do a serious election, have a major meeting, and we're arriving at the
• 3:02
  end of them congregating to the point that the harbor is full to bursting,
• 3:07
  and then we get a very long description of what that looks like as our
• 3:10
  protagonist moves forward to the actual meeting, and it's lovely r J pros.
• 3:15
  But you know, there's nothing of plot reasons to get into. And we're
• 3:21
  in the head of Hareen, which, if you'll remember, she made a
• 3:24
  bargain with Rand she was distracted. Men prophesied that she would be the mistress
• 3:31
  of the way, of the mistress of the ships ships, thank you Jesus.
• 3:35
  Yes. And her sister Shallon is the one who had an affair with
• 3:38
  the Kyrian and woman Ailiel and they got blackmailed by Vern and kad Swain.
• 3:44
  All of that. That's her sister Shallon, Okay, okay, And they
• 3:47
  are together here on this boat. So that's sort of the background of who
• 3:51
  these people are. And I think this chapter really is just all about completing
• 3:54
  men's prophecy, right. I really think Jordan was like, well, we're
• 3:59
  not getting there yet. She's not Mistress of the Ships yet at the end
• 4:01
  of this no, no, but it's she's on that path, right,
• 4:05
  yes, yes, and we're you know, kind of we're just connecting because
• 4:09
  like these characters were at shadow Logoth, right, they were with Rand for
• 4:13
  a whole bunch of stuff. They witness shut our Logoth. They only recently
• 4:16
  left the cleansing at shadow Logoth specifically, yes, the cleansing. They were
• 4:20
  there for the cleansing, and they're now returning to their people, attempting to
• 4:26
  reinsert themselves and do their thing and you know, kind of meld back into
• 4:31
  sea folks society. And then you know, Logan shows up, and then
• 4:35
  the news of the Amai r happened, and it's just very like, this
• 4:39
  is the impact that is happening on the sea folk as a result of everything
• 4:44
  that has happened with Rand and the people who have interacted with Rand. We're
• 4:46
  getting payoff to that, or not really payoff. It's more just the fact
• 4:50
  that like things continue and are messy after the climax scene. I like that
• 4:57
  she references the Great Escape from Abu Dhar, which is we know, all
• 4:59
  ma right, that is the little spark, and then the Great Escape was
• 5:05
  the results. Yeah yeah, and that was also Matt could get away.
• 5:09
  Yeah, it's really really cool that he was able to make such an impact
• 5:13
  and like as a side quest on his own way out of at Boodhar that
• 5:17
  like he kind of set that fire to give him cover to escape, but
• 5:21
  it's now turned into this like massive rebellion and revolt and like important thing for
• 5:28
  the c folk, very teverean of him. And then the next little bit
• 5:31
  is sort of about how a bunch of ships were destroyed, so they have
• 5:34
  to make do with the ships that they have or they have to either go
• 5:36
  into debt to chance ships and they're like trying to make it work and it's
• 5:41
  all awkward and the culture of the boats is wrong. But yeah, I
• 5:45
  mean boats are expensive, yeah, both time and materially, like boats are
• 5:49
  really hard to build every now and then I fell down manufacturing boat rabbit holes
• 5:55
  on YouTube. It's just like there's just such a massive feat of engineering to
• 5:59
  build a boat water as corrosive as hell. Yeah, I mean these are
• 6:03
  made of wood. These are not like metal ships or anything with it.
• 6:05
  But still, I mean ships are huge, the huge. I mean England
• 6:12
  kind of dominated the world for a while because they built ships like that.
• 6:16
  Yeah, yeah, totally. They had good wood for good chips because yeah,
• 6:23
  the English forests had good old forest growth. It was really good for
• 6:26
  making boats out of emphasis on had. Yes, well they made a lot
• 6:31
  of boats. England is not noted for its old growth forests today. No,
• 6:38
  just you know, we cut down a lot of the forest everywhere.
• 6:41
  I mean, we're out in Oregon where it's like, wait, we can
• 6:44
  save two percent of the original old growth, aren't we awesome? Like,
• 6:48
  boy, it's amazing to look at maps of where the forest has been the
• 6:51
  old growth forest has been cut down. Yeah, and we wonder why there's
• 6:56
  no habitat for animals. Uh. Anyway, So the broad gray green harbor
• 7:02
  of Ilian, that's where we are. The world is falling apart. Oh
• 7:06
  and in the book, the world is falling apart. Yeah. Literally though,
• 7:15
  Like there's winds that are going across each other in ways that are like
• 7:18
  that's the thinning of the pattern. Moment. Things are screwy. Everything's odd.
• 7:21
  We're not thinking about that. Yeah, they's just icee wind springs up.
• 7:26
  It's very abruptly starts abruptly ends, not the way winds work. Again,
• 7:30
  I'm assuming just more evidence of I'm kind of assuming, Like you know,
• 7:35
  portal world like the world's are sort of kind of merging together. So
• 7:39
  like a wind from one world will like blow in another world and then go
• 7:43
  back to its own world, and that's where it's coming from and going that
• 7:46
  you have sort of the merging through Teleronriod the different worlds, yeah, virtual
• 7:50
  worlds, so to speak. And that's where you get qurridors switching and stuff
• 7:55
  like that, because like, oh, in that world, the quarter was
• 7:58
  built this way, but in this world the corridor was built way, and
• 8:00
  then you have a switch, right, And then that's why things seem to
• 8:05
  escalates as time goes on, Right, because the novices and the or the
• 8:09
  accepted and the brown Aja switching is way more improbable than a couple of back
• 8:16
  corridors in the palace that connect the servants corridors being a little bit, servants
• 8:20
  quarters being a little different, right, Like the throne room's always going to
• 8:22
  be in the same place regardless, Right, you'd think the ajas would be
• 8:26
  in the same place. So when that switch happens, it's like, well,
• 8:30
  that's clearly to put Agwainn in the best position to deal with the Shaun
• 8:33
  Chin attack because Taveran, I mean, that's what that one's about. Like,
• 8:35
  let's be real, right, the physicists. The part of me that
• 8:39
  things Robert Jordan was a physicist makes me go, is he like trying to
• 8:43
  portray quantum effects happening on a metal scale where things are just like switching places
• 8:46
  randomly because they're like quantum tunneling into each other, is like non locality,
• 8:52
  a thing like I don't know, it's just interesting way to think about multi
• 8:56
  worlds, right, because that's the whole thing with them physics. Right,
• 9:00
  you look at one of the ways you can interpret the waves is that when
• 9:03
  you measure something and all the possibilities collapse, what you're actually doing is,
• 9:11
  you know, choosing a path, and all the other universes still exist out
• 9:13
  there, right, and all of them have chosen one of those paths.
• 9:16
  And so this is this idea of multi worlds that seems supportive by the way
• 9:22
  Robert Jordan writes his alternate worlds in the Wheel of Time is that every time
• 9:28
  someone makes a choice, you get these these worlds that spring up. Now
• 9:30
  they seem to be fainter, but they still seem to be able to overlap,
• 9:33
  and the Dark One collapsing them all into one, right, you know,
• 9:37
  and that goes I mean man, And this is where I can go
• 9:41
  back to my theory of like is the dark One at the center of the
• 9:43
  wheel. And that's why there's only ever one last battle is because no matter
• 9:48
  when the wheel turns, the battle only ever happens once to the Dark One.
• 9:52
  That's why if he's defeated once, he's defeated always right, which would
• 9:56
  bring the wheel to an end in a different way. So right happen.
• 10:01
  There's some critiquing of the shan Chan boats. That's fun. There's three levels
• 10:07
  on the stern castle and balconies, and just like the mental head desking at
• 10:13
  the design, it just I enjoy that, like the seafolk are and their
• 10:16
  boat stuff is not generally the most interesting, but like the scorn at shan
• 10:20
  Chan design, well, shan Chan design is designed for nobles to be abled
• 10:26
  to go out on their balconies and enjoy the ocean, right, Like they
• 10:30
  don't care if that makes the ship heavier and slows it down and fucks with
• 10:33
  its you know profile. Right, So the sea folk are always going to
• 10:37
  have slightly faster ships than the shan Chan. Yeah, much more nimble and
• 10:43
  sturdy. But I also imagine that the sean Chan built these specifically to get
• 10:48
  across the ocean, right, and they were like, we're going to use
• 10:52
  this much weather magic. We're going to have this kind of stress on the
• 10:56
  boats. We're going to be bringing these level of important dignitaries. Like there's
• 11:00
  a bunch of weird political hierarchy and like magic engineering. I think that went
• 11:03
  into like this is the colony ships. These are not just random shipping vessels
• 11:07
  that we repurpose. These were built to purpose. It's also you don't need
• 11:11
  to be quite as fast when you can just blow the other ship out of
• 11:13
  the water in distance. Yeah, like this is the sea folk have optimized
• 11:18
  for trade. They it's a completely different set of values. Just like logistically,
• 11:26
  so they get to the boat, they head up into the boat.
• 11:30
  They're the last ones to arrive, so we get the entire room responding to
• 11:33
  Herrena, and she's basically a social pariah. She got beaten. In this
• 11:37
  room, they're all looking down on her, except for like one woman who's
• 11:41
  kind of her friend. They leave the ring in the ceiling that she was
• 11:45
  strong from to a reminder of it. It's like, oh, yeah,
• 11:48
  that's still there. That's that's weird. The whole hanging upside down and being
• 11:54
  beaten thing that the seafolk have as a specific punishment is just so weird to
• 11:58
  me. And yet leaving the ring bolt there, I was just like,
• 12:00
  God, you had to make the weirdness extra weird, like so weird.
• 12:05
  I feel like Jordan took the saying string you up in the rigging and like
• 12:09
  made it just a little too literal among the c folk. That's kind of
• 12:11
  what he does is he takes a figure of speech and he's like, but
• 12:15
  what if Literally though he does that, a lot legends fade to myth and
• 12:20
  things that happen fade into weird sayings, and he's saying, maybe that's the
• 12:24
  origin of those sayings. I dislike that. I guess you're probably right because
• 12:31
  that's clearly what he's doing. So everything that keeps Harren going is the fact
• 12:35
  that she will be Mistress of the Chips on one day, even though she's
• 12:39
  a social pria, even though she's been punished for failing. She's like,
• 12:41
  doesn't matter, I will be which you know again one of those sayings that
• 12:48
  I'm like, oh, you'll be queen one day, I'm like, for
• 12:50
  how long? Sure? Today? Sure? Right? How much suffering do
• 12:54
  I have to go through to be queen for a day and then get my
• 12:56
  head cut off? Right? Like that's not necessarily going to be a good
• 12:58
  thing, right right? And then even in this chapter, she thinks,
• 13:05
  you know, at this point, she's thinking about how like, you know,
• 13:07
  despite having been beaten, that's not enough to dissuade her, But having
• 13:11
  to go back to cad Swain might actually dissuade her for this ambition. And
• 13:15
  that's what they're gonna ask of her, you know, is to go back
• 13:18
  and be in proximity to cad Swain. That's ultimately what they're gonna ask.
• 13:22
  And she's like, wait, I thought that I was willing to do anything,
• 13:24
  but actually here's the one thing I won't do. And I find that's
• 13:26
  a really interesting fun twist with characters when they issue some ultimatum about what their
• 13:33
  line is or how they don't have a line, and then immediately they find
• 13:37
  it like no, so what about this one thing? Like I'm willing to
• 13:41
  give up anything? No, wait, not that, Like so it's fun.
• 13:45
  It's a fun thing to see. It goes hand in hand with Robert
• 13:46
  Jordan loving to prove his characters wrong. Right, this is just another way
• 13:50
  of them being like, I will not cross this line, cross his line.
• 13:54
  You know. It's it's basically always sunny, right, Like yeah,
• 14:00
  so Zaida strolls on in, She's very full of herself and is like,
• 14:05
  well, the messengers not here yet. We should make him wait. How
• 14:09
  very rude. But then, of course Logain is in the act of arriving,
• 14:13
  as she says that, because he was waiting for Harena to arrive before
• 14:16
  he arrived. So, you know, it's a bunch of posturing to prove
• 14:22
  that the seafolk are annoying in petty rather than actually doing anything interesting for the
• 14:26
  plot. Right. I did like that they talked about how there's no one
• 14:30
  can make a gateway large enough to sail a ship through, and how that
• 14:33
  does kind of limit the sea folk, and like how you don't see in
• 14:37
  a lot of ways. It's Robert Jordan putting limits on, Like, yeah,
• 14:39
  we're not going to be sailing boats through gateways and coming to the rescue.
• 14:45
  Right, there's not going to be these you know, ships aren't going
• 14:46
  to be able to move through the sea an instant. You're gonna have to
• 14:50
  sail through the waters like everybody else because we can't make gateways big enough.
• 14:52
  Right, even Rand, the most powerful person in the world, can make
• 14:56
  a gateway just about big enough to ride a horse through. Right. You
• 15:00
  can use a circle to make them for like a wagon and team to get
• 15:03
  through. And I think we see andral you know, George Sanderson takes that
• 15:09
  to the limit and pushes it to the limit by making a giving them a
• 15:11
  full circle, and B giving him a talent. So both of those push
• 15:16
  it to a bigger, bigger size, right, And even then he calls
• 15:20
  it a miracle to do something bigger even than the guy doing it. It's
• 15:22
  like, this is not your standard everyday weave. This is the thing I'm
• 15:26
  doing because apocalypse. Mm hmm. We've got Amilla. I don't want to
• 15:33
  say that a Miila, Amelia Amelia. Yeah, is it brown? Aja?
• 15:39
  I should care more? But she apparently just did a I'm gonna research
• 15:43
  you and like kind of like thing that I said I do, where they
• 15:48
  think they're better than everyone else in their dignity is so much. And then
• 15:50
  the c folk, with their weirdly antagonistic relationship with teachers, is you know,
• 15:56
  teaching her a very different way to be. And it's said little side
• 16:00
  story that's happening off to the corner. Just yeah, and pretty consistent with
• 16:03
  all the ice that I who try and teach the sea folk as they learn
• 16:07
  humility very quickly. Mm hmm, yeah, I like how to hear She's
• 16:11
  like, does she not know she should have served the mistress to the ships
• 16:14
  first, then followed the wave mistress by seniority. It's like, no,
• 16:17
  she has no idea, she's not part of your society. Yeah, that's
• 16:21
  something that the ayeal also really do specifically, is like, well, this
• 16:26
  really really intricate hierarchy ranking thing should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer.
• 16:30
  And it's one of those ways that the seafolk and aye are very much foils
• 16:33
  for each other in some ways because they take such weird little rituals for absolutely
• 16:38
  Grant and the shan Chan too. Everyone does it to a certain extent.
• 16:41
  But yeah, they're like, the silly woman, doesn't she know it should
• 16:45
  be bi seniority? Why would she know that? That's so random? At
• 16:51
  least the sean Chan train their servants right, like they give them a chance.
• 16:56
  I no, no, I think not. We get some critiques of
• 17:06
  Herrena's performance as a diplomat. Herene thinks about how those critiques surely seem fair
• 17:12
  to anyone who wasn't there. But they weren't there, so they don't get
• 17:15
  to critique. But she doesn't say that, she just thinks it. And
• 17:18
  then look again, is here just within the time that that exchange happens,
• 17:23
  they're just wiling away the time before they decide to make the man wait,
• 17:26
  and then he's there already boom, and he comes up with the shocking idea
• 17:32
  of instead of trying to put the gateway anchor to a moving boat deck,
• 17:34
  is to anchor it above the boat deck and step down onto it. Yeah,
• 17:40
  just step from a stone dock down to the moving deck of a ship.
• 17:42
  It's not that complicated, right, So yeah, the epiphany they have
• 17:48
  when they're like, oh, I could do that too, is just like
• 17:51
  forehead slappingly obvious, like, yeah, no, that's how you You just
• 17:56
  anchor something above the deck. But you know, I think he's trying to
• 17:59
  just show how arl they're thinking is about ships, right, that's all they
• 18:02
  think about, is like being on a ship that is stable to them.
• 18:06
  Yeah, they are a little bit cartoonishly limited in their shipping metaphors. It's
• 18:11
  kind of like how Swan can't say anything without it being about fish and both
• 18:15
  right, right, The folk are very like if it can't be applied to
• 18:18
  how I already use a ship, it doesn't make sense. And it's it's
• 18:22
  fun, but it gets funny to the point of absurd sometimes, And yeah,
• 18:29
  this being an epiphany does feel a little bit absurd, Like, come
• 18:32
  on, they're smarter than that. They can see how this would work surely
• 18:36
  anyway. Yeah, So nobody recognizes Logan as he walks in, but they
• 18:41
  start to recognize his outfit and then he announces himself and they're like, oh,
• 18:45
  my goodness, this is actually an honor. This is actually dramatic.
• 18:51
  This is cool kind of I hear kat me eweing. Yeah, chef,
• 18:56
  So, I don't know if any of you saw earlier, but a radio
• 19:00
  our cat last Wednesday, so right out of the day after we recorded,
• 19:04
  was attacked outside and bit by another cat I'll say about four times on the
• 19:11
  butt. He is healing well and is just on antibiotics and he's doing fine,
• 19:15
  but he is trapped inside with the cone around his head and he is
• 19:18
  not happy about that, and he is letting us know. So if you
• 19:23
  do hear a cat in the background yowing curiously, it's because he's not allowed
• 19:27
  to go outside where he was attacked by another cat until he fully heals.
• 19:32
  Poor baby. Yeah, but he's been very affectionate and very happy and very
• 19:37
  drugged. Speaking of not affectionate and not happy, the Eyes to Die responds
• 19:44
  very badly to Logan announcing himself, and she's like, but he's tainted.
• 19:48
  It's so terrible because she apparently is super out of the loop. And Logan
• 19:52
  lets everyone know that no, the One Power is no longer tainted. Everything's
• 19:57
  fine, and that he hasn't eaten anyone for breakfast in a while. And
• 20:02
  he's very nice to her, even though she's ridiculous. They are just returning
• 20:04
  from the cleansing, right like, it's not like this has been a long
• 20:08
  time. This is literally her being like, oh, we just got back
• 20:12
  from that thing that happened, right, Like, that is true. The
• 20:17
  timeline again is like a month or two, and that's not a long time,
• 20:22
  especially in a world where you know, I know, we're just traveling
• 20:26
  faster with gateways, but still it takes a while to ride from one side
• 20:30
  of the country to the other, and very few people actually have access to
• 20:33
  gateways. And I think the pigeon networks are probably completely disrupted at this point.
• 20:38
  I mean, everyone's probably eating the pigeons. Let's let's be frank,
• 20:44
  there's probably not a lot of safe places to be a pigeon. No,
• 20:49
  that's that's I'd never thought of that, But you're right, like the Male
• 20:53
  network is suffering because of famine. Oof, that is dark. I mean,
• 21:00
  let me just say, there's not a lot of news and pigeons leaving
• 21:04
  Aradimon with the starvation going on there. Sure, Logan reassures them with saying
• 21:23
  it's a long time since I ate anyone for breakfast, which is kind of
• 21:27
  I kind of like the joke, but it's also kind of a bad joke.
• 21:30
  Yeah, it feels like, but you did eat people for breakfast,
• 21:34
  like literally though, So yeah, like you were a murderous kind of started
• 21:41
  a war and like raged across the continent and were like the Dragon Reborn for
• 21:45
  a while. So you are kind of a terrifying figure who could also be
• 21:48
  insane. I don't care that Sadine is cleansed now. You were tainted,
• 21:52
  and you could still go insane, because all the Aushamans still have insane things
• 21:57
  in their brain. Cleansing the tank did not save them, as we learned
• 22:03
  later, they did not cleanse their minds for sure, right right, But
• 22:07
  he's here to not to reassure them about the power. That's sort of a
• 22:11
  bye the bye. He's here to tell them the Dragon Reborn is calling in
• 22:15
  the service that you owe him, which is to transport food for a million
• 22:19
  refugees. So you know, I need all your ships of your entire nation,
• 22:23
  all of them. And as we were going into the scene, remember
• 22:27
  we were thinking about how many ships were lost and how hard it's going to
• 22:30
  be to replace them, and how they have to use these really subpar ships
• 22:36
  from the Great Escape. In the meantime, Like he's asking for a lot
• 22:40
  even without all of that loss of craft, and with that loss of craft,
• 22:45
  I mean, that's a really big ask. And so this is the
• 22:49
  they bring the grain. This is the grain that's quote unquote bad until Randon
• 22:53
  goes back and cuts it back open again, and he's like, you only
• 22:56
  open the bad sacks. Right, that's that's all this grain, and that
• 23:00
  gets delivered. Right. There's a scene even with the sea folk on their
• 23:03
  ships being like, I was set here by the dragon to deliver food,
• 23:07
  but I'm not being allowed to deliver it. So I guess I'm just sitting
• 23:11
  in the harbor waiting for something to change. That literally exchange happens right as
• 23:18
  they right before they opened the correct the correct sects that actually weren't spoiled.
• 23:22
  Ha ha ha. How convenient. And so while they're sort of arguing over
• 23:26
  this and debating back and forth, in comes the news about the ameer.
• 23:32
  Yes, a messenger in distress is given priority in the middle of the back
• 23:36
  and forth to deliver her terrible news, which is the news that will make
• 23:41
  an anchor weep. Right. That's our chapter title right there, yes,
• 23:45
  and I mean it's yeah, basically she stopped at all the islands between Tramalking
• 23:48
  and here, but always you know, basically, the news of the children
• 23:55
  call melting right, essentially ninive melting. The children call the female children call
• 24:00
  created fulfill the prophecy. Now, okay, where is that prophecy from?
• 24:06
  Is it a real prophecy the end of is it misinterpreted? Like? Is
• 24:11
  it a dark friend prophecy? What's going on with the prophecy? They give
• 24:15
  a name for it. I forget what the name is. They have a
• 24:22
  name for it. Anyway, they almost three weeks ago they decided to spread
• 24:30
  the word it's time for the suicide cult to go full suicide cult, right,
• 24:36
  And I think that's why it's hard for us to necessarily have the empathy
• 24:40
  for them that we do for some of these other cultures that are dying out
• 24:44
  that are sworn to non violence, Like it feels like they're to me,
• 24:48
  it feels like they are violating the way of the Leaf by killing themselves and
• 24:52
  killing the children. So we should talk about who the ami r are,
• 24:56
  right, Yes, clearly, I think it's very very obvious that the Amai
• 25:00
  are are to the sea folk what the gen were to the fighting au Right.
• 25:04
  For whatever reason, through whatever twisting of fate, there was a contingent
• 25:10
  of Aeel I'm assuming who went into the boats with a bunch of other refugees
• 25:15
  and were held aside and revered and protected as that culture on the waves developed.
• 25:22
  And then they get set on these islands and they do their whole thing.
• 25:25
  But they are the gen of the water. That is the reverence with
• 25:29
  which these sea folks seem to hold them. And I'm assuming that they have
• 25:33
  a similar origin story in the seafolk or just whoever. And I assume they
• 25:37
  follow the way of the leaf, right we have the genera is the same
• 25:41
  thing, the same thing, right right, Yeah, And so they're following
• 25:44
  the waterway. But they have this additional prophecy, which is that at the
• 25:48
  end of illusion, when the hand on tremalking melted, they believe that's the
• 25:55
  end of time, the end of illusion, and that they should die,
• 25:59
  that it is time for to leave. And that wording to me really strikes
• 26:03
  my ear because of the o gear thing translation order for us to come here,
• 26:07
  we have to leave, and so this choice of words it is time
• 26:11
  for them to leave this illusion. It feels like a strange misinterpretation combo of
• 26:17
  iel beliefs about how the world is an illusion and we all wake from the
• 26:21
  dream, and that whole thing blended with the O Gear belief that in order
• 26:26
  for us to come into the world, we have to leave. It feels
• 26:30
  like some wires got crossed, and some weird mistranslations happened, and some I
• 26:34
  don't know messiema like cult leader got everyone wound up in the wrong direction,
• 26:41
  and what should have been some kind of asset to the last battle instead got
• 26:45
  taken off the board before the battle even started. That's how I, in
• 26:49
  my heart of hearts, feel like it's going. And that makes sense because
• 26:52
  you have the Ayel, who are the really the founders of all the people
• 26:57
  who later became the followers of the Way of the Leaf. Right, they
• 27:02
  changed and bred and became, you know, part of the sea folk,
• 27:03
  but they were the Ael who believed in that right. I firmly believe the
• 27:07
  ancestors of the air were the Iel of the sea folk. Right, they
• 27:11
  should have called it the Way of the Kelp Sea Leaf. Uh. But
• 27:21
  you have O Gear and Ieel working together doing the singing, so I can
• 27:23
  see how the legends of the O Gear may have translated over into that group
• 27:29
  of of of the Iel who later went on to become the following the Way
• 27:33
  of the Kelp but yeah, it's and I get the tragedy, but it's
• 27:37
  like, how is poisoning your children ever good? Like it just yeah,
• 27:47
  yeah, yeah, you're supposed you're making me. You're trying to ask me
• 27:52
  to feel equal empathy for the people who killed themselves as the or for the
• 27:57
  children who got killed as for the people who killed them right, because they
• 28:00
  also killed themselves. And it's like, yeah, I don't any any philosophy
• 28:07
  that leads to and then I kill my own child should be abandoned, Yeah,
• 28:15
  yeah, just evolutionarily wise, like they don't last very long. Don't
• 28:18
  do that change your philosophy if your philosophy says and now I must kill my
• 28:23
  child, Like, don't have that philosophy. Cease, cease to subscribe to
• 28:30
  that, please, And you know, basically what, the only reason I
• 28:33
  can see something like that that happening is when you're in a point where death
• 28:37
  is inevitable and suffering will occur. Well, sure, extreme circumstances obviously count
• 28:42
  as an exception. People's fucking imaginations can do the work on that. But
• 28:48
  like, obviously there are situations that are exceptions, and that's what the mir
• 28:52
  are facing. I believe that they are facing a point where they believe that
• 28:55
  continuing to exist in this world will lead to incredible suffering because of the last
• 28:59
  battle. Now, I think the beliefs are full of shit. I don't.
• 29:03
  I don't, I don't. I don't agree with them. I agree
• 29:06
  with you. I don't agree with them, because we see how the last
• 29:08
  battle is one. Yeah, I don't see what value they could have brought
• 29:12
  to the last battle. I don't see why they would have been targeted.
• 29:15
  I don't see what treasures they had, what resources they had, I don't
• 29:18
  see why their loss doesn't even seem to harm the seafolk that much. They're
• 29:23
  upset about it, but then it never comes up again. It doesn't impede
• 29:27
  their performance because we don't really see them for the rest of the books.
• 29:30
  They would have been fine on their islands doing nothing. Like maybe if there's
• 29:33
  been a line somewhere that, like during the fight between the Dragon and the
• 29:37
  Dark One, the seas became tidal wave and all the islands were swept away
• 29:41
  and the people, you know, save themselves a drowning death. You know,
• 29:48
  something like that would have at least given me some reason to be like,
• 29:51
  Okay, well they were all dead anyway, you might as well like
• 29:53
  take some poison, right, but then a bunch of them took slower poison
• 29:56
  that took days to take effect or whatever. And I'm like, a tsunami
• 30:00
  would kill you faster than that's true, generally, think, Yeah, it's
• 30:04
  like, what this is all that suffering? You're going through days of suffering?
• 30:07
  How what? How is that better than days of suffering? Like,
• 30:11
  yeah, couldn't you like why didn't you put all your children on boats and
• 30:15
  send them to the mainland as refugees and say like, oh, like,
• 30:18
  our islands are going to be destroyed, but our children are going to get
• 30:22
  saved. Like it's very And Robert Jordan, to my understanding, secondhand via
• 30:26
  the osmosis of the community, to my understanding, Robert Jordan thought that this
• 30:32
  was going to land a lot harder than it did. He thought that he
• 30:36
  was writing something that was really gonna punch us all in the gut and then
• 30:40
  we all just kind of shrugged, and that did not please him. This
• 30:45
  is what I have heard secondhand by osmosis through the community. I mean that
• 30:49
  I haven't heard that, but I believe it. Like there's nothing I can
• 30:53
  see where this is supposed to be a heart wrenching moment, but it's it's
• 30:59
  heart wrenching to the c folk who we've already had a hard time caring about,
• 31:03
  right, And it's supposed to be this other group of people who we've
• 31:07
  never heard about before really a couple of times, but like in passing and
• 31:12
  then and have kind of committed these horrific crimes against children. Yeah, so
• 31:18
  h I don't Yeah, I don't have the same I'm just like, okay,
• 31:22
  I don't don't do that. Then it's yeah, it's it's it's tough.
• 31:27
  It's tough to know why he wanted this to be impactful. But at
• 31:32
  the same time, right, like it is trying to sort of broach this
• 31:33
  idea of suicide in a way, but like, man, that's hard to
• 31:37
  talk about, Like what kind of pain were they suffering where they felt like
• 31:42
  it was better to leave this world than to continue? And I don't feel
• 31:47
  like there's a good argument for that, so, which means it makes it
• 31:48
  feel not particularly well written other than there was this prophecy, right yeah,
• 31:55
  which is like to what end right? Right? Yeah, It's it's weird,
• 32:01
  it should be. It is sad. The Amayr children are obviously children
• 32:06
  and thus valuable and shouldn't get killed. But yeah, the Amayar we have
• 32:10
  not spent enough time with to care about. And even we didn't spend that
• 32:14
  much time with the Jena Eel in the Glass Column chapters. But it was
• 32:19
  really impactful writing that made them matter in a very short period of time,
• 32:23
  and that was not deployed here in nearly the same kind of way. There
• 32:28
  was one POV during the cleansing. We have names for gen We don't have
• 32:31
  any names for them, Yeah, we do. There was the one person
• 32:34
  watched the who watched the thing light up and sat down and smiled to think
• 32:38
  that she would see the end of the age of Illusion. And it's like,
• 32:42
  oh, it's so dark and weird because it's like you're smiling thinking about
• 32:45
  how you're going to go poison your children, your entire kindergarten class because you're
• 32:50
  probably a teacher, so and you're going to go like happily poison them because
• 32:52
  the hand on the hill lit up because someone a thousand years ago decided that
• 32:58
  that was what was going to get them the late in their sex cult.
• 33:01
  And like, I just I just I feel like the a R Are a
• 33:07
  case of people tragically spiraling off on the wrong track a long time ago.
• 33:12
  I just I don't want it to just be like I wanted to be wrong.
• 33:16
  I want it to be something deeply in the world that's wrong and not
• 33:19
  just bad riding. Yeah you know, yeah, or at least some dark
• 33:22
  friend plot. I would like to see a sham l be involved somehow or
• 33:25
  something like that, where where it's like, Okay, maybe this was like
• 33:29
  fucked with by some forsaken back in the day. Give me something that gives
• 33:34
  this any significance whatsoever? Oh yeah, like maybe like maybe the bubbles of
• 33:37
  evil were gonna hit really hard and like weird stuff is gonna happen. Like
• 33:42
  they knew that they were going to be all hinders tappy or something, and
• 33:45
  they were like, no, the only way to escape going full hinderstap or
• 33:49
  whatever, right rights tap, Yeah, we've got to kill ourselves first before
• 33:53
  our souls are catchable in that kind of loop. Like, but we need
• 33:58
  to see that on page. We need to see them discussing it and debating
• 34:00
  it and like talking about how they might be wrong. We need to see
• 34:05
  it, or we need to see some sea folk investigating afterwards. Getting caught
• 34:07
  in it. Oh yeah, that would work, That would work. How
• 34:10
  did they know that this minefield was going to go off? Or and if
• 34:15
  it is just a jab at how cults are bad, then it still would
• 34:20
  have been nice to see that that was what happened, rather than having to
• 34:24
  headcanon around this weirdly unsatisfying hole or I mean, as you just trying to
• 34:29
  show that, like things ran do affect people in ways that he can't foresee,
• 34:32
  and his effected ripples across the land, and there's prophecies and modn prophecies
• 34:37
  that mean that things are going to happen that he can't control just by you
• 34:42
  know, fulfilling his life, right. I mean I would enjoy that if
• 34:45
  I cared about the people that was happening too. And RJ has proven himself
• 34:51
  able to make entire character vignettes in a paragraph, so like his choice not
• 34:55
  to do so here has to be interpreted as deliberate and that annoy me.
• 35:00
  And then Logan basically says, yeah, there's I don't care if there's any
• 35:05
  survivors. You're gonna do what you said you were gonna do, which is
• 35:07
  take all your ships and go get grain. Because these people kill themselves.
• 35:12
  And if you don't feed this nation, those people will die of starvation,
• 35:15
  which is cold but real. I mean we are in go time for the
• 35:20
  end of the world. And like you can mourn the dead or save the
• 35:23
  living, you can't do both. I mean he does say more and if
• 35:27
  you must, but mourn on the march, but like you know, you
• 35:29
  can you can focus on one or the other, you can't focus on both.
• 35:31
  And I think the last two chapters have ended with him saying, you
• 35:36
  know, on the march to Tarman Guiden, right, like Jordan is trying
• 35:39
  to say, like we are going to Tarmon Guiden. Yeah, right,
• 35:43
  You're going to air Domon to get ready for Tarmon Guiden. Is how you
• 35:46
  en the last one? And this one is more and if you must,
• 35:50
  but more on on the March for tarm and Guiden. So last two chapters
• 35:52
  both ending with on the March or on the go to Tarmon Guiden. So
• 35:59
  Jarnon's not fucking round and he was not kidding when he was like the next
• 36:00
  book is going to be the last one. He really really was attempting to
• 36:06
  write himself into that corner to make sure that it happened. He was doing
• 36:09
  everything he could could to tack into the wind of his own words. Right
• 36:15
  right, these armies are marching detarmin Guide and I can't stop them anymore.
• 36:20
  I have a limited timeline. I can only tell so many stories like things
• 36:24
  are going the characters are going to force themselves into battle wherever they are right
• 36:29
  now, the battle's happening, and I do because he's the kind of discovery
• 36:34
  writer. I do think he was like, Okay, I'm just gonna point
• 36:36
  these armies and the characters are gonna have to get there. Yeah. Yeah,
• 36:38
  He's like, I will write that bridge as I come to it and
• 36:43
  it'll be great. And that takes us end of that folk chapter. Yeah,
• 37:00
  chapter twenty three, call to a sitting and our symbol is the force
• 37:06
  snake in the Force snake. That's good. That's good. I like that.
• 37:10
  Can't I get that from you? I hope not. But maybe I
• 37:15
  got it from one of the podcasts that I listened to somewhere along the way.
• 37:20
  One of you is to blame for that. It's not me, actual
• 37:22
  property. I did not come up with it. One of you did.
• 37:28
  Maybe accerin Wheel Takes. I'm hearing it in Gus's voice in my head as
• 37:30
  I'm thinking about the word. So maybe it was wheel takes all right,
• 37:35
  shaneless is is stealing from my friends. Let's go with Magla and Celita out
• 37:38
  for the morning. Ramanda had the patched brown tent to herself, a blessed
• 37:43
  opportunity to read, though the two mismatched Brandt's brass lamps on the small table
• 37:49
  gave off a faint, yet nose wrinkling scent of rancid oil. One had
• 37:52
  to live with such things these days. Some might consider The Flame, the
• 37:58
  Blade, and the Heart seemly for one of her attainment and position as a
• 38:01
  girl in farm matting. She had been forbidden such books, but it made
• 38:06
  an agreeable change from dry histories and terrifying reports of food spoilage. She had
• 38:12
  seen a side of beef kept for months, as fresh as the day the
• 38:15
  cow was slaughtered, But now the keepings were failing one by one. Some
• 38:20
  had taken to muttering that there must be a flaw in Agwaine's creation. Yet
• 38:23
  that was errant blather. If a weave worked once then properly done, it
• 38:29
  always worked, barring something to disrupt the weave and Agwaine's new weaves always worked
• 38:35
  as claimed. She had to give the woman that, and try as they
• 38:38
  might, and they had tried very hard, no one could detect any interference.
• 38:43
  It was as if Sayodar itself were failing. It was unthinkable and inescapable.
• 38:50
  Worst of all, no one could think of anything to do. She
• 38:52
  certainly could not. A brief interlude with tales of romance and adventure was much
• 38:58
  preferable to contemplating utter futility and the failure of what was, by its very
• 39:02
  nature unfailing. Ah. Yes, a simple tale The Flame, the Blade
• 39:09
  and the Heart. The romance book. There's the Travels of Jane Forest Writer
• 39:14
  adventure book. And then there is the romance book about Burgda and goetl Caine.
• 39:19
  And I guess some other people maybe I do like that it's Burgida and
• 39:22
  Getle Caine, and it's just like steamy romance. Yeah. Like Burgita sees
• 39:28
  herself as a hero who does epic stuff and has a great love story,
• 39:30
  but like her literary legacy is primarily just as smart. The Boddice getting roped.
• 39:39
  It's fantastic, uh huh. And I wonder why she's got a single
• 39:44
  braid. The relevant point here is, of course the keepings are failing,
• 39:49
  right, the everything's spoiling. Everything's going bad, the ice so that I
• 39:52
  can't do anything about it. The one power is not keeping things from spoiling.
• 39:57
  Yeah, scary times. It'd be like, like, you know,
• 40:00
  speaking of nineties books, we've been talking about a bunch today like dies the
• 40:04
  fire Suddenly gunpowder doesn't work and steam power doesn't work for no fucking reason.
• 40:10
  It just steam power doesn't work anymore. But what like, it's just this
• 40:15
  weird alien space bats. You know, Like this would be like, oh,
• 40:20
  you put things in the freezer and they rot anyway? Yeah, you
• 40:23
  put things in the oven and they stay raw? Like what is That's not
• 40:27
  how it's going on the next bit, I have nothing to say. I
• 40:36
  am so dearth of notes for the next I would say four pages. I
• 40:39
  don't even know how to begin talking about this chunk of name salad. All
• 40:47
  right, well, I think I got I got some ideas. We'll start
• 40:52
  at the top. First of all, Bowed Coffin is mentioned in such a
• 40:55
  way that should be setting herself, that should be set her up for interesting
• 41:00
  stuff to happen later. She is not, but she's mentioned here, so
• 41:06
  failed promise. That's great. Moving into the rest of it. I didn't
• 41:10
  look up the characters to see if they were dark friends or not, because
• 41:14
  I just don't care that much. But what's relevant here is this thing with
• 41:20
  Nissu. So I don't the whole like sitter thing with Magla and Celita,
• 41:24
  I don't. I don't really know or care about that. But the thing
• 41:28
  that I do care about is Nissal bringing Romanda her investigation into the murder of
• 41:37
  Anaya and Kyne. Right, because she's been investigating it for Aguay and Agway's
• 41:40
  gone, she has to report to somebody, so she comes to Romanda and
• 41:45
  shares this information. And this is what puts the seed in Romanda's head that
• 41:51
  by the end of the chapter culminates in her saying, we need to arrest
• 41:54
  Delana. Sure, but it takes like six pages for her to convey that
• 42:00
  information. Yeah, there's okay, not a lot like there's. There's also
• 42:07
  this whole through line about Sharina that gets woven through this Sure because she runs
• 42:12
  into she will she sees Sharina later this This is a novice who organized the
• 42:16
  families. Is the grandmother who's getting younger, she starts channeling, and all
• 42:22
  the isid I are terrified of her because she's already like dominating the novices without
• 42:27
  even being Isidye. Ramanda's really holding down the far end of the being terrified
• 42:32
  spectrum. I think of all of them, I think she's the most threatened
• 42:36
  by Sharena. But also remember Sharena is from Nineve's accepted test. Sharina is
• 42:43
  the Isidae in Malkir in her third arch, So Sharina is a very very
• 42:49
  interesting character for that reason. But yeah, she's been organizing the novices,
• 42:52
  making like, you know, a campus wide bell system and encouraging them to
• 42:55
  knock, get their clothes dirty, and you know, basic practical shit because
• 43:00
  she's a woman of her sixties and has raised a big family. So there's
• 43:05
  a through line here about how she needs to be put out and how dare
• 43:07
  her and the other older woman be here. But also they're so useful,
• 43:10
  and they're so good at the new weaves and they're so good at healing.
• 43:14
  How can we get rid of them? And it's this thing Romanda hates and
• 43:17
  I'd have more to say about it if it ever Wednesday Neghbrare, But like
• 43:21
  she dies before she can completely hamstring all of this, So her resistance to
• 43:28
  it is It's worth noting that not all eyes said I embrace it equally.
• 43:31
  She represents that resistance, but that resistance is actively eroding and will ultimately get
• 43:38
  washed away with that issue, so it doesn't matter right well, And the
• 43:44
  other thing to realize is Sharina also is so powerful that basically once she becomes
• 43:49
  I Sidi, she will be one of the top I Sidi almost immediately.
• 43:52
  Yeah, she'll be kad Swain like, yeah, instantly once she attains the
• 43:57
  shell, and that, combined with the force of her will, I think
• 44:00
  is terrifying to these established middle of the road power hungry I said, I
• 44:06
  like Romaine, Oh yeah, for sure. People who are middle of the
• 44:08
  road and petty about it are going to not appreciate someone who casually blows them
• 44:14
  out of the water without even trying. Doesn't care to a bunch of bitching
• 44:17
  about how Swan and Agwaine have mastered over the Romaine basically, but it's just
• 44:25
  it's just bitching. We don't need to go through whitline by line. I
• 44:29
  did like this line, though, do you realize she'll be the longest sitting
• 44:32
  Amberlyn in history because she's so young to be raised, she'll live forever.
• 44:42
  I hate it and I hate it. On one level, I have to
• 44:45
  wonder if Jordan was setting us up to kill Agwaine because of lines like this,
• 44:50
  because there are so many of them. On the other hand, I
• 44:53
  don't I think that Sanderson had free reign and he picked her. I don't
• 44:59
  think Jordan had necessarily had a Gwain in mind when he for someone who died
• 45:02
  in the last battle, especially because they're both so reluctant to kill women.
• 45:07
  That was it to be imprisoned or tortured or enslaved or whatever, but they
• 45:12
  can never be killed. For the one of the very few female deaths to
• 45:15
  be allowed to be Agwayne just really twists the knife in a specially tender place.
• 45:21
  I mean, I agree, we needed people to die, We needed
• 45:22
  to lose people who were close to us, We needed to have there be
• 45:25
  real costs. There maybe should have been even more deaths, But that's kind
• 45:30
  of the thing, is that with so few deaths, that she would be
• 45:35
  one of them is just like, come on, man, she could have
• 45:38
  been the longest reading Homorland ever. I also would have liked to see the
• 45:44
  world a little closer to disaster for her to sacrifice herself. She was like,
• 45:47
  oh yeah, things are start like it was like not even that bad,
• 45:51
  and she like created this whole crystal thing and it was like, mm,
• 45:54
  I mean it was bad what he was doing. He was actively like
• 45:58
  making the world dissolve. But what annoyed me about it was that she wasn't
• 46:02
  sure that what she was doing was not necessarily going to prevent more cracks from
• 46:07
  getting made. She was just gonna plug the cracks that already existed. And
• 46:09
  I was just like and show other people how to make the weave. And
• 46:13
  I'm like, couldn't you just like show the people how to make the weave
• 46:15
  and come back with more people? Yeah, it's and then it's you know,
• 46:19
  well, it's because of the grief of Gawain and so she had to
• 46:21
  do a menetha in Queens and this is why we fucking hate Golwin. Yeah,
• 46:25
  that's why we hate Golin. Yeah yeah. Yeah. So this is
• 46:30
  where we get the link between Anaya and Carrien. For some reason, the
• 46:35
  two were picked out, But all I've learned so far as that they've been
• 46:37
  close friends for many years. Blue called them and another blue sister Cabrina mrcande's
• 46:43
  the three because they were so close, but they were all closed mouthed too.
• 46:46
  No one recalls any of them talking about their own affairs except with one
• 46:50
  another, and that is the association necessary for Romanda to triangulate. Ultimately,
• 46:55
  after like twenty minutes of thinking about it, subconsciously delaw a Halima dark friend
• 47:02
  arrest. Oh no, they've already escaped, which we see them sneak out
• 47:05
  here in a minute, right because they get they figure out that their covers
• 47:08
  about to get blocked. Yeah. Yeah, Romanda is a bit slow on
• 47:10
  the uptake, but only by a few minutes. Uh. We get a
• 47:15
  little bit about Theodrin and how she's now brown, but not really brown because
• 47:19
  she hasn't taken the actual tests, so she's stuck in that in between place
• 47:22
  where nobody really wants to be, and Romanda does the like worst thing where
• 47:27
  she very kindly makes sure that Theodron is protected from believing she's really a nice
• 47:32
  to die. Yeah, just so you know you're beneath me. Yeah,
• 47:36
  just it'd be nice and make sure you're aware of that. It would be
• 47:39
  cruel for you to think that you were my equal yeah, well a bit.
• 47:43
  It's it's some super oppressor class shit, and I just like throw out
• 47:47
  this whole head of lettuce. We don't need it. We just don't.
• 47:52
  We just don't. Theodrin is a trooper, give me a pacon. Yeah,
• 47:59
  yeah, And then we can at the end of the whole like hiding
• 48:00
  the book thing, because like Nissau comes in while she's reading, you know,
• 48:04
  a romance novel and she kind of tries to hide it, and it's
• 48:07
  super awkward, and she makes sure to hustle and miss out out of the
• 48:08
  tent such that she can't look for the thing that was clearly being hidden from
• 48:13
  her. And it's just like it is our jade, making Ramanda human.
• 48:16
  On top of being heady and vengeful and power hungry and all this other stuff,
• 48:21
  she's also human enough to be embarrassed about being caught reading romance. But
• 48:24
  I also like the like, oh maybe I said eyes or hiding secrets.
• 48:28
  Yeah, sometimes the secret is just the romance novel. They don't want you
• 48:30
  to see them reading. Yeah, it's not always a big deal. It's
• 48:34
  not always a big deal. It's just like they're embarrassed. That's how they
• 48:37
  maintain the area of mystery. You know, yeah, who's the same range
• 48:40
  didn't have a couple of spicy novels hidden ooy in her backpack on the road
• 48:45
  to Demon's Field. I mean, she wasn't getting anything from land. She
• 48:49
  had to get it from somewhere. Apparently she likes an older man with mustaches.
• 48:53
  So for a colleague of her own standing age, yeah, age and
• 49:00
  profession and general personality and interests, Well that's not true. Tommy is kind
• 49:06
  of her personality too. Tom has swann of very different parts of her personality,
• 49:08
  but they are both her personality. So Ramanda leaves the tent to go
• 49:15
  to this meeting because Theatron shows up to say Lelaane has called a meeting of
• 49:19
  the hall. So Romanda very you know, at an even measured pace,
• 49:23
  make sure to get there in time. And so we have a bit of
• 49:27
  a walk and stare at everyone. We stop to talk to Tiana about how
• 49:30
  she's being too subservient to Sharina and how terrible that is. And it's just
• 49:35
  a weird power play. I don't like it. I think Tiana's doing her
• 49:37
  best. It's so rude that Ramanda's like, well, Tiana seems really overwhelmed
• 49:42
  she's not good at being the Mistress of Novices, and like she has eight
• 49:45
  times the novices that any Mistress of Novices has had to deal with in like
• 49:51
  a millennium. Like, of course she's overwhelmed. She should there should be
• 49:54
  deputized extra Mistress of Novices to help her. Like, you can't in increase
• 50:00
  the workload this much and have anyone keep up. That's an unrealistic expectation.
• 50:06
  There are more novices than there are, I said I at this point,
• 50:07
  Yeah, one Mistress of Novices is not going to be sufficient. You should
• 50:12
  be you know, deputizing Sharena since she's apparently already taking on half that workload.
• 50:16
  Anyway, And we aren't really seeing the revitalization of both the White Tower
• 50:20
  and the Black Tower because both of these towers are recruiting actively and bringing in
• 50:24
  a thousand people at a time, right, which is more than the White
• 50:27
  Tower has had in a generation and generations, And all of a sudden,
• 50:30
  we're gonna have multiple thousands of channelers on either side. And that's just the
• 50:35
  Black and White Tower, not to mention all the satellite organizations that they're forming.
• 50:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get to the Hall of the Tower.
• 50:42
  Yeah, just to note that like the two types of healing, I
• 50:45
  just thought it was interesting. They're very different weaves, right, and learning
• 50:49
  one doesn't prevent you from learning the other, but also doesn't necessarily help you
• 50:52
  be better at the other, which kind of is like the yellow adjaw is
• 50:54
  interesting because it's for all this time, it's been people who are basically good
• 50:59
  at one weave, which is this field dressing heeling that they've been using,
• 51:02
  and it's like, if you're good at that particular weave, you get to
• 51:06
  be yellow aja. Otherwise we don't really give a shit, you know.
• 51:09
  And now all of a sudden that these women who are really good at healing
• 51:14
  this new way and that's honestly much more versatile and has a lot more skill
• 51:20
  based to it, and all these people who had like well just slam healing,
• 51:23
  adam and nittle work, aren't you know. Turns out they're not that
• 51:27
  good at this new method of more subtle healing, and so the old yellow
• 51:30
  ajaw is really getting left behind. It's kind of like the old yellow waja
• 51:36
  is like they only knew how to like do court stenography or like write in
• 51:40
  emojis. And then someone came along and was like, but have you considered
• 51:45
  handwriting, like cursive handwriting without shortcuts and abbreviations and truncations, and like they're
• 51:54
  just so different. You know, you can communicate a whole concept in emojis,
• 51:59
  like stenographers write basically gibberish, but it's perfectly legible if you know what
• 52:02
  you're looking at. But then there's just like beautiful teacher handwriting. You know,
• 52:10
  it's just handwriting and you can write anything and there's no like limitations on
• 52:15
  it, and like they're very different skills. Let's see, I see it
• 52:17
  a little bit bit like writing an emoji and then writing in like English,
• 52:22
  and like one is, yeah, you can communicate in it, but it's
• 52:24
  incredibly ineffective and you can only get across basic concepts, whereas in English you
• 52:29
  can write poetry, you can write stories, you can you know, basically
• 52:34
  create anything you want. And that's the difference the two healings. Right,
• 52:36
  this old way of healing was basically emojis, and now Ramana can't spell right
• 52:42
  or even just like honestly, like word processors versus writing on paper, Like
• 52:45
  the amount of times that I have to write things on paper because I need
• 52:50
  the ability to change font size and typeface and color and position with more flexibility
• 52:57
  than a word processor can give me. I don't have the brain space to
• 52:59
  use all the dam tools. I just need to have my grip of colored
• 53:01
  pens so that I can just scrawl on a piece of paper and like encode
• 53:06
  all the information that way, Like they're just knowing how to use a word
• 53:09
  process or is not the same thing as knowing that I like to use red
• 53:13
  for certain concepts when I'm writing notes down, you know, like it just
• 53:16
  yeah, whereas I have no problem changing colors in my highlights and they all
• 53:21
  mean things to me, and I can type notes and everything. I mean,
• 53:23
  I can, but for certain projects it's just more inefficient than just grabbing
• 53:28
  a piece of paper and like totally just like there's like no I need to
• 53:32
  be able to like just randomly scribble drawings in the middle of my text,
• 53:38
  you know, and have doodles that like are for illustrative illustrated notes. You
• 53:44
  know. Anyway, we're really off topic, but yeah, it is interesting
• 53:47
  that the Yellow AJA has been truly hide bound, like the most hide bound
• 53:53
  perhaps of all the ajas, because of how their lack of innovation has manifested
• 53:59
  and also how how hard it is to experiment, you know, on living
• 54:01
  people ethically well. And then there's that, I mean, that is a
• 54:05
  real none of the other odjes have except for the Red maybe none of the
• 54:07
  others odges have that level of ethical dilemma to face. I guess maybe the
• 54:12
  Blue because of like espionage and shit. But yeah, truly, I mean,
• 54:15
  knowledge seeking is not is not going to take you into the same quagmires
• 54:20
  as healthcare. One of the things I wanted to ask you about is this
• 54:22
  line here. Most of the older women only have to see a we wants
• 54:27
  to have it down. Usually that's the case for stronger channelers. Are these
• 54:30
  the older stronger channelers or is it just these older women are more experienced,
• 54:37
  Like why is it that these women have that see it once and learn it
• 54:40
  ability, because we've before really only seen that with really powerful channelers ran ninive
• 54:47
  avienda aguayin right. You know what I bet it is. I bet it's
• 54:52
  the kind of thing that everyone develops eventually, and depending on how strong you
• 54:57
  are, you develop it earlier. So these women who have lived their lives,
• 55:02
  done their work, learned their shit just broadly, just in the being
• 55:06
  human department, and they just have matured in ways that our teenage protagonists have
• 55:12
  not, and so I think they just have a jump start on it.
• 55:15
  Their minds and their brains are just more mature, and they've got more of
• 55:19
  those synaptic connections. And so even though they're weaker channelers and they're newer to
• 55:23
  channeling, like a lot more of that mental neural groundwork has already been done
• 55:30
  in ways that like our heroes are super powerful, so it overrides the usual
• 55:34
  progression. I think that might just be it just like he's giving a nod
• 55:37
  to maturity counts for something. Even when you're learning a brand new skill,
• 55:40
  being a more mature adult, it's different than being a teenager learning a skill.
• 55:45
  Maybe I thought it might have something to do with the new healing and
• 55:49
  the way it is sort of intuitive for like the kin right, but somehow
• 55:55
  this is the more natural way to learn to heal if you're not railroaded into
• 56:00
  the field medicine version of it. By I said, I Yeah, totally
• 56:05
  having the space to experiment and let it breathe and not have it just be
• 56:08
  like emergency run to the next station and get it over with kind of stuff.
• 56:25
  So we arrived at the hall. Yeah, and sure I'm standing outside
• 56:29
  in all her dark friend are wanting to get in, but isn't allowed in
• 56:31
  because the Amberlance seat's not there. Yeah, weird bureaucratic blank space that she
• 56:37
  exists in. It's like, oh, they never anticipated the Amberlance seat being
• 56:40
  you know, kidnapped. I mean, she's not supposed to put herself in
• 56:45
  situations where she could be kidnapped. They do have rules about that, right,
• 56:49
  Yeah, she clearly did violate that rule. But she but see much
• 56:53
  much like certain former presidents in certain boxes of documents kept in certain water closets.
• 57:00
  You know, she decided that there was an exception that should be made.
• 57:02
  So the exception was made because in her mind, she decided that that
• 57:07
  was how that was going to be. She didn't inform anyone, but at
• 57:12
  least legally she has some ground to stand on. She does actually law.
• 57:16
  Yeah, it's sketchy. Without talking about it with one other person, I
• 57:21
  think that really puts it on some tenuous legal footing when literally you didn't even
• 57:24
  put it in your diary. You just thought about it and walked out,
• 57:29
  didn't even leave a note, didn't even tell Bode if I'm not back in
• 57:32
  forty five minutes. These are the words to take to swan right, right,
• 57:37
  So she walks into the hall. There's the thing about the stole being
• 57:40
  on the seat where the ambulin would have been, and how the red aja
• 57:45
  is still represented in the boxes and in the stole right excessive reminders of Aguayne's
• 57:50
  absence looming large. He queen just wanted to keep up with the Two Rivers
• 57:55
  tradition of walking into traps. I mean, she did learn from a ninive
• 58:00
  who made that argument very succinctly in book three. Delanna's there right because she's
• 58:06
  and she thinks about how at this point Helena is basically yelling at Dollana in
• 58:12
  public. It's very clear that Helena is the one in charge of that pair,
• 58:16
  and that means she doesn't have a lot of respect for Delanna, because
• 58:22
  Helena is a non channeler in charge of this, you know, browbeating this
• 58:25
  channeler into doing things. So Romaine's just like what a pushover? Yeah,
• 58:31
  for you to take a lover who is not Eyes to Die is already bad
• 58:36
  taste, and to take the submissive role in the partnership is just like,
• 58:40
  are you even in Eyes to Die? Like what is happening here. That's
• 58:45
  that's where she's coming from. Like I think that that's really like ridiculously hierarchical,
• 58:50
  but that's where she's coming from, because she's a ridiculously hierarchical person.
• 58:53
  Then we overhear a conversation about myreel. Oh yeah, yeah, morel and
• 58:59
  her third slash fourth quarter? Is it fourth slash fifth? I'm getting confused
• 59:05
  at this point. Yeah, exactly how many she's got, because this would
• 59:08
  be her fifth, because she had three and then she took land on right,
• 59:12
  Land was the fourth, right, Yeah, Land was the fourth,
• 59:15
  and so yeah, now she's technically got a fifth. And his name is
• 59:20
  Hugh. That's how you pronounced that. I believe the double L y w
• 59:25
  is pronounced a Q. I'm sure I'm not saying that very well, but
• 59:29
  that's how they say it in the audiobooks, and that's generally the sound for
• 59:32
  that double L. Yeah. And so this this idea of how could they
• 59:36
  possibly pressure him the bonding, Well, she's trying to hide lamb. Yeah,
• 59:38
  yeah, what blackmail could you possibly have on my road? Yeah?
• 59:40
  We know, old news. Moving on gossip, gossip, and Ramonda wishes
• 59:45
  that she had had responded to the summons slightly more leisurely. She looks like
• 59:50
  she, you know, hopped to meet Lelaane's demands and you know, but
• 59:53
  again it's it's just Romaine. It's just Romaine stuff. And Lelaane's got all
• 59:58
  she's all smiling and happy. I never really understood why is she all happy?
• 1:00:01
  I don't get it. Yeah, she's like, this is going to
• 1:00:04
  be dramatic and amazing and ooh ah wow. And I just I feel like
• 1:00:08
  it's just that Romayne has a scope of scale that is very small and petty,
• 1:00:15
  even when they think that they're operating for the larger plan and they're just
• 1:00:20
  playing weird power games because I don't see like this whole thing about Because what
• 1:00:23
  she's announcing is that there was this offer from Rand's Ashaman for the bonding,
• 1:00:30
  Right, That's what she is announcing. She's in possession of that information and
• 1:00:34
  is excited to share it. But I don't see how that really gives her
• 1:00:38
  much power unless I try to put myself in her head where White Tower politics
• 1:00:44
  is truly what the entire world is revolving around, which it objectively isn't because
• 1:00:49
  I live in the actual life, right, But if I put myself in
• 1:00:52
  her head, if she thinks that, like you know, it's isidy centric
• 1:00:55
  worldview of like, well, what we do matters most of anything, and
• 1:01:00
  what we do with the dragon reborn matters a whole awful lot. Then I
• 1:01:05
  can see her seeing this maneuver as getting one up on Romanda, because she's
• 1:01:12
  the one who was able to deliver this information and make it happen, so
• 1:01:15
  to speak. But like we just know that none of that matters, and
• 1:01:19
  that the is said I are a petty side quest at best, and so
• 1:01:23
  I just it's hard to take her seriously. That's the best I got that.
• 1:01:27
  Yeah, I'm there with you, extra extra here all about it,
• 1:01:30
  Ashaman now bondable, get yours today, Thank you, super Skylike that's true.
• 1:01:37
  So so incomes which sister is this? I'm losing it in the name
• 1:01:44
  salad well more, A bunch of isaid I show up, none of whom
• 1:01:46
  I care about particularly, But we got Quamesa dolanam as mentioned, Salita is
• 1:01:52
  there, Lirelle, Soroya, Elegrin, Samel and facel Mal. It's just
• 1:02:00
  names upon names upon names. I'm sure. I'm sure a couple of them
• 1:02:01
  are black aja. I forget which ones because they just run away in the
• 1:02:07
  Great Purge. And eventually enough of them show up that we begin a session
• 1:02:13
  of the Hall, which is not formal but is sealed to the Hall,
• 1:02:17
  and it's a very weird and bureaucratic gray zone that kind of gets created for
• 1:02:23
  them to deal with this in an unofficial official capacity. I guess the only
• 1:02:29
  important person is Maurice Jahar and Bessine and Nathan are the two other warders that
• 1:02:37
  she brings with us. Those are the three. I mean, really,
• 1:02:39
  it's just Jahar, and he's what matters. He's the really important character here,
• 1:02:45
  right, So yeah, Basically, they begin the session and Lelaine a
• 1:02:47
  Blue says that a green eyes to dye was brought to her, and all
• 1:02:52
  the Greens get a titter about that, because how dare But it's because they
• 1:02:58
  were looking for a Gwain, not the Morland, but Aguyne al Vier because
• 1:03:01
  it's from the Dragon Reborn, and somehow that makes Lelaane have the right to
• 1:03:06
  do that. I didn't quite follow her logic, and nobody did, I
• 1:03:08
  don't think, But it doesn't matter because they're here now and they bring them
• 1:03:14
  in and it's yeah, Maurice, No morel Maurice. Who is it?
• 1:03:20
  Yeah, Maurice, Yeah, that's Mary's not Mauric's, God, damn it,
• 1:03:23
  Jordanice. So yeah, it's Maurice and her Ashaman Warders, one of
• 1:03:30
  whom is Jahar, and he's really the focal point of the scene. He's
• 1:03:34
  the one who delivers the messages, who performs the weaves, He's the focal
• 1:03:39
  point of the discussion, and what he has to say is well, first
• 1:03:45
  of all, Maurice comes in and is like, I think you're all stupid
• 1:03:49
  for having a rebellion because you shouldn't be fighting with Isid die when the shadow
• 1:03:52
  exists to fight, which, like you know, in the run up to
• 1:03:57
  the presidential election here in the United States, feels like a very poignant comment.
• 1:04:02
  But then she turns it over to Jahar, who insists on talking to
• 1:04:08
  a GWayne, but a Gwin's not there, so he has to deliver it
• 1:04:11
  to the hall instead, and before he can get to it, a man
• 1:04:15
  channels and that which means Dolana's gonna be like, oh no, I have
• 1:04:20
  to go check on something real quick. And yeah. Then by the time
• 1:04:26
  that Romanda realizes that Helena must be part of the problem. They've already left.
• 1:04:31
  They she leaves and they immediately pack and leave. Well, Jaar says,
• 1:04:35
  or maybe it was that forsaken who killed Evan, And it is.
• 1:04:38
  It's exactly who it is, right, It's it's that female who looks like
• 1:04:42
  a man there, looks like a woman but channels like a man. Yeah.
• 1:04:45
  And when he and when he says that, that's what makes Dolana get
• 1:04:48
  up and leave him. Yeah yeah, She's like, I need to breath
• 1:04:50
  the fresh air and then runs the freak out. Yeah yeah. And on
• 1:04:56
  her way out, she passes another Eye to Die who left earth as soon
• 1:05:00
  as the ashaman announced himself. This one woman hurries out and I was like,
• 1:05:03
  why did she do that? But then I noticed she comes back in
• 1:05:06
  here with another Eye to Die who's not a sitter, because this Size to
• 1:05:11
  Die has some weaves she wants to test out. And that's why the woman
• 1:05:15
  rushed off, was because she's like, I need to go get our engineering
• 1:05:17
  sister who has thoughts on this, because we might not have this opportunity again
• 1:05:20
  for a long time. M N cell has a chance to test this weave
• 1:05:26
  of detecting a man channeling right because remember that that was a big plot point
• 1:05:30
  when m'geddeon was captured, is they wanted to get the weave to detect men
• 1:05:34
  channeling, and she kept giving them just these things that would create you know,
• 1:05:39
  terrible headaches. And so yeah, this is this is finally a little
• 1:05:43
  bit of like putting the rounding on that of yes, the weave was possible.
• 1:05:46
  Mcgeddeon was being just an awful person by hiding it from them, and
• 1:05:51
  here it is, although again it never really seems to make a difference,
• 1:05:55
  but at least the weave exists. Now, yeah it does, and we
• 1:05:59
  get mentioned of they sell is one of the only malchierri eyes to die that
• 1:06:02
  exists because most of them have long since done a land and hurled themselves into
• 1:06:06
  the blank for them to their homeland, well, oll of Vermand is like
• 1:06:11
  this would have been useful five years ago. Now they just go and join
• 1:06:17
  the Black Tower. It's not like all that useful to detect them channeling.
• 1:06:20
  Yeah, now that we're not hunting them down because they're like a danger to
• 1:06:24
  society, it's sort of moot. But sure, it's like making a better
• 1:06:29
  flintlock rifle. Now it's like, well to what end. So we have
• 1:06:33
  some interesting back and forth about how ooh, it's my ashaman or my worder,
• 1:06:36
  but you can tell them what to do. Then ask him questions this
• 1:06:40
  one time and I die hissing at each other. Basically, don't speak to
• 1:06:44
  me or my worder like that ever again, Yeah, something like that.
• 1:06:46
  Yeah, And then we finally get to the point of the meeting, which
• 1:06:53
  is him announcing any sister who is faithful to Aguayne Elvir may bond an ashaman
• 1:06:59
  to a total of forty seven. You cannot ask for the dragon reborn,
• 1:07:02
  nor any man who wears the dragon, but any soldier or dedicated you ask
• 1:07:06
  cannot refuse. The reason why Lelaane thinks that this is awesome is because it
• 1:07:13
  allows them to get their circles expanded without having to make an alliance with the
• 1:07:17
  Black Tower. And this feels like scoring political points for her on Romanda to
• 1:07:23
  be able to circumvent that alliance, because we just saw in the previous chapter
• 1:07:28
  with these characters in it, they just like sat around and voted to approach
• 1:07:32
  the Black Tower about having men to help them expand the circle. So this
• 1:07:38
  is better for them, yes, is what she's thinking, and she thinks
• 1:07:42
  about it repeatedly in terms of equality. Eww, I don't want equality.
• 1:07:47
  Anything that smacks of equality is gross and it just feels very You know,
• 1:07:54
  we're going to make sure to include bonds or terms in the bond that will
• 1:07:57
  force the men to obey us, which we all know how well that's worked
• 1:08:00
  for men who can channel, which is not at all right. We saw
• 1:08:03
  that with rand, so you know, that's a very flawed plan on her
• 1:08:08
  part. I just hate the idea of someone saying I have a right to
• 1:08:12
  demand an unequal power dynamic over you. Like maybe that's just the anarchist in
• 1:08:16
  me, but I just want to punch people like that in the face with
• 1:08:19
  all the bricks, like, don't be like that. You shouldn't want to
• 1:08:25
  have power over me. You might need to have power over me because we
• 1:08:28
  live in a stupid world, but you shouldn't think that it's a moral failing
• 1:08:31
  for us to seek equality. I just cannot vibe with you. It's just,
• 1:08:36
  ah, yeah, it's terrible. Shouldn't shouldn't be like that. And
• 1:08:43
  so as part of this sort of announcement of bonding, they're like, ah,
• 1:08:45
  we don't want to be with tainted men. And the men are like,
• 1:08:47
  no, Sightine's clean now we swear, and we're like, we don't
• 1:08:50
  believe you. And then Marie says, well, you should believe him because
• 1:08:55
  it's true. So this is the memo first getting out. Finally, I
• 1:08:59
  keep complaining with the no one's getting the memo. This is an instance where
• 1:09:01
  the memo is genuinely being distributed to people who have the power to distribute it
• 1:09:06
  really widely. At this point, the world needs to start figuring it out.
• 1:09:12
  When we got really frustrated after Winter's Heart when no one suddenly had when
• 1:09:15
  we saw everyone having a reaction in Crossroads to the cleansing, this is what
• 1:09:20
  we're expecting, is the men going out to be like, yo, it's
• 1:09:24
  clean, respect me now, you know. And that wasn't happening. It
• 1:09:28
  said. It was just, oh, there's this big power thing going on.
• 1:09:31
  And I think maybe if they'd happened together, it would have been a
• 1:09:34
  little more accept or like one right after the other. But we gotten such
• 1:09:38
  a time suck in that fucking book where we never you know, this is
• 1:09:42
  now basically the next day, like we're we're not that far along in the
• 1:09:45
  timeline, because again, Crossroads was about a week long in total, right,
• 1:09:51
  the news of the Ameer suicide in response to the cleansing is only just
• 1:09:57
  hitting. So mm hmmm. Yeah, the memo about that is getting out
• 1:10:01
  at the same time as the memo about the fact of the cleansing itself.
• 1:10:04
  And she said that was like ten days ago or something that I thought we
• 1:10:08
  got a timeline in that chest. Okay, in thirty days right time.
• 1:10:13
  Still, yeah, one month or very recent since the clean He's very recently,
• 1:10:17
  especially when stuff has to drump. I mean, even in our world,
• 1:10:19
  a month is still a pretty the recent event. I know the news
• 1:10:24
  cycle happens faster than that, but actual events with like serious import do take
• 1:10:28
  longer than a month to come into being and thus are relevant for more than
• 1:10:31
  a And then they talk about a peculiar number forty seven. Why I have
• 1:10:39
  a question before we get there. Why do Serionia and Faisel not stand up
• 1:10:45
  to pass this? What's their beef with this thing? Saroya and Fecel.
• 1:10:49
  I don't know what their deal is. I just know that they've been very
• 1:10:53
  consistently against all arrangements with the Ashaman for whatever reason. I think Robert Jordan
• 1:10:59
  might have just been like, well, ideologically, people aren't going to agree
• 1:11:01
  even when they're on the same team, and some people are just going to
• 1:11:04
  be opposed to things because they're opposed to them and just not not want it.
• 1:11:11
  I should have looked them up to see if there's a reason why they're
• 1:11:13
  so opposed to this, but I did not. Myreel put a trout in
• 1:11:17
  her bath as a novice. That seems relevant. They're part of the group
• 1:11:24
  that wanted to negotiate with a LIGHTA. Yeah, religion. It's totally just
• 1:11:28
  feels like it's an ism of just like they just don't want to because they
• 1:11:30
  don't like those people. Not those people, you know, with all the
• 1:11:34
  scare quotes necessary to bring that across, I've got nothing, I've got nothing,
• 1:11:41
  Okay. So yeah, it's literally just that they are ideologically opposed and
• 1:11:45
  consistent in that opposition because humans are like that. I mean, she's like
• 1:11:50
  if Icell's of the Green, I don't I don't know. I got no
• 1:11:56
  reason why they would remain sitting. It's nothing in their street picks them out
• 1:12:01
  from any of the other sitters who voted for GWayne. One's on Romayne's side,
• 1:12:06
  ones on Romanda's side, ones on the Laane side. Neither of them
• 1:12:11
  is black Aja, Neither one of them had any sort of argument or stand
• 1:12:15
  out moment. It's just it's what okay, Yeah, they they just don't
• 1:12:19
  like it for reasons that are probably kind of racist, magicist. So they're
• 1:12:26
  just worried about the taint is basically what it boils down to. They've gotten
• 1:12:29
  themselves so wound up over how horrible the taint is that they're just like really
• 1:12:33
  like dug into that hole and that's their entire worldview is like the worst thing
• 1:12:36
  in the world is to get anywhere near the tinte. And it's like the
• 1:12:40
  fact that it doesn't exist anymore won't penetrate for years at this point, I
• 1:12:44
  think, because they're so up their own asses about it. Gotcha, you
• 1:12:46
  know how people are unfortunately so yeah, you were saying about the numbers.
• 1:12:50
  They were questioning why the forty seven. Yeah, forty seven is a very
• 1:12:55
  specific number. You didn't pull that out of a hat, right, why
• 1:12:58
  forty seven? Explained forty seven? And this is how they learn about all
• 1:13:03
  the isid eye that Elida threw into the Oh no, no, no,
• 1:13:09
  no no. When Alida threw a bunch of them at the Black Tower.
• 1:13:12
  That's the group that they're learning about, right, right, and there is
• 1:13:16
  it's interesting, She goes, well, at least they're Alida's I sid eye,
• 1:13:19
  right, She questions, should it matter? It does matter somehow,
• 1:13:23
  I feel less annoyed by it if it was Alida's isid die And it's like,
• 1:13:26
  I feel kind of bad about that, And I like that self awareness
• 1:13:29
  that she's like, hmmm, might be a little screwy. It's kind of
• 1:13:32
  crazy because like there's only a thousand I sid eye, three hundred in the
• 1:13:36
  Rebel Tower, three hundred in the White Tower, about three hundred on the
• 1:13:40
  loose, maybe three hundred and thirty three in each one of those, Like
• 1:13:43
  fifty I sid eye from the tower is such a huge part of their force.
• 1:13:46
  Yeah, and then you add the Purge to that, which is another
• 1:13:50
  third of what's left. Yeah, their quarter of what's left. I always
• 1:13:55
  say the third, but it's sectually closer to a quarter. Oh my god.
• 1:13:58
  I mean you're down to know under two hundred I sid eye left in
• 1:14:02
  the tower and then the ones who died and were abducted by the Sean Champ
• 1:14:09
  right, Like being a tower, I said, I it just there aren't
• 1:14:12
  that many. There can't be that many left, Like, there just aren't.
• 1:14:15
  Like at the end of all this, you know, if before GWayne
• 1:14:19
  brings the people back in from the rebels, the White Tower must be just
• 1:14:25
  a complete ghost town. There's like two Iceid eyes manning the desk, you
• 1:14:29
  know, turning the lights off at night. But that there can't be very
• 1:14:31
  many more than that. Yeah, like maybe two hundred maybe maybe maybe one
• 1:14:36
  hundred and fifty, probably too few, but like it's not a lot.
• 1:14:41
  It's not a lot. And and then after the last battle more of them
• 1:14:45
  die. You've got these huge crop of novices. You're gonna have very very
• 1:14:51
  few old eyes to die with these huge new coming graduating classes of novices and
• 1:14:57
  accepted coming into the ranks of the Ice Sidi. The entire culture of the
• 1:15:00
  Tower is going to be almost completely cycled through in like one hundred years.
• 1:15:04
  It's going to be entirely people who were novices during the last battle, right
• 1:15:10
  try twenty years, Yeah, I mean, yeah for sure. Yeah,
• 1:15:15
  I love that. We get the quote where he quotes Evan as he dies,
• 1:15:18
  where he says she's channeling Sidine because it was such a powerful man.
• 1:15:23
  Yeah, and here He's saying, Oh, yeah, you need to know,
• 1:15:27
  by the way, that there is someone who looks like a woman who's
• 1:15:30
  channeling Sidine. Yeah, yeah, they need to know. And it's like,
• 1:15:35
  yeah, they could have used that knowledge a while ago actually, and
• 1:15:41
  I think that just brings us to the redout. Okay, yeah. Suddenly
• 1:15:45
  that small chime sounded again in the back of Hermanda's head and she knew where
• 1:15:49
  she had heard the name Cabriana macandas we must order the arrest of Delana and
• 1:15:55
  Helena immediately, she said. She had to explain. Of course, not
• 1:16:00
  even the Ommeland seat could order the arrest of a sitter without explanation. The
• 1:16:04
  murders with sideine of two sisters who had been close friends of Cabriana, a
• 1:16:10
  woman Heleima had claimed friendship with, as well a female forsaken who channeled the
• 1:16:14
  male half of the power. They were hardly convinced, especially Leline, not
• 1:16:19
  until a thorough search of the camp turned up no trace of either woman.
• 1:16:24
  They had been seen walking toward one of the traveling grounds with Delana and her
• 1:16:27
  serving women, both carrying large bundles and scurrying along behind Helena, but they
• 1:16:31
  were gone escaped to be bail fired by rand Later they narrowly escape ahead of
• 1:17:27
  disaster here, and then they narrowly missed the window on the other side at
• 1:17:32
  Natran Spero really just eken along until their number comes up. Thank you,
• 1:17:39
  Religion. I do have just a couple of things that I want to talk
• 1:17:42
  about that we're in the notes of Encyclopedia. Watt Okay Magla insisted on Selita
• 1:17:50
  as the new sitter for the Yellow but Romanda does not understand why. Yeah,
• 1:17:56
  yeah, we noticed that it's part of the two young Sitters conspiracy.
• 1:17:59
  Broad I think, I think so, he says, we get the answer
• 1:18:03
  in the Gathering Storm, chapter forty three. I'm trying to find out what
• 1:18:10
  that means, so give me just a second. I also, I kind
• 1:18:13
  of skipped over it, but there's a mention of how Eben Hoppuo was brutally
• 1:18:16
  like hurt in his death when he was saving Dagion, like he kept fighting
• 1:18:23
  after he should have died, and like that wasn't included in the chapter of
• 1:18:27
  the Cleansing. It was very just oh, Diagion's holding him and rocking him
• 1:18:30
  like a baby or whatever and being sad. But this is the most graphic
• 1:18:33
  description we get, and it's still really vague, and it's just such good
• 1:18:38
  Rja writing of just like you don't know how badly he was hurt or how
• 1:18:42
  he was hurt at all, but you know that he should have been dead
• 1:18:45
  and yet he was still fighting, and that just paints such a vivid picture
• 1:18:48
  no matter where your mind goes. Yeah, So the answer is that it's
• 1:18:51
  part of the Two Young Sitters thing, and that's just where we find out.
• 1:18:57
  We're in Jesse Blaw's POV. Yeah, the Head of the Brown.
• 1:19:00
  Yeah, the head of the Brown. So that's where we sort of see
• 1:19:02
  from their POV what the strategy was and how it kind of failed. Yeah,
• 1:19:08
  it failed so much. Interesting. This chapter explains a lot about all
• 1:19:12
  the Two Young Sitters and all that kind of stuff. So might be interesting
• 1:19:16
  to look at the Gathering Shadow of the Gathering Storm chapter forty three at some
• 1:19:23
  point, I mean, we will in like a year and a half or
• 1:19:27
  so. Okay, Then the other thing that I thought was interesting, let
• 1:19:33
  me get back to that. We didn't talk about the reason Theodrin has attached
• 1:19:38
  herself to Romayne is because she's spying for Aguayne. Yeah, yeah, she
• 1:19:44
  asked them to attach themselves to the sisters to keep an eye on them.
• 1:19:49
  Her and Falian attached to Romaine. I believe was the arrangement. So presumably
• 1:19:55
  Failian is on with Lolaane because Theodron with Ramada there's a reference to Mirandian noble
• 1:20:02
  learning they needs new healing. That is most likely uh Jeannette, and I'm
• 1:20:10
  not sure how they figured that out, but I'm going to take their word
• 1:20:12
  for it. Interesting, I don't know why they would know that. I
• 1:20:15
  feel like Jenet, the Mirandian noble who discovered she can channel in the books
• 1:20:21
  is a character that has come up once or twice before, So I think
• 1:20:25
  that's they're just assuming that's the Mirandian noble, right, because she's the one
• 1:20:28
  who joined the There's only one, only one Mirandian noble in yeah, we
• 1:20:32
  can assume that. Why not so at this point though, and then just
• 1:20:35
  a sum of the four Oschman that have been bonded by Isaha said, I
• 1:20:40
  are Jahar, Dahmer, Flynn, Carlton, and Naith. Those are the
• 1:20:45
  four bonded Ashman. And then e was the fifth. Evan was the fifth
• 1:20:48
  and he died and then the last one they say Delana with her serving woman
• 1:20:54
  that's is that's actually someone else, that's Mesa m I E s A.
• 1:21:00
  Yeah, yeah, this is a poor woman just gets dragged along because she's
• 1:21:02
  effectively the property of the sizeid I And this is the last reference that we
• 1:21:06
  have for her. Yeah, I'm assuming she just vanishes into the masses of
• 1:21:10
  Grandal's people or gets cast out because she's not pretty enough to stay with Grandal's
• 1:21:15
  people. But more likely she just gets sent down to like the natural Sparrow
• 1:21:18
  Kitchen just to like work down there with her mind melted, because that seems
• 1:21:24
  like what she would do Grandal. So I just wanted to go through those
• 1:21:26
  notes and be like, yeah, there's a couple of little little mysteries in
• 1:21:29
  there that we didn't quite touch on that lot Encyclopedia had pointed out. But
• 1:21:34
  yeah, well thanks for keeping us honest. Yeah, thanks, thanks for
• 1:21:39
  thanks for that. Those are tough chapters. There's a lot of names,
• 1:21:43
  a lot of interactions. I think Jordan thought he was being very clever when
• 1:21:46
  he was writing those chapters because yet he was keeping all those characters in mind,
• 1:21:51
  and they were acting true to their backstory, and it's just who that
• 1:21:59
  is tough to care. Yeah, and it's one of those things where if
• 1:22:01
  there had been better payoff for more of those characters, we would care more
• 1:22:04
  about the sections. But because they don't, we've lost steam at this point
• 1:22:10
  for them. But you know, again, it's the way he was imagining
• 1:22:14
  writing the end. Probably would have tied together more of these little bits into
• 1:22:17
  a better cohesive hole in a way that was never going to get communicated through
• 1:22:20
  the notes to Sanderson. Yeah. Maybe, or maybe he wrote himself into
• 1:22:25
  a point where we had too many details and he was never going to touch
• 1:22:27
  them all and never going to bring them all together. Maybe he was he
• 1:22:30
  was going to do a thing where he just had them all get blown up
• 1:22:32
  in a building at once, like when the Sharans attacked us. All of
• 1:22:35
  them were done. But yeah, this was Uh, I'm glad we doubleheaded
• 1:22:42
  this for sure. Yeah, that was not the most exciting thing we've ever
• 1:22:46
  done. But we got through it. And we get to do a GWayne
• 1:22:50
  Nelson Mandela imprisonment montage next week and that's not fun. And we'll write it
• 1:22:57
  two hours. Yeah, we write it two hours. I called I was
• 1:22:59
  gonna I said, it's gonna be an hour and a half to two hours
• 1:23:00
  with two chapters. So yeah, there we go. All right, Well,
• 1:23:05
  everybody see you next week. Thank you so much for joining us once
• 1:23:10
  again, really appreciate it. A huge thank you to all the patrons so
• 1:23:13
  sporting us. It really really makes a big difference. And everybody else,
• 1:23:17
  thank you for listening to the ads. Sorry, and remember it to submit
• 1:23:21
  your stuff to what idle slash. Make notes about when what idol may or
• 1:23:26
  may not be. I don't know when the actual contest is going to happen,
• 1:23:29
  but when this episode releases, there will still be a few days left,
• 1:23:31
  I believe to submit your entry. I submitted mine over the weekend.
• 1:23:38
  It doesn't have a real series video. It's just a lyric video. So
• 1:23:41
  if you don't have the energy to do a proper video and you just do
• 1:23:45
  a lyric video, know that you're in good company with me, if you
• 1:23:46
  consider me good company, which you probably do since you listen to my podcast
• 1:23:49
  and you're listening to this bird shit at the end. Yeah, be in
• 1:23:54
  the lyric only category with me. It'll be great. Well, not category,
• 1:23:57
  but you know, broad Bin in everyone's minds. And this year I
• 1:24:00
  about out because I said I'm planning a wedding, I can't also do a
• 1:24:03
  watt idol video. So yeah, so it's all met editing video. So
• 1:24:11
  you're all lucky that I made anything at all, because video is not my
• 1:24:14
  medium. I don't like it. I'm not doing that, but definitely I
• 1:24:18
  hope to see you all in the audience when what Idle happens. Whenever that
• 1:24:21
  is. I'll be blaring the date from the rooftop once we know what it
• 1:24:25
  is, because it's going to be fun and I'm sure that there's gonna be
• 1:24:29
  a lot of stuff in it that's way better than what I'm submitting and I'm
• 1:24:30
  looking forward to it. And four more episodes to episode five hundred. I
• 1:24:38
  can't wait. So exciting. Arbitrary number, I mean, come on,
• 1:24:44
  five hundred episodes is not that fucking arbitrary, right, Like I know it
• 1:24:47
  is, but it's like, holy crap, that is, so I'm not
• 1:24:53
  sure. I don't think I never thought we'd get there In main series episodes.
• 1:24:56
  That doesn't even count show episodes. It only counts tangents to are the
• 1:25:00
  only thing that is counted in that. In addition to the books, this
• 1:25:03
  is main series five hundred, so we've done more than five hundred, but
• 1:25:08
  oh yeah, way more. Yeah yeah, not to mention the other series
• 1:25:11
  we've worked on and everything else like that. So but yeah, the Watts
• 1:25:15
  spoilers hitting episode five hundred is epic. Is epic. It's very epic.
• 1:25:18
  Thank you for coming along on this journey. Yes, thank you all.
• 1:25:21
  You were all fantastic. And with that, we bid you adio. I'm
• 1:25:30
  turning on recording locally and the magic of local recording. It's just the number
• 1:25:36
  of people I still have to scold to be like, can we please do
• 1:25:40
  local? Like really like yes, yes, just record yourself. We explain
• 1:25:44
  it. I listened to so many podcasts with such wider reaches than ours,
• 1:25:48
  and it's just like all broken up because they're doing an interview or it's not
• 1:25:53
  even an interview, it's just their normal setup and it's just through the internet,
• 1:25:56
  and it just makes me die inside. It makes me cry. It's
• 1:26:00
  like, Kate, how Kate reading feels when people speed up audio books.
• 1:26:02
  That's how I feel when people record on the cloud. It's the same thing.
• 1:26:08
  It's the same feeling, and they're like, well it's different, and
• 1:26:11
  I'm like, how can you not hear the difference? Like, I'm not
• 1:26:13
  an audiophile. I'm not a crazy person that like needs high tech you know
• 1:26:17
  headphones. Like I can barely tell the differency my my, you know iPods
• 1:26:23
  and my headphones, and you know, I can tell they're really crappy ones.
• 1:26:28
  But like I can really hear the difference in recording on the cloud because
• 1:26:31
  you drop out all the time. It's like, objectively, you can hear
• 1:26:36
  the signal of going down in bit rate and literally dropping and getting sped up
• 1:26:42
  and chopped up and slowed down. It's just like, Nope, make better
• 1:26:45
  standards. I mean, maybe we're more sensitive because we're you know, we
• 1:26:49
  edit the audio, but I can't believe that's the that's the whole thing.
• 1:26:53
  I mean, not comfortable in my chair, what's going on? Yeah,
• 1:26:56
  editors definitely have a bit of a cursive knowledge going on, but it's truly
• 1:26:59
  bad. And then God just reminds me I got a new shower speaker because
• 1:27:04
  a friend told me it was really cheap and sturdy, and I was like,
• 1:27:08
  all right, well, if it's if I get what I paid for,
• 1:27:10
  and it really is only fifteen dollars worth of quality, Like it's only
• 1:27:13
  fifteen dollars but maybe it'll be good. And I started using it and it's
• 1:27:16
  but I needed to hang it in my shower because it's a shower speaker and
• 1:27:20
  I don't trust the things like, oh, you just stick it to the
• 1:27:23
  wall, like I don't trust that they will fall. Sorry, yes,
• 1:27:26
  eventually they all fall. Yeah. And the last one I had had had
• 1:27:29
  a little loop on it, and so I had had a like hook that
• 1:27:31
  I had attached to the wall like a proper like you know, household hook,
• 1:27:34
  and so I tried to like attach it and like Brandon figured out how
• 1:27:38
  to like attach it, and then it sounded like crap, and I was
• 1:27:41
  like, wow, it really is fifteen dollars worth of crap. I hate
• 1:27:44
  this so much. I can't listen to it. Turns out it was just
• 1:27:45
  it was rattling on the bracket that wasn't meant for yeah, And I was
• 1:27:49
  like because as soon as as soon as I picked it up and moved it
• 1:27:53
  because I didn't like listening to it, then it sounded better. Oh oh
• 1:27:57
  wow, plastic and plastic rattling will get in the way. Because I thought
• 1:28:00
  it was just my ears being really picky, and it's like no, it
• 1:28:01
  was literally making stupid vibrations that weren't supposed to be there. Yeah, the
• 1:28:06
  speakers often need a good anchor, especially if there's any bass in there,
• 1:28:10
  like they are vibrating. Yeah. Oh, I figured out how I'm going
• 1:28:15
  to get my sound system set up at the wedding. I've simplified it quite
• 1:28:19
  a bit, so I have an input on the front that just has a
• 1:28:24
  headphone jack coming out of that, so I can plug in anything that has
• 1:28:28
  a headphone jack to play music, right, But I also have an adapter
• 1:28:31
  for the phone that lets you plug a headphone jack into it and continue to
• 1:28:35
  charge an iPhone, So any basically any iPhone as well, you can plug
• 1:28:41
  into the base of that and we'll be able to play music off of any
• 1:28:44
  iPhone it doesn't need headphone jack. So that should be enough to connect to
• 1:28:48
  my existing sound system, which has a base and has two giant speakers that
• 1:28:53
  used to be used for a restaurant sound, so they should be more than
• 1:28:59
  big enough to provide the sufficient music for the venue. And then I have
• 1:29:04
  a separate speaker with two wireless microphones that's like a karaoke speaker. Of the
• 1:29:10
  quality is not nearly as good, but it should be fine for announcements and
• 1:29:13
  like fowls and stuff like that, right, because yeah, you're not trying
• 1:29:15
  to communicate like a concert. You're trying to communicate like one person at a
• 1:29:19
  time, spoken word exactly, exactly exactly. So I've got I've got two
• 1:29:24
  sound systems set up, and I think I think we're good for both in
• 1:29:27
  terms of once really for music and entertainment, and the other one's going to
• 1:29:30
  be for voices, announcements and speeches. Sorry, in case you haven't wondered,
• 1:29:34
  the wedding is all I'm thinking about these days. It's pretty much one
• 1:29:38
  hundred percent of what's occupying my free time. So it's amazing how much even
• 1:29:43
  a simple wedding is just a lot of planning. And then you know anxiety.
• 1:29:46
  Anxiety on top of that is just making me ruminate over it repeatedly and
• 1:29:50
  repeat the same facts over and over and over and over and over again.
• 1:29:53
  So that's always fun. It's how we process. Yes, it's annoying certain
• 1:30:00
  extent, but it's also like, at a certain extent too, you have
• 1:30:02
  to just accept this is how my brain works, and it's it's you can
• 1:30:06
  manage it better if you just allow that to be rather than judging yourself perpetually
• 1:30:11
  for me, right right, because then you're and you're judging yourself and it's
• 1:30:15
  not helpful. Now I just ruminate and then I'm like, oh yeah,
• 1:30:16
  well I'm gonna do that for a few minutes, Okay, moving on.
• 1:30:20
  It's like when you're meditating and you're supposed to not get mad at yourself for
• 1:30:25
  having thoughts come up. You're supposed to just be like I'm thinking and now
• 1:30:28
  I'm returning to meditating, and like do it without judgment. Like you extend
• 1:30:31
  that to everything. It's not just meditating, it really is the best way
• 1:30:35
  to manage your brain. Weasels, cause you know, I and I'll say
• 1:30:40
  that I've talked about mental health, but I used to have a lot of
• 1:30:42
  trouble with spiraling, or basically, I'd have anxiety and then I have anxiety
• 1:30:45
  about having anxiety, and that just got worse and worst wores, And this
• 1:30:48
  is where you know, I got on SSRIs and they kept me from spiraling
• 1:30:55
  and let me heal. But they certainly, I would describe them like a
• 1:31:00
  cast for my emotions, right, yeah, yeah, right, they prevented
• 1:31:03
  me from using them and hurting myself while they were broken, but once I
• 1:31:10
  was healed, they weren't helping me at all. They were just restricting me
• 1:31:13
  from feeling my emotions. And so once I got to a certain point,
• 1:31:16
  I really I realized I had to go off of them because all they were
• 1:31:18
  doing was preventing me from enjoying things, because I you know, and now
• 1:31:24
  you know, smiling is still risk, but I have coping mechanisms and I
• 1:31:29
  can stop right. Yeah. My mom described it as pulling down the amplitude
• 1:31:33
  of just everything. So she would go on them in the winter because the
• 1:31:38
  troughs were so low, and then go off of them in the summer because
• 1:31:41
  she couldn't be her artistic self and like play out and do summer festivals and
• 1:31:45
  like participate with her artistic friends because the amplitude was just too low. Like
• 1:31:50
  it's fine when you're just in survival mode, but if you actually want to
• 1:31:54
  like do things with the intensity that your mind provides, then yeah, I've
• 1:32:00
  never done them myself, but that's how my mom has described it. Two
• 1:32:04
  things I also recently learned You're a more prone to heat stroke when you're on
• 1:32:10
  SSR eyes, which explains the heat stroke I got when I was hiking the
• 1:32:14
  Blue Mountain, which I did not understand because it felt like it came out
• 1:32:17
  of nowhere by the time I was on SSR. I's yep, it did.
• 1:32:21
  It came out of an unexpected quarter. And it makes you sweat it
• 1:32:25
  where times, which explains all the night sweats I used to have, which
• 1:32:28
  I don't have anymore, and I couldn't figure out why. I'd be like,
• 1:32:31
  what's going on, I'm just waking up in puddles anyway, TMI about
• 1:32:36
  my medical history. But if you are on SSRs, if you're on SSR
• 1:32:42
  eyes, which a huge percentage of you people are out there, you know,
• 1:32:45
  just be aware of the side effects that I you know, the doctors
• 1:32:48
  just don't really tell you about and you never know which ones are going to
• 1:32:51
  hit you, right. That's the other thing that's crazy about side effects is
• 1:32:55
  like the same drug, different people can have a totally different set of side
• 1:32:58
  effects. Oh yeah, yeah. The class of drug affects you in so
• 1:33:00
  many different ways, depending on the little binders they put in it and the
• 1:33:05
  ways that they tweaked at this. And there's so much chemistry that like we
• 1:33:09
  as normal people just do not understand that goes into making very different outcomes.
• 1:33:14
  So the doctors are like necessary oracles, but also, yeah, they're often
• 1:33:18
  not working in your best interests, and even when they are, they don't
• 1:33:23
  know everything, so you have to be open to the creativity of your own
• 1:33:28
  medicine. It's it's interesting. I had to experiment with hormonal birth control for
• 1:33:33
  a while, like figuring out which if there was one that wouldn't give me
• 1:33:38
  migraines. The answer was no, it was it took a while to like
• 1:33:44
  systematically work through that. Sure, that's definitely not a workable submution. I'll
• 1:33:49
  probably have to end up on statins, and I'm worried about those giving me
• 1:33:54
  muscle cramps well, because those are cholesterol lowering drugs. And yes, I
• 1:33:59
  have highkla's genetic I've always had high cholesterol despite being an athlete or eating healthy
• 1:34:04
  and alo jazz. So anyway, happier news. I was on Dragonmounts What
• 1:34:13
  Rewatch podcast yesterday, but since obviously the show is only a few episodes and
• 1:34:20
  comes out years in between, they are currently going through Avatar Book three and
• 1:34:27
  I got to be on four episodes three and four, so and that's the
• 1:34:30
  one where it's the Painted Lady and Soca makes a sword out of a space
• 1:34:36
  rock. So I think they're two really really good episodes. They're all great
• 1:34:41
  episodes in book three. And honestly, does Avatar really have bad episodes?
• 1:34:45
  I don't think so great show. And of course, you know, I
• 1:34:49
  mean, if you don't know what Avatar is, it's there's so many parallels
• 1:34:53
  to Wheel of Time. It's not even funny. You have a chosen one
• 1:34:56
  who's reincarnated, who channels the four different powers. There's some differences, of
• 1:35:00
  course, but like they're both great fantasy shows. I've been told so many
• 1:35:05
  times I don't have any interest in acquiring yet another fantasy show, but I
• 1:35:12
  believe it. Aradia, are you an Avatar free person? You like,
• 1:35:16
  haven't watched the show? Correct? I watched some movie or show pilot or
• 1:35:25
  so, I watched something once many years ago, but like, yeah,
• 1:35:30
  I've I'm not an Avatar person like at all, just because it never it
• 1:35:35
  didn't cross my radar until I had already gotten full up on other things.
• 1:35:41
  But it looks pretty and everyone who likes it also likes Wheel of Time and
• 1:35:45
  is very nice and tells me that I would love it, so like I
• 1:35:47
  believe that it's great. It seems to be a positive cultural force. I
• 1:35:50
  just have never had the energy for it. Yeah, the writing is excellent,
• 1:35:56
  The characters are well written, they treat each other well. This is
• 1:36:00
  some found family aspects of it. I think a lot of people of our
• 1:36:02
  generation really identify with to judge by the memes, I see my generation sharing
• 1:36:08
  my cohort like I can. I've learned a lot about certain TV shows based
• 1:36:12
  on how they've been memified by my fellow millennials to discuss their feelings and like,
• 1:36:17
  Yeah, the found family aspect of Avatar has definitely come through loud and
• 1:36:21
  clear. But I mean, honestly, I think one of the better it's
• 1:36:26
  it's it's comfort show for me as well. So it's it's hard to hear
• 1:36:29
  somebody be like, oh, I haven't really given that chance when you're like,
• 1:36:30
  but it's my best friends, you know, Like you know, it's
• 1:36:38
  someone it's like someone who's like, ah, you know, I've read Maza
• 1:36:40
  Lan, I've read a Game of Thrones, and I'm pretty much full up
• 1:36:43
  on fantasy. I don't really want to read that Wheel of Time stuff.
• 1:36:45
  I don't really know, Like it's not the same thing at all. It's
• 1:36:48
  completely different. It doesn't feel the same, it doesn't read the same,
• 1:36:54
  like it's it's it's totally worth it. But I understand if you don't want
• 1:36:59
  to do it, because you know, there's a lot of material out there,
• 1:37:00
  and I guess it's fine. I won't hate you forever. It's just
• 1:37:04
  watching shows. It has just never been a big part of my life for
• 1:37:09
  various reasons. So it's like if someone was like, well, I'm not
• 1:37:13
  much of a reader, but I did get through Wheel of Time, and
• 1:37:15
  I feel like that was pretty awesome, But I don't really know if I
• 1:37:18
  have it in me to take on another show or an Yeah, you know,
• 1:37:21
  like it's more like that, like if I was the kind of person
• 1:37:24
  who consumes that medium more broadly, I probably totally would have absorbed it.
• 1:37:29
  But it's just for reasons like, yeah, just not a lot of shows
• 1:37:33
  period. Yeah, I feel like there's something about after the end of a
• 1:37:36
  work day, sometimes all I can do is come home and turn on the
• 1:37:40
  TV, and it's like that's all that I have the mental energy for,
• 1:37:42
  and I end up watching a lot of TV that like more probably than I'd
• 1:37:46
  like to admit, you know, like just because it's it's a low effort
• 1:37:50
  and it's a lot of times just all I have energy for. Yeah,
• 1:37:54
  No, I mean I serve YouTube a ton, like every night. I
• 1:37:59
  don't think Brandon likes how much we watch you too, but he tolerates it.
• 1:38:03
  But also, like the work I do is way less strenuous. It's
• 1:38:06
  just hurting the cats and brain beasels of my own mind to try to get
• 1:38:11
  things done while I stay at home. So like when I get to the
• 1:38:15
  end of my day, I still have more energy. So I'm like,
• 1:38:16
  no, let's serve infotainment for an hour and a half, Like it'll be
• 1:38:21
  great and we're back good time. I'm actually well hydrated today, I guess
• 1:38:31
  for once. Usually i'm the one column for the break exactly exactly. I've
• 1:38:36
  been having to drink, not drink more water, but drink more water earlier
• 1:38:40
  in the day because of how I'm taking my new thyroid medication. You're supposed
• 1:38:44
  to take it with water very very first thing, So chugging a bunch of
• 1:38:47
  water like first thing, which like I'm was inconsistent about before, but now
• 1:38:53
  I'm very very consistent about it. It's a good baseline to start your day
• 1:38:58
  with. At least a half a glass of water does set you up right.
• 1:39:01
  What I found is if I don't chug a little bit of water first
• 1:39:04
  thing in the morning, my coffee causes my stomach to be upset. Oh
• 1:39:08
  yeah, But if I chug a glass of water before I drink my coffee,
• 1:39:11
  I can have coffee and then wait on food for a little bit.
• 1:39:14
  Yeah. Yeah, you just gotta can't get the system powered up first thing,
• 1:39:16
  and then when you don't want to be putting actual like food molecules in
• 1:39:20
  there, it's just just water. Just get it all awoken. Oh,
• 1:39:25
  chef, he's being cute. He was sitting on the couch behind me for
• 1:39:30
  a while, but then he he's back out at the window, ready for
• 1:39:34
  chapter two. Chapter twenty twenty three. I think it's my read on this
• 1:39:44
  too. The evil number, isn't there. There're a movie called twenty three
• 1:39:47
  that's all about like I think it's got Jim Carrey in it, and he
• 1:39:51
  sees the number twenty three everywhere and it's like the sign of evil or something.
• 1:39:56
  I don't know. It's got supernatural overtones, no idea, Yeah,
• 1:40:00
  no, docks are grein with me. Yep. Jim Carrey so okay,
• 1:40:03
  I'm not making that up. That movie exists for those of you who care.
• 1:40:08
  It's terrible, and I think it's basically like sign based around some scientology
• 1:40:12
  bullshit. Yeah, but it's all you know, the idea that twenty three
• 1:40:16
  occurs everywhere, which of course it does. It's like twenty three is a
• 1:40:21
  very common number to occur in our lives. But it's also like one of
• 1:40:27
  those things when you're going for a number that's not totally even. Some people
• 1:40:30
  go for like twenty three, right, because it's not too big and not
• 1:40:33
  too small. My preferred number is seventeen for that purpose, but yeah,
• 1:40:38
  totally. Yeah, most people either pick a number with threes or sevens in
• 1:40:43
  it. Sure, yeah, it's middle of the range, yeah, but
• 1:40:46
  not too middle, not like five or anything ridiculous, right, right,
• 1:40:48
  five is obviously middle, right, that's not random, right? Yeah.
• 1:40:55
  No, it was an obsession amongst the Trumpbones in Marching Band because they are
• 1:40:59
  ranked twenty three. Okay. Yeah, people are so silly but also weirdly
• 1:41:04
  predictable. Yeah, yeah for sure. Yeah, don't give mean to the
• 1:41:09
  I don't think I don't think we have free will argument because I think we're
• 1:41:13
  just little robot machines responding to stimuli. We're just very, very complicated machines.
• 1:41:17
  I used to think that, but I've now come around to understanding that
• 1:41:21
  that model is really really specifically dated and has some problematic limitations because it really
• 1:41:29
  only comes about in the context of like the early Industrial Revolution and a bunch
• 1:41:33
  of philosophical thoughts that leads right into the creation of capitalism and helps explain colonialism
• 1:41:39
  through a scientific lens. And it's just like, yeah, but now it's
• 1:41:44
  I mean, but we but we're physical things, right, We exist as
• 1:41:47
  a physical object, and we obey the laws of physics, and in no
• 1:41:51
  way has any human been shown to violate the law of physics with their body.
• 1:41:56
  Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's the it's really rooted in the
• 1:42:00
  division of the mind from the body, and like, that's the era when
• 1:42:03
  we stop being seen as whole beings that exist in concert with the world,
• 1:42:10
  and we start getting subdivided into different interlocking systems that can be isolated from each
• 1:42:15
  other. It's it's a whole thing in the disability studies density of stuff that
• 1:42:20
  I've been reading, and it's I'm recently coming truly around to being like that
• 1:42:25
  model is actually not I mean, it's a model, so it's flawed,
• 1:42:30
  which is a given. But yeah, I there's there's I don't know.
• 1:42:36
  I used to believe that and I don't anymore. I'm not sure how to
• 1:42:40
  frame what I believe, but it's it's too too aer specific to be true,
• 1:42:45
  if that makes sense. I'm very early on in this, in this
• 1:42:49
  deconstruction, Okay, yeah, because I love to hear more about that,
• 1:42:53
  because like, for me, that that to me is we're just you know,
• 1:42:57
  machines is a poor way of putting it. You know, obviously in
• 1:42:59
  the age we say we're our brains, we're computers running on you know,
• 1:43:02
  electricity. But like the idea is that that we are mental. For me,
• 1:43:09
  the mental state and the physical state are the same thing, right,
• 1:43:12
  we don't. Our mental mind doesn't exist separate from our physical body. Like
• 1:43:15
  you can put in you know, you put a nail through somebody's brain,
• 1:43:18
  it changes who they are. Yeah, no, yeah, so uh yeah,
• 1:43:24
  there's the model as it exists for the world broadly, and there's the
• 1:43:27
  model as you have have as you were understanding. It's it's weird, tricky
• 1:43:32
  shit, but I mean it's yeah, the deconstruction of it. I was
• 1:43:35
  reading it and was in very much this like we have we have tried to
• 1:43:41
  pretend that our minds don't matter. It's just our bodies, and like everything's
• 1:43:45
  biomechanical, and everything has a predictable cause and effects, and it's like,
• 1:43:47
  no, shit's complicated, and it's well yeah, wait, I mean see,
• 1:43:50
  in the same reason that like weather, you know it, it's very
• 1:43:55
  difficult to predict the weather in a particular place, but climate has over all
• 1:44:00
  trends that you can pretty much nail in that. You know, individual person's
• 1:44:03
  behavior is very difficult to nail down moment to moment, but people have trends
• 1:44:08
  that you can predict with statistics. Yeah, but there's just so many flaws
• 1:44:15
  with how we currently understand it that it's like, at what point do those
• 1:44:18
  flaws override the actual useful truths in this marketle Well, yeah, going on
• 1:44:24
  disabilities studies is a good way to feel like the flaws outweigh the benefits.
• 1:44:31
  Yeah, And that's where like whether predictions are terrible as well, right,
• 1:44:35
  Like it's chaos is inherently almost impossible to predict in any useful sense. Yeah,
• 1:44:42
  especially at the most granular scale like how an individual will respond on a
• 1:44:47
  given day to anything like Nope, too granular to make good predictions. Foundation
• 1:44:54
  is interesting. If you've ever read Isaac Asimos Foundation, that's sort of the
• 1:44:59
  basis. I mean, don't even on hard read, hard hard read,
• 1:45:01
  but it is sort of the whole idea behind that series is that you can
• 1:45:08
  make those kinds of predictions, and that you can make them with the kind
• 1:45:11
  of granularity that will predict you know, almost what any individual. It generally
• 1:45:15
  can't make individual predictions, but when the individual affects the society as a whole,
• 1:45:20
  there's some ability of the predictive narrative to reflect, Oh, well the
• 1:45:27
  society is going to react this way therefore, and that's going to affect me
• 1:45:30
  this way. So yeah, yeah. I tried to read it after enjoying
• 1:45:34
  the TV show, and I did not get very far. I haven't watched
• 1:45:39
  the show. Oh the show I enjoyed a lot. Unfortunately, the part
• 1:45:44
  of it I enjoyed the most, as far as I can tell, was
• 1:45:46
  the most made up from whole cloth. And it was weird because I was
• 1:45:50
  like, oh, this plot line feels the most weirdly archaic old sci fi
• 1:45:55
  and it feels the most true to like what I associate with ASTHMOV because I'm
• 1:45:59
  a very vague ASTHMA fan. I'm not a big ASTHMA fan, but I've
• 1:46:00
  read a little bit. And then I go to learn that that plot line
• 1:46:04
  is wholly divorced from the books, completely and utterly made the fuck up.
• 1:46:12
  I was just like, oh, well, I liked it, but I
• 1:46:15
  guess I don't know what about the books actually, And I read the first
• 1:46:19
  like mini story of it, and it was just so like, I don't.
• 1:46:26
  Yeah, hard read. And for me, it's been thirty years since
• 1:46:29
  I've read them, right, Like I read them as a teenager, couldn't
• 1:46:33
  haven't read them since so and I there sci fi from that era is weird.
• 1:46:39
  It's hard to read. I've read lots of it and enjoyed it.
• 1:46:42
  The founda and yeah, maybe it's just because I was hoping to get some
• 1:46:46
  clue of why the show did all the cool things it did and I didn't
• 1:46:49
  get any of it. But yeah, I enjoyed it a lot. I
• 1:46:55
  need to get on some of these Apple TV shows that I've missed. Yeah,
• 1:47:00
  yeah, Apple TV is there's a lot of stuff on there that's like
• 1:47:02
  weirdly good and just totally underrated. And uh, also, Lee Pace just
• 1:47:09
  steals the entire show just like, I mean, you just watch it for
• 1:47:13
  the plot, and by plot, I mean Lee Pace, Like, just
• 1:47:15
  watch it for the Lee Pace like. He's great, He's fantastic. You're
• 1:47:21
  saying it's a well paced show. It is very well paced. Yeah,
• 1:47:31
  all right, on that note, please read us into this chapter. Okay.
• 1:47:34
  Thank you for listening to the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast. Rate us
• 1:47:39
  in the Apple Podcast app, or support us on Patreon. Good enough