Latest / WoT Spoilers / Rivers of Shadow & A Conversation with the Dragon - The Gathering Storm chapters 32 & 33 - EP530

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Rivers of Shadow & A Conversation with the Dragon - The Gathering Storm chapters 32 & 33 - EP530 · WoT Spoilers

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: This is the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: We're doing a Ninive tracking down Grendall today. So it's
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: a it's a two part chapter, well two chapters, and
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: the second one's pretty short with a little bit of
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: nine even rand and the first one is Sherlock Ninive.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Nieves detective agents.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It really feels like this could be a spin off, right,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Like she was a healer, now she's a detective Ninive
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: al Mira land Man dragon in no.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I mean the way that she does like gumshoe detective work,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: but also like heals a child on the way is
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: just yeah, it's another It's very very We've noticed this
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: repeatedly with this Anderson's stuff in this book. He writes
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: these little vignettes that could almost be an entirely self
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: contained story just modularly hook on to the main story.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: This feels like another one of those where he wrote
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: a scene that like it almost has enough world building
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: to not need any other context. It's right, the complete
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: arc of her beginning middle end is good enough, you know.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: And I feel like if you pay attention to the
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: way Sanderson talks about writing, in the way he writes like,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: you can almost see his outline in these chapters, and
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I think that's to me. Doing the podcast the way
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: we're doing it very much exposes the bones of how
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: a story is written. And with Jordan, it was obvious
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: that he was weaving a pattern that he would write
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: one story and then he write another story on top
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: of that, and they need pile a third story on
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: top of that, and he'd weave them all together in
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: a way that led to this incredibly complex pattern. And
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: I feel like Sanderson has the outlines of the characters
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: and is just painting them in solid colors, and you
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: can see sort of the bones in the way it works,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: and like all the characters are there and they're all
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: moving in the same way and they're all doing the
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: same things. But with Jordan, you could see the tug
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: of the weave pulling on them in different ways, and
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: it was just it was complex in a way that
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: I think was just it's different. And I think as
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: as Anderson's gotten older, his writing has gotten more complex
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: and there's more of that layering. But certainly here you
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: know there's an outline and I can see it.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: It's definitely a much younger, less experienced writer, Like that's
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: very obvious. There's just a certain new car smell. How
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: obvious it is.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: A new word smell. Yeah.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But also I kind of like how we write
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: to Ninive.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: I think he does a great job on Ninive. I
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: was gonna say that, I think I think it's very
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: very good. Yeah, And I do say like it's a
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: simpler story, but that doesn't mean it's not a very
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: good story, right, Like.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, complexity is not necessarily quality.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly exactly exactly, Yeah, So I don't mean that as
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: a criticism necessarily, although it's obviously coming off off as one.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: But just like the style is different, and that's where
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I'm seeing the differences is in the sort of the
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: big chunkiness of the story that Sanderson writes versus the
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: like intricate weave that Jordan writes.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like this is a very Sanderson chapter.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: But also I feel like it's in many ways the
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: best one yet in this book, Like he's it's it
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: clicks better than the other ones, And I really like
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: how he writes Ninive. I always found Jordan's depictions of
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Ninive to be kind of harsh and clunky, and like
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: it just wasn't wasn't the easiest character for him to write.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: I think, sure, yeah, I like the rounder edges on Ninive,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: especially at this stage in her life, like that that
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: is a good evolution for her to be at right,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: she's not. She doesn't have to maintain that angry edge
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: all the time, just a channel. She still gets angry,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: but then she calms back down from it.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it just you can I think that Sanderson
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: looked up to niniveh Yeah, It's like he writes her
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: in this very like understanding your heart is in the
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: right place and always has been kind of way, and
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: she's just way more easy to relate to. I don't know,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: maybe it's just because I'm getting older, but I yeah,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: I just I thought he did an incredibly good job
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: with such a core character. Like the other characters like
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: saying you know, Matt especially, it's been very like oh god,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: this is so harsh, and then Ninive comes along and
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh no, I like this. I like
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: this change. This is actually better.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Well, And I think the weird thing with Ninieve and
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Matt is I think they are amazing characters for the
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: same reason. And I think he got it with Niieve
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: and completely missed it with Matt. I think he got
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: the hypocrisy with Ninive. He writes the hypocrisy with Ninive,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: and it keeps her funny, it keeps her fresh, and
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: he just he just takes Matt at face value, you know,
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: And a lot of people do that. They takes him
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: at face value. They don't look at what he's doing
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: in the same way. And I think that that Sanderson
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: was fooled by that character. That's why he doesn't write
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: him quite as well. He didn't realize that this is
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: a noble character at heart.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Right, I totally agree with you. Fuji Nineve is, Yes,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: perhaps the only major character that doesn't backtrack to an
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: earlier part of their growth. Ark Nineve actually feels like
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: he's picking up the baton right where Jordan left it exactly.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The only one of the umens Field five really
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: who gets to advance forward.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or starts not going backwards like I feel like
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: a book five ninetive. This feels like a book twelve nineteen.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, because she's no longer tied to her anger, right,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: She's moved beyond that, and she's accepted her powers, and
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: she's accepted she's Isidai and all of those sorts of things,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: and it's almost refreshing to be like, okay, like she
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: could have done that with parent so easily, to have
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: him accept that he's the leadership. Right, we've moved beyond
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: that struggle. We didn't have to rehash it again. And
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: that's where I feel like paren was a miss and
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Ninive was a hit.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally. She does just enough recap for you
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: to see the connection between the last time Jordan wrote
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: her and this, but like, yeah, it feels it feels
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: like a nice upgrade, which you know, is kind of
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: weird to be like, oh, I can tell it's changed.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I can tell it's not Jordan writing it, and I
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: like it better. Like it's kind of funny to have
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: that moment where it's like, this is one of the
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: first moments where I really am like, I'm kind of
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: glad that some other author came in to finish this
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: instead of letting Jordan just continue to get lost in
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: his own world.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: And I'll say about Ninieve too, is like, ever since
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: rand came and picked her up for the Cleansing, she's
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: kind of just been another hangar on without any real
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: autonomy of her own. And it's like he kind of
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: didn't know what to do with her. She was always
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: supposed to be the one who cleansed the source with him,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: but then what do I do with her after that?
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Like he didn't really know and it was just it
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: was yeah, and she struggled to find something to do
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: or because she's she should be protective, but rand was
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: falling apart and you feel like she should be taking action,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: and like, yeah, I feel like this is this is
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: her finally doing something, and it's like, Okay, about time,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: come on, nieve right her whole thoughts about Moraine, Like
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: we should actually get into the chapter. Do you want
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: to read this in?
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: I feel like we're talking about this chapter for a
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: while and not actually started it.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay, We're gonna start chapter thirty two Rivers
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: of Shadow. And the symbol is the snake in the
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: wheel because we got bubbles of evil ish kind of
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: sort of because.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: I have no idea why the snake, I mean, that's
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: just plot stuff. The weavy, it's sort of the wheel
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: like coincidence and the wheel weaves and patterns tugging on
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: other people.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: You know, what symbol I would have chosen? What the staff.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: We haven't had the staff logo since freaking Moraine left
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: the series, right, I mean, like some spoke five. We
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: haven't seen the staff logo in so long. But it's
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: both the wisdom doing the healing and thinking about her
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: two rivers days, and also how she thinks about Moraine.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, for purposes of publishing this, it's the
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: staff logo. We're just gonna head Cannon in the staff logo,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: all right, Maria is it? Nieves stood on the broad
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: wall around bandar Ebon, looking down over the darkened city.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: The wall was on the inland side of the city,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: but bandari Ebon was built on a slope, so she
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: could see out over it, past the city, toward the ocean. Beyond.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: The night fog rolled in across the waters, Hanging above
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: a crisp, black mirror sea. It seemed like a reflection
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: of the clouds high above. Those clouds glowed with a
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: phantom pearl light cast by a moon she could not see.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: The fog did not reach the city. It rarely did.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: It hung over the ocean, churning like the ghost of
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: a forest fire, stopped by some unseen barrier. She could
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: still feel the storm to the north. It called on
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: her to ride through the streets shouting warning, flee to
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the cellars, store up food for a disaster will strike. Unfortunately,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: packing earth or reinforcing walls would not help against this tempest.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: It was of a different sort entirely. I'll just cut
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: it there. It goes on. She's having very cool, poetic
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: thoughts about things. It's it's cool, it's nice writing.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: What's the title Rivers of Shadow? What does that refer to?
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: It comes up way later in the description of the
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: way the light plays over. I think I highlighted it.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: It's like way later in the chapter. Very random. But
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: at one point she's got a torch and it's casting shadows,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: and that is that's where the title of the chapter
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: comes from. We'll get to it. I can't find it now.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: I mean it's got to be some a bit metaphorical
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: as well, right like that, she's following like a river
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: of shadows to.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: The Oh here it is? Here?
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Does I found that source of the corruption?
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: It's when she goes to the mansion grounds, right before
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: she picks up the soldiers to go on the mission.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: It's literally the line before that, and I needs lantern
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: kestrine shadows on the grass, and it's light shone through
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: the trees, trained and trimmed in the shapes of fanciful animals.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: The shadows moved in concert with her lantern, the phantom
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: shapes lengthening and merging with the greater blackness of the
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: night around her, like rivers of shadow.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's got to be two meanings
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: to that, right, I mean.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: No, I don't know, honestly, Okay, I mean, as we
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: get to it, maybe you'll, maybe you'll find something. But
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I looked at that for like five minutes, just like
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I don't.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, I just think as a title is just the
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: fact that she's following the shadow, like she's trying to
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: track it down. That's all that I think They're trying
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: to go for some double meanings. Yeah, sure that works
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: as a title. Yeah, I distretch, I know, why not?
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Why not? So? Yeah, she's up here on the wall
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: thinking about how she's literally one of the most powerful
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: people in the known world as far as she knows,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: between being like one of the most powerful channeler or
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: the most powerful channeler with the White Towers authority behind
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: her and married to Land, She's like I'm literally so powerful,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: so totally powerful.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Like he's I love this line. He might not have
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: a kingdom, but Land was a king and I just
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: want to be like yoas king, like he would just
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: be like my boyfriend is a king. Yeah.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Also, she thinks so highly of herself that she thinks
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: that Katsawayin blames her for her exile. I'm like, not
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: once anywhere in kat swayn or Rand's calculations about this
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: has a nin Nieves name come up once. Neither of
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: them have thought about her at all, respectives. And meanwhile,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Nieves over here like surely Kat Swayne blames me for
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: her ex file Like Katswayne literally does not.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: No, No, this is moment was Codswayne give her like
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: a look and she's like, oh, Codswayne thinks this, and
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: it's like, I bet codswayn barely even saw you.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Like no, it's even funnier than that. Katswayne actually does
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: give her a respectful nod because she's the only person
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: worth paying attention to. And Ninieve's like, there's no way
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: that Katswayne respects me. Katswyn, oh that's right. Ericant asked
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: for that, and it's like no.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: She literally she didn't give you a little respectful nod.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Right, Julie thinks you're the only ice to die worth
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: interacting with right now.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Because of her like a willingness to punch people in
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: the face and say inappropriate things and like not count
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: out to the like uh White Tower rules that she's
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: supposed to like, that's what Codswayne.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Respects exactly exactly. She doesn't respect Nieve's youth, but she
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: does respect ni Nieves's general attitude. Yeah, Ninive just cannot
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: accept it. So it's really funny because but yeah, all
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: the other ISID are annoying, and Katswayne and Nineva agreed
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: that all the other ISI diet are annoying. So yes,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: kat Twayne respects the violence exactly. I hate it, but
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: it's true.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: It was true. True. There is a well in the
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: opening reading, he said, the fog did not reach the city.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: It hung over the ocean. Why wouldn't the fog reach
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: the cities? That's just air currents And in the fact
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: that you have heat coming off the land and cold
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: air coming off the sea. I don't understand that or
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: is that something power related?
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Like I don't know because it's not the procession yet
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: it's not the ghost procession.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Elevation, the cloud, the city's on the hill and the.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it really did. It depends on the temperature of
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: the ocean versus the temperature of the land and the
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: topography and like how the winds are coming on shore
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: or not. Like, fog does a lot of things, right.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: The San Francisco area is famous for being foggy as hell,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: right right, right, right, like, but then this is saying, oh,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the fog rarely reaches the city, like not all not
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: all ports are the same. But yeah, probably it's that
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: it's very cold air out over the ocean and then
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: it's a warm air from on land blowing out to sea,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: so then the fog is forming out over the ocean
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: rather than blowing in. But I don't know, Maybe it's
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: just the fact that there is magic about to happen
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: and not magic but you know, the ghost procession. Maybe
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: it's the opening ripples of the ghost procession.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Maybe maybe somehow yeah, yeah, like I was trying to
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: make it related, and I agree. I think it's just
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: weather patterns. Yeah, but yeah, so that they're out there
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: to see the ghosts, right, this is something that's happening
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: every night. Since Rand entered the city, right, because now
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Rand is I mean, he's distorting the pattern, and so
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: I think it's it's breaking a little bit easier around him.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: We're seeing more of these bad events, and you know,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: like he causes the tea to go bad when he's
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: in a bad mood. He's making things bad things happen
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: around him now because he's touched the dark Ones, He's like,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, his connection to the Dark
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: One is a lit causing bad stuff to happen, is
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: how I feel like somehow his his probability is the
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: dragon has been tainted by his touch of the Dark One.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, he's very much becoming kind of a demigod
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: with like cosmic effects in his general vicinity because he's
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: all dark One afied right now, Little forsaken Rand. Yeah,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: all those ripple effects are are kind of bad. And
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: there's thinning in the pattern so ghosts can come through.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: But also there's literally the bubbles of evil where people
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: burst into flame and not the cybermen, no, not the
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: cybermen are coming through.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Oh and the little Blue box. No, okay, it's a terror.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: A vacuule.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: That would make sense that the tartist was an encapsulated
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: vacule that would travel between you know, attached to the
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: pattern in different places and times.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. My one true religion is that all fantasy worlds
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: actually exist in one universe, and somehow their cosmologies all mesh.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Every story I've ever read, they all exist in the
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: same universe.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: They do ours. Yeah, the comments about how there's no
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: food growing anymore, which is yeah, the Dark One's touch,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: the ghosts Dark One's touch, like there's all bad stuff
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: from the Dark One. He's really screwing people over.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I also noticed that Rand is proclaiming that the
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Last Battle will be starting soon.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: M hmm.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: We're a far cry from the boy who wanted to
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: hide the fact that he was the Dragon Reborn. Now
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: he's telling just the general public prepare for armageddon.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Well, he really, I think at this point, believes that
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Land's first attack will be the beginning of the Last Battle.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Right. He knows there's a ticking down clock on the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: start of battle. He's got a rough idea of how
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: long it will take Land to initiate. Yeah, that makes sense.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: And when you're gathering armies from multiple nations, you kind
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: of have to be like Okay, time to start, like,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: gather the troops, everybody, We're gonna start heading in that direction.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Like hurting large groups of people involves a lot of
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: announcing what you're going to do ahead of time.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: It's true. Crowds are incredibly stupid. They're very slow to
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: absorb information and to respond. So you have to be
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: very simple, very direct, and repetitious when you want a
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: crowd to respond.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, lots and yeah again. Nine. You've seen lots of
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: three credible reports of people who had insects burrowing out
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: of their skin. Someone who's burning, you know, spontaneous combustion
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: basically and burning alive.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: But turned to charcoal without burning any of their bed linens. Right,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: that's some weird physics. That's not just too much hair
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: gel and open wire in the house. That's like, actually
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: weird it.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Cigarettes and alcoholism. We know.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: There was a very specific spate of spontaneous combustion suddenly
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: being a thing in the early days of electricity that
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: had a lot to do with a lot of flammable
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: products and uninsulated wiring.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Nah.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: I remember reading with this a bit ago as a
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: very specific period where suddenly there was a bunch of
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: spontaneous combustions, and then electrical insulation was figured out and
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: the rate went down.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: So I thought the rate went down as smoking rates
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: went down, because people would basically be drinking and smoking
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: and false sleep with a cigarette. Generally overweight people would
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: false sleep with cigarette in your hands and then you
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: sort of catch on fire.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure that happened as well. But there
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: was a very specific thing near the introduction of electricity
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: when people just didn't quite realize how dangerous of a
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: thing it was they were inviting into their homes. Got
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: it and a lot of very very volatile like hair
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: products and like fireproofing, not fireproofing, the opposite of fireproofing,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: like just really flammable tree months on various like upholsteries
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: and their products, and it just it was we did
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: some really dumb stuff about one hundred years ago, which.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Is crazy because they had they had open flames because
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: how that's like they had campbells and stuff like that.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: So electricity was more dangerous than open flame in creating
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: these kinds of problems.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Sparks and people putting ever more volatile gases into their
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: general environment. It was just sort of the two lines
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: were going to intersect in a in a spike in
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: quote unquote spontaneous combustions.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Listen, just because I had means last night doesn't mean
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: I'm putting ever more spontaneous gases into my environment.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Anyway.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Anyway, is right?
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: So we we rehashed the wi just fixing Ora Domani politics,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: fix anything? Or why does it matter that rand cares
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: about the election of things? And Ninive does make a
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: good argument that like the shawn Chan even aside from
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: just like the general world, but like the Shawn Chans
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: specifically are a good reason to try to shore up
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: the world that he's going to leave behind, which.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: And what if Grendl really was here right like she
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: is here, so you should probably have like been a
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: forsaken in every town, you know. And this is the
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: last place in all the markers. Even though it's so
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: funny because it feels like Grendall had very little to
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: do with the chaos and Aradumont. It feels like it
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: just fell apart kind of on its own.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: I know, right, well, she was giving out a lot
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: of orders for the Merchant Council to carry out.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: That's true, And wasn't she giving out merchants to who's
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: the military commander? Da yeah, Erada, So he was just
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: like that's when he sort of became traders when he
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: picked one of the orders to follow and stopped getting
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: the rest.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Right. But like, she was sending orders to lots of
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: different people in the political and military spheres, so like
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: she is responsible for a lot of the chaos, but
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: not in a way that we've seen evidence of on
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the page. It's just kind of like, oh yeah, and
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: arad Demon's and chaos.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Like, right, because most likely because of Grendel, we can't.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Really pick apart how she was doing that. It's just oh, yeah,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: she was doing nefarious things like head canon at will
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: so whatever.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: So here's where we get the look between Codswayin and
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: I neive that we talked about earlier that not of
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Codswayn's couldn't possibly have been out of respect. Codswayne was
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: far too self righteous and arrogant for that.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: So an instance of Sanderson having a character be wrong, right,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: but she's wrong in a very precisely inverse to correct
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: way that basically tells you exactly what is happening, and
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: there's no room for interpretation.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Right, well done. I appreciate that she's wrong.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: And then she thinks about Rand and how he's changed
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: a whole lot stubborn folks back into two rivers hadn't
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: had Rand's strangely menacing aura. I believe that.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: She talks about how the room darkened when he's threatened Codswain,
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: and that's something that we've seen as the theme. Everyone
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: around him seems to see that darkening out of the
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: corner of their eyes, which is again just the dark
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: ones touch on him. Right. That's forsaken Rand right there.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Right, that's the overpowering presence that's really making regular old
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Rand hide and not be present, this literal atmosphere of
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: dark gloom and nihilism that's like literally oozing out of
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the walls whenever he looks at you too hard. And
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: then she hears a child cough.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Right, so we get this little side story about her
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: healing this girl, which, as far as I can tell,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: the whole side quest it's just a little side quest,
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: like there's nothing really related to the rest of the story.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: It's just like trying to show A nine's character that
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: she's the kind of person who will stop on her
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: way to do something important to heal a child.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I think that's part of why I like this section
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: so much. Like there's a lot I like about the
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: ninive coverage here, but the part where she takes the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: time page is worth of time to go find a
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: child and heal them. I'm like, I feel like we
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: should have seen her doing this sort of shit before.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: It feels like an overdue nineve scene.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: Actually, mm hmmm, And I had canon that this is
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff she does all the time, we just
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: haven't seen it on the page.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Sure, yea.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: She doesn't act like, oh my god, this is the
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: first time I've ever stopped to heal a child. She's like,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: oh my god, another fucking one. Okay, come on, Yeah,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: what are you doing? Yeah you should have brought them
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: to me eight days days ago. Yeah he's sick. Yeah,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: you idiot, make sure you get extra food. Don't fucking
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: sell it. And the fact that she has to say that,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: and the fact that she knows not to tell them
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: not to sell it means she's done this a bunch
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: of times before and people have sold the food.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm guessing that was more because she knows she's
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: in a refugee city. Sure, I thought I had more
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: to do with that than her prior experience with people.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: But yeah, either way, this is this is what we
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: expected the yellows to be doing the whole time, right, yes,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: this this is like the way that she is acting.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: This is yellow Aja one oh one.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like you're saying, like she's been doing this forever.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: She's been doing this the whole books, presumably the whole books.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: There's a trail of children that she's been healing, and
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: we know for a fact that the yellow Aaja has
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: not been doing that. We can headcanon that Ninieve has
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: been doing that, no problem. We know for a fact
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: that the yellow Waja has not, And like that's that's
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: all that we ever expected of the yellow Auja. It's like, yeah,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: you should have known, because like she even says like
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: you should have brought him to me days ago, And
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I'm like, how would they have known that you can
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: just go to an Isadai and get healing the yellow
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: eyeses I have been hiding from them for centuries? Like
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: in what world has the outreach been done necessary for
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: you to assume that they would know to come to you.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Only you know.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: That they wanted to stand up for the d on
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: that one and be like, how was I supposed to
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: know that? Hey? Like where's your flyers? Where's your like propaganda?
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Where's your Yeah, that's that's ridiculous. Happened?
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Where's your news crier on the corner? Like singing your praises?
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Like where's your sponsored by the Yellow Aja? Like health clinics?
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Like what is what is the Domani attitude towards isaid? I? Right,
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: it's not the most favorable.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Right, she thinks that they're supposed to be more pragmatic. Yeah,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: but even then, it's like why why do we think that?
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: What evidence have we seen in the world building to
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: make us think that that's true? Niinieve they're not Amadisia obviously,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: but like it because they have a lot of windfinder
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: traffic or something. I don't know, but I think it's
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: very cute that we spend all this page time on
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: a character in a family that has no bearing on
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: the plot.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Right, This child doesn't come back to save anyone. The
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: father doesn't heroically sacrifice himself as a pseudo warder, the
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: mother doesn't join the White Tower, like nothing happens, right,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: there's no payoff for this other than a child didn't die,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: which like that is payoff, right, that is payoff. But
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: we're so used to going through these books being like,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: what's the bigger payoff? And it's just kind of refreshing
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: almost to be like, yeah, you could just heal someone
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: for the sake of healing them. It doesn't It doesn't
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: have to lead to a clue. It could just be
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: for its own sake.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: So I have a question for you. The line Ninieve
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: took the cup and mixed the something and fever bane
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: in it. What's the something there for you? It should
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: be the first sentence of a paragraph.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: A C E M.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, akam yeah asum. I googled. It doesn't doesn't look
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: like anything to me.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Is it a hard C? Is a hard? Is it
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: a hard s? Or a soft? When it's just one
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: letter like that, I don't know how English works. I
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: can't even remember how they say it in the audio books.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: It's not coming to mind.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Because, yeah, the dictionary is bring up ace, which is
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: not correct.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: I think it's probably acum. I think that's how she
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: says it in the book. Yeah, I feel like the
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: phrase is yet akum and fever bain, not asum. Asum
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: would be weird. Acum, But I have no idea what
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: that is. Maybe his cat stepped on the keyboard and
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: he decided that was a good word.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's just a cat. It doesn't it
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem acum meditation. I don't know, Like, there's no
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Google doesn't give me anything that could be an herb
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: or anything like it. And I don't see any other
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: reference to uh acum anywhere in the book. Let's see
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: if it pops up anywhere.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Weird.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: No, it's part of placement. But no, that's that's the
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: only other place that turns up. So Noah, I just
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: I couldn't find anything any clues about what the acum
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: would be, and that just seems like a weird word.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: So we're just going with her random herb you made up.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: It's a plant.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: It's a plant.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: So yeah, and I needs doing a combo, a conscious
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: combo of herbs and healing. She's not using the herbs
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: as a crutch. She's using them in concert with the weaving.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: She's using them to treat the fatigue that healing causes, right, right, right,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: And that's she's actually using them as like pay medication
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: after surgery, right, or something to help you recover after surgery.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, it kind of reminds me of like holistic
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: medicine when it's not falling off into WU space like
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: actual logical holistic medicine, where it's like, yeah, you should
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: probably like eat well in addition to taking your pharmacology drugs,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: you should probably like alter your diet in specific ways,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: in addition to just taking a pill. Like it's more
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: than one thing. I feel like the acid di are
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: very much like, no, there is a pill for that.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: End of story. And nine he was like, well, but
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: maybe going on like a walk would be a good
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: part of the treatment regime.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Too, which is funny because she's like, no, there's a
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: pill for that.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Well, the medication is yeah, no, for sure, the analogy.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Is a little weak, but no, no, I go way
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: that she's.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Going against institutional Yeah, the way she's doing is institutional knowledge.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Just being like no, just like yeah, like there can
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: be other things that are healthy for you other than medication.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Right, maybe even to the point of like doing an
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: herbal tea. That might be a good thing to do
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: at least your place ebo effect will be good. We're
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: in her case, you know, herbal medicine clearly actually helps, but.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Well, it's like the migraine medication has caffeine in it,
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: because it's like, yeah, the caffeine helps. Like it's kind
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: of crazy how much caffeine can make a difference when
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: your head starts to hurt.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Right, Well, I mean fundamental truism of all medicine is
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: that it started as herbal medication and we worked outward
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: from there, like the once upon a time that's.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: All we had, so you know, yeah, yeah. Oh, and
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: so she starts thinking about like how she's going to
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: handle Rand. And I love this as much as at
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: galleder to admit it. Bullying him was just not going
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: to work. Finally somebody said it. Finally somebody fucking says it. Right, Yeah.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: I highlighted that and like underlined it. I was like, please,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: why have you not realized this? You and cod Swain
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: have just tried bullying over and over and over again,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: and guess what, It's not gonna work.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: What I dislike is that she thinks that bullying should work, yeah,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: and that bullying is a tool she will continue to
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: go back to for normal people with normal problems. It's
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: just that this one time, for Rand, she's going to
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: have to think outside the box. Don't love that? Hm,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: but yes?
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: And then she's like, how did Moraine get him to
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: listen to her? Oh? She paid attention to his wants
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: and needs and listened to him and worked with him
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: rather than bullying him. I don't know if I could
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: ever try that, but maybe it's worth it. It's just like
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: I'm ready to stab myself, like, which is great ninive writing?
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it's so ninive again, Like I love this
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: take on ninnive because I'm like, that's naive. That's definitely ninative.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: I can recognize the ninive all over that.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Did she perhaps see her simply as another one of
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: those relevant and manipulators? Yes, because that's what you are.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: The hip the hypocrisy, right, Rand did have so many
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: people trying to control him that must frustrate him, and
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: they made I needs job a lot harder since she
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: was the one that he actually needed to listen to.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Such a good hypocrisy.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, love that really good.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: The line that makes me mad is where she's like, well,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: maybe Rand just liked what Maurine was doing because it
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: flattered him. And I'm like, you know better than that, Ninive.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: You know that Rand and Moraine. Both are better than that.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: That's not what was going on, you know that. I
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: know that. Stop being mad.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's that jacket is too fancy for you. Rand, like,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: stop putting on airs vibe.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm just like again, good Ninive writing makes
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: me annoyed. Very good Ninive writing.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: And the way she is like, okay, Rand needs to
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: act like the mayor, and the mayor needs to be
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: loved the wisdom. The wisdom punishes people, and she's thinking
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: about the White Tower, right. The White Towers meets out
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: the punishment and keeps people in bounds. But Rand should
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: be loved as king.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I don't know how much I believe that
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: leaders need to be loved and adored while the police
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: arm takes all the heat. I don't know that that's
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: the dynamic I would subscribe to in an ideal world.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: But at least she is consistent across the books, and
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: I do appreciate consistency.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and I get it. You don't want to
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: have a hated leader, right. You don't want people to
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: shake the leader right like it's it. But you do
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: that not by distracting them with love and then punching
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: them with the police arm. You do that by having
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: someone be a good leader.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Right, Being loved doesn't mean you're a good leader, It
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: means you have a good propaganda arm.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, something about our current political system makes me
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: think you and I might be a little cynical.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: I have no idea what you're talking at all. I
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: am entirely talking about what's happening in these books, one
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: hundred percent, no analogies to any events, current or past.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: So Ninive runs into the It's basically on her mission, right, Yeah.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Niniev is thinking about how she needs to get Rands
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: to trust her, to listen to her, and to understand
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: that love is an important attribute for a leader to cultivate,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: and this somehow all coalesces into a plan to figure
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: out how to find grand All. And so she launches
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: off on it.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Which is that's where she was heading when she stopped
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: to heal.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: The kid No, because it says, but how to show
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: that to Ran? She couldn't force him. She needed to
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: get him to listen to her another way. A plan
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: began to take root in her head. By the time
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: she reached the mansion, she had an idea of what
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: to do. She did the kid thing on the way
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: back from seeing the fog to go to the mansion.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: Which is God staying God God.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: By the time she gets she side quests because she
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: doesn't really have anything better to do. And then as
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: she gets back to the mansion, she's like, wait a second,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I have an idea, grabs some people from the mansion
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: and heads back out to do things.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: I mixed up the order of things. I thought she
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: was encountered the girl on her way out to fix
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: the to encount to find Rendel. No, yeah, I see,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: I thank you for clarifying.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a confusing order of events. I had
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: to like flip back and forth and try to like
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: sort out where things were happening, because like, at first,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: she goes she has a plan and she goes stomping
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: off to get someone, but she actually goes stomping off
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: within the mansion, and that's where the first encounter takes place.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Getting the dose in Laurel. That's actually all at the mansion.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: OK.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I kind of thought it was another location, and it's not.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Laurel takes her to another location, but like this mansion.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: Is never follow hippy too a second location.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: I know, But like this mansion is where everything's happening.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Like for some reason, I always thought this was yet
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: another location. Is not. It's literally the mansion. Anyhow. I
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: don't know how many people were confused about that, but
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: if anyone was confused about that, there you go. And
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: if you weren't, then now you know that I have
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: bad reading comprehension.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: So she grabs a bunch off duty soldiers. Poor bastards,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: were just hanging out with their buddies, probably just got
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: off duty, and we're like finishing up a game of
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: cards before they went home to the like five minutes.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: They had like five minutes, and she's like, lazy sods,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: come with me.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: They're like, god, damn it, I was gonna go home early.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: But fine, yeah, but I mean they end up being
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: a pretty good sport about it. They like catch the
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: vibe of what she's doing and help her with the mission.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Like they seem fine with it. No, no, they get
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: a pat on the head from their supervisor for helping
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: her or something.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Well, and they're like helping out. I said, I right.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: It's like kind of having a celebrity come in and
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: be like you help me out. You're like, oh, okay,
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: like this will be fun yeah or dangerous one of
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: the other.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Also, the lady does shoot fireballs.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, so here we go with the rivers of shadow line.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: This is the paragraph where she comes up to the
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: gates and before she grabs the soldiers. That's the river
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: of shadow. Oh okay, so yeah, I think you might
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: be right about Like she gets an idea and then
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: there's these rivers of shadow and she gets drawn into
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: a much more plot heavy experience than you know, saving
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: this child, who you know is useful to the extent
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: that she is a human being that has a life
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: or the boy he is a human being that has
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: a life. But yeah, now she has a plot, like
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: a plot forwarding plot to.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Do, and so she's she's followed into the thread. She's
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: following a river. She's following this like trying to figure
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: out how this person died and who was in control
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: of them and where they were and who ended up
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: killing this person because it's just she's like, this is
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: too much of a coincidence, which is so funny in
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: the world of Teveran, but she's like, it's too much
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: of a coincidence that this boy died the day before
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: the dragon reborn wanted to see him. Somebody took action,
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: and I will track down that person again.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Ninive go in full detective agency, like she is a
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: private eye and she is on the case. These clues
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: don't line up. She's got her murder board out, she's
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: got strings and markers, and she's doing the whole bit.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: And she figures that if you follow who runs the
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: place rather than who's in charge of the place, like
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: military owns everything. Right, nine It's like, no, no, no,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: I don't want who owns the business. I want I
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: don't even want the regional manager. I want the floor manager.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: That's who I want to talk to. That who knows
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: what's happening. Sure enough, that person is quite easily intimidated
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: into giving the correct information without fluff because they're just
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: a working person. They don't have a lot of like
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: political intrigue to engage in. It's just a housekeeper being like, ah,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: here's the address.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, why'd you wake me up in the middle
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: of the night. I'm still tired.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Right, Like, she did nothing wrong, right, She just has
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: the information nine Eve needs and that makes it a
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: much easier and tear than going after someone who actually
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: is going to get prosecuted.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: I thought it was an interesting line here when they
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: were talking about you know you're aware, is said, I
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: don't lie, and I need things to herself. The other
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: road is only formality. The tours folk need no tear
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: on greol to make them honest. And I wanted to
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: sort of say, the difference between being honest and not
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: telling a lie are huge, and I need lies all
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: the time. But she's very honest.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I also feel like we've seen this move
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: before from isid I making those two separate statements and
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: then letting people draw their own conclusions.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, No, she's really good with the isid EE
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: statements here for sure.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Well, And it's just like I feel like we've literally
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: seen this exact exchange from other eyeside, like this is
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: iside one oh one. It's like you are aware of
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: the isid I nude, I lie, Okay, Like let's establish that.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Like it's like the good cut, bad cop of ISIDI interrogations.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: It's like that I don't know. So yeah, Then we
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: learned that the torturer lives at his place of business,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: which is not creepy at all.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: When you're really into your work you know, you just
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: do you just make a palette in the front office
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: the back office and sleep there all the time.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: In the Goals district. She chooses to live in the
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Goal District twenty four to seven.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, because it stinks. I mean, I guess if you don't,
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: you just get used to it. You don't want to
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: go in and out.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: I suppose that's true, like air conditioning in hot environments.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you just get used to the stench, you
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: never have to like, you don't like to get east
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: at once. If you never leave.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Pro tip, don't be a torturer, and then you won't
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: need to get used to the stench.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: I got my hobbies.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Dislike.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: So they go to a dungeon, which is a dungeon
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: in every sense of the word.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not the fun kind of dungeon, No, like the
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: worst kind of dungeon. And it's hidden inside the false
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: front of a candle maker's shop, which is genuinely being
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: run as a candle maker's shop. You know, Curb, the
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: apprentice is making candles. It's a proper running front. But
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: sure enough it's easy to realize that it is in
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: fact a front.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: Then he was stirring up trouble. Sometimes to see what
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: was at the bottom of a cloudy rain barrel, you
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: need to just stir the water to bring up what
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: was at the bottom, or just like, I like that
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: analogy of just reaching into the muck and stirring it
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: up just to see what's going on down there, whereas
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Rand's kind of just looking down from the top of
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: the barrel is like king, She's like, I'm going to
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: stir it up.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's so true to niniveas a person. That's
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: genuinely how she's moved through the entire plot. It's like, well,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: what if I just ran in swinging? Then what we'll
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: figure it out after, which is again very Matt, like, now,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: what if I just hit the people who I dislike
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: and then we sort out the rest after.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: It helps that they both carry a big stick Matt literally,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: Ninive metaphorically she.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Used to literally carry a bit stick, and that's why
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: that will be the symbol for this chapter.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: For this episode, she thinks about how she hasn't heard
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: from Gwin to the others because she doesn't have a
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: dreamtar on real anymore. She gave it up when she
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: went to the Reps tower and she can't dream walk
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: without a tarn real, so Ninive has just been That's
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: the other reason why she's been a little isolated, Right,
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: She sort of felt like a rand adjunct because she's
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: been totally out of contact with the rest of the plot,
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: whereas for a long time they all met and tell
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: her run RealD together.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that was a real fail not taking a
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: dream radio.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Now she's got to wait for GWayne to like scream
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: into her dreams.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a lot, it's a lot. I like
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: the way that she breaks into this place with her
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: gang of soldiers, the way she places the ward against
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: eavesdropping around the door, and then I was like, all right,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: kick the door in, but it's like basically a silencer
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: like on the door kicking maneuver, Like you can really
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: see this. Sanderson like, ooh, what if I actually like
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: metagamed how the rules of channeling work. And it's like,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: all right, that is pretty cool.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: That was pretty cool. Yeah, that it was very I
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: like that it's a good way to sneak up on
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: the p because then they can't hear the like the
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: door crashing open, because they they're like, oh, yeah, why
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: wouldn't suspect the door of being broken open, because of
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: course you're going to hear that.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: And then they go in and they jail or they
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: they grab the three guys, right, the jailer and his
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: two apprentices, and she they're being you know, annoying, and
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: she says this great line, it's don't provoke me. It's
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: already far too late at night for reasonable people to
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: be awake. That's a great way to start your intimidation
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: with these people, to just be like, look, I am
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: already in a bad mood because it is after midnight
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: right now.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: Even though it's her fault. Well, yeah, she's the one
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: who got up and woke everybody up and says we're doing.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: This, yeah for sure, because she was out doing the
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: watching the ghost parade.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, right, like that only.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Comes at midnight, but like it's a it's a great
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: way to startle someone awake and then say I'm not
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: reasonable because it is in fact one in the morning.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: So cooperate, and she rolls a twenty on her intimidation check.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: And so they tell her about the trap door into
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: the dungeon. Right, she figures out that the two apprentices
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: aren't apprentices they're just jailers.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the soldiers tribe and points it out.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: He's like, these are not apprentices. I know what apprentices
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: look like.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: This is this no at it and so, but the
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: actual apprentice, right, So the apprentice is the one who's
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: doing all the work, right, He's the one who's he's
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: the one and he's also the one who's poisoning same
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: same person, which seems weird that. I guess Grendall gave
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: him enough ability to make candles pretty autumaton like, I.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Mean they're probably really shitty candle. Yeah, lest be really
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: probably been dropping in quality ever since this whole situation started.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: It's like having a robot make your candles and they
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: keep messing up, but keep doing the same thing over
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: and over again.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: You've seen those like bread dough kneeding robots. Yeah, imagine
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: he makes candles kind of like that.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: That's technically a candle, but you didn't like allow for
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: any ofs or movement or variation whatsoever. You just did
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: the exact same movements over and over and over again
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: until you had something that resembled the campbell. Yeah, and
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: he's probably asleep when he's not working because that's like
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: he's asleep when they come in. I mean it's late
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: at night, but still I imagine he does a lot
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: of like when he shuts down, Essentially he doesn't do
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: anything in his private time.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, he runs for eighteen hours a day and
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: then shuts down for the other six and then lather
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: rints repeat, and yeah, they snag him. He's also there
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: and they grab him and they're like, oh, it's just
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: a child, whatever, it's fine. And he tries to run
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: away at the end of the chapter, and they like
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: grab him because, you know, for whatever reason, he realizes
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: that he needs to escape to maintain his orders. But
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: for now he's still pretending.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: I thought he tried to scramble out the front door
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: after you went up the stairs, so I thought he
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: tries to run away. Like in the middle, he's trying
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: to run away twice.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: No, he wants once. Yeah, okay, but at this point
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: they just have like apprehended him just in his blankets.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: He wasn't trying runaway, and now he's just sitting there going, oh,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on. So yeah, Ninieve basically
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: promises the jailers that if they talk to her she
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: will make sure that they don't get punished for killing
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: the man or whatever. She's like, I give you amnesty
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: for whatever you tell me, which she doesn't really like
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: promising amnesty to these people. But also it's like she's
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: on extremely thin ice, so that makes sense to offer
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: to get what she wants, right.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: And she's just trying to get the like they're kind
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: of just doing their job, even though they're really terrible
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: people who've done really terrible things. It is their job
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: to do those things, and she's not there to stop them.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: She's there to track down Grendall.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Right, that's the thing is that they're doing what rand
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: wants them to be doing. Proving that their tortures isn't
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: the point. So it's easy to promise you won't be
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: punished for having been being torturers because that was already
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: on the table from the get go. So then they
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: they're pretty free with their information. She doesn't have to
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: deal with a lot of lying. But she thinks she
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: is right. She has this like many times back and
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: forth with this Jorgan guy where she's like, well, did
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: you kill him this way? Did you kill him that way?
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Did you let him die this way? Did you let
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: him die that way, and Jorgan's like, no, I take
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: pride in my work. I have standards, I have procedures,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: and sometimes people just die and I don't have an explanation,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: and that was this situation, and like she does not
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: believe him, But after several go around, she's like, man,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: he's really like annoyed, like just like a point of
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: pride for him that like this is not supposed to
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: have happened. Like he's more annoyed about you not believing
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: him than he is worried about the consequences of why
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: the fuck you're here, like shit, So for her, the
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: trail's going cold, right, She's about to give up the
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: way Rand was gonna give up. She tried so hard,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: but like Jorgan didn't kill him, and so she doesn't
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: know where to go from there.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: I like the line, Look, it's not the type of
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: prisoner you kill anyway, like not only like why wouldn't
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: he both there was no not only did I not
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: kill but I didn't have any reason to kill him.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: It would be stupid for me to kill him.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Right right exactly, And then he also talks about how
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: the man would not yeah, the information that he had
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: he's like, I know how to torture information out of people.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: This man held on like no one has ever held
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: on before, like magic was in his brain or something
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: crazy like that. And he was like.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: Well yeah, and then she's like, oh, is that why
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: he killed him?
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: He's like, no, that part is pretty funny.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: That's pretty funny, like his frustration.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: I know he's a torture and a terrible person and
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: like a man died, but like it is funny how
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: he's just like, oh my god, for you, please believe me.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: It kind of reminds me of someone who's a messuse
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: trying to convince someone they don't do happy endings, Like no,
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: I would never do that. That would tarnish my reputation.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: Why would you accuse me of that? Stop it?
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Right? Yeah?
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like I would lose my license like I would
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: I but no.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It is very much like, look, there's a professional
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: code of ethics, like I will be stripped of my
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: license and never allowed to practice again, and in this
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: guy's profession, get killed.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Probably right, they guarantee I will never practice again by
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: making sure I don't breathe again.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Right, This is like a mafia thing. They rules like
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: just because you think that we're all a bunch of
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: lawless criminals doesn't mean we're actually lawless amongst ourselves. We
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: actually still have rules. So now Ninieve does the most
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: matt thing she could possibly do. She stops trying, and
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: she randomly, casually, almost accidentally stumbles right into the information
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: that she.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: Needs, which is she goes and heals the woman and
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: realizes not only is she being deprived of food, she's
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: being you know, she's not unhealthy because she's in the dungeon.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: She's unhealthy because she's being poisoned.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Right, Niieve, just as a by them by because you know,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: she healed that child. She's like, well, I'm not going
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: to leave the prisoner without at least a brief health overview.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: And then shecy's poison, which is the last thing she
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: would expect. And suddenly everything comes together. And when she
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: yells back up the stairs saying wait, come back, that's
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: when the kid tries to take off, like I don't
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: know how, but somehow, like that lets his little trip
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: wire brain routines like know that, like the jig is up,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: you have to get out of here.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: So there is twice then he runs away because in
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: the beginning, he says, he was asleep under the blankets
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: over there, tried to scramble out the front door after
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: you went up the stairs, and they caught him. Oh
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: so in the beginning, he does try to scramble away
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: as soon as she comes in, and then again once
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: she realizes she's like, who read the food? And then
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: he tries to escape again.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: As has been established, I have terrible reading comprehensions.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: That's why there's two of us, because truly, if we
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: can both catch eighty percent of what happens, as long
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: as that twenty percent doesn't overlap a whole bunch, we
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: can usually figure it out. And then we've got these
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: wonderful people here with us live to catch us when
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: they we neither one of us can figure it out.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Which is a percentage of the time.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: We'll go with that. It is a percentage, a percentage.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: I do not want to say what percentage.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, So, yeah, he did try to get away twice.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: He's just trying to get away constantly. So it must
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: be that when the other people come up the stairs,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: the guards are just distracted enough that the kid is like,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: I can make another break for it.
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, and I think he's also realizes he's caught
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: because he goes who prepares the food and he's like,
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: oh shit, that's me, like and runs. So I think
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: that or he's got the programming in there at least
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: a run.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, totally an apprentice we found amongst
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: the refugees a few months back. Quite a lucky fine.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Our last apprentice ran off on us, and this one
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: was already trained.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: I'm guessing Grendall killed the last apprentice and replaced held
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: one off. Yeah.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: So that's the thing too, is that the the Chandler's
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: shop is not a new thing, that that's been the
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: front for a long time. But yeah, how providential. Yeah yeah,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Graandell definitely providential. That other apprent is like right off,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah, okay, so yeah, child runs out the door
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: and he was like grab that child. Four men body
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: tackle said child in the muddy street at one thirty
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: in the morning. And nine he was like, good job,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: that was an excellent move on your part, thank you.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: And then we have a scene break and Ninive brings
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: the kid to rand In the next chapter.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, then we switched chapters to chapter thirty three, a
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: conversation with the dragon probably forty minutes later, after she's
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: brought the entourage back up to the palace and summoned Rand,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: and then we opened scene with the chapter logo being
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: the Dragon on Rand saying this had better be important
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: because I was finally asleep for the first time in
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: like a month, So what are we doing?
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: And it is, I mean, he figures out where Grendol
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: is with this, like Nineve brings him the boy with
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: the information that he needs.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Ninieve is just looking at him, going like
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: the man seemed almost an interpretation of the Rand she'd
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: once known, like a statue carved from rock to look
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: like him, but exaggerated in heroic lines like he's he's
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: very very LTT in this whole chapter, just the way
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: he interacts with her, the way he holds himself. He's
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: really leaning on the LTT part of himself to stay
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: cognizant through this.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she's trying and tries, she tries to prod him
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: into getting you know, his normal reactions, his normal like
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: back and forth of like, well, don't get a hotty
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: on me, I spanked your bottom and he's like mm hmm,
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: and he's no reaction and it's just like that just
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter to him anymore because he is He's more
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: LTT than he is Rand at this point.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, deeply so, deeply so. And Min is here in
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: this whole scene like in a robe, drinking tea, like
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: watching everything, but she doesn't interact at all. Ninive thinks
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: about her a lot, but she doesn't actually do anything.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: Doesn't She like fall asleep because she's exhausted from staying
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: up late like reading books.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she she falls asleep on the bench kind of
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: like you know, curled up, because yeah, she is studying
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: as long into the night as Rand is up doing
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: politics and stuff. And sheeah, so it's an hour of
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: watching Nieves stare intently at this child while Rand stares
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: intently into the middle distance. I can see why she
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: falls asleep.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: One thing I don't think we talk about a lot
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: is how much this is a precursor to Niniva actually
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: healing the madness in the Aushaman, because this is kind
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: of the first time she figures out how to heal
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: compulsion and the madness is what she says is, oh,
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: this is a different kind of compulsion. I know how
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: to heal that. I can get these spikes out of
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: their brain, and it's described the same way as these spikes,
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: the same way that RAN's black compulsion is described in
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: his brain.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, this is very directly how she gets the
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: idea for that that healing later and I remember when
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: she does it later, she's like, ooh, I might lobotomize
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: this man. Oh well, because like she remembers what happens here.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: Right, And I do love that, like the madness that
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: men get is just basically the dark One's compulsion from
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: that he like, it's the same thing that just builds
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: up over time from the dark One's taint.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: I do really like the idea that the madness is
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: not like, I don't know, just a spanner rattling around
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: in like in the engine of their minds. It's like
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: the dark One is like puppeting them and like messing
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: with them. Like I like the idea of that intentionality
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: that makes it even more sinister of an effect.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: You touched the dark One, the dark One touches you right.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Back, right right, yeah, exactly exactly.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: So Ninive reports that this compulsion in his head he
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: was the one who did the poisoning, and that Rand's like,
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: oh okay, yeah, that's actually a good clue because like
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: grandall uses compulsion a lot, and if this is really
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: intense compulsion, that points to it being something she.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: Did, right, And he's like, this might be such a
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: great discovery, it's good enough to make me forget how
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: you obtained it, meaning going behind his back and commentary people, right,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: just going totally rogue.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: Which is again that's forsaken level threat, right, like yeah, right, like, oh,
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: I will forgive you. Well, what would you've done if
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: you didn't forgive her? Would you punish her? Would there
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: be like this level of like forsaken level punishing your
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: minions because they don't do things the way you say
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: they're supposed to, right, that leads to bad outcomes, and
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: minions who don't take initiative the way NNI.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Did right, Right, Yeah, it's very like Rand being punitive
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: to your allies for no reason other than that they
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: didn't ask permission is deeply the opposite direction you want
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: to be going. I mean, she was thinking just earlier
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: about how a leader needs to be loved and not feared,
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: and like this is some fear based leadership Rand.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: Well, and then he does that thing where that he
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: did the Codswain. Do you think if I simply said
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: the word your heart would stop beating? I'm like, reusing
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: that bullshit? Come on, but like it is it he
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: is essentially giving into the bad part of the pattern
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: that lets him do things like stop somebody's heart, Like
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: that would be bad of him, evil?
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, I did think it was a little
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: bit of a cheap shot to recycle what he used
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: on Kat Swayin on this child just to prove that
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Grandall's compulsion was in his head. I'm like, at least
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: get some new material.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Yeah, I didn't like this. I didn't like
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: that line up very much. I was like, you could
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: cut that out.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I liked the idea that Rand can deliberately push
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: on the child's mind so hard that he can prove
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: there's compulsion there. Like, I liked that a different line
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: would have been appreciated to do that, Like do you
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: believe that something else impossible that could also happen? You
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: know that, like that flower will suddenly burst into flame
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: and then it does something I don't know, but recycling
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: the line that he used on Katz because this child
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: did nothing like what kat Swain did. This child doesn't
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: deserve that, Like, he deserves some originality, Rand, if you're
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: going to terrorize him, he deserves an original line.
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: But I think the important thing that Anderson is trying
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: to convey here is that when he's doing that, the
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: tea turns bitter. And I need's hand that he is
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: and Mens. Yeah, he's actively causing bad things to happen
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: and causing the pattern to corrupt around him when he
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: uses that kind of influence.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I just wish he had had deigned to
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: come up with a new line to do that with.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: But no, I do like the part where he both
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: makes Curb freak out and proves that there's compulsion and also, yeah,
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: sours are stale. La fies makes the tail, makes the
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: tea go stale on the side, just like you can't
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: be in his presence without things warping.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: I missed Men's tea going stale. I don't see that anymore.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's uh, oh, there it is.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: Men walked over to sit beside him. She was regarding
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: her tea with a grimace. Apparently hers had spoiled as
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: suddenly as Ninis had. Nice. Yeah, so Rand gives Ninive
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: the clue she needs to unravel compulsion and to undo
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: it for the first time.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Which I'm surprised it worked given that it is his
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: male understanding of the power. Usually those kinds of mechanics
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: don't translate across the gender divide.
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: But eh, I mean, I feel like it's like either
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: way you're making fire. Think of it the way unraveling
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: the gateway, where you pull on a thread and then
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: another thread. I bet that would work the same way.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: For both Mmm, sure, sure, yeah.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking on that level of mechanics. Right, there's the weaving.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: How the weaves come together is different, but like some
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: basic things about the fact that you're weaving threads is
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: the same for both genders.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Sure that makes sense, Especially when it comes to undoing
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: a thing. It's always less complicated than putting it together.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: Right right, And it's just like you invert. You can't
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: slow right, say, I'm not exactly sure what you need to,
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: can't slo out, but that's how I do it. Either.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: You can't slap what's there.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: Right, Like, there's a really fundamental first principle that applies
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: to whatever context. Yeah, okay, that makes sense, And yeah,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: Rand kind of man's blames at her and she gets
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: really annoyed by it. And it's just such a nineive
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: thing because Rand is not trying to be annoying, but
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: nineys just like, don't patronize me, because you know he
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: does say like, oh, I'm sure you're you're clever enough
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: to do that, because you know he is ltt right here.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: It's a very like he's speaking from the vantage of
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: a four hundred year old PhD. And she's like, you
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: did not even graduate community college, sir, right, But he's
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: speaking as all, so he's not trying to be condescending.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: It's just like, you know, you're a new age I
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: is to die, but you're clever, you'll figure it out.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: And I love this description, right because I think it's
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: so important. Later she could see it now, a complex
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: web made from lines of spirit aaron water. It was
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: horrible looking at it with her mind's eye, cris crossing
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: the youth's sprain, bits of the weave touching here and there,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: like tiny hooks jutting deep into the brain itself. Yeah,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: and the way like we see Rand's compulsion describe that
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: way and just coated with gold. It's like a black
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: mass that he coats with the gold, and that's what
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: Veins of Gold does.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, she's really worried that it's going to
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: go badly for this kid because it is such a
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: delicate brain surgery kind of thing. But she also knows
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: that if she backs out at this point, Rand will
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: not stop there. This is too tantalizing of a clue.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: So really, if she wants to get the trust that
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: she initiated this whole thing for, she's gonna have to
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: hope that she doesn't lobotomize this poor child. And unfortunately
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: she does.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: Well, she doesn't even know that's a risk, right, She's like, oh, yeah,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: I will heal. Yeah, I will do my best to
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: heal this. This is something wrong, I will remove it. Right.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she's where she's gonna kill him. She's actually not
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: where she's gonna bottomize, and she's just Rachel straight up
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: kill him. And it's so tragic how she's doing it
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: and it works, and she's like, this feels right, this
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: feels good. I'm putting the world back the way it
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: should be. This is why I went into medicine in
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: the first place. And then a page later it's like, yeah,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: you freed him to be a vegetable because that's what
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: Grandal left for you to recover.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: Sorry of a vein, right, like the dagger has to
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: come out, but that action kills the patient.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is kind of that. And again you know
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: grand All killed him, right, Yes, grand All took away
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: any potential for there to be recovery for this person.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: Like she put the knife in.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she positioned the knife so that there was no
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: way to pull that out without, yes, severing the main
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: vein and just making it all all go away, like
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: and I need you know. And she does heal the
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: kid and put the world back the way it should
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: be in the sense that he can now die as himself. Right,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: that's the only thing that's left to fix about this.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: And she does give him that, and it does.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: He does give up the information, right, he uses the
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: last bit of life left in him to betray I'm
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: not gonna say betray because it's not a betrayal, but
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: to give up the person who kills him, right, and
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: like honestly, like nothing better if you know. And this
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: is the thing, like Grendall has compelled everyone because she
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: thinks that she is safe. She thinks she has fried
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: their mind so badly that there's no information there, and
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: even if the healing was accomplished, they couldn't give anything away.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: So the fact that he has the presence of mind
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: and the ability to fight back after that incredible compulsion
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: and to give up that way, I mean, that's a
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: huge triumph for this boy. Even though his tragically is
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: going to die from this, dies from this.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: It suggests that he was an incredibly like, strong willed,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: very present lot of personality, kind of person that like,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: even being that hollowed out, like there was a part
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: of him that was like fuck you, fuck you and
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: able to just yeah, like hold on to like I
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: know the place I went, I know where I was
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: last myself, I know the address of the building where
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: I lost everything. Like it's so tragic.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: It also helps make you less angry about Natrum's barrel, right,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: because if everyone's been compulsed like this boy, you're like, Okay, well,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: maybe wiping out all those people wasn't necessarily quite as
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: insane as it felt on the surface. Because if everybody's
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: either Grendel, Grendel's allies, or people who are treated like this,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: like yeah, they all they all deserve death at this point.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: Right, If you could fix your braid to think that
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: what Ninive did to this child was mercy and was healing.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: Then can you really say that Natron's barrow was a crime? Like,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: are are those not mutually exclusive stances to hold? Because yeah,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: that's how grand All operates. We know that from her,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: We know that from Rand, we know that from other characters.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: Like this is what Grandall does. She takes away the
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: person permanently and puts in what she wants and that's
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: that's it.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: And all of our servants are like that. All of
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: our servants are famous, pretty people who she's mind fucked.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: And like the whole estate, like the entire palace she's in,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: is a self contained estate, hundreds of people, but like
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: presumably none of them have the capacity to harm her
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: or her cause, which means that they have no personality
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: ness left, which yeah, means that being released back to
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: the wheel is the most merciful thing you can do.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: And that is bleak as hell, And like, you don't
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: know that for sure, not down to every single stable
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: boy at the very edge of the estate. You don't
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: know that for a fact fact, but you do, but
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: you don't, but you do. It's messy and.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Then when Ninive tries to kind of blame him for it,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: I love his speech here.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: Oh it's good, it's good.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really good. I'm just gonna read it. Should
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: I suffer for them all? In my neive? He asked quietly,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: rising face still half in the darkness. Lay this death
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: at my feet if you wish, it will just be
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: one of many. How many stones can you pile on
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: a man's body before the weight stops mattering? How far
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: can you burn a lump of flesh until further heat
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: is irrelevant. If I let myself feel guilt for this boy,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: then I would need to feel guilt for the others,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: and it would crush me so good, because it is
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: this pile on of guilt of just everyone who's died
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: for him, everyone which like that. He has to let
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: it go in the last battle. That's the whole thing
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: that lets him come back and rise is he lets
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: people be their own heroes. He lets go of these
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: people who have died for him.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: Right, Guilt is not what anyone needs. It's not what
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: anyone needs from you. Guilt is not going to help
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: the situation at all. And he's right to feel guilty
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: for every single person who died would crush him. It
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: is crushing him. He does feel guilt for all of them,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: and that's why he's so defensive about how No, uh,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not feeling guilty because but you are. To truly
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: put that down and to not feel guilt would not
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: be to be defensive about it, and.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: To have emotions other than anger to be sad. Right,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: the weight has crushed his ability to be sad. It
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: is a crushed his ability to feel guilt. He no
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: longer has those emotions. He has nothing but anger left.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: That's not good. You need to be able to have
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: all the emotions and like go through the whole range
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: and feel all of them and pass through the experience
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: and metabolize the emotions. Like you can't just be angry forever.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: It won't work.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: No, And he's like, no, listen, listen, I'm gonna die soon,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: so I can suppress all of my emotions until then
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: and then I'll be dead and it won't matter. So
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: I don't see what the problem is.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Which I just yeah, it's very unsustainable for you to
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: plan to just leave the world in the maximum chaos
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: as you leave, right, Like he puts so much potential
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: energy really high up on a shelf and then just
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: drops it as an act of dying and is like,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: you guys will figure it out when like the bomb
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: shatters on the floor, It's like you didn't have to
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: put all of the stuff way high up on a
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: shelf in a precarious position. That's what you're doing. You're
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: making everything so much more precarious than it has to
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: by doing this, because the fallout is going to be
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: so much worse than if you could just like cry
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: for once, like God.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: And then here I hears some proto Sanderson, this story
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: that Tam tells him. When I was much younger, Tam
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: told me a story he'd heard while traveling the world
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: about the boy who right. Sanderson tells the story of
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: Fleet in the Stormlight Archive, someone who runs and runs
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: and runs and doesn't stop until they die, right. And
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: that's an inspirational story in Stormlight Archive that reminds me
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: a lot of this one. Instead of running, it's climbing
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: the peak. But this idea that like you get to
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: the end, the end of your journey is where you die,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: and you want to use up all your energy to
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: achieve that end.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: This is not a healthy way to look at the world. Also,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: I just have so many as a person obsessed with
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: high altitude mountain climbing for a bit, it's a very
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: silly story. There's some mountain that you can't come back
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: down from, Like blind people have summited Everest without supplemental oxygen,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: So shut up.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: But Dragonmount is so much higher, Like it's the point
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: where like there is zero oxygen on Dragonmount. You would
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: die if you were like rand Is, Like I would
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: die if I wasn't at the top using my power
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: to keep me, you know, alive.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: Well, that's because he didn't spend months acclimating. Fair, Like,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: you can't go up to Everest. I mean, it's called
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: the death zone for a reason. But like, also you
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: have to spend weeks acclimating from base camp up through
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: Camp one, Camp two, Camp three, Camp four.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm just saying the Dragonmount makes Everest look like
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: a tiny little hill, right, Like, canonically, Dragonmount's a lot bigger.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know that I buy that.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: And way outside the atmosphere, No.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: Is there a canonical measurement? Is there a canonical measurement
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: for a Dragon Mount? I remember we did math once
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: and it came out really really bad, and it does not.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: It can't go out of the atmosphere because then the
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: weather around it would be way different.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: I will read this from Reddit. The peak of Dragon
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: Mountain is easily in the death zone, which is twenty
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: six thousand plus feet. It rises well above the clouds.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: What Encyclopedia sites the height of the peak is roughly
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: ten miles, although there's no citation for that. There's a
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: discussion where people tried to use the shadow length calculate
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: the height and came in with something in the range
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: of thirty to fifty thousand feet, depending on the exact
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: distance between Tarball and Dragon mount and the exact latitude
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: of each, So you know, it could be up to
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: twice the height. And what's Everest.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Eversus fuck twenty seven something I can never remember. It's
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: fucking bad with numbers.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: Twenty nine thousand feet.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one of those cool numbers.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: So basically, looking at the shadow, it's Everest or taller height.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, if it's significantly taller than Everest, I guess
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: maybe his story is right.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: But whatever document I look at kind of puts the
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: lower Everest is the lower limit of Dragon mountain.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: All right, well, okay, some people definitely have gone up
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: Everest and come back down without supplemental oxygen. That's happened
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: many times. Literally blind people have done it. But if
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: it's significantly taller than Everest, then I guess TAM's story
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: tracks pretty good.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: It's the tallest waterfall in the world.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: Hmmm. Also, I think it's hilarious that he tells us
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: this whole story and it, you know, it is clearly
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: giving us hints of the vans of Gold Da Da da.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: But like, he doesn't hike up the mountain. He uses traveling,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: so it doesn't and that's why he's able to come
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: back down, you know. Is like because he literally didn't
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: hike up the mountain. It's like you fucking cheated, you
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: fucking hacked the Kobayashi Baru, Like, fuck you, dude.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: But for him, the climb is going into the dark
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: ones den, not going up onto the mountain top.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, sure, but it's still funny. He travels to
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: the top of the mountain that supposedly kills you if
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: you go up there. The only people who ever get
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: up here people who die, except people who travel.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: Well, it's standing upon his own grave. Right, there's a
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: lot of like symbolism there.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure, you're back in the.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: Same spot he killed himself in and like his contemplating
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: doing it again, right, Like there's a lot of full
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: circle stuff with that.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: Also, I'm pretty sure that there's a depiction of like
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: active vents and fumaroles and maybe even a lava lake
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: at the top of the mountain.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're supposed to be. Yeah, there's a caldara and
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: everything at the top. Yeah.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, that is definitely a magic mountain, because
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: that doesn't seem likely, but it's a magic mountain. It's fine,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: It's fine.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know. He goes on about this for
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: a long for a couple of pages. It feels like
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: I don't need to hold back. I don't need to
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: salvage anything of this beaten up soul of mine. It's
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: more like you're beating up body. But yeah, I know
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: that I must die.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: It's giving me strong Frodo and Sam at the opening
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: of the Return of the King, you.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: Know, sure where they're just really torn up and really
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: badly beaten up within the last leg of the journey.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: Well and where Sam is like, well we got to
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: make sure to ration our stuff so we still have
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: food to get back. And you know, Frodo just does like,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: oh Sam, Yeah, It's like no. But Sam's hope is
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: the reason why they fucking get home. The fact that
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: Sam always has that plan, always has that hope in
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: his heart, is core to why they get home.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: And also it's why Rand survives. Right, He has that
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: core hope and that lets him go into another body,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: like his body dies, but he gets to survive because
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: of his linked Mordon and his willingness to not give up, right,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: because that's why Mordon dies, like Morden gives up and
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: goes into the dying body.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: Right. And I mean, and you can see that fierceness
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: here because right Nineve is like, you need to think
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: about contingencies, you need to have a little more Sam
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: Wise Gamgee in your monitors. And He's like, don't fucking
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: tempt me with that. I can't deal with being tempted
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: by that, which, again, it says a lot about how
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: tempted he is by that. It says a lot about
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: how important that is to him, that he would want
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: that if only he let himself.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: Well, remember that was one of his three questions how
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: do I beat the Dark One and survive? Right? He
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: doesn't really talk much about that last part, but he
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: does ask how do I beat the Dark One survive?
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: And the answer is to live, you must die, is
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: the answer they give him. And so he's like, well, fuck,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: I guess I have to die. But we all know
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: he gets his body has to die, but he gets
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: to live on in Morgan's body, which is so annoying.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: Men's fallen asleep because she's been up all night with books,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: pulling on lighters, trying to figure out how to beat
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: the dark One.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Naive also like totally less. I mean, kind
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: of sort of lets the cat out of the bag, right,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: She's like, I did this so you would trust me.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: It's like when you explain the joke and it takes
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: all the humor out, It's like it does it? Does it?
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: Does it pull down the trustworthiness if you say why
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: you did it? Or is the added transparency a further reassurance?
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: But it's very Ninive, right, It's like, this is why
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to manipulate you. I know, Ninive, I know
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: that's how you're trying to manipulate me. That's fine, right.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, you, Ninive, are not doing subterfuge. Well
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: we know why you're doing like and and he reassures
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: her that he does, in fact, still trust her. She
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: still does rank highest on the trustometer. Even as everyone
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: is getting devalued, she still leads the pack. And he
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: puts in the perspective that kat Swain only cares about
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: him essentially as the dragon reborn, and Naive, you know,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: cares about him as randolphor And that's I find it
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: annoying how she's like kat swayin only cares about how
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: I fit into her plants. It's the same criticism I've
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: had of him with respect to Iguay and being like, yeah,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: her plans are for you to save the world. It's
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: okay to be a piece in her plan when her
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: plan is literally for you to fulfill your destiny saving
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: the fucking world, Like that shouldn't be a mark against her.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: But also I do get it that like Ninive is
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: more concerned with rand to the human being. I mean,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: she wants them to save the world, but like you know,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: she's a much more direct kind of person. She sees
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: saving the world as having him maintain his humanity, right,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: like that's her approach and to survive, to seek to survive, right,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: It's if you don't like she understands without all the
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: academic study that Min is engaged in, that in order
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: for Rand to survive, or in order for Rent to
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: save the world, he has to be the kind of
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: person who wants to survive. Like, she gets that at
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: a fundamental level because she just knows people because she's
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: good too, rivers people or whatever. But yeah, I like
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: that Min has been studying so hard that she can't
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: really stay up on purpose because she's exhausted. It's like, yeah,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: that's right, because when she's not, you know, getting reviled
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: for being a sexy lamp, she's actually like doing some
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: pretty intense research.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: Which leads to both the breaking of the seals and
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: the how they use the calendar to over Morgan. Right,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: she gets those are two really important things that she
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: figures out pretty much for Rand, right.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which that second one really affects Ninive too. That's
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: part of why Ninive goes into the pit with him
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: is because he needs two women that he trusts, and
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: he trusts Ninive. Yeah, Min figures that out men makes
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: it all happen and it's only because she does the
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: very not screen not page turning activity of reading, which
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: is literally is page turning. But you know what I mean,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: You know it's not page turning watching someone turn pages.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: Very much so, very much so, it's not being a
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: sexy lamp. It's just doing the thing that does not
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: play well on screen.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: Doing the hard work, right, yeah, yeah, it's.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: Very unsexy actually doing.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: That in a lot of cases. Yeah no, And so
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: often in fantasy, Like what makes magic so fun is
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: that like, oh, they don't have to do the hard work.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: They can just magic it. I mean, that's why I
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: always love Fantasia and like the the mops going nuts.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: Right, oh hell yeah, got it?
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Magic is just not having to do chores.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: And it turns out now you're supposed to use it
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: for like more special things. And that was the whole
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: lesson of Fantasia is like magic is not supposed to
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: be used for mundane things like mopping. All right, I
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: think on that note, anything else.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: I'm ready to read that he left her. Then the
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: flickering table lamp finally gave out, leaving only the one
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: on the table Rand had surprised her again. He was
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: still a woolheaded fool, but he was a surprisingly self
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: aware one. How could a man understand so much yet
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: still be so ignorant? And why couldn't she come up
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: with an argument against what he'd said? Why couldn't she
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: make herself yell at him that he was wrong? There
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: was always hope by surrendering that most important emotion, he
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: might make himself strong, but risked losing all reason. He
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: might have to care about the outcome of his battles.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: For some reason, she couldn't find words for the argument.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to The Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast.
• 1:19:58
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• 1:20:01
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• 1:20:06
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• 1:20:09
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• 1:20:12
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