Latest / WoT Spoilers / Honey in the Tea - Knife of Dreams chapter 24 - EP497

Transcript

Honey in the Tea - Knife of Dreams chapter 24 - EP497 · WoT Spoilers

• 0:00
  So, uh, you had some bullshit then you wanted to bring up on
• 0:05
  recording and I already forget what it was. Patrons. That's not bullshit,
• 0:10
  that's that's bullshit. No, you were like and I'm going to say that
• 0:15
  on air, and I, oh, I don't know how to remember to
• 0:19
  give you the on ramp to make that sound organic. Yeah, no,
• 0:22
  that's fine, that's fine. Nope, don't remember. That's fine if I
• 0:27
  don't think it was that important. I think it was more of a joke.
• 0:29
  I was gonna say, I was gonna get out there and tell them
• 0:32
  off. I don't know who they were anymore, but consider yourselves told off.
• 0:36
  You know who you were, what you did? You you know what
• 0:41
  you did? We don't. But you know, I've completely forgotten because I
• 0:46
  had, you know, five minutes since I had that thought. But I
• 0:51
  but that brings me back to the one thing I did remember that I wanted
• 0:54
  to do, which was patrons. Because I do want to try and keep
• 0:57
  up with that as much as possible. While Seth is looking that up,
• 1:00
  I do want to remind you on behalf of Zuol that Walkcon tickets for in
• 1:06
  person attendance at Walkon can be purchased through June fourteenth, which is real soon
• 1:11
  actually because it is currently June fourth so that is in ten days, which
• 1:15
  is actually after this episode's going to come out. So only you people in
• 1:19
  live are getting this reminder, but consider yourselves reminded. And digital attendance tickets
• 1:26
  will be on sale after the in person ticket sales close or something like that.
• 1:32
  All right, so we've got four new patrons I want to thank on
• 1:34
  this episode. I want to start with probably one of my favorite Patreon names,
• 1:40
  will the real demandrad please stand up now for those of you who are
• 1:47
  not aware and haven't listened to the podcast recently, I have a certain theory
• 1:51
  about Vanon, and then you've got Taime, who could have been Demandred,
• 1:57
  and then of course Demandred eventually shows up. So I love that name just
• 2:00
  because you've got all these good potential demandred's and then we all speculated about it
• 2:05
  for ages and ages indeed. So next we would like to thank Alexander Nava,
• 2:13
  Thank you very much. Thank you help me with this last name so
• 2:17
  Careva. Uh so, thank you to Stephanie Sukharaiva did my best on that
• 2:24
  last name, but I appreciate it. Thank you very much. I love
• 2:28
  our Canadian folks, Yes we do. We do love our wolfkin and last,
• 2:35
  but certainly not least, we would like to thank Peter Boss. You
• 2:38
  are the Boss. I'm sure you've never heard that before, not once in
• 2:43
  your life. You're so welcome for that original commentary. Now see, I
• 2:46
  gotta go with the whole name Peter Marie Boss, because like I read everybody's
• 2:50
  name as they put it into Patreon, I assume that's how they want it
• 2:53
  to be read. So okay, okay, middle names, Peter Marie Boss,
• 3:00
  thank you very much. Well, I can't pick and choose. I
• 3:02
  can't say we'll the real Please stand up. I feel like that's not you
• 3:06
  know, you can't skip words the middle of the name just because it's yeah,
• 3:10
  yeah, yeah. I will put whatever you put into that name and
• 3:15
  I will read it. I promise you that. I don't know if everyone
• 3:20
  was totally aware that their full names were going to go into that, but
• 3:23
  you know it's not like anyone listens to this podcast. Well you know there's
• 3:25
  two there's places you can put your full name and then you put your display
• 3:30
  name, right, so there is actually a difference. Oh my Patreons are
• 3:36
  mostly just so said, and forget I like that stuff in so long.
• 3:40
  Yeah. Well, and just keeping up with the Patreon web page sometimes can
• 3:45
  be a little crazy. Man. They keep changing it, and I'm just
• 3:47
  not on it often enough because we don't run our community through the Patreon web
• 3:53
  page. We run it through discord right, right, right. They've added
• 3:58
  a bunch of stuff since we've had our thing going to try to basically capture
• 4:02
  what we're doing. I've also noticed Spreaker has now basically created an in house
• 4:08
  Patreon as they're you know, they're all converging on the same thing, realizing
• 4:12
  what us. You know, various podcasters have been cobbling together through these various
• 4:16
  platforms, so they're all trying to create the same functions. But you know,
• 4:19
  we got in kind of early on these platforms, so we just have
• 4:24
  our you know, cobbled together system and ignore the updates as they go by.
• 4:28
  And then yeah, every now and then it's like, oh boy,
• 4:29
  this place has changed. Yeah, yeah, all around going whoa, okay,
• 4:32
  I need to find that information in a totally different place. Yeah,
• 4:36
  little disconcerting sometimes. And you know, back when I was young, I
• 4:40
  used to keep up with all the software changes and all the things that were
• 4:42
  relevant to me, and it's just not possible anymore. Like the software landscape
• 4:46
  has become so big and so diversified. But at the same time, I
• 4:50
  still use some of my favorite programs that I used to use ten, fifteen,
• 4:55
  twenty years ago. They just keep getting updated and because they're good programs,
• 4:58
  right, Like I still watch videos with the LC right, like you
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  know, right, yeah, totally totally. I mean, WINAMP still whips
• 5:05
  the lama's ass. It just does, like that's just what it does.
• 5:23
  This is the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast. All right, Well, do
• 5:29
  you want to talk about the beating montage? It's just such an awkward way
• 5:33
  to put it, but yeah, it's a montage interrupted with beatings I suppose.
• 5:41
  Okay. The issue I have with this chapter and I love this chapter,
• 5:45
  right, I don't want to knock on this chapter. But she keeps
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  saying things like every two or three days, and then she says things like
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  on day two, and it's like, well, is it every two or
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  three days or are you on day two? Because there's no way that things
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  are happening with any sort of regularity if you're only on day two or three.
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  Yeah, it's a little little screwy on the timeline, for sure,
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  that is true. And yes, it is definitely a montage of interesting things
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  interspersed with beating scenes which are kind of feel a little unnecessarily egregious by the
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  end. But just like she tells Lelane, it's you know, she tells
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  Lane, listen, I've been beaten all these times. I am not gonna
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  break. If I've been beaten this much and I haven't broken yet, there's
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  nothing they can do to me because they have to heal me, right like.
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  And I think that's what Jordan's trying to say to us, is the
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  same thing he's saying. Is that Agwayne saying to Lelane, which is she's
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  not gonna break right like? This is a legitimate strategy, Yeah, for
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  sure. And I want to be upfront to anyone who's been following my like
• 6:46
  discussions of these books over time. You may have heard me call this the
• 6:50
  Nelson Mandela arc. And I recently listened to I believe it was through Line
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  did like an hour long podcast about like the man, the myth, the
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  legend, Nelson Mandela. And it's a really poor comparison. I've just been
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  saying it because I was like, ooh, inspiring leader gets imprisoned and messed
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  with a whole bunch. But like, there's just so few comparisons I can
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  actually draw between those things, so I'm gonna stop calling it that arc and
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  and just yeah, if you happen to pick that up from me, just
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  like I will put the link to the through line episode in the thing,
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  because it's just like it's not like it's offensive, it's just inaccurate. So
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  can you explain what you thought the compare, why the comparison made sense,
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  and then now why it doesn't and why you don't want to use it anymore,
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  just because Igwaine's whole thing is being like beaten and her, I mean,
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  I guess just because of the duration of it. Nelson Mandela was locked
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  away for twenty seven years, and it was just such a much more complicated
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  thing where they were like attacking him through his family through social isolation, sometimes
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  through torture, sometimes through coercional like just so many different things. And it
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  was like the whole apparatus at the state for all these years, Whereasa Queen
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  is like in a contest of wills for a week, you know, like
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  this chapter, this montage takes a week. It's nine days, so it's
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  a Randland week, And it just feels like the time scales are so out
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  of sync that, Like, however, epic Agwayne is Nelson, Mandela did
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  it for longer than she's been alive, and so it just feels like they're
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  so deeply out of scale that like, aha, Like again, I don't
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  think I was being offensive per se. It's just like this just now I've
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  learned it, I'm like, I can't anymore. This just feels really hollow,
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  Like this is just me not knowing what I'm talking about. Like,
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  there are surely better political prisoners to compare Agwaine to, like just because he's
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  the most famous person who's imprisoned that I know of off the top of my
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  head, Like, that's not a good reason to compare this. No,
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  but I can see why you would say, Okay, this would be the
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  Nelson and nell ark. This is the point at which she's imprisoned, tortured
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  and comes out of it the leader, right, Like the superficial parallels are
• 9:01
  there, whether or not the details. Yeah, And I mean, and
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  the conflict is different, right, this is more of a like civil war
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  between two parties that were equal kind of thing, whereas again, Nelson Mandela's
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  thing was like ending apartheid, which is starting from an equal like sociopolitical situation.
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  Like it's just how can you compare the rebels to the anti apartheide people,
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  Like, there's just there's no apartheid. There's just like this this little
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  civil war between siblings that's happening. It's just very how if anyone wants to
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  tell me that it actually is a great parallel, like great, But I'd
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  be more interested to know what struggles actually compared to this, because I do
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  think that the leadership qualities that we admire in someone like Nelson Mandela are exemplified
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  by Agwaine and many other leaders. And I just would love to find the
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  right parallel from the real world to compare her to, because she does rock
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  this whole section. Igwayne is like amazing, So I want to know in
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  the real world she could actually be compared to in a way that has some
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  like interesting historical mnemonics to it, rather than just like except for this,
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  except for this, except for this, that's all. I guess I should
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  probably wet my whistle to do a read in uh while you're doing that.
• 10:15
  Wedding update. Wedding favors have been for the most part, constructed, dialing,
• 10:20
  final details. We got a Costco membership yesterday so that we can go
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  buy things for the wedding at Costco. Wow. So yeah, lots of
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  ideas, lots of finalizing, and more stress than I expected, and probably
• 10:37
  more stress than I need because it's all self inflicted. Yeah, it sounds
• 10:39
  like you've got everything well under control and don't need distress. Incredibly under control.
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  I don't need to stress at all. It's really it's amazing how well
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  it's all coming together, which of course means that my brain is going it's
• 10:52
  coming together too well, something's going to go wrong. Stress. Oh god,
• 10:56
  our brain's fun. No, you can't, really can't, you really
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  can't. It's uh, it's amazing how brains work. Let's distract ourselves with
• 11:03
  a really excellently written chapter from our Covert series, Chapter twenty four, Honey
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  in the Tea and our symbol is the Flame of Tarvaluin. Iguain knew from
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  the start that her strange captivity would be difficult, yet she believed that embracing
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  pain as the a Yield did, would be the easiest part. After all,
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  she had been beaten severely when she paid her toe to the wise ones
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  for lying strapped by one after another in turn, so she had experience.
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  But embracing pain did not mean just giving way to it rather than fighting.
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  You had to draw the pain inside of you and welcome it as a part
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  of you. Aviende said. You must be able to smile and laugh with
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  joy or sing while the worst of the pain still gripped you. That was
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  not so easy at all. And I have no desire to actually read the
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  beating scenes, So we're going to stop there because that's just weird. Was
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  that a shorter read in than I was expecting? Yes, because the next
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  paragraph is the actual beating scene, and I didn't actually want to read that.
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  I can slip away for a second. I was like, all right
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  now, it's totally avowd. I was just like, I don't actually want
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  to read a GWayne being beaten directly. That doesn't seem necessary. Yeah.
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  So we are in, yeah, a beating montage, and this beginning part
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  is just like a very in depth description of her being beaten. Yeah,
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  And the only thing that I think is interesting is how she discovers that if
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  she just allows the experience to pass through her, then it goes away very
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  quickly. And this is something that anyone who's ever you know, sworn vituperatively
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  while stubbing their toe has experienced. Right, take the pain in, you,
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  let it pass through you. You don't get attached to it, it
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  goes away. That's kind of what she's doing. She's not holding on to
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  it, she's just letting it happen, and then you reach equilibrium after much
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  faster. It also seems to be that she's starting off by like screaming and
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  yelling as loud as she can, right, She's letting as much out,
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  so that's why. And Sylvian is like, oh, I would beat you
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  harder. But in the beginning it seemed I was really getting through to you,
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  right, like, because this is the first beating, right, and
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  Agwayne's screaming and thrashing, and you know, she's doing all the things that
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  she can do to sort of just accept like this is my reaction to being
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  beaten. Yeah. Yeah. And it's only later that Sylvian is like,
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  uh, it's not really working, is it, right? Yeah, because
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  Agwayne just goes through that experience every time. It just gets calm or faster
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  at the end, she's just as upset during, but then the calmness after
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  that's what it is, almost instantaneous. Yeah, right, And I think
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  that that's you know, a very real part of being human, like holding
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  out against the pain and trying to ignore it and trying to push it away
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  and you know, being very rmmed about it like that tends to create tension
• 13:50
  and chronic illness in your body, whereas just letting it all through is like,
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  Okay, I can move on with my life. And there is something
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  this series very much talks about, like accepting pain. Like we see Rand
• 14:03
  living with pain, chronic pain, right, we see Agwayne sort of accepting
• 14:07
  pain and not letting it stop them from living their lives, which is,
• 14:13
  I, you know, something I thank goodness don't have to do. I
• 14:18
  don't know if I could honestly like it's it. I mean, once you
• 14:22
  have to, you have to, I suppose, and you do have to
• 14:26
  like be within the limits of that, which these heroes don't have to.
• 14:30
  They just get to power through because they're teenagers who are Tiberan and have magic.
• 14:35
  Yeah. Yeah, there's a certain amount of like I can just ignore
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  that and it doesn't affect me at all, and I'm still you know,
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  well, there's a line later where you know, she's like, oh,
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  and I didn't get bach to sleep, and that's not a problem, And
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  I'm just like, you're in pain, you're exhausted, and you won't admit
• 14:52
  it to yourself, right, Like, I can only imagine what I would
• 14:56
  do to get an extra couple of hours of sleep, pain free sleep.
• 15:01
  Yeah, So it is amazing that she's able to just ignore that, and
• 15:05
  there's a certain amount of well, it's I'm saving the world, so therefore
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  I should just be able to Yeah. The part where she's able to reframe
• 15:11
  it as a badge of honor to be taking these wounds in battle and it's
• 15:18
  easy to welcome a badge of honor is like, I mean, mentally,
• 15:20
  I kind of get it, but also like that's some pretty demigod level mental
• 15:26
  gymnastics too, Like, but on the other hand, I've sat for dozens
• 15:31
  of hours of tattooing. Mm hmmm, So you know, like there is
• 15:35
  definitely a part of me that's like, well, yeah, I mean I
• 15:37
  will willingly subject myself to pain and like even laugh and smile through it because
• 15:43
  I want the end result that comes from that, and it's fine, so
• 15:46
  like, but it's it's self induced for art. It's not being literally beaten.
• 15:52
  It's having like a little inconjected in my skin for beautification. It's just
• 15:56
  they're not truly comparable. This is not an action like bone deep injury.
• 16:03
  Right. The closest I can come to it is, you know, being
• 16:04
  a distant swimmer and forcing myself to just keep going through the pain hour after
• 16:10
  hour for these you know, incredible distance events. I used to swim,
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  and I again don't know how I did it at that age, but I
• 16:15
  guess there's a certain amount of like acceptance of the pain, right, I
• 16:22
  don't know. It impresses me, Yeah, it impresses me. And different
• 16:26
  kinds. Yeah, that's the thing. I guess. There are different kinds
• 16:30
  of pain. And I think it's hard to say. You know, you
• 16:33
  can have chronic pain, you can have acute pain, you can have muscle
• 16:37
  pain, you can have tattooing pain, you can have beating pain. Right,
• 16:40
  those are all incredibly different yet no less painful, right, or painful
• 16:47
  in very different ways, right, And the reasons for it are different.
• 16:49
  And I mean this is where, like you know, the parallel to a
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  political prisoner like Mandela, who did you know get physically tortured among other things
• 16:56
  during his imprisonment is comparable because like, yeah, being physically beaten until you
• 17:03
  agree to a different set of rules is an old play. This is a
• 17:07
  thing that people do all the time. It's terrible, but like it is
• 17:11
  a very real thing that happens and so and some people don't respond to it.
• 17:18
  They're like, no, fuck you, I'm not going to change my
• 17:21
  principles. Other people totally fooled for it. Like it doesn't mean that they
• 17:25
  believe any differently, they're just not willing to deal with the pain. But
• 17:27
  some people, some people do. Some people absolutely do and put up with
• 17:33
  it for years and years and years and just you know, do that.
• 17:37
  So it's not like a GWayne is genuinely a work of fiction like real people
• 17:41
  have been as epic. It's just really hard for us to imagine from our
• 17:45
  plush little lives. I always really think of the Chain of Command the Star
• 17:52
  Trek episode where the card is taken prisoner and he's beaten until he's basically there
• 17:59
  are fours on the wall and the guy who is beating him wants him to
• 18:03
  say they're five basically lie about reality, and you know he and and so
• 18:07
  it's this whole thing where it's like he's he's basically tortured until he denies the
• 18:11
  reality in front of him, and and so it's it's a great episode.
• 18:15
  I highly recommend it. But that reminds me a lot of what's going on
• 18:19
  here where it's it's more of a shorter term beating, right. It's also
• 18:23
  fictional, obviously a shorter term prison sentence, where you know, he's in
• 18:26
  prison for about a week and he's starved for about a week, and there's
• 18:30
  just a lot more mind games going on, right, like because he is
• 18:33
  in a cell, right, so they fuck they fuck with him on time,
• 18:36
  they're fucking with him on food, they fuck with him on like just
• 18:38
  what is reality, which they're not necessarily trying to do here with Agwayne.
• 18:42
  They've already lied to themselves about what is reality and then just assume that she's
• 18:47
  gonna be part of that. Yeah, there is. It's less of a
• 18:51
  gas lighting and more of a mutually exclusive definitions of what is right right right,
• 18:56
  one is going it's it's what happens with Masana really right, and Agwayne's
• 19:00
  confrontation Until I Run Riota is not a gas lighting game. It's a sheer
• 19:03
  force of wills whose reality is true. Like, it's not that there is
• 19:07
  a true objective reality. It's that we are fighting over who gets to define
• 19:11
  objective reality right in the whole winner gets to determine who was right exactly exactly,
• 19:18
  you know, like the winner gets to say what is reality in this
• 19:23
  case? Yeah, we're wrong unless we win, in which case we were
• 19:26
  right the whole time. It's that kind of thing. So we get some
• 19:30
  rules about how she's going to you know, she's going to obey some orders
• 19:33
  but not others. Right, She's not gonna curtsey to anyone. She's not
• 19:37
  gonna call anyone I said, I whatever. You know. She has three
• 19:42
  or four of these rules where it's like I'm willing to go this far but
• 19:45
  no further. Right, Yeah, she has to toe a line of obedience
• 19:49
  to the conditions of her imprisonment without giving up her claims of being the omerline
• 19:56
  in prison. Right, And that is that's tough lot of thinking around,
• 20:00
  Like I really like the way he deals with the other novices, where instead
• 20:04
  of like all right, so well that was fucking funny that totally this rail
• 20:10
  being to toe the line. That's good, nice, nice, Yeah.
• 20:18
  I like how he deals with the other novices that it's not. She doesn't
• 20:21
  deal with them on their levels. She's just like, yeah, no,
• 20:22
  I'm clearly not a novice anymore because I can do things that no novice can
• 20:26
  do. Yeah, it's an unusual prison sentence, and she figures out the
• 20:30
  conditions of that prison sentence like on the fly. And I think a lot
• 20:34
  of that has to do with how Swan has counseled her on what it means
• 20:37
  to be ombrelin, so she knows what she can compromise on and what she
• 20:41
  can't compromise on, and what will make the critical subconscious psychological differences in her
• 20:47
  chain of command, so to speak, and how she presents herself in the
• 20:51
  hierarchy, and people who respond according to that kind of programming respond accordingly because
• 20:57
  she plays the game like Swan would despite being you know, more than half
• 21:03
  her age, less than half her age right now, in a lot of
• 21:07
  ways, Swan is too uh Agwayne as lewis, theren is durand he has
• 21:11
  this voice of like reason and experience in their head. That's telling them to
• 21:17
  do things that they wouldn't otherwise know how to do. Yeah, what would
• 21:18
  Swan do is basically just how a gwayn navigates this, except for not quite
• 21:22
  because Swans set up the conditions by which Elida could do a coup. So
• 21:25
  like it's a little different, but you know, the basics of what Swan
• 21:29
  knows, not Swan's personality. Where's rand has a ww lttd? Yeah,
• 21:34
  yeah, except not the voice in his head right, Like that's the thing.
• 21:37
  Is LTT in his head? Is not louis thereon? Tell himm No,
• 21:41
  that's just lose. Yeah, that's just ltt Yeah, yeah, just
• 21:44
  ltt the acronym. Yeah. We also see al vi arn yep going for
• 21:48
  her penance because we saw her getting signed that penance when she got dismissed as
• 21:55
  keeper Yep, because she had ordered Elida beaten so many Timeslia like, you're
• 22:00
  going to take ten for everyone, which means we're gonna be here for a
• 22:03
  minute. Yeah, it's gonna be a while, but yeah, and you
• 22:07
  know, Agwaine's like, well, I wonder why are all the Yarns by
• 22:08
  yourself? I wonder if that means anything. Yeah, she's black Atja right,
• 22:12
  like, well, and she's been shunned by the White really hard for
• 22:17
  losing the stole. Yes, right Rightwayne thinks, well, there's no way
• 22:21
  that the White are shunning her, like there's not, like the Rock can't
• 22:22
  have gone that far. And it's like, no, they totally are.
• 22:26
  They're completely shunning her for having lost the Stoll. That's absolutely what's happening.
• 22:30
  The Rock has gone that far. And so she's got this pair of this
• 22:33
  is the first time she's been beaten. So she's leaving. We're seeing a
• 22:36
  lot of these things for the first time. She's got two red sisters who
• 22:40
  are with her, who were not guards. But they're not not guards.
• 22:45
  The skirts divided for riding of guards. Yeah they're not pants, but they're
• 22:52
  not not pants. But no, but this is the sentence they were not
• 22:56
  precisely guards. And then again they were not precisely not gone. That's verbatim
• 23:02
  from the book I'm not That is absolutely something that Jordan wrote. They're not
• 23:07
  precisely not guards. M Yeah, it's a little too close. Yeah,
• 23:14
  it's real funny. It's like RJ is just winking and nodding at us.
• 23:19
  I love it when he does a double negative there. Yeah, it's fun.
• 23:22
  Yeah, that was a fun little line. I read that and I
• 23:25
  was like, ah, yeah, pants. Yeah. I highlighted it for
• 23:29
  exactly the same reason. I love that she gets her own clothes back from
• 23:34
  when she was accepted. They just like dust them off and hand them right
• 23:38
  back to her. They're like, welcome back. You haven't been gone long
• 23:41
  enough for these to have gotten cycled onto another girl yet. That's Oh.
• 23:45
  There's a line in here where she says, oh, my god, back
• 23:49
  when I was sixteen, and I'm like, you know, a year and
• 23:52
  a half ago, Jesus. She's like, I barely remember being that young.
• 23:57
  I'm like, you still have teen in your age, my girl,
• 24:02
  h and will for another two years. Yeah, a gwain, I mean,
• 24:10
  was I being that self pretentious about myself at that age and going,
• 24:12
  oh, yes, but I was sixteen. I was such a child.
• 24:15
  But nod eight too. I'm yes, I was doing that. I am
• 24:18
  guilty as charge. I recognize what a guain is doing because I did it
• 24:22
  too. It's my argument for why I have never gotten tattoos. Five years
• 24:26
  ago, I was a fucking idiot, and that's been true my entire life.
• 24:32
  Looks at my tattooed, Boddy, do I want that guy putting tattoos
• 24:37
  on my body? Hell no, Well, my Wheel of Time tattoo is
• 24:40
  how we met, so you know, no, I yeah, well but
• 24:44
  no, it's choosing a tattoo when you know how much you change over time
• 24:48
  is hard, Like what am I going to be okay with in five years?
• 24:52
  And that's part of why we have time. Was my first really genormous
• 24:56
  tattoo was because I was like, at this point I will never not have
• 25:00
  through the phase of my life where I was obsessed with Wheel of Time.
• 25:02
  So even if I never read it again, it still had that impression on
• 25:06
  me. So it's safe. And Robert Jordan's dead, so he can't say
• 25:08
  anything terrible that will make me so im And then of course Warriors of Multi
• 25:15
  came out, so it's like, obviously, dead people can still say things
• 25:18
  you didn't know, but like, yeah, yeah, but you know,
• 25:22
  he'd written Conan the Barbarian already, so it's not like there's nothing in Warriors
• 25:26
  of the All Tie that wasn't in his cone and books. Yeah, which
• 25:29
  I just you know, conveniently memory hole every time someone brings up just I
• 25:33
  don't like that sentence, so I choose to ignore it. You're like,
• 25:37
  wait a minute, Robert Jordan's other books were incredibly sexist Cone and books and
• 25:42
  books glorifying the South. Hmmmm. Anyway, so wheel of time, let's
• 25:48
  move on. Yeah, my tattoos went in an order of wedding ring flowers
• 25:56
  to help me stay chill in college fandom, favorite bird, whatever my artist
• 26:03
  wanted to put on me because it was a cheaper rate, and I just
• 26:06
  wanted a tattoo. That was my chain of reasoning. So you can see
• 26:11
  the descent. Once you have a few, you're like, ah, sure,
• 26:12
  just like, give me a cool tattoo, do whatever, it'll be
• 26:15
  fun. Oh yeah, I mean there's absolutely a certain amount of inertia to
• 26:22
  getting tattoos, right, Like the first one is always going to be the
• 26:26
  hardest. Oh yeah, Well, once you have a tattoo, then anything
• 26:32
  you get dilutes the meaning of all the tattoos a little bit, and then
• 26:34
  every tattoo becomes slightly less important. I wouldn't say it dilutes the meaning,
• 26:38
  but it dilutes the scariness. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, because
• 26:42
  my wedding ring is still just as meaningful despite all the tattoos I've gotten since,
• 26:47
  I should say, dilutes the importance of that being your only tattoo.
• 26:52
  Yes, yes, yeah, there's an attrition to your non tattooedness for sure,
• 26:59
  But you know, definitely always go slow with tattoo choices. They are
• 27:03
  rather permanent. You can't go too slow with choosing your first tattoo or any
• 27:07
  tattoo. Like, I love tattoos, would never pressure anyone to just jump
• 27:11
  into it with their first like no, no, no, you take the
• 27:14
  ten years, You do what you gotta do. And it's like for me,
• 27:18
  it's always I've had trouble getting a tattoo of something I'm a fan of,
• 27:21
  just because again, like people are saying, like even Star Wars tattoos
• 27:25
  like the Cannon, and the feeling around Star Wars has changed so many times
• 27:30
  despite it being incredibly popular. And then you know, getting a tattoo of
• 27:33
  an obscure series like Wheel of Time means I'm always going to have to explain
• 27:37
  what Wheel of Time is to people, which less of an issue than it
• 27:41
  used to be, but that explanation I have to explain. I was born
• 27:45
  in Canada, I have to explain. There's other things I have to explain
• 27:48
  all the time, you know that. I just find that to be annoying.
• 27:53
  Yeah, lots of people don't like explaining their tattoos or having them commented
• 27:56
  on. I'm weird that way. I kind of like my tattoos being conversation
• 28:00
  starters, which, like I don't know why, I just for some reason
• 28:03
  that works for me. But most people are like you I am. I
• 28:07
  am the minority opinion for sure. I wouldn't want to talk about my tattoos.
• 28:11
  And if I don't want to talk about them, then I don't want
• 28:15
  them to be seen. If I don't want them to be seen, why
• 28:17
  am I getting them in the first place. Yeah, my dad kind of
• 28:19
  had that reasoning, except he really wanted them. So he has a very
• 28:22
  thorough covering of tattoos under his T shirt and shorts line like on his back
• 28:27
  and upper arms and his hips because he didn't want anyone to talk about him.
• 28:32
  So he just had them only in places that were easy to cover for
• 28:33
  a very long time, and it was a whole hang up he had where
• 28:37
  he really wanted tattoos, but he couldn't stand the thought of people commenting on
• 28:41
  them, so he just got very densely done on his back and shoulders where
• 28:47
  and I'm the I don't have the first, but I do have the second
• 28:49
  right where I don't really want them. I've never had a desire for a
• 28:55
  tattoo, you know, And I've seen some cool ones where I'm like,
• 28:57
  that would be cool, but then you usually the cool factor. If I
• 29:00
  see it again in a couple of years, I'm like, now, it
• 29:03
  wasn't that cool to begin with, you know, I like, for a
• 29:06
  while, I really like the mechanical tattoos. Anyway, I'm way off,
• 29:10
  way off the tangent. Yeah, that's good. We're smoking over there,
• 29:14
  thank you. Anyhow, where were we? What are we doing? I
• 29:19
  told you when we started this you were gonna have to keep me on track
• 29:22
  because because of the montage and the time jumps in this chapter, it's very
• 29:26
  it's not a linear chapter. It's a lot of moments, and so it's
• 29:30
  very I'm definitely dipping into those moments, not in any sort of chronological order.
• 29:49
  Okay, so the next moment that is relevant is the encounter in the
• 29:53
  kitchen where she faces down alvesteir so Agwayne goes into the Novices dining halls,
• 30:00
  thinking about the numbers that she's going to create when the tower gets reunited and
• 30:04
  she gets tripped by a novice because we're having a power struggle thing, and
• 30:11
  alva Steir is just an absolute child. Agwayne handles her like putty with again
• 30:15
  her Swan skills, right, because Alvisteir is like, no one's gonna say
• 30:18
  anything if you report me, and Gween's like, hmm, you want to
• 30:22
  take the three to zeros and not lie, but you want others to lie
• 30:23
  for you, And she just sounds so sage and so wise, and it
• 30:27
  makes a very strong impression on alvas Stear. Alvas Steir becomes Nicola two point
• 30:32
  zero after this because of how this encounter goes down. And by the end
• 30:36
  of the chapter we have all the novices standing, getting her a tray,
• 30:40
  getting honey in her tea, bringing her a cushion. That's how the chapter
• 30:44
  ends. This is the book end to that. That's the whole point in
• 30:47
  the chapter is this. She's basically one people over by holding them to a
• 30:52
  higher standard, which is something Alida has never done right. Alida is always
• 30:56
  going to the lowest common denominator punishment fear, where Gwayne's like, no,
• 31:00
  I'm just holding you to a higher standard. You can beat me. I'm
• 31:03
  not really gonna tell. But you really expect people to lie for you.
• 31:07
  That's not cool, you know, And like that's just a really great way
• 31:11
  of going around. It's by saying, yeah, I hold myself and I
• 31:15
  hold you to a higher standard. And by punishing me, you're not hurting
• 31:21
  me. You're hurting the tower, you're hurting the truth, you're hurting Iida,
• 31:25
  You're hurting yourself. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And it wins over
• 31:29
  people who are just trying to find their way and are not deeply committed to
• 31:33
  being against her. You know. The novice is an accepted or just trying
• 31:36
  to follow the lead of the Isidai well, and they're in this deeply,
• 31:40
  deeply toxic corporate environment where the toxicity is coming down from the top, and
• 31:47
  here's someone saying, like, just act better. I'm doing it. Yeah,
• 31:52
  And it's like you don't need them to tell you to be better.
• 31:56
  I can tell you to be better. You can tell you to be better.
• 31:59
  Yeah. It's institutional toxicity versus just like a grassroots example on the ground
• 32:04
  doing its thing, and it works really well on the novices. The novices
• 32:07
  come in clutch for her time and time and time again, all the way
• 32:10
  up through the battle for the Tower against the Sean. She the novices and
• 32:15
  the accepted are her biggest asset, really, and I love the way the
• 32:20
  meeting she has with the novices here, the one on ones where she starts
• 32:22
  helping them with their fears and even their channeling, really sort of foreshadows her
• 32:28
  ability to bring them together with Forasong real and teach them how to link and
• 32:32
  all. It's like they've already been learning from her quite a bit, So
• 32:36
  it makes sense that then when she needs to teach them how to link,
• 32:37
  it's very easy for her to do so because she knows these women very well
• 32:42
  and knows their strengths and weaknesses. Yeah. I hadn't thought about that she's
• 32:45
  got this teacher student rapport already built up before that highly stressful situation. I
• 32:51
  hadn't thought about how valuable that is, specifically, not just the interpersonal rapport,
• 32:54
  but the teacher's student dynamics specifically exactly exactly when we talk about man,
• 33:00
  she's trying to teach them this complicated linking thing that like is hard to do,
• 33:04
  and it's like one of the reasons, and I've been skeptical about that
• 33:07
  in the past, and like, eh, it just seems like she's,
• 33:08
  you know, able to do that really quick. And now I'm like,
• 33:12
  okay, well, Jordan actually was sort of setting that up by giving her
• 33:15
  this teacher student relationship with the novices that they existed. And also just how
• 33:22
  few accepted there are in the town. Truly, so few, so few.
• 33:28
  Yeah. Yeah, once the last battle is over and everything is organized,
• 33:32
  the they're gonna be going through shifts of accepted tests, just like churning
• 33:37
  these women out for like months, just like back to back accepted tests as
• 33:40
  fast as they can take a nap and refresh and get another isidye up there
• 33:44
  to like power the ungreyoll like they're going to have so many women taking a
• 33:47
  test. The other interesting thing here in the kitchen is the steady stream of
• 33:53
  Isidie serving women taking food up to Isidie quarters. Right. Just how broken
• 34:00
  the tower is. It's indicative of the social dynamics that Igwayne is having a
• 34:06
  really hard time believing. This is a really helpful piece of evidence for her
• 34:09
  understanding how deeply these cracks run. She's like, Nah, it's not that
• 34:15
  bad, and again. This is day one. She's still very much in
• 34:19
  the process of being disabused of her notions about what was going on in the
• 34:22
  tower, and this stream of cloth covered tray is just heading out constantly because
• 34:27
  none of the eyes to die, I want to eat in the common hall
• 34:30
  is really really indicative of some bad, bad things. So then she heads
• 34:35
  out of the kitchen to classes right, and they give her a fork rout
• 34:37
  tee, very diluted, tiny amount of fork root tea to keep her from
• 34:45
  channeling strongly. I get a little confused about the effects of fork rout tea.
• 34:49
  It seems like, uh, if you can channel at all, you
• 34:53
  can channel pretty well. I don't know this whole weak tea makes you able
• 35:00
  to channel weekly. It seems not right to me. It seems like weak
• 35:02
  tea should just fade from your system quickly. I mean, he does have
• 35:06
  her getting dosed every hour, whereas when Ninieva and Elaine were dosed it was
• 35:10
  hours between doses I think. But yeah, it does feel like he added
• 35:16
  a level of detail in kind of a ret Connie sort of way, like
• 35:22
  it was just like a binary You drink it, you're out, and now
• 35:24
  he's like, oh no, there's nuance. There's actually recipes that we've worked
• 35:29
  out real quick. Sure, yeah, I mean poison dosage makes the poison
• 35:35
  and all that jazz, right Like, so sure, we don't really know
• 35:37
  how it works at low doses, but okay, Like it seems like why
• 35:43
  don't they just shield her and this use of folk routie, It seems like
• 35:47
  it's a setup so that she can channel a little bit of the last battle
• 35:52
  and form a circle at the Battle of the Town. Sorry, not the
• 35:57
  last battle, right, I think of that as I mean, it's part
• 36:00
  of the last it's the it's the opener to the headliner. Yeah, like
• 36:02
  the Battle for the Time was definitely the opener before the main event of the
• 36:06
  last battle, right right, right, it's after the blast battle in my
• 36:10
  mind has started, even though it's a battle kind of happening independently. Uh
• 36:15
  huh uh. Yeah, that's super valid. But you know, the whole
• 36:17
  reason the Sean Channer there is because shaw Mael gave him the sign that says
• 36:22
  it's time to come back, right Like, yeah, yeah for sure.
• 36:25
  So you know, in a lot of ways, it is a strike of
• 36:28
  the dark one. It's just yeah, I'm stretching that I know, just
• 36:34
  accept your your loss and move on. Yeah, it's because if they shielded
• 36:40
  her, shielding is binary. You can't be weekly shielded, right, and
• 36:45
  he wanted her to be able to weekly channel so he decided that the t
• 36:49
  was a way that he could do. That is what I think really happened.
• 36:52
  Jordan wanted weekly channeling Agwayne, so he invented slash backfilled to make it
• 36:58
  work. I mean he did it to osmodion. That is so true.
• 37:02
  But also that's a level of nuanced and sophistication that modernized that I don't have.
• 37:07
  That might really be limited to age of lisms. But you're right,
• 37:08
  you're right shielding. Shielding is not binary in that way. You are right.
• 37:14
  I am wrong, But certainly the Tower is said, I don't have
• 37:17
  that skill as far as I can recall, No, definitely not. So
• 37:22
  she goes to her first class and this is one of my favorite little showing
• 37:28
  off bits where she's like the teacher's like, okay, a sense everybody here
• 37:35
  can do a ball of fire, Let's see if the really weak student can
• 37:38
  do it. Right. Basically, she's accepted who's almost a child herself,
• 37:45
  and so she's trying to one up a GWayne well, and she was there
• 37:49
  when Agwaine showed up. She's jealous of how a fast Agwayne moves. She's
• 37:52
  just trying to do some pecking order nonsense and assert that she's the better one
• 37:58
  now ha ha ha. But that would only work if Agwayne was accepting herself
• 38:01
  as a novice, which she is not. And so Agwain creates seven balls
• 38:07
  surrounded by seven rings in each of the ajac colors, right, again,
• 38:13
  emphasizing the seven ajas right, all seven all seven colors right, that's an
• 38:20
  active defiance. Also splitting it that many ways, right. A lot of
• 38:23
  these accepted can't even split their weaves. A lot of the I said,
• 38:28
  I can barely split their waves. Right. That's something that's considered very difficult
• 38:31
  to do, and it get exponentially harder with each time you split. Right,
• 38:36
  some of them are lucky to split two or three times. A Gwaine's
• 38:39
  doing it fourteen right, and it just it's being like, this is an
• 38:45
  absurd lesson. What could you possibly teach me when I can do this right?
• 38:51
  Also, you know, as you were talking, it occurred to me,
• 38:52
  not only is she doing the seven Aja colors, she's done two different
• 38:57
  groups in two different forms, each of the seven colors. Right, she's
• 39:02
  balancing both towers. She's saying, visually, I am bringing together two different
• 39:07
  groups of the Isidana am making them into a harmonious hole somehow in this intricate
• 39:14
  dance. And the balls in the center, which represent the tower, red
• 39:20
  is the biggest, and the rings on the outside, which are outside the
• 39:22
  tower, red is the smallest and green is the biggest, because she would
• 39:27
  have chosen green if she'd had her choice. Yes, yeah, it's She's
• 39:31
  literally just like waving her flag in the middle of class, being like,
• 39:36
  what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do about it? What
• 39:38
  are you gonna do about it? And even with fourk root in her She's
• 39:43
  like, even while I am drugged and in prison, I am managing both
• 39:47
  of these systems and you literally cannot stop me. It's like, hey,
• 39:52
  listen, I went on the hero's journey. I'm a hero now I can
• 39:55
  do hero shit. What are you trying to again? I've leveled the funk
• 40:00
  up. This is This is basically when you get stuck back at the beginning
• 40:06
  of a game after leveling up to level like fifty or one hundred or whatever,
• 40:10
  and they're like, you know, all right, go ahead and kill
• 40:14
  those suerats. You're like, okay, right, right, this is not
• 40:19
  going to be a challenge. You like explode with power and they just drop
• 40:22
  and you're like, okay, was that is that what you wanted? Yeah?
• 40:28
  Yeah, it feels very beginning beginning of the video game. Again,
• 40:31
  Yeah, it's a good scene. I like it. And then when she
• 40:35
  gets yanked out of class to get you know, punished by her Red AJA
• 40:38
  handler people, we have an interesting interaction where Katerine the black Aja Red sister
• 40:45
  black Ougia, yeah, black, what is it? She's on the council,
• 40:50
  Yeah, yeah, but she's like hitting Aguain with with air because like
• 40:53
  I told you to run and again is walking at a measured pace and the
• 40:57
  other red grabs her arm and is like stop, you have to stop.
• 41:01
  This is not your right and Katerine is like snapping at her even It's a
• 41:05
  very tense interaction between reds over a Guayine like again, we are day one,
• 41:12
  let's be fair between a black and a red, yes, exactly exactly
• 41:16
  like it's and that's where that tension comes from. As Katerine was gonna beat
• 41:21
  her like a black and the Red is like whoa even I think that's too
• 41:23
  far. And like when you've got the Red defending Aguaine, your cover might
• 41:29
  be getting a little thin, and Caterorie, I want to dial it back
• 41:32
  a little bit. Just do we what's Katerine's ultimate fate? Do you know?
• 41:37
  Do you remember? No? Well, it's Google time, But don't
• 41:44
  let Google summarize it, because we might be eating blue covered rocks and we
• 41:47
  don't want that. Don't worry. I'm going to Encyclopedia watt. That's actually
• 41:52
  like human primary source. That would be secondary primary sources, the books themselves.
• 41:59
  We'd have to look it up there. Well, the primary source to
• 42:00
  what Google would summarize, I guess, sure, sure the parlance of that
• 42:05
  model. But yes, truly the books are the primary source. Oh,
• 42:08
  Agwayne kills Messana, but it turns out it was Katerine into size, so
• 42:14
  Agwayne. During the dream battle yep, Katherine becomes the mistress of Novices after
• 42:21
  Sylvia. After Sylviana gets thrown in prison for disobeying, Katerina becomes mistress of
• 42:27
  Novices briefly. Yeah, but that's like two days before the power collapses.
• 42:31
  Yeah, and she gets yeah, fireballed by agwayin in the dream. She's
• 42:36
  great. Yeah, we just love having a dark friend as mistress of the
• 42:37
  Novices Serium, Katerine. It's actually it's shocking that Sylviana is not a dark
• 42:43
  friend, frankly, and she's enough lawful neutral that I would argue she's borderline
• 42:46
  dark friend just by sheer procedural alignment. Like I like her because she comes
• 42:52
  around in the end, kind of like when you're that bureaucratically aligned with people
• 42:57
  that are definitely doing black auja things like I don't know it tainted buy association.
• 43:05
  There is a certain amount of Sylviana feels a little bit like the middle
• 43:08
  manager in the Nazi regime of just like, I know, you were just
• 43:12
  punching papers, but I don't know, it seems like you and you were
• 43:17
  doing your job great. And you know, here's a better analogy. The
• 43:22
  rocket engineers from the Nazi regime who we brought over to this country and had
• 43:30
  work for us and celebrated because their work was so incredibly useful. Yeah,
• 43:36
  and yet the rockets were also used to you know, bomb soldiers and look,
• 43:39
  conquering the moon before the communist was not going to do itself. It
• 43:45
  was not going to get preemptively struck. So that's kind of how I feel
• 43:50
  about Silviana, where it's like, you really were on the wrong side,
• 43:52
  you really were supporting the wrong people. You were really kind of doing bad
• 43:57
  things. You were beating the shit out of this eighteen year old girl until
• 44:01
  she needed healing twice a day, until she's bloody. Like, that's not
• 44:06
  an innocent thing to be doing. I get you were just following orders,
• 44:09
  but at some point just following orders just doesn't do it for me. And
• 44:14
  I don't like the agwayne elevates her in the way that she does. I
• 44:19
  don't understand what Sylviana did besides following orders that gets her, that elevates her
• 44:28
  into that position. Well, maybe the Nelson Mandela comparison is going to be
• 44:31
  appropriate thing because we can talk about the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa
• 44:35
  and how much that was pissing off of literally everybody because he gave too much
• 44:40
  to each side, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah,
• 44:44
  so it compromises complicated, I guess that way to say that. Yeah,
• 44:50
  but yeah, I don't know if she's necessarily the von Braun of the entire
• 44:54
  regime. But yeah, sure there's I like her because she does ultimately come
• 45:00
  around, but it is frustrating how long it takes because she's very bureaucratically aligned
• 45:06
  with what's happening. Like to deprogram yourself that hard on your own while actively
• 45:10
  perpetrating evil is like, I mean, good on, You're forgetting there eventually.
• 45:15
  That is an impressive feat. Yeah, given your context, she grew,
• 45:21
  I guess I should give her room to grow. But yeah, no,
• 45:25
  I mean the resistance to giving her accolades and rank and recognition is I
• 45:30
  think well grounded. Can I also just say I love this line juggling with
• 45:34
  the power. This is a reference back to her juggling the balls and the
• 45:37
  rings. Juggling with the power is not all that much easier than juggling with
• 45:40
  your hands. But I'm too glad he acknowledges it must be easier, because
• 45:45
  there's no way to juggle seven rings and seven balls with your hands, just
• 45:50
  not possible. No, no, it's a comparable mental feat if the number
• 45:54
  of hands is not a limiting factor, right, Like your brain can keep
• 45:58
  doing that, but the number of hand and you have limits it. But
• 46:00
  with the power you're using your fingers or nothing at all to do it,
• 46:07
  so there's less of a limitation. Right, super sky like Sylvianna seems like
• 46:12
  the human moral event horizon. If you're doing something wrong, and Sylviana says
• 46:15
  you're doing it wrong, you know you're super wrong. Sure, I like
• 46:20
  it. Uh So, after she runs rings around the accepted, they shift
• 46:23
  her teaching to one on ones with isid eye Yes. And this is important
• 46:31
  for two reasons, the main one being her access to eyes to die is
• 46:36
  much more important. And also it's like her sliding upwards in the hierarchy,
• 46:42
  like she's literally forcing her way up, even with in a system she doesn't
• 46:45
  agree with. They're like, well, we got to treat her at least
• 46:47
  a little like an accepted, not a novice like, just because she knows
• 46:52
  too much to be treated like an obvious like. Then then she's shown that
• 46:55
  it's silly to treat her like an novius. It's disruptive to the other novices,
• 47:00
  and what they're trying to do is bury her importance. And if she's
• 47:04
  going to make a fuss everywhere she goes, that's sort of against the point.
• 47:07
  So they have to find something else to try to diffuse her impact,
• 47:12
  and can we also talk about how they have zero zero punishment strategy other than
• 47:17
  beat her more. I feel like they could have been more creative in three
• 47:22
  thousand years. That's what I'm saying, right, Like, my mouth can't
• 47:30
  form words because I'm just like, there's other ways to punish people, There's
• 47:34
  other ways to induce behavior. There's other things that you can do to somebody
• 47:38
  other than put them over your knee and strapper. And the fact that that
• 47:42
  has proven to be ineffective, I guess this might might be what I have
• 47:46
  against Silviana more than anything else. When the beatings prove ineffective, why do
• 47:52
  you keep doing them? Yeah, which is you know, a bigger problem
• 47:57
  than her. The mistress of Novice's rule book has once and then ye you
• 48:00
  know. So it's like, but that seems weirdly inadequate for an institutions that's
• 48:07
  had this many women go through it. You'd think that they would understand like
• 48:09
  how to withhold food or induces any of the things that sul Doom do to
• 48:16
  their demani. I mean, like, come on, like the is said,
• 48:20
  I treat their novices basically like servant people without much you know, free
• 48:25
  will to do their own thing. Like you'd think they would have hit on
• 48:28
  some of the things that suldom do just to keep them like corralled. But
• 48:32
  yeah, they've unironically went for beatings will continue until morale approves. Like they
• 48:37
  don't realize that that's an ironic statement. They're just doing it, just doing
• 48:42
  that. Yeah, I know they do have like the whole sending people to
• 48:45
  farms for twenty years or whatever. But yeah, it's weird how they're just
• 48:51
  Elida's just really hell bent on beating again into shape. And it feels like
• 48:54
  Argie got kind of in a hole creatively, like got tunnel vision on,
• 48:59
  like this is how it's going to go. And it's like, but in
• 49:00
  real life, wouldn't people be interested in other methods. I wouldn't say it's
• 49:05
  RJ got tunnel vision. I would say the I said, I have tunnel
• 49:07
  vision. I think he's making a point about that, right, I think
• 49:10
  he's saying that these people have no creativity. They're stuck in a rut.
• 49:15
  They can only look at things from one side. They will keep bashing their
• 49:17
  heads against a wall. That's what makes the tower, I said, eye
• 49:21
  the tower, I said, I I just have such a hard time believing
• 49:23
  that they've survived for three thousand years with that little innovation, Like that's just
• 49:28
  a stretch to me. Yeah, I and I would bet other mistresses and
• 49:34
  nofices have different ways of approaching these women. I mean, but yeah,
• 49:39
  the beating is when the beatings are supposed to be the last resort, right,
• 49:44
  And I think that's why they continue, because it's like this is supposed
• 49:46
  to be Everything else we've tried has failed, and we do beatings right,
• 49:52
  but they never tried anything else with a gain. They went straight to the
• 49:54
  beatings, and because it's supposed to be the last resort, they have nowhere
• 50:00
  else to go from there. They started it. They started at the top,
• 50:05
  right, and so there's nowhere to go up. Yeah, And that's
• 50:07
  just I much like Ada Laurna. I wish that Kat Swain was here,
• 50:12
  because Kat Swayne would think of something more interesting than just more stretch. Sure,
• 50:17
  right, she'd make great beans off the floor or something which I would
• 50:21
  hate, but at least it would be different. So we get a mention
• 50:27
  of some of the sisters walking through the halls. We get Pavara, who
• 50:30
  we know is doing the whole searching for Dark Friends quest same as Doasan,
• 50:37
  who she also mentions, Yeah, and so I think a lot of what
• 50:38
  she's seeing is like she's noticing weird behavior from them because they're hunting the dark
• 50:43
  Friends, right, and she's noticing that weird behavior, right. She says
• 50:45
  she can't ask about the ferrets because she doesn't know She knows their names but
• 50:51
  not their faces, so she doesn't know who to approach about them. And
• 50:53
  then we talk about Leana. We go visit Leana and see how she's sort
• 50:58
  of doing, which we get a lot of good scenes with Leanna. There's
• 51:01
  a lot of fun eyes to die chatter in the background every time we visit
• 51:05
  Leana, because she has her guards and they are not red, so they
• 51:07
  tend to be brown's or whites or yellows, and they say interesting things and
• 51:12
  talk about interesting stuff. And she seems to be making a bit of a
• 51:15
  difference, right. She's influencing these women a little bit. She's telling them
• 51:21
  about the outside. She's doing the same thing as Agwayine, but people are
• 51:24
  listening to her a little bit more because or at least the isid I are
• 51:28
  listening to her a little bit more because they accept that she's also isid eye,
• 51:31
  and they're seeking her out as an interesting novelty and talking to her.
• 51:37
  Yeah, as a colleague, they're like how, but also I take you
• 51:40
  seriously. But it's like, wait, as a child, Leanna is at
• 51:43
  least a woman in their eyes, in their hierarchy, and so Agwaine really
• 51:46
  does have to change things through example, whereas the Leana can change things through
• 51:51
  words a little bit more. And she does a very good job at that
• 51:54
  because she is really good at people skills. And then she asks Agwayne,
• 51:59
  so when do we escape? Agwaine says we don't. We take it down
• 52:01
  from the inside. Land just basically cracks her knuckles and says, all right,
• 52:06
  let's go. Yeah. She's like, I've basically been doing that already,
• 52:09
  you know. Like he's like, oh, so continue doing what I've
• 52:12
  been doing all right? Uh huh. She's like, so we're following Swan's
• 52:15
  playbook that I've been following, right likely. She's like, okay, so
• 52:19
  Swan has changed in face but not in mode. Yeah. Yeah, that's
• 52:23
  why I'm like, why does everything Leanna do fall so in line? It's
• 52:27
  like, oh, it's just Swan's playbook. They're both following it. So
• 52:44
  the next thing I've got is ben I now sad the brown that gets in
• 52:47
  trouble. So now we have a series of isidi where she's visiting one after
• 52:52
  the other after the other, and we get it again. We're in serious
• 52:55
  montage mode, but there's little facts about each of these isidie to talk about.
• 53:00
  Yeah, over the course of all these beatings, we are also having
• 53:02
  these encounters with us to die, which we now get to run through back
• 53:06
  to back without beatings interspersed, which is kind of nice. I love the
• 53:09
  parallel to the owl in Varren's study. There's a large brown lizard was perched
• 53:15
  on a huge skull of a bear, so you'd have thought it was stuffed
• 53:17
  until it blinks. I'm assuming for the same reason that it eats mice who
• 53:22
  chew paper. Maybe I mean lizards. Some lizards eat mice. Okay,
• 53:27
  yeah, I guess desert ecology is brutal man. Yeah all right, yeah,
• 53:31
  you know, I realize I know very little about reptiles. Definitely not
• 53:36
  my area where I'm like much of an expert. Yeah, I've just seen
• 53:38
  enough nature documentaries with a lizard, mouses, hind quarters going down a reptiles
• 53:43
  gullet. Yeah, it's like, no, that happens. I've heard David
• 53:45
  Attenborough tell me that it happens. Tuh. I guess I have too.
• 53:50
  But for some reason, I never remember the day David Attenborough documentaries that.
• 53:53
  Well, must be in some odd state of mind when I'm watching them.
• 53:59
  But I love myself some David Attenborough. Oh and according to Margo, even
• 54:02
  bearded dragons sometimes get small mice like pet bearded dragons. I guess snakes.
• 54:07
  I've seen snakes eat mice right like those are. Yeah, so that's that's
• 54:10
  pretty standard. Fair. You can just buy rats and mice for your for
• 54:15
  your pet reptiles. So yeah, totally. I love ben I in general
• 54:20
  because well, first of all, she's brown, so obviously she's great.
• 54:22
  But I love how Igwayne, just like pied pipers, her into so much
• 54:27
  trouble and then he gets her out of it again and thus gets a stalwart
• 54:31
  ally for life. It's just so amazing. I love the interaction right because
• 54:36
  this is Oh, I guess I shouldn't have told you that. But I
• 54:38
  shouldn't have told you that. I shouldn't have told you that. M I
• 54:42
  guess you're gonna have to go do some digging. I'm like, Igwayne,
• 54:46
  the steel trap of mind just forgot that she shouldn't mention that. Okay,
• 54:52
  okay, so you know why I think she did it. Right, So
• 54:58
  Benet is saying, okay, you know, make a ball of fire,
• 55:01
  okay, make this weave, okay, make that wave, okay, make
• 55:06
  the weave for traveling right right, right? Yeah yeah, and Aquaen's like,
• 55:08
  come on, you're not gonna get me with a game of Simon says,
• 55:12
  right right, I'm not gonna show you the weave for traveling by accident,
• 55:15
  especially after Leanne warned me. And then immediately she turns around and is
• 55:20
  like, well, you know, I'm gonna get you in some trouble.
• 55:22
  I think that's honestly why she did it. I think it was like,
• 55:27
  oh, you're gonna make You're gonna play games with me. You're gonna try
• 55:29
  and get me in a game of Simon says, I'm going to tell you
• 55:30
  something that's going to ruin your fucking career, but maybe i'll also save your
• 55:35
  career later. Well that's later, yeah, yeah, my best ye,
• 55:38
  it'll be great. No, it's I love it. And also then we
• 55:40
  get you know more information about the thirteenth Depository, and of course we all
• 55:45
  love secrets, so that's fun. And this is the one later where she
• 55:49
  comes to Agwuayin and says, I got in trouble. Well, somebody got
• 55:52
  in trouble. Hypothetically, if someone got in trouble, what do I do?
• 55:55
  And Aquain says, well, you could tell them where the information came
• 56:00
  from so they can stop thinking there's a leak. And then you can volunteer
• 56:01
  to be one of the librarians who takes care of the thirteen Depository, and
• 56:06
  that's your career can skyrocket, it'll be great. Yeah, and then and
• 56:08
  then all of a sudden you get to be one of these special secret Browns
• 56:12
  that you know has access to special information and you know you're on all the
• 56:16
  secret email chains and the text messages that everybody's been hiding from, right Yeah,
• 56:21
  and it works out great for her, but yeah, it's a fun
• 56:25
  interaction. And then after that there's also the little the history lesson about she
• 56:32
  Ye and then how she was basically controlled by the Hall and how that's a
• 56:38
  bad idea. You actually need a single leader, especially in times of war,
• 56:44
  right, Yeah, Gwen uses it to be like, you know,
• 56:46
  if you really don't like the way the tower's being run, there is historical
• 56:50
  precedent for just changing it six times in the history of the tower, and
• 56:55
  the ambulance was dangerously divisive or dangerously incompetent, and the Hall failed to act.
• 57:01
  Sisters have risen up to remove her, just saying, just saying,
• 57:07
  just saying, she could not have planted the seed deeper with a shovel or
• 57:09
  driven at home, or bluntly with a hammer. It is quite fun,
• 57:14
  but this is a Brown sister we're talking about, so she does need it
• 57:17
  spelled out rather directly. I think it is a good point here though,
• 57:21
  that she hasn't heard of the other two wars. The woman brings up she
• 57:23
  did miss a lot of novice and accepted classes on history etiquette, and Swan
• 57:30
  did a lot to make up for that in private lessons. But you know,
• 57:34
  you can't make up for years of teaching, years of school in six
• 57:37
  months of private tutoring. Yeah, it's just not possible. Swan had to
• 57:42
  pick and choose so specifically that, Yeah, Agwayne is like, you're going
• 57:45
  to take a century or so to backfill what she should have known before chaining
• 57:50
  this position. That's that's a real criticism, and I like how she owns
• 57:53
  it, like, no, yeah, I am eighteen. That is that
• 57:57
  is true. I'm the Oberlin and I'm eighteen. Both things can be.
• 58:00
  The next I said, I we encounter is Lyrelle dore Lenne Dorell, Lyrene
• 58:07
  Dorellan. Yeah, and this is where Agway gets casually informed that Elaida tried
• 58:13
  to kidnap Rand. She's literally never heard of the kidnapping plot until it just
• 58:17
  gets dropped in casual conversation here, which is very like whoa, yeah,
• 58:23
  even though you know a bunch of stuff, you also are still books behind.
• 58:28
  That's kind of a trip. Information takes a while to travel. It's
• 58:31
  one of Jordan's founding thesis for this novel. It really is. When you
• 58:37
  listen to him talk in that in that prologue, you realize that, like,
• 58:42
  information takes time to travel and it changes over both time and distance,
• 58:47
  and like how much how important that was to almost every scene that he's writing,
• 58:52
  And then and then I say, how much I think that ties into
• 58:55
  his really good POV work, right, Because in order to have information change
• 59:00
  over time and distance, you really have to look at one person's POV and
• 59:05
  how are they seeing the information versus how this person sees the information? And
• 59:08
  I wonder how much because I don't see the same POV work into some of
• 59:13
  his earlier stuff. It's not quite as good. He developed it over time,
• 59:16
  for sure, And I really do think to really hammer in that one
• 59:21
  point of information changes over time. Yeah, yeah, he had to develop
• 59:24
  his craft better so that he could make his point more thoroughly. It's good
• 59:29
  art. And then she has a not so great encounter with Pritala Nerbaijan,
• 59:35
  who is antagonistic. We sort of get a switch, should we get all
• 59:39
  the good interactions in the beginning and then all the sort of negative or antagonistic
• 59:45
  ones at the end. Right, So she has some series of successes and
• 59:49
  then a series of failures. Yeah, and this one basically she gets punished
• 59:53
  for pointing out that Elida's power effectively has no limits unless the ice I say
• 1:00:00
  that there are limits. And this is apparently a spanking offense. And what
• 1:00:05
  she's doing is laying out her argument one line at a time to various basically
• 1:00:09
  planting the arguments one line at a time to various I Sidi knowing they're going
• 1:00:14
  to go argue with each other, and they'll hear the arguments, bring them
• 1:00:16
  up, and hopefully there'll be a whole coherent argument put together from all of
• 1:00:22
  her various points that in all the seeds that she's planting among all these iii
• 1:00:27
  even the ones who punish her, and then when she addresses them in a
• 1:00:30
  body, she'll be able to reference things all of them have heard from her
• 1:00:32
  individually as she goes Yeah, yeah, for sure. Her next bad encounter
• 1:00:38
  is Sarancha Colvine, who spends more of her time writing out a list of
• 1:00:45
  what Agwaine did wrong than actually teaching her. That feels just like a super
• 1:00:47
  petty power play. Doesn't even have anything to do with agwayne like particularly,
• 1:00:52
  it's just how this woman is. And then she has to carry the lists
• 1:00:54
  back to Sylviana and get beaten for all of them. I wonder what Sylviana
• 1:00:59
  does with that, is like this one's for those three offenses, Like yeah.
• 1:01:06
  And then there's Adam Lorna, who is the Captain General of the Green
• 1:01:09
  Ajia and is one of the first people to really she interacts with Agwayen during
• 1:01:15
  the Battle of the Tower. She gets rescued. She's on the first floor
• 1:01:20
  right, yeah, GWayne rescues her, and then later yeah, which she's
• 1:01:22
  at high command down in the lower floors and realizes that it is a GWayne
• 1:01:27
  who's you know, doing the resistance, and she's one of the first people
• 1:01:30
  who says, oh, maybe we should accept a GWayne as our leader for
• 1:01:32
  the post Alida world because sure seems like she's the only one we all like
• 1:01:38
  she. We get a lot of POV from her during the post Alida preunification
• 1:01:44
  window. That's Ada Lorna's really our main POV for that transition. I really
• 1:01:50
  love the moment here where after beating Agwayne, she frowns her hair brush like
• 1:01:53
  it's not working, like it's something wrong, Like is this not's? Like
• 1:02:00
  I've hit lots of students with this and it always has a different effect.
• 1:02:02
  Yeah, Like, uh, is defective hair brush? What's going on?
• 1:02:07
  Like? Did you switch it out for a soft, padded one? Is
• 1:02:09
  that why? You're like? Yeah, it's it's that's That moment really just
• 1:02:15
  made me laugh, having her just like look down and brush and be like
• 1:02:17
  what right, I don't know. It really really tickle my funny bone.
• 1:02:21
  That's good. And also she's green, which is the aude that a GWayne
• 1:02:23
  would have come from. So there's definitely always that extra layer. If anytime
• 1:02:27
  she interacts with the green, it's like, yeah, this could have been
• 1:02:30
  your AJIAC colleague, if only the timeline had been different. And right after
• 1:02:34
  she looks at the brush is when she says, I wish Godswain was here,
• 1:02:37
  right, she would teach you a lesson. Yeah, Also like she
• 1:02:39
  would figure out why this brush is working. Yeah, Catsman would know how
• 1:02:44
  to make this brush work properly. That's what she's thinking, definitely, that's
• 1:02:49
  where she thinks about. The pain is a badge of honor. That's the
• 1:02:52
  battle that she's fighting. This is how she's able to sort of give into
• 1:02:55
  the pain, except the pain is realizing like the pain minor compared to the
• 1:03:00
  pain of losing the battle right which that she's fighting. It's weird mental gymnastics
• 1:03:05
  to me, but hey, whatever gets her through. I'm in supportive.
• 1:03:08
  Yeah, I mean it, But I do want to say something about how
• 1:03:12
  mental pain can be worse than physical pain. Really, I mean, you
• 1:03:16
  talk about people who hurt themselves like I mean, we can talk about cutting,
• 1:03:21
  we can talk about people who burn themselves alive, we can talk about
• 1:03:23
  suicide. All of those things are are instances where people are hurting themselves physically
• 1:03:30
  because they are in so much mental anguish that the only relief from the mental
• 1:03:35
  anguish is physical pain. Yeah, which I can relate to to some extent,
• 1:03:37
  because I've learned recently that when I'm really dysregulated, painfully loud music can
• 1:03:43
  bring me back into round. Like I turn music on really loud, and
• 1:03:45
  at some point it becomes painful, but it wasn't before. Like It's like
• 1:03:50
  I get regulated, and then once I get a certain amount of regulated,
• 1:03:52
  then I realize that it hurts, and then I can turn it down and
• 1:03:57
  like, huh, okay, I'm feeling calmer now. Like so I totally
• 1:04:00
  get it. I'm just much like with Rand, I'm deeply impressed at the
• 1:04:02
  scale that Agwain can take it to. Uh. For me, it's picking.
• 1:04:06
  I'll if I've got I realize that if I have a lot of anxiety,
• 1:04:11
  especially at work, I will find some bump on my skin and pick
• 1:04:15
  at it till I bleed until it hurts, and then I'll keep picking at
• 1:04:17
  it till it hurts more, until it bleeds more. And I'm not doing
• 1:04:20
  it consciously. I won't even realize I'm doing it, so I'll be like,
• 1:04:23
  are you okay, And I'll be like, oh, oh yeah,
• 1:04:26
  I'm fine. Yeah, I mean yeah, r e tattoos and clenching my
• 1:04:31
  jaw and digging my nails into my hands. I mean, you know,
• 1:04:34
  it's so on and so forth. Yes, so there is a level of
• 1:04:40
  like, I get it, like pain on one level, physical pain does
• 1:04:43
  pale in comparison to mental anguish. Yes, but Agwaine is her mental anguish.
• 1:04:47
  Is this very like lofty intellectual like but the tower and my place in
• 1:04:51
  the political world of saving everything. It's not like mental health. It's like
• 1:04:57
  her belief system. And that surprises me. Well okay, but let's let's
• 1:05:01
  get into Agwain's heead a little bit. This is someone who was abused by
• 1:05:04
  the sean Chan and then elevate, you know, brainwashed by the wise women
• 1:05:11
  into all sorts of things, and then elevated into what can be considered the
• 1:05:16
  most powerful position in the world, all within the course of two years of
• 1:05:20
  being pulled out of her rural town. She has so much pressure on her
• 1:05:28
  to make this work to be amazing. That's really valid. The amount of
• 1:05:33
  pressure she is feeling is nothing compared to pressure anxiety that we felt at work
• 1:05:41
  or in school. Yeah, yes, it's a lot, it's a lot
• 1:05:47
  when she's we look at what Rand's gone through, You look at what she's
• 1:05:50
  gone through. You know, they're very comparable on a lot of levels.
• 1:05:55
  The timing might be different, but you know, we don't. We don't
• 1:05:58
  wonder why he's insane. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, she's been through through
• 1:06:05
  some stuff that Yeah. No, I mean that's super valid. Her worldview,
• 1:06:10
  all of the suffering she's experienced in her life kind of depends on things
• 1:06:13
  going a certain way at this point. So yeah, I guess that mental
• 1:06:16
  anguish is more than just ideological. It's kind of how she's holding her sanity
• 1:06:21
  together. Also, there's no LTT for her. She's just got to be
• 1:06:27
  a badass, just whatever thing in her brain says. She has to prove
• 1:06:30
  herself better than everybody else around her. Yeah, which none of us can
• 1:06:34
  relate to it all what No? Oh, Yeah, we get a little
• 1:06:41
  bit about the novices here and sort of their behavior. Nicola and Arena basically
• 1:06:47
  tell a bunch of exaggerated tales again, tales distorting over time and distance,
• 1:06:51
  about Lagwayne that's Timber. If you can hear them grunting on the floor,
• 1:06:58
  Yeah, I did you heard that? Were big old dog stretch. And
• 1:07:04
  then a bunch of the noficers try and act like her. They're like,
• 1:07:08
  oh, if she can get away with it, sil can we And they
• 1:07:10
  get their asses beat and they go, I don't want to do that anymore.
• 1:07:12
  That was not fun because they don't have the same mental anguish, the
• 1:07:15
  same goals, the same guilt, the same responsibilities piled onto them that a
• 1:07:21
  Gwayin does. They don't have the same conviction that they should be in charge
• 1:07:25
  of things, because of course they shouldn't be. It's silly. Whereas Agwayne
• 1:07:30
  is very convinced that she's right, and you know, all the rest are
• 1:07:32
  trying to emulate her. But we can't have a hall full of omorlands.
• 1:07:35
  We only need one Omorland, you know, so it makes sense that they
• 1:07:39
  can't emulate her. Timber definitely disagrees with you. Wow, you can hear
• 1:07:47
  them making noise of objection. There, very very obinionated. I'll just take
• 1:07:58
  a b take a moment. Don't worry, I'll leave all the dog noises
• 1:08:03
  for the recording. People love dog noises and he wants out him clawing at
• 1:08:10
  the door, and see, can you see that? Like love there?
• 1:08:13
  Because Mike, you're okay, you can stay in here for a little bit
• 1:08:17
  longer. Meanwhile, I was at an eighty year old's birthday party over the
• 1:08:24
  weekend and ran into someone randomly there at the keg, because you know that
• 1:08:28
  awkward thing where you're both heading to the keg, you got to figure out
• 1:08:30
  who's going to go first. So we ended up striking up a conversation within
• 1:08:33
  three sentences. I had mentioned that I do a podcast completely without meaning to.
• 1:08:40
  It's just so on the brain constantly. And of course this person has
• 1:08:44
  only watched the show Wheel of Time, but it's like, oh, totally,
• 1:08:45
  you follow you, it's a five star. I'm just like, you
• 1:08:48
  won't because we're drinking black beet porn right right right. It was also very
• 1:08:53
  funny that I said Wheel of Time and he's like, oh, yeah,
• 1:08:55
  no, I watched the show. It's great. So other people are like,
• 1:09:00
  I'll follow you and give you a five star, and I'm like,
• 1:09:01
  it's not I don't really need that. I'd rather you just like, actually,
• 1:09:04
  if you list want to listen, listen, if you don't. Yeah,
• 1:09:06
  it's like you won't remember. And also I need to remember to carry
• 1:09:11
  the stickers with me because then I could at least give people like a reason
• 1:09:13
  to remember. But it's like, you're not going to remember. You're barely
• 1:09:15
  gonna remember that you struck up a conversation with me. You're certainly not going
• 1:09:18
  to remember the name of my podcast. Yeah, like you didn't type it
• 1:09:23
  into your phone or something. Yeah. Yeah. Oh this chapter it's a
• 1:09:27
  long chapter too, Like it's a big honkin chapter is high. Yeah,
• 1:09:32
  and that's that's why we need this. The chapter's high. So yeah.
• 1:09:39
  And this chap, this chunk with the novices is also where she's helping one
• 1:09:43
  at a time. She's not holding classes, she's not going to teach more
• 1:09:45
  than one at a time, but she is creating one on one relationships with
• 1:09:49
  these girls, helping them with you know, whatever they're having trouble with in
• 1:09:55
  class, whether it's a subject material. Right, because I kind of think
• 1:09:59
  of her as someone who like went through grad school yeah right, and is
• 1:10:05
  back in high school and people are like, how do I do calculus?
• 1:10:09
  And she's like, well, I've been using calculus for like a year now.
• 1:10:13
  On a daily basis, So let me show you because this stuff is
• 1:10:16
  really simple. And then just that combined with comforting them because of the last
• 1:10:21
  battle stuff, right, because this is where she gets clued into the fact
• 1:10:26
  that corridors change. She didn't know yet because she was out in the camp
• 1:10:30
  and camps are apparently not being affected. But here she is in the first
• 1:10:34
  few days, over the course of the first week, getting clued into the
• 1:10:38
  fact that sometimes the corridors move, and there's ghosts walking in and out of
• 1:10:42
  walls, and none of the Eyes to Die are addressing it, but everyone
• 1:10:45
  knows it's happening, right right, which is kind of what happened in Cameron,
• 1:10:50
  except for Elaine was also worried that she was had pregnancy brain right right,
• 1:10:57
  uh, but same thing, and she's Gwayne's able to talk it over
• 1:11:00
  with Swan and you know, make sure that she's you know, got the
• 1:11:03
  definitely Eyes to Die approved explanation to hand out. And it does just like
• 1:11:08
  with Elaine being like, well, I don't know why this is comforting to
• 1:11:12
  dialand but I guess it is same thing with Agwayne. It feels like feeble
• 1:11:15
  comfort. But the fact that these women are able to say their fears out
• 1:11:18
  loud and be heard and have their feelings validated is enough to diffuse the anxiety.
• 1:11:25
  It's literally all you have to do is say, I hear you,
• 1:11:27
  You're not crazy, your feelings are valid, and like it's half the battle,
• 1:11:31
  even if you can't do anything about the building itself. Also her being
• 1:11:35
  like, yeah, the last battle's coming. Did you think the White Tower
• 1:11:39
  wouldn't be affected? Like the White Tower is where it's gonna happen, like
• 1:11:43
  we are well, she doesn't exactly say that though, No, no,
• 1:11:45
  no, no, she leaves out the last battle part. She's just like,
• 1:11:48
  it's just White Tower shit, you know. Vaguely, she's like in
• 1:11:55
  her mind, she's like, it's the pattern unraveling. But I'm gonna I'm
• 1:11:58
  gonna fuzz that over. We'll just skip that. There are wonders in the
• 1:12:03
  world, and is it any wonder they don't appear at the White Tower.
• 1:12:08
  Yeah, wonders you mean bubbles of evil, like what shifting realities? Yeah,
• 1:12:14
  they're surprising. The rules of physics are bending, and that is a
• 1:12:17
  miracle. Maybe not a miracle for the good guys, but it's a miracle
• 1:12:23
  nonetheless. And then we get to hear what her advice sounds like coming parroted
• 1:12:28
  from Nicola, which just makes Agway and sound like the most insufferable, difficult
• 1:12:32
  to like person. The way Nikola describes Agway and it's just like, I
• 1:12:36
  do not want to know this person. It's the same way that the the
• 1:12:42
  Dorans think the Kyrians make their thrones. Yeah, the cultural mismatches. It's
• 1:12:46
  a little the same because it's like, on the one hand, yes,
• 1:12:49
  this is what Agwayne says, but on the other hand, it's such a
• 1:12:53
  simplistic reduction of how Agwayne approaches things. Also, I just I'm in my
• 1:12:59
  peace, should take more breaks and give themselves more rest in space era and
• 1:13:02
  so I don't appreciate work hard, then work harder, like no, work
• 1:13:05
  hard, then take a nap, then take a rest day, right,
• 1:13:11
  tend to yourself. It is important to rest. Yeah, it is important
• 1:13:14
  to have a chance to recover, Like you're not going to do your best
• 1:13:17
  work if you're just wearing yourself then day after day after day. And in
• 1:13:20
  Guay's entire arc is that like the reason Awayne burns out literally into a flaming
• 1:13:26
  crystal at the end is not just Godwin's fault. It's also because she's been
• 1:13:30
  running herself at two hundred percent for the past like six months up until that
• 1:13:33
  point. I mean you might want to you may say two and a half
• 1:13:35
  years up really right, like truly? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. She
• 1:13:40
  does not rest, so of course her advice includes no rest, but don't
• 1:13:42
  listen to again. I look, I love Agwain. It's not in this
• 1:13:45
  section, but it's in the next montage chapter of hers where she thinks about
• 1:13:49
  she just has to scrub the floor in front of her, like, I
• 1:13:53
  admire so much about Agwain in this arc. She is who I aspire to
• 1:13:57
  be in so many ways. But work hard, then work harder, I
• 1:14:00
  feel like, is a level of taking it slightly too far. Just just
• 1:14:04
  just work hard and then rest and next, what do we have? Laras
• 1:14:13
  is the next thing that I have? Okay, Lara's which she seems to
• 1:14:17
  not be punishing Agwayne, right, She's like, yeah, I go ahead
• 1:14:19
  and scrub, but like, if you take a break, go ahead and
• 1:14:23
  take a break. And Agwayne's reading into that that she's an ally. I'm
• 1:14:28
  not so sure how accurate that is, And if that ever comes up again,
• 1:14:32
  it does. Laras does offer a GWayne escape later. I feel like
• 1:14:38
  at this point, Laras is holding her judgment. She doesn't know if she
• 1:14:43
  wants to accept Elida's orders to treat this one as a novice. She hasn't
• 1:14:47
  made up her mind where her allegiance lies yet. I don't think given that
• 1:14:50
  she helped Swan and Leanna to escape, given that she protested to Swan about
• 1:14:57
  how the supergirls were getting treated way back in Dragon Reborn, I feel like
• 1:15:01
  she's very much making her own choice, regardless of what the Amberlin says about
• 1:15:05
  this woman who claims to be the Ombrelin, and she just decides to kind
• 1:15:10
  of leave Aguayin alone, be like, no, you you seem to be
• 1:15:13
  willing to play by the rules as I set them, So I'm not going
• 1:15:15
  to play power games with you because I don't need to buy Mistress of the
• 1:15:18
  Kitchens. What are you gonna do? Take away my spoon? Like there's
• 1:15:23
  no Lares is not threatened by Agwayne. It's really all the same to her,
• 1:15:28
  and Agwayne is fine, so she doesn't have to hit, beat her
• 1:15:33
  and do all this other shit that the Eyes that I do. And then
• 1:15:36
  literally later she does offer escape. I wonder how much of this is because
• 1:15:41
  remember how Suan made her Mistress of the Kitchens an official title, and like
• 1:15:47
  that she kind of did it just to cover up a visit to a GWayne
• 1:15:50
  but like ninive but yeah, right, it was all a super girl.
• 1:15:56
  It was all the super girls. Yeah, And I wonder how much of
• 1:16:00
  Laris's loyalty is because of that, you know, you know, and that
• 1:16:05
  like accident Severeen, like granting her that little title then led to the escape,
• 1:16:11
  led to her helping Agwayne here, Like how much of her loyalty and
• 1:16:15
  help was because of that little offhanded promotion and her being, like, you
• 1:16:19
  know what, she was a good arm alone, she did promote me.
• 1:16:23
  Treat the staff well, It's amazing the little things they'll do for you down
• 1:16:27
  the line. And that's the point Jordan makes over and over and over again,
• 1:16:30
  right, like, treat your staff, well, he sure do be
• 1:16:32
  nice to your waitress, sure does definitely be nice to back of house too,
• 1:16:36
  not just front of house. Well, you just don't interact, you
• 1:16:41
  know, ignore back of house. That's all they want. Please. Well,
• 1:16:43
  in this case, it's the institution. They can't really ignore a back
• 1:16:45
  of house because they're at department within said institution. But yes, yes,
• 1:16:51
  as a customer, leave back of house alone. Don't don't walk up to
• 1:16:56
  the window. The window is not there for you to talk to. The
• 1:16:58
  kitchen hmm, it's there for the food to go through, not your face.
• 1:17:04
  The food is for your face. It's not the same thing. And
• 1:17:08
  you know why black house makes food for your face, so you won't talk
• 1:17:11
  to them and you'll be shoving too, busy shoving food into it. Agwayne
• 1:17:15
  thinks of doing all of these chores, both the kitchen and like outside chores,
• 1:17:20
  law and care, all of that stuff. She thinks of it as
• 1:17:24
  penance for not having shielded her hidden her ability to channel before doing the quindiar
• 1:17:30
  thing. She's like, yeah, this sucks, but I do kind of
• 1:17:32
  deserve it because I could have been more clever about my attack. So I'll
• 1:17:39
  just accept this as a personal penance and not make a fuss about it.
• 1:17:42
  And I'm like, way to pick your battles a gway yep. Follow In
• 1:17:45
  this lesson, we get that there are thirty one accepted in the tower.
• 1:17:49
  Thirty one. That's so few. I could name thirty one s named,
• 1:17:55
  is said I, without even thinking about it. That's nice. I could
• 1:18:02
  I actually I'd like to see you cry. I don't think you get to
• 1:18:05
  thirty one, a dozen, maybe even twenty. Yeah, but going up
• 1:18:12
  to thirty one, I don't think so. Yeah, what s named people?
• 1:18:16
  Yes, thirty one named people? No problem? But yeah with an
• 1:18:20
  isid that do I count no within the books people, But if we expand
• 1:18:27
  beyond isidie to the entire cast, I never realized I was also s named
• 1:18:30
  God, damn it, sarand smat sparrin, spar no segouine. No,
• 1:18:44
  we're just fail. No, all of you stop slams. Are you ready
• 1:18:51
  to be serious? Slam fear? Okay, I can be serious for saying
• 1:19:00
  good Lord. Chat is in full rebellion anarchy in Chat right now. The
• 1:19:20
  other thing that's interesting here is she picks up a bunch of random news from
• 1:19:27
  being seen as a piece of furniture while isaid I talk. And the important
• 1:19:30
  thing of all that is we're rehashing books and books and books and books,
• 1:19:33
  and one name, one name comes up again and again. Elida do Evrinia
• 1:19:39
  Royhan GWayne is learning that she has basically nothing to do. And Elida will
• 1:19:45
  topple herself because literally, like what everything's her fault and everyone knows it.
• 1:19:51
  Yeah, and the list of you know, the expedition is the Black Power
• 1:19:56
  failed, do my as well as failed, you know sherrim being stripped,
• 1:20:01
  Chamarin chimaron. Yeah, garbage rotting in the streets, her edict regarding rand
• 1:20:10
  right, like, all that stuff, all that stuff was just bad.
• 1:20:14
  And yeah, it's all light his fault. And this is where I get
• 1:20:16
  frustrated because after all of that, we get this line on the morning of
• 1:20:21
  the second day. Sho'll be telling me all of this happened within one day.
• 1:20:26
  No, No, it's just no, the weird timeline stuff, it's
• 1:20:30
  just weird timeliney whimy. He's describing a whole series of days and then jumping
• 1:20:35
  around to specific events that happened on day two. Yeah, it's it's the
• 1:20:41
  road trip chapter. But like with a good reason, I would say I
• 1:20:46
  would have if I was editing this chapter together personally, I would have put
• 1:20:49
  it more in chronological order, like beating encounter, beating encounter, beating encounter.
• 1:20:56
  Actually, like just giving you a sense of the rhythm of her days.
• 1:20:59
  That's probably how I would have organized this if I was in the editor
• 1:21:01
  seat. It's an interesting decision to organize it the way it is. But
• 1:21:05
  I can see how that might have felt very repetitive, be like, oh,
• 1:21:09
  this is happening and then a beating, and then this is happening and
• 1:21:11
  then a beating. It is repetitive. That's what she's going through. That
• 1:21:15
  would be good, pos well true, but he's trying to cluster. I
• 1:21:18
  think he's trying to eliminate the repetitiveness of it by clustering, Like, here's
• 1:21:23
  all the good encounters she had with Isidai, here's all the bad counters,
• 1:21:26
  here's the things from doing chores, Like, well, I think he's a
• 1:21:30
  coward. I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that one. No,
• 1:21:39
  I just it's weird to me that he's done that sort of pacing thing so
• 1:21:43
  many times, making things seem boring or drawn out, because that's how the
• 1:21:47
  character feels, and this time he decided not to Like, I guess he
• 1:21:49
  just wanted to change it up and do something different. But I expected something
• 1:21:55
  more typical and I did not get it. So she's outdoing yard work and
• 1:21:59
  Alviarren show up and is like, escape, Escape, Escape, You want
• 1:22:01
  an escape, right? Escape escapes a thing you could find it if you
• 1:22:04
  want to escape, and it's just like, I am content with my situation
• 1:22:09
  and goes you're not very loyal to a line, are yea? And All's
• 1:22:14
  like, why would you say that? It's like, I mean, I
• 1:22:16
  have eyes because yeah, doesn't take a politically astutid person to notice that you
• 1:22:24
  got, you know, fired from being keeper, which is not really a
• 1:22:28
  thing. And so every two or three days she pops up and says,
• 1:22:31
  hey, do you want to escape? And Agwayne replies, I am content
• 1:22:34
  with my situation, which I feel like is the punchline of some joke where
• 1:22:39
  like some really dry humor. Yeah, it's like something I would prefer not
• 1:22:43
  to sort of thing exactly exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a
• 1:22:46
  little little bartle be gone on. Yeah, that movie fucked me up.
• 1:22:53
  Not gonna lie on the fourth day. Now, even though we went from
• 1:22:57
  the second day to the fourth day, we somehow have an every two or
• 1:23:00
  three days with alvarn. So don't get me started on that, because I
• 1:23:04
  already talked about it. You've already been started on that. She sees Martin
• 1:23:10
  Stepaneos, who's been kidnapped by Alida and has been here for like a week,
• 1:23:15
  or more at this point, he's been around for a little bit,
• 1:23:18
  but he's been on the road in custody for a long time. Yes,
• 1:23:23
  he's only recently arrived at the tower within like the last week or more.
• 1:23:27
  And he is like, I would like to talk to someone who is not
• 1:23:30
  a Red sister. Also, she's sort of notorious and dragon reborn connection,
• 1:23:35
  and I just I need refreshing conversation please, And Agwayne gets to have a
• 1:23:41
  very interesting exchange with him. I love the little like the hand or teacup.
• 1:23:45
  She drinks it, hands back and he's like, oh, they serve
• 1:23:48
  you. That seems odd for a prisoner, and she's like, mmmm,
• 1:23:53
  they think a tea will improve my mood. It's such a good euphemism because
• 1:23:58
  it's not a lie. I mean really, it's it's a very very euphemistic
• 1:24:02
  we of saying they're poisoning me to keep me magically shackled. And mattin Stepaneus
• 1:24:08
  was the king of not Aerodomon, but yes as the Dooby doobt. Yeah,
• 1:24:14
  he says, what be pleasant? Do be talking to someone other than
• 1:24:18
  I said I. So we get a little bit of bail domon origin King
• 1:24:23
  of King of Bail Domon is how I think of matt and Stepaneos. Yes,
• 1:24:27
  bail Domon if he was a king, which is insulting to bail Domon,
• 1:24:30
  But you know, we do what we got to do for unomonics.
• 1:24:33
  He spouts a bunch of bullshit that's basically been fed to him through half truths
• 1:24:39
  and lies by misinformation that he's put together in a predictable way, and the
• 1:24:45
  Red Sister sitting off to the side like nodding at him like he's a boy
• 1:24:48
  reciting his lessons as he just spouts propaganda. It's basically him and Gowin are
• 1:24:54
  believed basically the same thing. Basically, Yeah, but Mattin Stepaneo's is able
• 1:24:59
  to to have that bubble burst by really gentle questioning, where as Gowain bursts
• 1:25:03
  everyone else's bubble defensively whenever anyone questions him in the slightest But yeah, Agwayne
• 1:25:10
  is able to say, point for point, you're wrong, you've been lied
• 1:25:13
  to, you don't know what you're talking about, and it would be much
• 1:25:16
  it would be very It is very possible for you to verify all of this
• 1:25:20
  if you can get any access to information, and if you can't get access
• 1:25:24
  to information, maybe that's a problem you should think about. You know.
• 1:25:30
  It's one of those be aware of who you can't criticize kind of moments.
• 1:25:33
  It's like, well, the red outa doesn't want you to know this,
• 1:25:36
  and they keep you from learning if I'm telling you the truth or not.
• 1:25:40
  You should, uh, maybe not be so loyal to them and you everyone
• 1:25:44
  I only see red sisters. They're not letting you talk to anybody else,
• 1:25:46
  maybe because they're hiding things from you. Maybe because you've been brought aboard a
• 1:25:49
  sinking ship, which I love the ship analogy for someone described him the pirate
• 1:25:55
  thing, right, uh huh. Yeah, also with you know, you
• 1:25:58
  know, she's doing her best impression. She's not quite to the fish metaphor,
• 1:26:01
  but she got a boat metaphor in so yeah, she's getting it.
• 1:26:04
  She's trying. I do think, you know, alien really I like it,
• 1:26:12
  excuse me as the pirate capital, right because it's this delta that you
• 1:26:15
  can have a bunch of hidden coves and stuff like that, right, and
• 1:26:19
  then people can raid from there, so you really can't control who's coming and
• 1:26:24
  going. So I like it as sort of the pirate ie, the pirate
• 1:26:27
  king. We'll take it. It's not at all what's happening. But we'll
• 1:26:30
  take it. It's fine. Yeah, So she gets sent off to get
• 1:26:33
  beaten again for having the impudence to talk to the king, which gets her
• 1:26:38
  in trouble for being late to her next lesson, which gets her beaten again.
• 1:26:41
  It's just this, you know, We'll just keep beating her until we
• 1:26:44
  run out of hours in the day, and agwainn it's just like, all
• 1:26:46
  right, fine, I guess associating is what I do at this point.
• 1:26:50
  And then on the seventh day she rested, No, she didn't. She
• 1:26:57
  accused Bannon of betraying her, and one of you will betray me? Yeah,
• 1:27:01
  different book, but sure is it me? Banon? Yeah? And
• 1:27:05
  she yeah, she sees Bannon goes, you betrayed me, and then she
• 1:27:10
  leaves to the conclusion you must be a dark friend, to which Banon,
• 1:27:13
  you know, hustles her aside and it's like no, no, no,
• 1:27:15
  no, no, blah blah blah blah blah, and then catches herself in.
• 1:27:17
  She tries to lie, you know, essentially about the fairs, like
• 1:27:20
  I have betrayed and cuts herself off, which proves to Agayn incontrovertibly. All
• 1:27:26
  right, So you're not a dark friend because you can't lie. You're still
• 1:27:30
  bound by the oath, So I guess I can trust you. But also
• 1:27:31
  you ambitious little snake, how dare? How dare? And like she's trying
• 1:27:36
  to weasel out of it, and Awayne has to just like you said,
• 1:27:39
  be better and lead by example and be like, no, you are gonna
• 1:27:43
  warn the fare. It's no matter the risk to yourself. It's a penance
• 1:27:45
  for being a little shithead. And Bannon actually accepts this woman split hairs with
• 1:27:50
  a razor. She took the thinnest excuse to decide her notes no longer applied,
• 1:27:56
  and then she betrayed the very woman she had helped choose. Yeah,
• 1:28:00
  I don't like that about it, jast. We were really all like confusedly
• 1:28:05
  liking her when we saw her before, and this this, I mean,
• 1:28:11
  ah, man, that's that's real shady Bannon. It's real shady, real
• 1:28:15
  shady. I don't like I like. So we were liking her last time,
• 1:28:19
  We were understanding her reasoning while hating where she ended up. It was
• 1:28:24
  this like really weird journey where we were like, we kind of like her,
• 1:28:28
  but we also hate everything she does. How can we like the person
• 1:28:31
  and hate the actions, like what is going on? It was a whole
• 1:28:34
  journey that we went on. I forget which episode it was, but it
• 1:28:38
  happened. Yeah, yeah, but yeah. Going basically begins to win her
• 1:28:42
  back over, and at one point, Bannon says like, it would be
• 1:28:44
  so great to see Alia get pulled down, and Agwaine's like, that makes
• 1:28:47
  no sense. I thought you wanted Alida to get pulled out. She needs
• 1:28:50
  the and to spell it out for her and explain what must have happened.
• 1:28:55
  Well, it wasn't also until Bannon came back and experienced what Alighta really was
• 1:29:00
  like, and she's like, oh, this was a mistake, Like I
• 1:29:03
  didn't realize how bad things had gotten while we were gone exactly, and she
• 1:29:08
  she goes to the on and she's like, I'm tired and I'm missing something.
• 1:29:10
  And Leanna's just like NAT's Bannon's ambition. I can do the math and
• 1:29:15
  put together the dots and figure out what must have happened, and we know
• 1:29:18
  as readers. Yeah, Landa's absolutely correct in her read and I love her
• 1:29:23
  comparing, like smiling at Bannon and forgiving her is so much harder than smiling
• 1:29:27
  after being yeah again, Like you said, the mental anguish is really a
• 1:29:30
  powerful driving factor with a gwin because her emotional response to Bannon is like so
• 1:29:35
  much stronger than her reaction to pain. Then we're back to visiting Leanne again.
• 1:29:42
  Another visit to Leanne, yes, with another lovely bizarre Isidi conversation in
• 1:29:46
  the back. This is a real fun one. I mean, this is
• 1:29:49
  technobabble to the highest degree. This means nothing. Dissimulated structures are fundamental to
• 1:29:58
  any possibility of nunderstanding what is happening right, like what it's so like the
• 1:30:04
  Tachyon beam. Yeah, the inherent impossibility of dissimulated structures is a given,
• 1:30:11
  a given. Oh sorry, I did not realize that the inherent impossibility is
• 1:30:17
  a given of dissimilar dissimulated structures, right, And what they're talking about is
• 1:30:24
  the hallways moving right, And they're saying, basically, somehow these structures are
• 1:30:30
  switching in a way that should be impossible, and the one's saying, okay,
• 1:30:35
  but they're switching, so you have to admit that that's reality. And
• 1:30:40
  the one's like, but it's not logical, and like, yeah, typical
• 1:30:43
  white going around in circles and it's a really important, like you know,
• 1:30:47
  under the technobabble what he's there's this line that I think is actually really important.
• 1:30:54
  Only a novice would think the real world can be applied to logic.
• 1:30:58
  Ideals must be first principles, not the mundane world. And that is just
• 1:31:03
  such a flawed thinking like that will lead you into the weirdest, fucking fascist
• 1:31:11
  corners. If you think like that, you will end up in so many
• 1:31:13
  bad places. Mmmm. I actually read it the other way, but because
• 1:31:17
  I was like, oh, no, of course you can't. Just the
• 1:31:20
  real world has to apply to logic, right, That's that's what physics is,
• 1:31:25
  right. It's like, right, you can get all sorts of weird
• 1:31:28
  mathematical structures, but until you have some sort of verification that that's how the
• 1:31:34
  real world works, you can't make predictions about the real world with that math.
• 1:31:39
  Yeah. And it's like if you're like, models are wrong, right,
• 1:31:44
  models are lies? That is that is axiomic to to all logic,
• 1:31:47
  is that models are wrong. Oh yeah, yeah, it's why every teacher
• 1:31:51
  you've ever had in physics has lied to you exactly because the model is wrong.
• 1:31:56
  So if you have a model for how you think the world should work
• 1:32:00
  and it doesn't match your observed reality, the only rational response is to update
• 1:32:06
  your model. People who insist that reality is wrong inevitably end up on the
• 1:32:13
  wrong side of history, or at least the bad side of science. And
• 1:32:16
  that's the problem with the Whites. Logic, right is, logic can take
• 1:32:21
  you to legitimate places, assuming your assumptions are correct and and assuming you apply
• 1:32:28
  it to the real world in a way that there's feedback. And they're doing
• 1:32:30
  either of those things. No, And it's a really weird failing of how
• 1:32:34
  RJ wrote the White ojed they shouldn't again, like with the beatings will continue
• 1:32:39
  until morale improves. It's like the Whites shouldn't be this deluded about the thing
• 1:32:44
  that is ostensibly their central tenant. Right, But again he's writing every adja
• 1:32:48
  to be deluded about the thing that is their central tenant, right, Like
• 1:32:51
  that's the whole point of them. He's writing that deliberately, right, Like
• 1:32:55
  they are logic without in sense. Yeah, yeah, right, that you
• 1:33:02
  could frame that, right like every odd ja is. The Blues fight a
• 1:33:09
  cause without considering the consequences. The Greens fight battle without being good at fighting
• 1:33:15
  the you know, the the yellow heel on a conceptual level without actually going
• 1:33:21
  out and healing people, right, Like, and the Whites do logic that
• 1:33:27
  sort of just takes their feelings and dresses them up as facts, right without
• 1:33:30
  ever applying feedback from the real world or considering whether the logical conclusions they come
• 1:33:36
  to are realistic. Yeah, and they're more devoted to their system than they
• 1:33:42
  are to the results. They would rather be appear to be right than actually
• 1:33:46
  be advancing their own understanding of reality. But I get especially angry at the
• 1:33:51
  Whites because they should be scientists, they should be forming hypothesis stesty, and
• 1:33:56
  they're not doing that. So they're arguing about if it's possible for what is
• 1:34:00
  objectively happening to happen, and it's like, but it happened. It objectively
• 1:34:05
  happened. Like I'm watching the series about Chernobyl because I just decided that that
• 1:34:12
  would be fun. And they get some stuff wrong, but like it's fine,
• 1:34:14
  it's a drama. And like one of the things they keep circling around
• 1:34:17
  is but it can't have exploded. It's just it's not possible. And it's
• 1:34:21
  like, but it objectively did, And you are killing people by denying that
• 1:34:27
  it happened, and worrying about the how later. Worry about the how later.
• 1:34:30
  The how's not important right now there's an exposed burning core. Clearly you
• 1:34:35
  missed something good, right like, it doesn't matter what you think is possible.
• 1:34:42
  What matters, it's what's happening. So yeah, we uh are with
• 1:34:45
  Leanna hearing all of that going on in the background. Agwayne asked, Leanna,
• 1:34:51
  do the sisterses who visit you still ask the same questions. Those questions
• 1:34:56
  are for the secret of traveling, for basically saying, hey, do they
• 1:35:01
  know how to travel? And if they don't, that means Bonin hasn't passed
• 1:35:05
  those things on and therefore we can trust her. However, however, the
• 1:35:13
  reason they're still asking about it is not because Bannon didn't pass them on.
• 1:35:16
  It's because Alida is keeping them close to the breast and doesn't want to teach
• 1:35:20
  very many people because she's a power hungry little m So this trusts Bannon not
• 1:35:28
  so it's almost they're wrong to trust her for that reason. They come to
• 1:35:32
  faulty conclusions with the facts that are available. They read her correctly, but
• 1:35:36
  they just assume that if she had betrayed stuff to Alida that Alida would have
• 1:35:42
  because again they assume Alida's a better leader than she is. They assume that
• 1:35:45
  Alida would spread that information as widely as she could rather than deny her people
• 1:35:50
  access to these tools. Sometimes the hardest games I play, like in chess,
• 1:35:56
  are against amateurs who just they're so bad that you expect them to do
• 1:36:00
  the right thing and they're like, well that you would never do that,
• 1:36:02
  that's dumb, And then it puts you in this weird, awkward position where
• 1:36:04
  you're like, uh, okay, well I have an advantage now, but
• 1:36:08
  this is not at all the game I expected to be playing. Mm hmmmm,
• 1:36:12
  absolutely absolutely, But you know they do win bayan and over in the
• 1:36:17
  end it ends up being it ultimately becomes the correct trust. It just starts
• 1:36:21
  out under false pretenses, all right. So then Agwain gets to meet doa
• 1:36:26
  scene on the ninth day, and Doacene basically seems to be on her side.
• 1:36:30
  She's like, you don't mean to surrender, do you? All right?
• 1:36:32
  Cocoa cool, which is uh interesting, and she heals away and using
• 1:36:40
  the old method. So again, that's more proof in quotes that they were
• 1:36:45
  not portrayed fully, even though they were, and then after her morning beating,
• 1:36:50
  she talks to Sylviana about how Shamaran was able to be demoted, because
• 1:36:58
  this is a really critical threat to understanding both why Elida is a bad leader
• 1:37:02
  and why Agwayne is winning this contest of wills. It's all about who's accepting
• 1:37:09
  whose authority. Shamarin accepted her demotion and that made it real, gave it
• 1:37:15
  power. And it's also airbud rules, right, it is also airbud rules.
• 1:37:18
  Yes, where Agwayne basically says there's no provision saying she's allowed to demote
• 1:37:26
  people, and Sylviana says there's no provision saying she can't, which is exactly
• 1:37:31
  why Airbud is able to play in the stupid game. Right in that movie,
• 1:37:36
  they say, well, there's nothing saying he can't play in the game.
• 1:37:42
  Okay, so airbud rules. We have to explain this for anyone knows
• 1:37:45
  no Airbud rules. Airbud rules is the dog is allowed to play in the
• 1:37:48
  game because he's the mascot and he's clever, and everyone's like super into it
• 1:37:53
  because it's a feel good kids movie. And then they're like, you can't
• 1:37:56
  have a dog in the tube, and they're like, well, but you
• 1:37:59
  can't. You didn't say we can't, so ha ha, Right, it's
• 1:38:02
  a kid's movie, right that came out that was super popular, and yeah,
• 1:38:05
  it's there's a dog named Airbud and he's named Airbud because his name is
• 1:38:11
  Bud, and he jumps and dunks basketballs, which is a ridiculous premise to
• 1:38:15
  begin with, such a silly premise, And he's a golden retriever. You
• 1:38:18
  know, he's very cute. He's a golden retriever. And the idea is
• 1:38:23
  an incredibly good basketball player for some ridiculous reason. He's a street dog.
• 1:38:28
  Okay, he has skills. So then they get him on the team and
• 1:38:30
  he starts playing on the team as a player, and you know, of
• 1:38:35
  course the bad guys are like, you can't have a dog on your team,
• 1:38:40
  and they go, where in the rule book does it say we can't
• 1:38:43
  have a dog on the team. And the ref goes, you're right,
• 1:38:45
  and nowhere does it say you cannot have a dog on the team, and
• 1:38:48
  therefore you are allowed to have a dog on the team. And so,
• 1:38:53
  and that's become such a universal way to say, if it's not forbidden,
• 1:38:58
  then it's allowed. Mm hmmm, airbud rules. This is also the beginning
• 1:39:02
  of Agwayne and Sylviana having interesting conversations. Rather than just exchanges about beatings and
• 1:39:08
  honorifics, they're actually exchanging ideas and having a discussion outside of the Mistress of
• 1:39:14
  Novice Novice relationship. There's a moment where Sylviana turns tough and goes you got
• 1:39:18
  me monologue and you sly dog right like. There is that moment where she's
• 1:39:23
  they're talking, we're chatting, and she's like, get out of here.
• 1:39:26
  We're not supposed to be chatting. That was that was wrong. But again
• 1:39:31
  it's you know, Agwayne's the wag Agwayene is carrying herself and moving through space
• 1:39:36
  is subconsciously affecting people. After a week of experiencing her equanimity and her reactions
• 1:39:44
  to all this, Sylviana can't help but respond to the inherent authority that Agwayne
• 1:39:50
  is displaying. It's just it's creeping in. She can't stop it. Very
• 1:39:55
  slowly, very insidiously, but it's happening. There's a certain amount of of
• 1:40:00
  training in the White Tower to bow to authority, and Agwayne is taking the
• 1:40:05
  authority. She's you know, what she's learned from the wise ones right that
• 1:40:11
  Aviana still hasn't learned is the only way to get authority is to take it,
• 1:40:15
  is to claim it. And she is claiming that authority, and the
• 1:40:18
  people around her don't know what to do because like, but you're a novice
• 1:40:21
  and you're claiming authority and it's breaking our brains. But there's no one who's
• 1:40:27
  remotely competing on your tiers. So I guess we're gonna start falling in line
• 1:40:31
  against our own conscious wishes. God damn it, because again there's there's a
• 1:40:35
  huge gap at the top. Alida is not doing anything. And for a
• 1:40:40
  while Alviarn was the leadership at the top, controlling Alida, and there was
• 1:40:45
  at least a hand steering it. It was the black Ah Josh steering it
• 1:40:48
  into the rocks, but there was steering going on. And now that we've
• 1:40:53
  seen alvi Aarren in complete punishment mode and Alida as well we will see soon
• 1:40:59
  in complete insanity mode, there is which we can say, you know,
• 1:41:02
  Faine might have something to do with that, right, Like, there's no
• 1:41:06
  leadership and so there's a vacuum, and what do we know about power?
• 1:41:11
  Like it fills a vacuum and Aguayne has just been given a lot of power.
• 1:41:15
  Yeah, and people like Sylviana are rightfully looking for a leader. She
• 1:41:19
  is the mistress of novices. She has a specific role in the government structure
• 1:41:24
  to play. She needs there to be a leader, and Alida's not fulfilling
• 1:41:29
  that. So she's gonna naturally reorient and gravitate to someone who's willing to take
• 1:41:33
  on the responsibility correctly, like she can't help it. So I mean again,
• 1:41:38
  if Kad Swain or anyone competent was anywhere near power, this would be
• 1:41:42
  a much more difficult struggle for Agwayne because she is young and only has six
• 1:41:45
  months crash course of Swan tutelage. But because because Alida is so bad at
• 1:41:50
  what she needs to be doing. It's, you know, a walk in
• 1:41:55
  the park, I mean a lot of beatings for a walk in the park.
• 1:41:58
  But relatively speaking, yeah, well, and Shamirn was also beaten nearly
• 1:42:04
  as often right as GWayne was, and she gave that's that she didn't have
• 1:42:09
  the fortitude to withstand the beatings. She didn't have the mental framework to contextualize
• 1:42:15
  the beatings and make it make sense because she was in the wrong in that
• 1:42:19
  instance. She was in the wrong. Her friends were trying to beat her
• 1:42:21
  sense back into her about claiming her power, but she'd already given her power
• 1:42:26
  up, so it was untenable and that's why she runs away. And then
• 1:42:30
  the next thing I have is the readout with a noviice is giving her honey
• 1:42:31
  and the tea. Yeah, yeah, it's a bookends that first scene where
• 1:42:36
  she gets tripped on her way in This is you know, effectively a week
• 1:42:41
  later and things have really turned around for her this over this montage. And
• 1:42:46
  I feel like a lot of books try and do this, like from being
• 1:42:53
  bullied to being the hero of the students, when they do it over like
• 1:42:56
  the course of like this whole school year. And that's the book. And
• 1:42:59
  George does it in a couple of sentences at the beginning and ending of a
• 1:43:01
  couple of his chapters. And the story is better in my opinion than a
• 1:43:05
  lot of other people who tell it. He is a master of his craft.
• 1:43:10
  He is a cushion rested on the bench in front of Agwain's tray,
• 1:43:14
  a tattered thing that was more patches in different colors than original material, but
• 1:43:17
  still a cushion. Agwaine picked it up and set it on the end of
• 1:43:21
  the table before sitting down. Welcoming the pain was easy. She basked in
• 1:43:27
  the warmth of her own fires. A soft suscerration gusted through the room,
• 1:43:31
  a collective sigh. Only when she popped an olive into her mouth did the
• 1:43:35
  novices sit. She almost spat it out again. It was not far short
• 1:43:40
  of spoiled, but she was famished after her healing, so she spat only
• 1:43:44
  the pit into the palm of her hand and deposited it on the plate,
• 1:43:47
  washing the taste away with a sip of tea. There was honey at the
• 1:43:50
  tea. Novices got honey only on special occasions. She tried not to smile
• 1:43:57
  as she cleaned her plate. And clean it she did, even picking up
• 1:44:00
  crumbs of bread and cheese with a dampened finger. Not smiling was difficult,
• 1:44:04
  though, First Doiccene a sitter, Then Sylviana's resignation. Now this the two
• 1:44:12
  sisters were far more important than the novices or the honey, but they all
• 1:44:15
  indicated the same thing. She was winning her war. There you have it,
• 1:44:59
  you're muted. There's one line in here that I did want to talk
• 1:45:03
  about that we we skipped over. She hasn't had any dark or disturbing dreams
• 1:45:08
  since she's been rescued. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's important to
• 1:45:14
  mention. Yes, being free of the camp has freed her of those headaches
• 1:45:18
  and dream problems, and she's had some fine dreams lately about Rand, Matt
• 1:45:24
  Paren and even Goway. Most of her most of most dreams of him were
• 1:45:29
  just the dreams of him prophecy dreams or like, what kind of dreams she's
• 1:45:33
  having about Rand, Matt Paren and Gowain all at the same time. He
• 1:45:39
  all, I'm saying, you got a dirty mind. Put that thought down
• 1:45:45
  with that back where it came from. So helped me terrible. Hey,
• 1:45:50
  Rand, I never went So I was watching Dune and I was like,
• 1:45:59
  you know what, I think. I know why Rand has three girlfriends.
• 1:46:02
  It's because Paula Trad's has two, because he's got the And I'm like,
• 1:46:06
  and I bet Jordan my heroes about more women than I hate. No,
• 1:46:13
  like that. I don't like that at all. No, it has much
• 1:46:17
  more to do with the three fates. And there's many, many other reasons
• 1:46:23
  to have three women. But I mean, there is so much Dune,
• 1:46:27
  There is so much Doune in all of it. It was. It was
• 1:46:31
  I was watching the second Dune movie and just being like, oh, yep,
• 1:46:35
  those are that's space. There we go, I said, I yeah,
• 1:46:40
  space, I el Benny, jesuit are the I said, I.
• 1:46:44
  Spice is the one power. It's addictive. Yeah, everything is settled through
• 1:46:48
  sword fights. Yep. Yeah, I still have to watch part two.
• 1:46:54
  I liked it. I agree with it lacks some soul in my opinion.
• 1:47:00
  I thought amazing movie, love it. But I think someone pointed out that
• 1:47:03
  like in movies, people don't have lives anymore. Everything they do is for
• 1:47:09
  the plot. Yeah, well, just like TV shows, right, there's
• 1:47:12
  no there's no none of the weird episodes anymore. Same. Yeah, and
• 1:47:16
  so it's hard I see that now and almost everything I watch from like,
• 1:47:20
  there's there's nobody having a life. It's like, whatever you're doing, you're
• 1:47:25
  doing it for the plot. And it's making some of the movies hard for
• 1:47:29
  me to watch. Yeah. Like, I go back and watch some older
• 1:47:32
  stuff and it's just I'm enjoying it more. Not saying it's better, but
• 1:47:35
  I'm enjoying older things more. Yeah. And do I sound old yet?
• 1:47:40
  God? I was ranting to Brandon this morning about gen z truncation of words
• 1:47:46
  for like algorithm navigation and how annoying it is enough to carry a decoder ring
• 1:47:51
  around everywhere just to like see how people are circumventing the algorithm today. And
• 1:47:57
  it's just like I'm just entering my old man yelling at kids to get off
• 1:47:59
  my lawn phase. I guess just like just speak normal English. God,
• 1:48:03
  damn it, stop gaming the algorithm. I hate it, but it's just
• 1:48:10
  me. I'm just I'm just getting old. Oh fine, liligen. I
• 1:48:15
  love that chapter art, the five the seven rings with the seven balls inside.
• 1:48:20
  That's gorgeous. Yeah, very good quote. That's fantastic. All right,
• 1:48:26
  are we uh? I think we're done. We petered off there at
• 1:48:29
  the end. We we hadded to two hours? Yeah, my brain just
• 1:48:30
  ran out of juice. Yeah yeah, let's turn recording off. That was
• 1:48:35
  two hours. Thank you for listening to the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast.
• 1:48:40
  Rate us in the Apple Podcast app, or support us on Patreon.