Latest / WoT Spoilers / The Golden Crane - Knife of Dreams chapter 20 - EP494

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The Golden Crane - Knife of Dreams chapter 20 - EP494 · WoT Spoilers

• 0:12
  This is the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast. So do you want to talk
• 0:17
  about the Golden Crane flies for turb and guidance? Will he ride alone?
• 0:24
  So? Yeah, didn't I? You know, I don't usually tear tear
• 0:29
  up when I'm reading these chapters for when I'm making notes, right because I'm
• 0:33
  very much bisecting them and reading them for like clues and context and not necessarily
• 0:38
  the emotion, right, Like, that's not that's something I've gotten in other
• 0:41
  reads. Definitely teared up at the end of this episode, this this read.
• 0:46
  As I was making my notes, I was like, oh, yeah,
• 0:48
  no, this is fine. Now I'm not okay, I'm leaking onions?
• 0:54
  Who's cutting? Yeah? I so vividly remember the first time I listened
• 0:58
  to this on audiobook. I remember exactly where on the land I was,
• 1:02
  like, what piece of BlackBerry hedge I was cutting down? Like I specifically
• 1:06
  remember just like stopping and leaning on my rake and just like crying, just
• 1:10
  like you've gotta be fucking kidding me, Like I'm cheering alone in the woods,
• 1:15
  you know, like it was just it was a whole thing. Yeah,
• 1:18
  this is fantastic. I enjoy it very much, and I'm I'm I
• 1:23
  think we're gonna read a lot of it because, yeah, it's just really
• 1:26
  good. I know a lot of times like it's pros go read it on
• 1:27
  your own time, but like this is this is a chapter we might need
• 1:30
  to make an exception for. There's some good stuff here. This might be
• 1:34
  one of my favorite chapters that like. And it's it's long, right,
• 1:38
  it's the two part. Like we start off with the after effects of the
• 1:41
  fight and with Rand and sort of the there's a lot of we can talk
• 1:46
  about there, but then we switched to ninive her POV and the whole negotiation
• 1:53
  with Land that essentially starts the last battle, right as we talked about in
• 1:57
  the previous previous episode, Yeah, last episode, the battle kind of starts
• 2:01
  in this episode. Like the last episode is the boulder getting pushed, and
• 2:06
  this episode is the boulder being like actually like starting to move and then it's
• 2:12
  just you know, it's just watching the boulder roll downhill from there. This
• 2:16
  chapter twenty, the Golden Crane are symbol as the nodding Ravens. I assume
• 2:21
  that's a reference to all the ravens in the beginning of this chapter feasting on
• 2:24
  the trollucks and each other. Yeah, we will be ranting about bird facts.
• 2:30
  Okay, it sounds good to me. The wind had died away as
• 2:36
  the rain diminished, but gray clouds still hid the sun. The fine drizzle
• 2:40
  was enough to dampen Rand's hair, however, and began soaking into his gold
• 2:45
  embroidered black coat as he walked through the dead trollucks. Logan had spun a
• 2:49
  shield of air so that the rain drops bounced from it, or apparently slid
• 2:53
  down nothing to cascade around him, but Rand refused to risk Lewis there and
• 2:59
  seizing psych Dean again. The man had said he could wait until the last
• 3:02
  battle to die. But how far could you trust a madman on anything?
• 3:08
  Madman Lewis thereon, whispered, Am I any madder than you? He cackled
• 3:14
  with wild laughter. Now and then Nandeira looked over her shoulder at Rand,
• 3:19
  a tall, sinewy woman, her graying hair hidden beneath her brown schufa.
• 3:23
  She led the maidens, those on this side of the dragon wall, at
• 3:27
  least, but she had chosen to lead his bodyguard of maidens personally. Her
• 3:31
  green eyes all he could see of her sun dark face above her black veil
• 3:36
  carried little expression, yet he was sure she was worried over him not protecting
• 3:40
  himself from the rain. Maidens noticed what seemed out of the ordinary. He
• 3:46
  hoped she would keep quiet. You have to trust me, Louis there and
• 3:50
  said, trust me a light. I'm leading with a voice in my head.
• 3:53
  I must be mad. That's always fundyell a little bit. I know.
• 4:00
  Loose Therein is a real fun character this chapter. He's very present.
• 4:04
  He's also way more sane than Rand is, which is we've had that flip
• 4:09
  right where Rand is really the nuts one, and he's taking the last remnants
• 4:15
  of his sanity now and pushing it onto Lewis theren right, because Lewis Thereon
• 4:19
  used to be where he put all his anger and his hatred and the things
• 4:24
  he couldn't deal with. Yeah, it's always hard for me to put a
• 4:27
  finger on when Rand himself really becomes insane, because yeah, he does put
• 4:33
  it on loose Therein for a while, and he's still behaving in ways that
• 4:36
  are objectively sane ish, and then it really just completely flips. And it's
• 4:44
  hard to put a finger on when my has because of how into it we're
• 4:51
  getting. I put my finger on his hands, right on his fingers,
• 4:55
  right, Like, That's when I think there is a flip, because all
• 4:59
  of a sud sudden, Lewis Thearren is physically channeling. Rand is the voice
• 5:02
  in his head during the battle. Rand is in control of the body.
• 5:08
  Yes, yes, a little bit, but right his body. In response
• 5:12
  to Loose Barren's thoughts, mm hmmm, like you can't go back from that,
• 5:16
  A line has been crossed. Yeah, yeah, I think so.
• 5:21
  When we're really seeing that in how Lou's and Rand are interacting throughout this chapter,
• 5:27
  Rubert Jordan is like, yeah, the relationship has changed permanently between these
• 5:32
  two pieces of this one character. I think that's really an important part of
• 5:36
  the battle right that he went through, is that this That's the whole thing
• 5:41
  about Deathgates is there. They're Lewis then channeling, This is not Rand channeling.
• 5:46
  There is this swap at which point Rand has really lost himself, you
• 5:50
  know this, It was this thing he's been fearing right forever and ever and
• 5:54
  ever. Is what happens if Lewis Thearn takes over. What happens if Lewis
• 5:58
  Theren ceases the one power before I do you know and he almost killed them,
• 6:01
  all right, he almost you know, recreated Dragon Mount right there on
• 6:03
  the spot. So you know he was right to fear that, and in
• 6:08
  that fear he gave loose there, in the last of his sanity to how
• 6:12
  about you hold onto that because apparently you need it more than I do.
• 6:15
  I'll just live with all this trauma and pain and fear that Rand has accumulated
• 6:23
  in his literal life. I'll just deal with that with no sanity left.
• 6:27
  I'll just be insane because it's fine, I guess. And so yeah,
• 6:33
  obviously Rand isn't isn't channeling because he doesn't want to fight Loose there and over
• 6:38
  the power. He's afraid for that to happen again. So you have you
• 6:43
  know, in a lot of ways, they've nerved Rand a little bit,
• 6:46
  right, like most powerful channeler with all the terran grey All saw on grey
• 6:50
  All, but he doesn't actually want to seize the power. He will do
• 6:54
  anything in his power to avoid seizing the power. And on a whole other
• 6:59
  level than like early books, when he's like, I won't do it again.
• 7:02
  Yeah, yeah, and that was ridiculous, that's not going to happen.
• 7:04
  Like this is different now, he's an experienced channeler who is holding back
• 7:10
  because the costs are too great in a in a felt objective way, and
• 7:14
  he still has to do it. Sometimes he just limits it in a way
• 7:17
  that early books Rand was very all or nothing. Like later books, Rand
• 7:21
  is learning that there are shades of gray. You might say the early books
• 7:27
  are someone who is developing an addiction. The early books are someone in full
• 7:30
  blown power addiction, or the midbooks later, the mid books are and then
• 7:34
  the later books are someone who's kind of like recovering. Right this, well,
• 7:40
  this is this is him at rock bottom, right, this is him,
• 7:42
  Like, yeah, he's screeching into rock bottom at this point, Yeah,
• 7:45
  he's screeching into rock bottom. And then sort of after Veins of Gold,
• 7:48
  he's a recovering addict, right, Yeah, he has his epiphany and
• 7:53
  and then it's all good. Power. Power is addiction. I mean,
• 7:58
  there's definitely that That is an us it analogy that Jordan makes right over and
• 8:03
  over again. So it's weird because Rand gets over his trauma, which is
• 8:07
  what's actually happening there, but like he still uses the power. It's not
• 8:11
  like he stops using the power though. When he does get the power removed
• 8:16
  from him. At the end, when he switches to Morton's body and he
• 8:18
  can't channel, he heaves a sigh of relief. So maybe, in a
• 8:24
  way, actually that's true because after Vans of Gold, he could be cut
• 8:28
  off at any time and it wouldn't matter except for the fate of the world.
• 8:31
  But it wouldn't matter to him, Like, he'd be fine. It's
• 8:35
  just the part where the world needs him to be able to channel in order
• 8:37
  to like fix the whole like end of the world thing. But that actually
• 8:41
  makes a lot of sense. We need you to do cocaine to save the
• 8:46
  world. It's kind of vital. I know you're an addict, but uh
• 8:50
  yeah, here you go. Like you have to imagine what kind of mental
• 8:54
  fortitude he has to overcome to be able to do that and then accept it
• 8:58
  being taken away at any time. Oh yeah, I've seen that as a
• 9:03
  mechanic on side quests stories. In a couple of stories. I'm thinking of
• 9:07
  a Star Trek Voyager episode. I was thinking of a some other movie or
• 9:13
  something, but now it's escaping my mind. But like, it's definitely a
• 9:16
  thing that I've seen used as a side quest I've never seen it be the
• 9:20
  main quest, but yeah, it's definitely an idea that you can play with
• 9:26
  creatively. So they're going around, basically film's finishing off all the dead trolocks
• 9:31
  on the ground, making sure that none of were a threat, and ane
• 9:33
  of them were just wounded, none of them are pretending to die, you
• 9:37
  know, and a good good number of them are still, you know,
• 9:39
  dying. Sure, sure, yeah, And here's where we get to the
• 9:43
  bird thing. I need, I need, I need to rant about bird
• 9:46
  facts for a quick second here. Okay, all right, So crows and
• 9:50
  ravens are presented in these books repeatedly as liking to hang out together and eat
• 9:56
  eating all this food in nature. They really hate each They kind of have
• 10:01
  like an eternal blood feud that will never be resolved by water oath because they're
• 10:05
  not ideal And so that's just weird. But then why do I throw it
• 10:09
  down some like crackers and like twenty crows and ravens come flocking to come pick
• 10:13
  among Are you sure that there's crows and ravens? No crows and or ravens
• 10:18
  or ravens, unless sure it's one group with the other exactly exactly one or
• 10:22
  the other. There you go, and probably it's crows. If you're not
• 10:26
  sure, then it's crows, because ravens are really, really really big.
• 10:31
  Right. The other thing is because I and the good explanation for what's happening.
• 10:37
  It's a charnel house and they don't care. So they're all eating together
• 10:39
  because there's a loss of food. Fine, okay, I can buy that.
• 10:43
  But none went near any dead mergerl though, as they shunned the trolks
• 10:48
  too near a mergerl, and they shunned trollics too near amrgerl, that indicated
• 10:52
  nothing beyond caution. Very likely the myrdrall smelled wrong to the birds. All
• 10:56
  right, all right, all right, all right, sit down everyone.
• 11:00
  Birds do not have a sense of smell, with a couple of exceptions,
• 11:05
  which includes vultures, because vultures are awesome and have to be exceptional in all
• 11:09
  kinds of ways. I love vultures. I know vulture facts. Ask me
• 11:11
  for vulture facts. But one of the things about vultures is they're one of
• 11:16
  the only kinds of birds that can smell. Crows and ravens do not have
• 11:20
  a sense of smell. Birds in general do not have a sense of smell.
• 11:24
  Birds do not smell source because like I feel like, okay, having
• 11:31
  grown up with birds, they all have nostrils. I've seen them sort of
• 11:35
  flare them like, I've seen them sniff and taken air through their nostrils,
• 11:41
  right, parrots at least, And I kind of believe you. But at
• 11:45
  the same time, that seems outlandish to me that they have no sense of
• 11:48
  smell whatsoever. It seems like they might have like a reduced sense of smell
• 11:52
  or like a hmm, thank you pants and chat for providing a random Google
• 11:58
  result. Really really, Today, researchers have proven that many species do have
• 12:05
  a sense of smell, and for some it plays a huge role in their
• 12:09
  behavior. Well, that's frustrating. Shut up, super Skylike I I gotta
• 12:20
  say, look into this. It's like it's probably not their primary sense,
• 12:24
  right, It's not like you know, they they're sniffing out you know,
• 12:28
  prey and stuff like that. They're mostly relying on their hearing, right,
• 12:31
  they have, but hearing and eyes. They have really really really good vision
• 12:37
  and really good hearing for the most part. That's why they sing to each
• 12:39
  other and are all colorful. But I am being owned by facts right now.
• 12:48
  Facts and let me say personal experience growing up with birds, right,
• 12:50
  like, I've seen them smell shit? All right, Well, I can
• 12:54
  tell you that the source of this myth is me over extending how incredible a
• 13:01
  vulture sense of smell is. Because they do have like shark levels of sensitivity
• 13:07
  right right fast, Like, they don't hunt by eye or by ear,
• 13:11
  they hunt by nose. So it seems ridiculous that they evolve that in avoid
• 13:16
  right. Sorry, yeah, so that is a It is the thing that
• 13:18
  they have maxed out in a way that most birds have not. And the
• 13:22
  myth I, well, I can't speak for everyone, but the myth for
• 13:26
  me comes from just over extending that fact. I'm gonna have to go yell
• 13:30
  at someone in my life who planted that idea in my head. It is
• 13:33
  true they can't eat taste spicy things. Though they don't, capsation doesn't affect
• 13:37
  them, so they will eat like spicy peppers, like their green peppers,
• 13:41
  and they don't give a shit. So I've seen that. It's also let
• 13:46
  me tell you something very dangerous to let a bird touch you know, basically,
• 13:52
  lick your fingers after it's been eating spicy things and then touch your eyes.
• 13:56
  I can tell you that from experience too. Oh yeah, because they
• 13:58
  don't they don't react like it's spicy and then it's it's really fucking hot.
• 14:03
  I appreciate you making me not the only person who's been wrong in this moment.
• 14:07
  Thank you for sharing the wrongness with me. By the way, have
• 14:11
  you ever felt a bird's tongue? I have a couple of times. It's
• 14:15
  a fascinating Yeah. I've had chicken tongue experiences. Yeah. Yeah, very
• 14:20
  not at all like a cat or a dog now, very very different.
• 14:24
  Warm and soft and dry. Yeah, dry and rough in a way.
• 14:31
  That's I mean, cat tongues are pretty rough, but like, yeah,
• 14:33
  they're just so yeah dry, It's like, how is that a tongue?
• 14:37
  But it's They have a whole different means of eating. Yeah. They put
• 14:43
  things in their crop and it grinds it all down before it even goes in
• 14:46
  their stomach. They essentially have a second mouth. Yeah. They eat rocks.
• 14:50
  They eat rocks and put it in their throat, and then their throat
• 14:52
  choose the food for them with the rocks, and then every now and then
• 14:56
  they add more rocks because the rocks got worn down. It's wild at least
• 15:01
  that's how chickens work, most birds, I guess. But it's uh,
• 15:07
  radius flumming. She's like, I was wrong. Wait, I was wrong.
• 15:11
  I don't know how to how do I move forward from this point I've
• 15:13
  been saying. I've been saying this fact for a long time. Was my
• 15:20
  infatuation with vultures goes back for a while. What you're saying, everyone's wall
• 15:26
  source because that sounds like an urban myth to me. Well, it's more
• 15:31
  like a wildlife myth. Wildlife myth, yes, not urban. Well,
• 15:35
  I guess I don't know. Only urban idiots like myself would know. I
• 15:39
  mean, birds are certainly urban. There's a lot of pigeons and crows and
• 15:41
  ravens and domestic parrots that end up in the wild. But the question is
• 15:46
  do I edit out all of that? No, no way, no,
• 15:52
  uh uh. I need to win every once in a while. Fuck I'm
• 16:02
  gonna be mad about that for a minute. Uh huh. But we'll go
• 16:06
  with ravens and crows don't hang out. That's wrong, and it's the dark
• 16:08
  one's influence. I'm powdering, so I'm gonna move on. They are burning
• 16:30
  the bodies of the trollics maybe a hundred thousand trollics like that is way more
• 16:37
  Like, that's so many trollics in one off battle, right, I really?
• 16:44
  If I have a complaint about Brandon Sanderson's Last Battle, it's too small,
• 16:48
  The numbers are too small. There are so Jordan hints at giant armies
• 16:55
  out there in the millions. Yeah, I find one hundred thousand trollucs being
• 17:00
  taken down by a dozen eyes Sadai and Ashaman for a one off battle to
• 17:07
  just feel off. That just feels like the wrong number given how the actual
• 17:12
  last battle works. Like, yeah, either the last battles too small or
• 17:17
  this attack was too big, right, right, like one or the other,
• 17:21
  Like it can't be it can't be neither because with thirty people taking one
• 17:23
  hundred thousand trullucks, what they're taking out three thousand trollics each, right,
• 17:32
  that just seems Yeah, that's ridiculous. That's so ope compared to the early
• 17:37
  books, Like no, no, your a dog in your background is agreeing
• 17:42
  with me? This is a yeah once again on Tuesday's Will Babysit Essa,
• 17:49
  But that's actually timber, timber because Nessa went to work with never Yeah,
• 17:56
  thirty three thousand apiece. Yeah, it's a thirty three thousand in an hour.
• 18:00
  No, that's not that feels like a typo. Someone slipped and added
• 18:06
  too many zeros. Having that many people moved through a space in that amount
• 18:12
  of time, I don't think is possible, right, right, right,
• 18:18
  So yeah, the number just feels off, that's all. That's all.
• 18:22
  I just I'm like, maybe one hundred thousand, are you exaggerating a little
• 18:25
  bit? Is it? Maybe more like ten thousand would mean still three hundred
• 18:32
  apiece, which seems absurd. But yeah, with linking with song reaal okay,
• 18:40
  fine, maybe, but like you're making me really raise my eyebrows if
• 18:45
  you're claiming that they each took down three hundred in the course of all that.
• 18:48
  Like, I mean, I guess Ran took out a lot because he's
• 18:52
  right, h but like still he's throwing grenades and stuff like that. Basically,
• 18:56
  yeah, one hundred thousand, just like he could only cover so much
• 19:02
  of the house's periphery because of just like geometry. So I just yeah,
• 19:07
  I feel like someone threw down too many zeros and then uncritically printed it even
• 19:11
  though it's written out in in you know, words, Like I just that's
• 19:15
  it's too many. I'm sorry, it's just too many, and I'm just
• 19:18
  gonna give it with like, hey, he's just bad at estimating big numbers
• 19:22
  because he only lived with like fifty people forty days and forty right, yeah
• 19:26
  exactly, yeah, yeah, one of those. Maybe it's one hundred thousand
• 19:30
  ran it's like ten thousand, max. Come on, man, like count
• 19:33
  at a little. Yeah, maybe there's one hundred thousand pieces, I mean
• 19:38
  valid, valid if every track was divided five ways, so we get the
• 19:47
  assumption that they came from the waygate outside him studding shang Tai. Right,
• 19:52
  So, okay, was I wrong? I thought that Loyle went out with
• 19:59
  a channeler and closed a bunch of gateways, a bunch of waygates, waygates.
• 20:03
  Sorry, yeah, I feel like taking Loyal off the board with a
• 20:08
  random Ashimon for a whole bunch was turned into a big nothing burger by then
• 20:12
  and being like, and then we need another dude to go do that even
• 20:18
  more right, because he says here he says how many he managed to close,
• 20:25
  And I do remember him saying he didn't close the one out of settings
• 20:27
  chang Tai because he didn't want to go there. Right because he was afraid
• 20:30
  he was going to get like you know, so like maybe that's like the
• 20:33
  one he didn't close, and he did mention that, but like did he
• 20:37
  close all the rest? And he just needs Elder Haman to go close this
• 20:40
  one. There's a few they didn't get to. Yeah, I don't know.
• 20:45
  I feel like that plot got very muddled and lost in the churn.
• 20:49
  It did. It did because we lost Loyal for a couple of books to
• 20:52
  that, and then he just came back and was like done, and then
• 20:55
  it was like, wait, what exrectly did you do? Right? And
• 20:57
  then they didn't do the one in Camlin that they absolutely knew about, and
• 21:00
  like that causes you know, problems down the line at they knew it was
• 21:07
  there, they knew exactly where it was. It's just ridiculous, ridiculous.
• 21:14
  And it did close them. I mean, Rand set guards on some of
• 21:17
  them. But the whole thing with Loyal and Carlton going out was about closing
• 21:21
  them right. It was you take the keys out right, and Ran could
• 21:27
  never do that because Mashadar would be there waiting for him. Machine Chin sorry,
• 21:33
  would be there waiting for him. But yeah, the idea is that
• 21:36
  you go inside, you take the inner key, take the outer key,
• 21:37
  throw them away or put them in a neatly labeled bag for potential reuse later,
• 21:42
  because it is loyal we're talking about. I don't think he'd throw them
• 21:45
  away. I think he put them into a specimen bags in like wide out
• 21:51
  on the bottom like rock specimens, hide them away deep deep in the dungeon,
• 21:56
  and then some adventurer can find them on like you know, their dungeon
• 21:59
  crawl like at some point in the fourth Age, and it'll be great.
• 22:03
  Kona is saying, they close the ones that were far from civilization and guarded
• 22:06
  the others. So the ones under Camlin were guarded, right. The ones
• 22:11
  near steadying Shanghai maybe got guarded, but the rest of them got closed off.
• 22:15
  Well. Guards clearly was insufficient for stopping this tide of taralocs from coming
• 22:21
  through right right. What you need is a guard with some of fireworks stuffed
• 22:26
  in the edge, so you can just blow the place get under a ton
• 22:30
  of rock. Yeah, neither talks norrge all would enter a steading unless driven.
• 22:34
  I think that was an interesting little bit. I don't know if we
• 22:37
  ever get that before. Yeah, because we know we know they take refugees.
• 22:41
  Yeah, that's why paren and Aguayna and Elias take refuge in that one.
• 22:45
  Studdying the abandoned steading is because talocks and other dark things won't go there.
• 22:52
  There's a bit here about Olivia and how she is really still mostly just
• 22:56
  a weapon, and Rand tried to make the sisters sworn to him teach the
• 23:00
  shan Chan woman more about the power, but to their minds, that had
• 23:04
  nothing to do with their oaths of fealty. That comes up a couple of
• 23:07
  times in this chapter is how they don't accept her. He really wants them
• 23:12
  to accept her. He really really wants them to take her in and help
• 23:18
  her be a full person and learn the full use of her power so that
• 23:21
  she can help him die. Whatever that means. Whatever that means, Yeah,
• 23:25
  well, and that all goes back to he has promised lewis there,
• 23:30
  and he has promised himself that he can die, that he can give up
• 23:33
  this burden, and that what was an uncertainty now is a certainty, right
• 23:41
  because he has this prophecy for men, men never gets anything wrong. Therefore
• 23:45
  he knows he will die, but he also has the prophecy to live you
• 23:49
  must die from the snakes and the foxes. So he you know, I
• 23:55
  think he's putting things together, and like, yes, he is looking at
• 23:57
  Olivia with hope. It's hope that he can die and give up his burden,
• 24:00
  but it's also hoped that he can continue to live. Right, if
• 24:06
  you look at the prophecies together, Oh, she will help me die,
• 24:08
  I must die, but to die, to live, I must die.
• 24:11
  And so yeah, I just I think that there's a certain amount of real
• 24:15
  desperation to have Olivia learn because he wants to live. He wants to have
• 24:21
  a life after the last battle, even if he's not willing to admit that
• 24:26
  to himself, right right, he part of him is still very much acknowledging
• 24:30
  that, with how much he cares about keeping Olivia close and giving her the
• 24:34
  best education and giving her acceptance. Yeah, and I gotta say it's all
• 24:38
  about how he believes she will help him die because of the prophecy, and
• 24:44
  there's nothing to do with how she actually helps him, because all she does
• 24:45
  is pack him some fucking clothes, right, Like, it's the most useless
• 24:48
  goddamn prophecy out there, except for the fact that it tells rand that he
• 24:55
  will in fact die, right, like, it's I don't know, it's
• 25:03
  such a weird. I don't know if Sanderson used it weird or Jordan.
• 25:08
  But Jordan did say he wanted to have prophecies about things that were pretty unimportant,
• 25:12
  right, Like he wanted to have prophecies that were about like boring everyday
• 25:17
  stuff and so like, yeah, she'll help you, she'll she'll pack you
• 25:21
  a bag prophecy. You can't hear my eyes rolling, Oh, I can
• 25:25
  see them, but no, I am no. I agree. I think
• 25:29
  it was poorly handled. I would have loved to see her. I don't
• 25:33
  even see Randon Olivia interacting at that point, like she just does it mysteriously
• 25:38
  for real. We never see him give her those orders, We never see
• 25:42
  her interact with the Moridon body, we never see her acquiring the stuff.
• 25:45
  He just looks at it and goes ah. Yes, Olivia performed according to
• 25:48
  those actions that were not on screen, in the slightest of me telling her
• 25:52
  things like what what, Oh, it's nothing, it's a nothing burger question.
• 25:56
  Can you have a circle with two men one woman? Is that a
• 26:00
  possible channeling circle? I thought not. I thought you needed two women and
• 26:04
  two men. You know, you can do that. You can do that.
• 26:07
  Two men can't channel, can't make a link together, but if you
• 26:11
  bring a woman into it, then you can. So that would have been
• 26:15
  interesting, is to put Olivia as sort of a link between the two of
• 26:18
  them, that they had their own link, but they also needed like to
• 26:22
  be in a circle together, and if she had been the one to help
• 26:25
  them do that, then that would have like completed the circle, which will
• 26:29
  let him transition in bodies. Right. Yeah, but I mean I would
• 26:32
  be happy with the just doing a bit of property theft and hooking me up
• 26:36
  with like my you know, getaway package alternate identity. That would be fine
• 26:40
  if we had ever seen Rand tell her that that's what he wanted, or
• 26:45
  seen her have a cool moment of getting it together, or seeing her realized
• 26:51
  that the Mordon body was leaving and knowing that it was Rand because she recognized
• 26:55
  the belt buckle or something. But we got absolutely fuck all, We got
• 26:59
  one little thought inside his head, and that was the conclusion. It was
• 27:03
  so unsatisfying, even though yeah like it, I like the idea of a
• 27:07
  mundane prophecy, but like he got to give me like in a leaving a
• 27:10
  POV where she almost gets caught and then makes it happen anyway or something,
• 27:14
  you know, because I mean, yeah, it's important that he have a
• 27:18
  getaway bag so that he doesn't have to talk to anyone, Like that's important,
• 27:21
  But like, can we see her being told that that's what her mission
• 27:26
  is to help him die? Can we see any acknowledgment of that information getting
• 27:30
  to her ever? But no? Yeah, yeah, she seems like one
• 27:34
  of those uh setups that doesn't have a lot of payoff because there's a lot
• 27:41
  leading into her, right, like getting her capturing her, her conversion,
• 27:45
  her killing some folks, that her being convinced to help Rand, then this
• 27:51
  prophecy that and like and then you get oh she packs him a bag Like
• 27:56
  that's the like with money and not even in a way where she gets to
• 28:00
  have a cool like moment at all. Right, Yeah, yeah, it's
• 28:07
  you can't you can't have everything pay off. But this this is definitely one
• 28:10
  of those payoffs that I'm like I thought was bad, No, because it
• 28:14
  makes it it's so good here when he's like trying to make sure that she
• 28:18
  learns stuff and that she gets acceptance, It's like, all right, this
• 28:22
  is going to build to something more than a wet fart right right, right,
• 28:26
  and then it you know, yeah, so expect us to continue ranting
• 28:30
  about that as we get through the books. Also, she's incredibly powerful as
• 28:34
  a channeler. I wanted to see something with that. Like, she's supposedly
• 28:40
  like the most powerful channeler right in the series in raw power, most powerful
• 28:45
  female channeler. That's a giant Chekhov's gun, right, that's a giant gun
• 28:49
  up on the wall that never got used. Yeah, never got used.
• 28:53
  So yeah, a little bitter about that. Uh okay, So head,
• 29:00
  let's get into Rand's head a little bit. He's thinking about the blue eyed
• 29:03
  man in his head, right after he thinks about a Shamaa, which same
• 29:07
  person. It's bored and reincarnated that body gets around man. That's like Rand's
• 29:11
  like the third person to be in that sucker. Yeah, it's giving me
• 29:15
  some altered carbon vibes, it really is. Yeah. And then Lewis Theren
• 29:22
  says you should have killed them, you know, that's his usual response to
• 29:26
  Aschaman the sources clean. Now fool, Rand thought, guess Lewin Theren.
• 29:32
  Lewis Thearren replied, but are they am? I right? So there's this.
• 29:37
  What he's saying basically is, yes, the source is cleansed, but
• 29:40
  the people who started channeling before the source was cleansed are still tainted, and
• 29:45
  they can still go insane. Like Rand is still tainted. That has not
• 29:48
  stopped. Now he'll stop getting worse, right, So at this point we
• 29:53
  can pretty much say Rand is as bad as he's ever going to get in
• 29:56
  terms of the taint on his mind. Now he may all to it,
• 30:00
  he may experience a more trauma that gives him more darkness in another way.
• 30:06
  But yeah, yeah, this is he's gotten the maximum amount of exposure to
• 30:11
  that, to that corrosive damage to his mind. That is done. But
• 30:17
  yeah, those those black spiky things that Nineve sees, those are in his
• 30:21
  brain and they have not gone away. They won't go away until he gets
• 30:25
  all zen and like reverse you know, coats them with magic or whatever.
• 30:29
  And I think the answer we get is we never really get to find out
• 30:33
  if the damage continues to spread over time. Yeah, it's hard to say,
• 30:38
  is it progressive? Is it static? With how what's just going on
• 30:44
  in the world with all the things that are happening to them. Really hard
• 30:47
  to say, and not enough time passes between the cleansing and the end of
• 30:52
  the series, and then I need starts healing people. Right, so we
• 30:56
  assume that we never really get a long term test about anybody who you know,
• 31:02
  But yeah, the hospital for the men who could who channeled for that
• 31:04
  brief period of time between when they died and when the source was cleansed,
• 31:10
  Like that shouldn't be that hard to cleanse, like the thousand people, right,
• 31:14
  yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. And then it'll be
• 31:18
  fine for people who started channeling the day after that the source was cleansed.
• 31:22
  It'll be fine for them, right, right. And then the next thing
• 31:25
  I have is Varren's letter comes in. Yeah, yeah, the messenger,
• 31:32
  Old Old Ethan. This guy does a lot of work in these scenes,
• 31:34
  just bringing various people and notes into the scene and out of the scene.
• 31:38
  He runs around a lot. Yeah, and he's and he's got this parasol
• 31:41
  from the sea folk. It's like there's a whole like vignette of a story
• 31:45
  that Rgie just hid set and then moves on. It's great, but yeah
• 31:49
  he shows up and it's like Varren told me to give you this right away.
• 31:52
  RAN's like you could have waited till later. He's like, but the
• 31:56
  eyes saidaie said to give it to you right away, right, Oh,
• 32:00
  I'm doing that. Rant's like, fine, but I'm not going to read
• 32:04
  it right away. I'm going to do this whole other thing first and then
• 32:07
  read it later. Which there's nothing super urgent in that letter, unlike Varren's
• 32:12
  letter from att right, Like, there's nothing in this one that like he
• 32:15
  need like be cautious basically trust cod Swain. Oh okay, cool. I
• 32:21
  think that she probably told him to deliver it right away so that he would
• 32:24
  leave the room and let her gateway out. I bet that that's what which
• 32:29
  means. If that's the case, that means that she stayed for the fight
• 32:32
  and didn't leave before the fight. She leaves the room before the fight starts.
• 32:37
  But if she gave that note to Ethan and then immediately bounced after that
• 32:42
  and he promptly walked out into the rain, that means that she didn't leave
• 32:45
  until after the fight was over. Agreed, Yeah, I think she was
• 32:49
  fight. Something about the fight means she had to leave or well, she
• 32:54
  said she had done all that she needed to do and left the room before
• 32:59
  the fight started. But like if she knew it was coming then, Yeah,
• 33:04
  she's like, all right to I must pack your bags, prepare for
• 33:07
  a battle. We're gonna do a quick little battle, quick little battle,
• 33:10
  and then we're out. There's a tiny battle where you have to kill one
• 33:14
  hundred trollocks. I honestly don't think the warders did any fighting. I would
• 33:20
  figure not, since they didn't get to the manor house. That's said explicitly
• 33:23
  that a few bodies made it just to the foundations. So yeah, the
• 33:29
  warders actually would have just been hanging out waiting for the last extreme stress.
• 33:36
  Yeah. If to get the few that may have made it through right that,
• 33:38
  then maybe you have some orders to stop them. But there is one
• 33:42
  place they got into, and that was a barn. Yes, and they
• 33:45
  killed what nineteen Saldans Well, no, this is they killed well, they
• 33:51
  killed nineteen in total, and they've all been brought to this barn. They
• 33:53
  weren't all killed in the barn, but the bodies have all been brought here.
• 33:58
  Oh I thought they were all Okay, Yeah, they made this the
• 34:01
  morgue because so many of them did die here and it's a damaged building.
• 34:07
  So they decided to bring all the others who died in here as well,
• 34:10
  and yeah, it was. I mean, these are the fires that Rand
• 34:15
  had to direct Logan to put out. Right, He's like, okay,
• 34:17
  and put the fires up because I have a bad men in my head who's
• 34:21
  keeping Right from dealing with the fires. These this is the building that was
• 34:24
  on fire, and these are some of the victims of that encounter specifically.
• 34:30
  And so we have flies appearing out of nowhere all over the bodies out of
• 34:35
  suddenly, which reminds me a little bit of Rand and being captured in a
• 34:39
  trap by Faine, remember in Great Hunt and Great Hunt. Yeah, absolutely,
• 34:45
  I always think of that here. She gives me strong Fane vibes.
• 34:50
  Yeah, and we concluded that was definitely Faine and not a bubble of evil,
• 34:54
  right, Oh yeah, I think Feine even says something at some point
• 34:59
  about that that. Yeah. No, we definitely concluded collectively. I wasn't
• 35:04
  even part of the podcast at the time, but yes, speaking for all
• 35:07
  of us, collectively decided that, yeah, that was a fine thing.
• 35:09
  And this feels more like a bubble of evil. But I'm wondering if Faine
• 35:14
  isn't emanating his own bubbles of evil as he works his way through the world.
• 35:17
  Where is Faine right now? Where is Fain? Where in the world
• 35:23
  is seriously? Like, do you know? Because I don't. Yeah,
• 35:29
  let's see if we can do some research really quick. Wow, we really
• 35:34
  don't hear from him between Winter's Heart right before the cleansing, right remember the
• 35:39
  battle at Varren's hometown and God'swain's hometown farmatting. So the next time we see
• 35:46
  him is Towers of Midnight when he's like gathering his frolics towards the last battle.
• 35:53
  Well, that's garbage. So he really could be anywhere he is really
• 36:00
  not. Let's see there's any reference in Knife of Dreams. Nope, he
• 36:05
  is not in dislike Path of Daggers. He's not in Knife of Dreams.
• 36:10
  He's not in Gathering Storm. I didn't realize how long faate, like I
• 36:15
  think we we did say that, like this is pretty much last time we
• 36:19
  see Fane until the last battle. So he could be anywhere doing anything.
• 36:23
  Well, I'm gonna choose to believe that he's here. Yeah, okay,
• 36:29
  that he followed around here. Yeah, but then he didn't do anything.
• 36:30
  Then he left and did something else. No, that makes no sense.
• 36:32
  It makes no sense at all. But this does feel supernatural. This is
• 36:37
  more flies than there should be. Yeah, and the fact that they appeared
• 36:39
  he they weren't there. He stepped out and turned around and they appeared right
• 36:45
  Like, that's the you know, it's it's clearly magical bubble, bubble of
• 36:49
  evil. The patterns weakening, right, like some of what my my assumption
• 36:52
  is like in an alternate world, the flies gathered and then there was some
• 36:57
  sort of world swap and the flies appear from another world into this one,
• 37:01
  right, because the pattern's weakening between all the parallel worlds. We see that
• 37:05
  in the last battle where you see all the different fighters appearing right and sort
• 37:07
  of the way tell everyone Riodd's merging. These are different dimensions. Yeah,
• 37:13
  Oh, that reminds me. I've been listening ahead in the book. I've
• 37:15
  been trying to listen ahead in the book. And when a Gwayne's in the
• 37:19
  tower, she gets told that the tower has been shifting around for a while.
• 37:22
  Okay, so when she the big times that she experiences it with like
• 37:27
  the brown Auja accepted swap that happens after she arrives, but the shifting started
• 37:34
  before. That's not the first time the shifting happened. It just kind of
• 37:37
  phased in, one could assume, at roughly the same time as Elaine's palace
• 37:42
  started shifting. Cameln right right right. So I remember us debating that,
• 37:46
  and when I listened to this other chapter that's a little bit ahead of us,
• 37:50
  it was just like, ah, there it is. There's the confirmation.
• 37:52
  Long story short, the pattern is falling apart. Reality is not working.
• 37:55
  We're getting, you know, bubbles of evil, space shifting, time
• 38:00
  shifting things teleporting in from other dimensions, right like, you just can't be
• 38:07
  sure that things are going to stay at all stable, Yeah, at all
• 38:10
  at all. So Olivia drives all the flies away, which is interesting because
• 38:15
  the ability to control flies or bugs in general is a secret of the Blue
• 38:21
  Aja. Mm mm hmmm mm hmm. But Katswain says, so you watch,
• 38:28
  which makes me think that she's referring to herself right right right. And
• 38:30
  of course gott swayn would know, right yeah, but who this says,
• 38:34
  you know, of course she knows everybody else's weaves, right, Godsway isn't
• 38:37
  going to be restricted to green weaves. Only she's gonna learn all the other
• 38:42
  adjaws. She's been around she's blackmail. She learns all the secrets, including
• 38:45
  all the other adjaws weaves, I mean, at least the ones that are
• 38:47
  the lowest security, like how to make bugs come and go, because it's
• 38:52
  just not that hard to guard. People just don't guard it that hard,
• 38:55
  right, And it's one of those things that like we have learned that the
• 38:59
  most powerful channelers cod swayin Olivia ninive Elaine, they can see someone channeling brand
• 39:07
  doing something once and they can pretty much reproduce it. Right, So all
• 39:12
  cod Swayne has to do is see someone use the bugweave once she can reproduce
• 39:15
  it. Same thing with Olivia. She just sees Codswayne use it once,
• 39:19
  you know, And that's where she's learning. That's how how she is learning,
• 39:22
  right, is because she has that incredibly elevated power which seems to increase
• 39:29
  your ability to learn how to channel. Unfair advantage. It really is.
• 39:35
  It's interesting that like, yes, people can be less powerful and more skilled,
• 39:39
  but it does seem that the more powerful you are, the easier it
• 39:43
  is to learn how to channel. Yeah. Yeah, there's also another loose
• 39:47
  there insection where rand says I'm not you and then loose then is like if
• 39:55
  you're not me, then who are you? Huh, which is just like,
• 40:00
  yeah, the spiral is tightening to the point of explosion at this point
• 40:05
  because they are they are the same person. It is Rand discreating the voice
• 40:08
  in his head. Yeah, yeah, it's it's really the navel gazing has
• 40:12
  hit peak levels. The aura bros. Has almost eaten its way back to
• 40:16
  its own head. Like shit's getting weird with these guys. Some more stuff
• 40:35
  between Men and Olivia. Nothing really there, just obviously Men doesn't like her
• 40:38
  because she doesn't want Rand to die. But I wish Rand would be like
• 40:42
  I got the I don't know if Min knows the prophecy that to live he
• 40:45
  must die. I don't think she does. I do think that that's a
• 40:50
  mistake on Rand's part. I think he should explain that to her and to
• 40:54
  Ninive, especially since she's doing all the research right because I need and Men
• 41:01
  get in the way of Alivia getting her acceptance in her education with the other
• 41:07
  eyes to die, because they are both women who are respected by and close
• 41:10
  to Rand. So if they're not welcoming Olivia in, it's a lot easier
• 41:16
  for the others to continue to not welcome her in. Too, And the
• 41:19
  only reason they're doing that is because Rand isn't sharing the full prophetic information he
• 41:23
  has about how she fits into it, only part of it. And that's
• 41:28
  just like in for a penny, In for a pound, my dude,
• 41:30
  real time have people communicated? But I know, I know, then our
• 41:37
  podcast would already be over. We wouldn't be closing in on five hundred,
• 41:40
  like I know, I know. Men of course questions herself because of the
• 41:45
  whole Moraine prophecy, because she knows right, which I believe the prophecy is
• 41:52
  in order to succeed, you need Moraine essentially like less, and so she
• 41:57
  like I must be wrong about that because Marine's dead and so you and there's
• 42:00
  no way that like we're already condemned to lose because we lost Moraine. We're
• 42:05
  not going to give into that, right, But of course, as we
• 42:07
  all know, Moraine is still alive. And I think we just found out
• 42:12
  we just read the letter. Yeah not that long ago, yeah, not
• 42:14
  that long ago. So even in book right without any spoilers, like you
• 42:17
  can be laughing at this and be like, no, man, you're right,
• 42:20
  you're right, Like she's coming back exactly, Why doesn't Ran tell them
• 42:24
  because he's a terrible communicator and that's just part of the series. He has
• 42:29
  secrets on secrets and he's learned to be I said, ie and not tell
• 42:31
  anyone they don't absolutely need to know in his opinion, which ruins so many
• 42:36
  people's plans. Yeah, basically, basically that Lewis Thearren obviously is like you
• 42:42
  promised, you promised we could die, right, Like, don't let you
• 42:45
  can't let men's vision be wrong. Yeah, Loose Theren is not pleased,
• 42:49
  which tells me something about Rand, right, that part of Rand really does
• 42:52
  want to die right for all that he part of him wants to live and
• 42:57
  is trying to help Olivia out and you know, wants to make that part
• 43:00
  of the prophecy work. A very big part of him just wants to die,
• 43:04
  just wants this to be over. He is in so much pain and
• 43:07
  has suffered so much trauma and is under so much stress that he a big
• 43:10
  part of him is just over it completely and like him and you know,
• 43:15
  Loose there and has been on that beat for a while, you know,
• 43:20
  so he is really taking on that aspect of what he's been giving to Loose
• 43:23
  there, and it's finally swooping back through into him. Also, Yeah,
• 43:29
  and there's also that like if you've been told repeatedly you will die, you
• 43:32
  must die, and it's going to happen anytime now, and you keep getting
• 43:37
  like hyped up for it. Like eventually you're like, Okay, can we
• 43:38
  just get this over with? Like I've said my goodbyes, I've given away
• 43:43
  my gifts. I'm ready to just like you know, I've spent all my
• 43:47
  money, right or whatever, you know, I'm ready to die. You
• 43:52
  know, let's let's get this over with. Like I'm not, you know,
• 43:55
  I'm just suffering, you know. And and we live in one of
• 43:59
  the states that have a right to die clause in it, right, Like
• 44:01
  Oregon is one of the few places where, you know, if we buy
• 44:07
  law, have a right to die at certain points rather than suffer. Yeah,
• 44:12
  that's with dignity. It's a thing. It's fraught and complicated, and
• 44:15
  yes, we live in one of the only states that has it. And
• 44:19
  one of the many reasons that my parents have had talked about retiring here their
• 44:22
  whole lives. They're doctors, right, They they you know, ear doctors,
• 44:29
  but they exist in a hospital and they see people and they understand that
• 44:32
  like a lot of care and effort and suffering is spent in the last few
• 44:38
  weeks to few months of someone's life just to keep them alive for a little
• 44:43
  bit longer, and it's not worth it for the pain, it's not worth
• 44:45
  it for the money. And they want to be able to say no that
• 44:49
  kind of treatment. Yeah. Yeah, it's a whole giant conversation that we
• 44:54
  do not have time to get into here. It is. Yes, I
• 44:59
  am familiar with the com towards a that of that general discussion. It's a
• 45:01
  whole thing whereas some people find it, you know, absolutely unforgivable. Yeah,
• 45:06
  well, those people are trying to impose their worldview on others in so
• 45:10
  many ways that I just really don't care what they think rightly right now.
• 45:15
  And it's uh someone I'll try and be nonspecific, but you know, a
• 45:21
  friend of a friend a little bit older sixties found out she's got late stage
• 45:25
  cancer and has chosen not to fight it. And it's just one of those
• 45:30
  things where like, fuck, you got to respect that. But at the
• 45:32
  same time it's like, but why she just she doesn't want to put She's
• 45:36
  like, I don't want to suffer. I don't want to put in the
• 45:37
  effort. And it's like, yeah, no. My dad works in the
• 45:42
  field of medical journalism, not even journalism, but like the articles written by
• 45:47
  doctors for doctors in journals that only circulate amongst doctors. He's an editor in
• 45:53
  that world, specifically in oncology m and he just has a writing to,
• 46:00
  right, That's how he came into it. But he's learned a lot about
• 46:04
  oncology because most of the stuff he edits has to do with late stage cancer
• 46:07
  treatment and like the drugs that are developed for that, and so a lot
• 46:10
  of what he studies in order to be able to keep up with the work
• 46:15
  that he does is about how people are dying of cancer. And he's just
• 46:19
  like, yeah, I don't know that five months of going through all these
• 46:22
  side effects would be worth taking this drug at like thousands of dollars a dose
• 46:29
  like that, Just like yeah, technically it's it's a one month longer than
• 46:34
  the last drug trial, but like, doesn't seem worth it if you're going
• 46:37
  through the cancer itself. Like it's the world of people choosing how to extend
• 46:44
  their lives through cancer specifically is something I've learned wild amounts about through my dad's
• 46:50
  work, kind of just looking in through the porthole of like these doctors can't
• 46:53
  write sentences to save their lives, even if they know how to do drug
• 46:57
  trials. Well, reality is, you know, cancer is the longer you
• 47:01
  live, the more likely you are to get cancer. Right, Like,
• 47:05
  it's just at a certain point, you're lucky to live long enough to get
• 47:07
  cancer. Right You you made it to the what the cancers was taking you
• 47:12
  down? Yeah, it's fucked up, It's really fucked up. I still
• 47:15
  need to read The Emperor of All Melodies. I've heard it's very good,
• 47:20
  And I'm always blown away by the fact that, like, if you're not
• 47:22
  killed in if you survive to adulthood, right and aren't killed in a car
• 47:25
  accident, you'll most likely have a heart attack, and if that doesn't happen,
• 47:30
  cancer will get to you eventually. Pretty wild and like that's pretty much
• 47:34
  how you're gonna die. Like that's like one of those three ways. All
• 47:37
  the other accidents and mistakes and weird freak things that happen that kill people almost
• 47:45
  don't add up to a fraction of those other three things added together. Yeah,
• 47:52
  car accident's heart to season cancer. Yeah, which like are very big
• 47:57
  bins, to be fair, these are very but still still yeah. Yeah,
• 48:04
  So yeah, choosing thinking ahead of time about how you want to handle
• 48:08
  that makes sense. And yeah, choosing to live in a place with death
• 48:13
  with dignity laws is unfortunately logical. I said, we don't have time for
• 48:19
  this discussion, and we don't, which is never getting back to the book.
• 48:22
  But but but it is relevant in terms of RAN. Right, we're
• 48:24
  talking about RAN. This this person is suffering from an addiction, a disease.
• 48:29
  How you know that the taint is a disease. The power is an
• 48:30
  addiction. He's suffering in pain constantly. You know, his side is this
• 48:37
  unhealable wound. He's lost his sight, he's lost you know, and he's
• 48:42
  burdened with an incredible responsibility and an incredible guilt. Yeah, to say nothing
• 48:45
  of all of the trauma he's experienced with things like the box and Colavere killing
• 48:51
  herself and like so on and so forth, like the little girl that he's
• 48:53
  got so much literal just normal war trauma that's not magical but is still very
• 49:00
  Yeah, and then yeah, the PTSD, right that he has to be
• 49:02
  suffering and how many people. You know, we know the rates of suicide
• 49:07
  are extremely high, and when people who are suffering PTSD. Yeah, he's
• 49:10
  he's going through a lot, and he is not allowed to exit. He's
• 49:15
  not allowed to have with dignity. He has to keep living in order to
• 49:21
  get to the last battle and then die. However that works out. He
• 49:24
  doesn't get any agency over the thing that he both dreads and wants, and
• 49:29
  that has been you know, creeping towards him this whole time. I guess,
• 49:32
  very complicated. He's really traumatized and not able to appreciate how complicated it
• 49:37
  is to a certain extent, you know, like he's just enduring it.
• 49:40
  But we can look back and dissect it and be like, dude, that
• 49:45
  is that is a lot. Even Jesus is impressed he's living. The duty
• 49:50
  is heavier than the mountain. Death is lighter than the feather. He wants
• 49:52
  that release of death, but the duty is weighing him down and he can't
• 49:57
  let go of that burden yet. Yeah, because the world end permanently if
• 50:00
  he does. Like it's I'm glad that he's got the willingness to suffer through
• 50:06
  it. But like it says, there's a lot of pressure to be like
• 50:09
  you you get to the urine for death, that's the best you get to
• 50:13
  urin for because you literally can't have it now. It's and there's also something
• 50:21
  interesting to be said about what is he doing with his time right because he
• 50:25
  only has a little bit of time left. And I feel like after Veins
• 50:30
  of Gold, he is like, hey, let's let's win this thing.
• 50:36
  Let's have let's let's everybody support each other, let's have a good time.
• 50:38
  Now he's like, fucking sucks. I'm gonna fucking die. God damn it.
• 50:42
  I can't fuck God damn it. And he's wasting his time. He's
• 50:45
  wasting the time he has left because he's very bitter about it. You know.
• 50:47
  Well, according to Matt's visions, he's getting laid a lot. Well,
• 50:53
  yeah, I wouldn't say he's okay. Fair enough, he's not wasting
• 50:58
  him and men are like getting busy. And I don't know why she's not
• 51:01
  getting knocked up heart leaf tea? Is she taking the heart leaf tea?
• 51:06
  Because later she thinks about how she doesn't know if she's going to have his
• 51:08
  babies, And I'm like, so that means you weren't taking contraception this whole
• 51:13
  time question. Maybe I don't know. Yeah, it's it's it's possible that
• 51:17
  men is not as fertile as you know some of his other wives more non
• 51:22
  binary PCOS representation. Would you like to read Varren's letter? Yeah, let's
• 51:30
  get to Varren's letter, And yes, I definitely would love to read it,
• 51:35
  because is Varren. As I said, I have done what I can
• 51:38
  do here. I believe that I can fulfill my oath to you better elsewhere,
• 51:43
  so I have taken Tomas and gone to be about it. There are
• 51:46
  many ways to serve you, after all, and many needs. I am
• 51:51
  convinced that you can trust kat Swain, and you certainly should heed her advice,
• 51:55
  but be wary of other sisters, including those who have sworn fealty to
• 52:00
  you. Such an oath means nothing to a black sister, and even those
• 52:05
  who walk in the light may interpret it in ways you would disapprove of.
• 52:08
  You already know that few see that oath as invoking absolute obedience in all things.
• 52:15
  Some may find other holes. So whether or not you follow kad Sawane's
• 52:19
  advice, and I repeat that you should follow mine, be very wary.
• 52:24
  Arren. Yeah, she's referencing herself and Elsa. She doesn't necessarily know that
• 52:30
  she's referencing Elsa. She probably knows that she's referencing Elsa. She knows who
• 52:35
  Elsa is. Of course, she knows who Elsea is. We know that
• 52:37
  Varen knows who all the dark friends are. Yeah, she knows who else
• 52:40
  is, and she mind way made Elsa also. That's why, And that's
• 52:44
  part of why she says, even those who swore feel to you to you,
• 52:45
  because She's like, I'm the reason they all swore feel to you,
• 52:49
  to you. They didn't serve feel to you for the reasons you think I
• 52:52
  did that. You can't trust them just because I fucked with them. That's
• 52:57
  not good enough. They're gonna find reasons around the compole to do what they
• 53:00
  want, right right. Even the ones who I didn't compulse are doing that.
• 53:04
  Definitely, the ones that I screwed with are doing that. Varn knows.
• 53:08
  And Varen can't say anything because she's sworn to the Dark One until the
• 53:12
  hour of her death. It is not the hour of her death yet.
• 53:14
  She can't break the oath that far. But she can say trust Kad's Swayne
• 53:17
  above everyone except me. Which is the next best thing because she knows kad
• 53:22
  Swain isn't a dark friend and so her advice will actually serve the light,
• 53:28
  which I think is why she does that. I mean, obviously they've formed
• 53:30
  an alliance the whole, like Teach Him Tears, Teach Him to Love Again,
• 53:35
  right that. Varen was part of that, right, and Sally,
• 53:38
  But I thought all three of them were in on that. Ar's on that.
• 53:43
  She's not in that discussion, but she's on that mission. She knows
• 53:47
  his prophecies, she knows what needs to happen. At this point, she's
• 53:52
  aiming at the same goal as kad Swain and Sorelia. But yeah, I
• 53:55
  like how Rand points out Like yep, she also didn't point point out where
• 54:00
  she was going or what she was doing. She's just off and we later
• 54:04
  find out she's off basically to give the book to a Quain Right. First,
• 54:07
  she gets sidetracked looking for Matt and paren by Teverin, and then she
• 54:13
  goes to Aguain right, right, But she's on her way to a Quaene
• 54:17
  right. Yes, Yes, that is where she's going. That is what
• 54:22
  she's gone to be about, is doing something more important than helping determine if
• 54:27
  kad Swaen is Black Aja. Now she's off to decapitate the actual Black Aja
• 54:31
  she does know about, which that's I think that's what she's saying, is
• 54:35
  I can fulfill my oath to you by decapitating the black Aja. Right,
• 54:37
  That's really how I'm going to serve you. Right. She's determined that the
• 54:43
  advisors that Randa is most likely to listen to are both good on the side
• 54:49
  of light people, and now that she's done that, the best thing she
• 54:53
  can do is remove the Black Aja from the board entirely a woman of many
• 54:57
  masks, which I just love that. Yeah, Varren's masking hard. Kat
• 55:02
  Swayin doesn't know how right she is, but also she knows how right she
• 55:07
  is because that comment is like an n dimensional ever expanding, like it's true
• 55:12
  no matter how far I know the truth. Uh, but yeah, I
• 55:15
  like that Rand shares it with kat Swain. It is a sign that like
• 55:20
  he does truly take her advice when he wants it, which is very rarely,
• 55:24
  but he will take it when he wants it. Oh, he shares
• 55:27
  the letter, yes, yeah, And of course cot Swain's like, yeah,
• 55:30
  trust me, Like that's yes, I agree with her that you should
• 55:35
  trust me, but like she doesn't want to say that loud because then it
• 55:38
  just kind of sounds like conspiracy. Yeah yeah, yeah, and Ava in
• 55:44
  chat if she's not going to Agwayne directly, she is going to get going
• 55:49
  to go deal with Matt through Taveran, but Agwainne is where she's aiming,
• 55:53
  right that, Well, her plan was not to get yoanked over by Tiveran,
• 55:57
  right she used. She's like, I tried to go here and I
• 55:59
  got sidetry I tried to go there and I got sidetracked, and you know,
• 56:01
  these gateways kept messing with me, and like yeah, she tells the
• 56:05
  whole story about how she's trying to get to tarball In and Matt and Paren
• 56:10
  just yanker. Well she doesn't know which one right, right, right,
• 56:14
  yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She finds Matt first, but she's
• 56:17
  looking for either right, because she knows she's being yanked by Tavia, And
• 56:22
  she knows it's not Rand because she left him easily. So she's like,
• 56:24
  all right, well that leaves too, all right, So the o gear
• 56:30
  come in and Rand is like, I'm so sorry I can't come to your
• 56:34
  wedding. I'm sure it's going to be a big hole thing. And Loyle
• 56:37
  interrupts, like I just interrupted you, and it's like, oh no,
• 56:40
  we're married already. We're done because O Gear have a weirdly rapid sense of
• 56:45
  ceremony. Well, I think it has more to do with the fact that
• 56:50
  they were chasing him for such a long time. His mother was like,
• 56:52
  I'm not waiting. I don't care, like we are not gonna gonna risk.
• 56:55
  We've got everybody here together in one room. You're getting married right now,
• 57:00
  because otherwise I don't know if it'll ever happen. We've been chasing you
• 57:04
  for years literally, And then of course and obviously, like they the stump
• 57:09
  is happening, the last battle is coming, right, They are kind of
• 57:13
  aware of the urgency of what's going on, yeah, and they like kind
• 57:16
  of try to hide it from Rand that Loyle's going to speak at the stump.
• 57:20
  But I think it's more than that. Rand thinks it's just that Loyle's
• 57:22
  going to speak at the stump. I think they're trying to hide the fact
• 57:25
  that the O Gear might not be there for the last battle exactly. That's
• 57:29
  what they're afraid that Rand might find out. They're like we're going to try
• 57:31
  to make that out happen, but like we need you to not know that
• 57:36
  that is an option that would be bad for your mental health. And once
• 57:39
  again I have to wonder, would the Sean chan O gear disappear if the
• 57:44
  Book of Translation was opened? Would they? Oh that's an interesting question,
• 57:50
  are they because they're not as tied to the Studding. Yeah, I mean
• 57:53
  they wouldn't be on the studding when it happened. So would you have to
• 57:59
  be on this I assume? So, I mean you can be left behind
• 58:01
  by the away ship on an alien planet. So you think that you think
• 58:06
  the stetting are the spaceships, right, like, so you can't, like,
• 58:08
  it's not like everybody disappears, kind of like the disks when you go
• 58:12
  through a gateway or when you do skimming. That's kind of how I imagine
• 58:15
  them. But because they are pieces of a different dimension, right, the
• 58:20
  Steading themselves have to leave too. Yeah, yeah, totally totally, but
• 58:24
  I kind of imagine the og you're fading way with them. But no,
• 58:27
  the idea that like, I like that if you're outside the Steading you get
• 58:31
  left behind. Yeah, you should live about your life stuck on an alien
• 58:35
  planet and then you died, of course, because you wouldn't the longing would
• 58:38
  take you. Yeah, yeah, or just natural causes, I mean either
• 58:40
  way, Like, that's just that's where you're dying. But you don't have
• 58:44
  a you can't create a lineage, right, right, And so loyal Promising
• 58:50
  to be there at Tarman Guiden means that he is willing essentially to be outside
• 58:53
  the steading when the book of Translation is open, which would be a death
• 58:58
  sentence. And he says, and if I can't be there, will you
• 59:01
  tell me what it was like after, which like, yeah, that would
• 59:05
  only work if he stayed behind and abandoned his people for the sake of the
• 59:09
  book. Wow, loyal, you're just so loyal. Yeah, dying in
• 59:15
  the middle of writing your book. Who could have foreseen an author had happening?
• 59:19
  Too too soon? Too soon. I'm so confused. I've sealed,
• 59:30
  loyal, I've seen the way we sealed the waygates. I know in Camerlin
• 59:31
  and Kyrie and Ilien and Tear I put a very nasty trap on the one
• 59:35
  that was open near Faldara, but I couldn't find the one near Farmatting,
• 59:37
  even when I know this wygate actually in the city. I can't find it
• 59:39
  myself. I need you to find the rest for me. Loyal, didn't
• 59:43
  he do that already? A Michael, do that already? He did?
• 59:46
  Yeah, that's what him and Carlton were doing, right, Yeah? Yeah?
• 59:51
  Was that not what they were doing. I'm so confused by that statement.
• 59:54
  Yeah, much much agreement on being confused. Loyal meets parent. Yeah,
• 1:00:00
  a crowd of swords. Carlton and Loyal visit all the steading except stetting
• 1:00:05
  Shantai and visit all but those in the Borderlands and the Shadow Coast to post
• 1:00:08
  guards at the waygate. Oh, they're talking to the leaders of all the
• 1:00:14
  steading. They're not damaging the way gates. They should have been damaging the
• 1:00:17
  way gates. That's what they should have been doing. We were wrong about
• 1:00:22
  that. Should I go back in editing and make it so we were never
• 1:00:24
  wrong about that? I don't think so. I think it's just one of
• 1:00:28
  those things that's like, why are they they're going they went all the steading,
• 1:00:32
  they're just not sealing them, which seems just that was the whole point.
• 1:00:37
  I'm so frustrated that they were redoing that that like they didn't just wasted
• 1:00:44
  effort. We wasted Loyal's effort for books. Yeah silly. Yeah, that's
• 1:00:50
  very silly, very very silly. I don't like that religion. I don't
• 1:00:54
  think there could be way gates in Shan Shan because you'd have to know where
• 1:00:59
  you were growing the gate the ways too, and they wouldn't know about what
• 1:01:04
  was going on over there. Yeah, you need the talsman of growing to
• 1:01:08
  grow a waygate to a place. Yeah. The way gates were built outside
• 1:01:13
  of the gardens, right, not necessarily outside of stettings, outside of the
• 1:01:19
  They were built anywhere where the ogier might want to go, so that way
• 1:01:22
  they could quickly move through the world. So cities where they were doing lots
• 1:01:27
  of stone work also got way gates, okay, just so they were never
• 1:01:31
  that far away from their stetding. Yeah, so they wouldn't have to travel
• 1:01:35
  overland, so to speak, very much. So Yeah. Rant basically asks
• 1:01:39
  Oil to Loyle to redo all of the work that he already did, and
• 1:01:43
  Elder Hammond is like, no, Loyle has more important things to do.
• 1:01:45
  How about I go be your gopher? Right, and that occupies him for
• 1:01:52
  the rest of the series. Do we ever find out, like if that's
• 1:01:54
  successful uh No, I mean, we don't have any big disastrous things happening
• 1:02:02
  at waygates other than the Caitlin Waygate as far as I know. Yeah,
• 1:02:07
  the only thing we have with Hammon is that he shows up in a memory
• 1:02:10
  of light. Okay, so he does get to come back and fight in
• 1:02:13
  the last battle. Well that's good for him. Yeah, yeah, I
• 1:02:16
  think all Elder Hammond's had a bit of a taste for adventure too. He
• 1:02:20
  just doesn't want to admit it. I know he's disguising it as like I'll
• 1:02:23
  take over, but he rushed to fill that need real quick. He did
• 1:02:28
  eat Katswayne's like it's taver and I'm like, Kat Swayne. I think he
• 1:02:31
  just forgot how much fun it is to travel. And where is his mom?
• 1:02:37
  Heading to the stump? Also to the stump? Also right, so
• 1:02:44
  Elder Hammond no longer has to travel. He wants anything to not have to
• 1:02:50
  travel with her anymore. He's so over her. Oh that's funny because then
• 1:02:57
  he can just be in O gear he doesn't have to be Elder Haman.
• 1:02:59
  Right. Yeah, yeah, He's like, actually, I want to travel
• 1:03:01
  in ogi incognito and just cruise for a minute. That would be a nice
• 1:03:07
  break before I have to go fight in the end of the world. And
• 1:03:09
  he also I think he believes that, like, yeah, you need the
• 1:03:13
  youth to lead the stump, right, I need this this man to step
• 1:03:15
  up. And he's and he's been out there and he's seeing like no one,
• 1:03:19
  no one can argue the way loyal can for the people, right,
• 1:03:23
  And he's like, you're going to surprise a lot of people, including yourself,
• 1:03:28
  including your mother, Like you got this. The kids are all right.
• 1:03:30
  I'm saying it, Elder Hammon, you the kid Loyal are all right.
• 1:03:35
  So in comes Davren Bashir, Yeah, escorted by dark friend Ezra Ezra
• 1:03:43
  Penfel, Azelle Elsa I will okay Elsa Penfel, which honestly sounds like a
• 1:03:50
  Bond villain name. Truly. Yes, miss Penfell. Yeah, you think
• 1:03:55
  she's the secretary for the first act, but then it turns out she was
• 1:03:59
  actually the pass the whole time. Exactly exactly. Yeah. Davyn comes in
• 1:04:03
  to mourn his dead first and then to report to Rand about the meeting with
• 1:04:10
  a daughter of the Nine Moons, and that was just gonna be the meeting.
• 1:04:12
  But then he has to do the whole morning of nineteen of his Saldeians
• 1:04:15
  getting slaughtered. I love Elsa trying to stay and Rand being go help with
• 1:04:19
  the cleanup, and he'll be like fuck, fine, right, and Rand
• 1:04:24
  looks at her and thinks, well, clearly she's not who Varin's talking about,
• 1:04:27
  because Elsa's fervent, and it's like she is exactly who she's talking about.
• 1:04:30
  God so dense, these two Rivers boys. Varren gives them a letter
• 1:04:35
  that spells it out, and they're just like m mmmm, not going to
• 1:04:39
  read it, not going to hear it. She at least was one he
• 1:04:43
  did not have to worry about. It's like she's precisely who you have to
• 1:04:48
  worry about. Jordan proving his characters wrong as soon as someone says, well
• 1:04:53
  I don't worry about that person, meaning dark friend. Fuck they're a dark
• 1:04:56
  friend, right, totally saying I think I saw foreshadowing of Tarman Guide and
• 1:05:01
  it's like, yep, you sure did. That's Jordan pointing that out to
• 1:05:05
  us, like this is kind of what it's gonna look like. And then
• 1:05:08
  he says, you know, I hope this is the war to end all
• 1:05:10
  wars, but also I know humanity and we'll fight again after this is over,
• 1:05:15
  because we're we'll turn Yeah, so silly. But he brings news of
• 1:05:20
  uh Soroth the dark friend, right, and she arranged a meeting between Rand
• 1:05:28
  and the quote unquote Daughter of the Nine Moons in three days, which we
• 1:05:31
  know, of course, is going to be Summarrock. It'll be Summarag disguised
• 1:05:38
  as the Daughter of the Nine Moons. It's so silly too. They're like,
• 1:05:42
  we're gonna meet We're going to have you meet a really important head of
• 1:05:46
  state in an area that is an enemy control. You got a sneaky sneak
• 1:05:53
  your way out to this random place that isn't even within our own zone of
• 1:05:57
  control, and that's where you're going to meet one of our precious heads of
• 1:05:59
  state. I'm like, that is so suspicious. That is so suspicious.
• 1:06:03
  That's like I have a brand new video game console and you have to meet
• 1:06:08
  me at midnight behind the school and bring only Nichols, Like, no,
• 1:06:12
  come on, oh and by the way, don't tell anybody else. Only
• 1:06:15
  talk to me. Don't don't, don't, don't call the cops. Yeah
• 1:06:19
  no, no, that's not what it looks like. That's absolutely not what's
• 1:06:23
  happening, and Altara just crowned the new king. We know that's best.
• 1:06:28
  Yeah, and everyone was walking on eggshells, Sean Chan and al Tar and
• 1:06:31
  alike. That's because Thailand was murdered and no one knows why. No one
• 1:06:34
  knows who did it. Everyone is looking over their shoulders. I disagree.
• 1:06:39
  I think it's because Tuon's missing. Well, that too, well, but
• 1:06:43
  the Altarans aren't nearly as concerned about that because they don't care. Right,
• 1:06:45
  The Altars are freaked out because of the Thailand thing. The sean Channer freaked
• 1:06:50
  out a little because of the Thailand thing, and mostly because of the Tuon
• 1:06:54
  thing. Right, It's just there's a lot going on there and the Sheer
• 1:06:58
  has no idea any of it. He just knows that everyone's freaked out.
• 1:07:00
  Well, particularly Souroth looked as though she had a sword hovering above her neck.
• 1:07:04
  That's the apology she doesn't want to have to make. Yes, yes,
• 1:07:08
  that is the missing daughter of the nine Moons of it all, which
• 1:07:13
  you know, but she can't be clued into. For obvious reasons, she
• 1:07:16
  has him. She agrees, let him bring what five channelers, six female
• 1:07:23
  channelers and five male channelers, so six and six. No, I thought
• 1:07:28
  it was just you can bring five people can channel. She'll assume any man
• 1:07:30
  with you who can't write, because there's five people who can channel plus him
• 1:07:34
  channel, he's bringing six. Okay, I Christ miss reading that, right,
• 1:07:39
  So it's six channelers of each, right. Yeah, And Alivia makes
• 1:07:42
  a noise like an angry cat, which never gets explained. But I assume
• 1:07:45
  that that means that she's reading certain Sean Chan hierarchy strategy stuff in it and
• 1:07:50
  going, oh, this is not the arrangements how they should be, Like
• 1:07:55
  this is more than should be or something. I just I kind of assumed
• 1:07:58
  it was the mention of school bomb. Oh, that's probably more accurate.
• 1:08:04
  I am just wrong about everything today, Like just basket, take all your
• 1:08:09
  victory lapse because I'm just in the wrong line. Well, I can't wait
• 1:08:13
  to get the last three books, where you're just going to be wrong a
• 1:08:15
  lot because you don't have the expertise on those the way you do. Yeah,
• 1:08:17
  you're all getting a foreshadowing for what it's like to have the media fall
• 1:08:21
  off of the radio. Time to go Boltimore Berry Bushes. Yeah, basically
• 1:08:29
  it is. It is, Well, it's not quite the season for because
• 1:08:30
  now it's bird nesting season, so I really got to leave all that stuff
• 1:08:33
  alone because all the little songbirds are like making nests in there, all right.
• 1:08:38
  So Min tries to inveigle herself onto the trip. Rand is like no,
• 1:08:43
  men is like, we'll talk about it loose. Then's like that is
• 1:08:45
  dire and it's just funny. And as a person who doesn't want to talk
• 1:08:54
  about anything serious, only silly things cannot relate. Yeah, I've we need
• 1:09:00
  to talk or we'll talk about it. Definitely one of those things like oh
• 1:09:03
  fuck, all right, well I'm not getting yelled at here because there's other
• 1:09:06
  people present, but it's not going well for me when we get home.
• 1:09:12
  Yeah no, all right, pov shift. We made it to our first
• 1:09:17
  fucking break. This has been quite the recording. It's not going anymore anytime
• 1:09:23
  soon because this next one's the exciting one, so I need to take a
• 1:09:27
  short break. But yeah, no, I'm really excited about this. Obviously,
• 1:09:43
  the guy's wedding is occupying about ninety percent of my brain at all points
• 1:09:47
  in time, and so oh the reason I wanted to bring this up is
• 1:09:51
  because one of the rings Nieve was wearing is a ring bearing a flaw of
• 1:09:56
  sapphire was on her right hand, And there we go, right, right
• 1:10:00
  right. So you know the sapphire ring, because that's exactly the ring I
• 1:10:06
  got for Never and the ring I have for myself. So I like the
• 1:10:11
  idea that the ring I got for Never is the one that tells her it
• 1:10:14
  turns cold if I'm feeling hostile. But do you want to actually read us
• 1:10:20
  into this POV? Yeah, all right, so we are returning to the
• 1:10:26
  chapter and shifting povs to Ninive, lifting the damp cloth that lay across her
• 1:10:31
  eyes carefully so she did not catch the bracelet and rings on Griol in her
• 1:10:36
  hair. She wore that and her jeweled tour on Griol every waking moment.
• 1:10:41
  Now Nieves sat up on the edge of her bed with men needing healing from
• 1:10:45
  dreadful wounds, some missing a hand or an arm. It seemed petty to
• 1:10:49
  ask healing for a headache, but the willow bark seemed to have worked as
• 1:10:54
  well, only more slowly. One of her rings, set with the pale
• 1:10:59
  green stone that now appeared to glow with a faint internal light, seemed to
• 1:11:03
  vibrate continually on her finger, though it did not really move. The pattern
• 1:11:08
  of vibrations was mixed a reaction to sidar and sidine being channeled outside. For
• 1:11:14
  that matter, someone could have been channeling inside. Kat Swain was sure it
• 1:11:17
  should be able to indicate direction, but she could not say how ha for
• 1:11:23
  kad Swain and her supposed superior knowledge. She wished she could say that to
• 1:11:28
  the woman's face. It was not that kad Swain intimidated her, certainly not.
• 1:11:32
  She stood above kat Swain, just that she wanted to maintain some degree
• 1:11:36
  of harmony. That was the reason she held her tongue around the woman.
• 1:11:41
  Yeah, you stand above her, not at all, Okay, Okay,
• 1:11:46
  yeah, technically sure. It's like when you're technically somebody's boss, but they've
• 1:11:51
  been at the company for like twice as long as you had your job,
• 1:11:55
  and then like decided they didn't want to do it anymore, and you walk
• 1:11:59
  in. You're like, I'm gonna tell you how to do They're like,
• 1:12:00
  no, you're not. Yeah, no, you're not. Yeah, you
• 1:12:03
  might technically be my boss, but you're not gonna tell me shit. Yeah.
• 1:12:08
  So Toron Greol, we have a ring that vibrates that tells you when
• 1:12:14
  sidein and sidar are being used near you and could probably tell you the direction.
• 1:12:19
  I'm assuming there's some like user manual that has different patterns that says like
• 1:12:24
  coming from the east, coming from the west. Right. It's like those
• 1:12:27
  hand gestures that you can use for like click patterns you can use on various
• 1:12:30
  speakers. Oh yeah, you can take calls and hang up and all this
• 1:12:32
  stuff. And you're like, I don't I'm not going to remember all of
• 1:12:35
  that. But again, just all the things that we've learned that that nineves
• 1:12:43
  Toroangreol can do, which is she can detect sidein and sidar channeling, which
• 1:12:47
  is not something that anybody else can do. She's getten seriously powered up with
• 1:12:51
  her abilities. Not only is she ninive Almeira with all the power that comes
• 1:12:57
  with that, She's got a lot of little magical augmentations to her senses,
• 1:13:00
  to her sturdiness, to her endurance, to her capacity, all that she's
• 1:13:04
  a tank. She and Codswain are tax at this point, right. They
• 1:13:10
  are all the things that were like why don't chandelers have shields, why don't
• 1:13:14
  channelers do this? What they did? They did and they made rings and
• 1:13:17
  things like that, and they're essentially in battle armor, and she's wearing her
• 1:13:21
  battle armoor twenty four to seven. Every waking moment she's in battle armor channeler
• 1:13:26
  battle armor. Also, I kind of love the reference like D and D
• 1:13:30
  games where you like have a bunch of rings where you're just like, oh,
• 1:13:34
  yeah, I've got ten fingers, I'm gonna put on all the magic
• 1:13:38
  rings, right, Like how much equipment can I load myself down with?
• 1:13:41
  I kind of yeah, there's definitely this magic did bouji? Did you type
• 1:13:46
  that before? After a yeah, yeah, magic item gears starting to steck
• 1:13:53
  up like a high level D and D character, Yeah, I know,
• 1:13:55
  I mean she definitely is. She is completely kitted out in stuff that glows.
• 1:13:59
  Now it's got the magic shimmer on it for sure. Yeah, every
• 1:14:02
  last thing she's wearing. So, yeah, she wakes up, she's covered
• 1:14:06
  in gears. She says, I'm gonna go back outside and keep helping,
• 1:14:10
  and Land says, now you're way too tired. You need to stay in
• 1:14:13
  here and chilling out. And we get a disc room description of the room
• 1:14:17
  that's just a complete dump, but she and Land live there together, so
• 1:14:20
  it's paradise, right, That whole home is where the heart is. Home
• 1:14:26
  is where my lover is, right, Like, that's what makes it a
• 1:14:29
  home is that she's spending it. It's a private space that she can enjoy
• 1:14:32
  Land's company in private where he gets to give commands. I mean, it's
• 1:14:38
  more than just that, but yeah, it's it isn't though, Like you
• 1:14:42
  know, if you're in a happy partnership, then yet it really doesn't matter
• 1:14:45
  where you are because you know you're there with your best friend, so it's
• 1:14:47
  fine. So and then we get this ring, this with the flall of
• 1:14:50
  sapphire on it. That tells me that somebody's feeling hostile nearby because of course
• 1:14:54
  Lan's pissed off it something I wasn't entirely sure what he was angry about.
• 1:15:00
  He's hard to read because he's Land. I mean, it's the internal turmoil
• 1:15:03
  about Rand not going to the border lands and ignoring the border. Okay,
• 1:15:09
  the thing he's what she asks him about. She's like, why are you
• 1:15:12
  upset? It's that's that's what she's feeling, is that he's upset about something
• 1:15:15
  and she's like why. And then the chapter basic great and comprehension. Thank
• 1:15:19
  you, right? Should I explain it? One I did read this chapter
• 1:15:26
  before we started, I swear, but there's so much in it. It's
• 1:15:29
  a dense chapter. It's a dense chapter. We sort of get the interplay
• 1:15:33
  between them that I really like, where he's like, dude, you've got
• 1:15:38
  a headache. You need to stop channeling, and she's like, you don't
• 1:15:41
  know more about me than channeling. He's like, I kind of do,
• 1:15:44
  I kind of. I've been doing this for twenty years. You have been
• 1:15:46
  doing it for three max, right, you know really and you denied you
• 1:15:51
  were doing it for the first you know, yeah, you were doing some
• 1:15:54
  healing before that, but like, yeah, you're you don't you don't know
• 1:15:58
  any of the rules. You don't know any of the limits. I can
• 1:16:00
  see that you're tired. You should probably not be channeling. Yeah, this
• 1:16:03
  is It gives me the same feeling as like when Brandon and I are having
• 1:16:09
  a night where we're drinking and I'm like, let's have another drink and he's
• 1:16:12
  like, you need to drink water first, and I'm like, you are
• 1:16:15
  not the boss of me, even though I literally have told him repeatedly,
• 1:16:18
  please make me drink water, please whatever, Like whatever I say, however,
• 1:16:25
  I respond, please just push through and make me drink water. And
• 1:16:27
  then he goes to do it, and I am like, you are not
• 1:16:29
  the boss to me. Get out of here with your facts and your requests
• 1:16:33
  from past. Me get out and it. So this reminds me of that.
• 1:16:39
  It reminds me of when someone is convinced that birds can't smell, and
• 1:16:45
  okay, I have to basically push through that and you know I have to
• 1:16:53
  go fucking out. This is how to be wrong people, This is how
• 1:17:02
  to do it. Apparently it's hard for people to know how to be wrong.
• 1:17:06
  So here's me modeling being wrong. Oh yeah, it's really easy for
• 1:17:12
  you. I can tell taking it so well, great time, Just take
• 1:17:19
  your ball and go home, take my microphone and get out of here.
• 1:17:24
  The worst part is I have to listen to all of this again when I
• 1:17:27
  edited. And the worst part is you know, as you're saying it with
• 1:17:30
  confidence, that you're wrong, and you have to listen to yourself say the
• 1:17:33
  wrong thing with the utmost confidence and knowing that later on you're going to have
• 1:17:40
  to eat that crow, and it's just, oh, it's miserable. There's
• 1:17:44
  nothing honestly. The worst part about like I can get used to my voice.
• 1:17:46
  I got used to the reading. I got used to the alms and
• 1:17:50
  the sniffles and the all that. Fine. Being wrong and having to relive
• 1:17:57
  it is so fucking babe fall. It sucks. It sucks. Yeah,
• 1:18:02
  yeah, because when you're wrong in real life you can just be like,
• 1:18:05
  Okay, I was wrong, move and just move on, move on.
• 1:18:12
  As an editor, it's worse. It's so much worse. Good times,
• 1:18:17
  we get reminded of how the dynamics of the sea folk marriage work, with
• 1:18:20
  the obeying and public and private sort of thing and all that. We get
• 1:18:26
  that reiterated. We think about the other people who have been in the house,
• 1:18:30
  because nieven Land have seen some of them, and so we just kind
• 1:18:34
  of think about some people that exist but not really very interesting. Yeah,
• 1:18:42
  don't have a lot of a lot of notes here for a little bit,
• 1:18:45
  just a lot of thoughts about people. There's a little bit there's a paragraph
• 1:18:48
  of name salad here where I'm just like, none of those people matter.
• 1:18:51
  Yeah, they really don't. There's an interesting part where she sees a circle
• 1:18:57
  of thirteen weaving the power and she can tell that a man is directing the
• 1:19:00
  flows because even though sidar is being used because it's a you know, it's
• 1:19:05
  a full circle of men and women. There's a man in control because of
• 1:19:10
  how the sidar is getting moved. It's just like clunky. And she's like,
• 1:19:14
  well, clearly a man is in charge of that circle, and I
• 1:19:16
  thought that was kind of a fun, little mechanical thing. They're learning how
• 1:19:20
  to use the circles, they're bonding, they're they're they're linking for the first
• 1:19:24
  time, right, which it's early days, but like, this is super
• 1:19:28
  important because this is men and women working together. This is the whole point
• 1:19:31
  of the cleansing and the idea that Rand needs women to win the last battle.
• 1:19:38
  He needs men and women. He needs men and women working together in
• 1:19:41
  a way that he didn't have in the previous age, right, men and
• 1:19:45
  women split off and fought separately. And it is it's that thing like so
• 1:19:50
  many people complain about. And I was I was just reading reviews the other
• 1:19:54
  day because I was about The Wheel of Time, and people are like,
• 1:19:58
  oh, the man versus woman thing so overdone in the beginning, and it's
• 1:20:01
  like, yeah, because in the end, it's it's showing that it's hurting
• 1:20:05
  them and resolving that helps them. Yeah, you need a character's journey.
• 1:20:11
  It's like when someone's like, oh, he was such an asshole, and
• 1:20:14
  I'm like, yeah, but then he went through a journey, and like,
• 1:20:16
  there's you have to A character can't redeem themselves without doing shitty things first,
• 1:20:21
  right, there's no redemption arc unless there's a failure or a flaw.
• 1:20:28
  And I think people forget that and they're like, oh, but this character
• 1:20:30
  used to be flawed. And we do that to real people too. And
• 1:20:33
  we're doing that, and especially in modern media, is like we're taking up
• 1:20:38
  shit that people said in the past and like, yeah, I don't believe
• 1:20:40
  that anymore. I was wrong, you know. And I'll be the first
• 1:20:44
  to say, like, there's a bunch of shit in high school and probably
• 1:20:46
  even in college that I thought and said that I would not stand behind anymore.
• 1:20:53
  Yeah, for sure. I even read a forward to a book that
• 1:20:56
  I need to read the whole thing of, but I started with the forward
• 1:20:59
  just the other where this person is like, this is a collection of essays
• 1:21:01
  that I wrote over like a ten year period, and anything that I say
• 1:21:05
  in these essays that is contradicted by something I've said later. The later version
• 1:21:11
  takes precedence because I have evolved and thought about things and comes to new conclusions
• 1:21:15
  about these same topics in the course of the time since I wrote these essays
• 1:21:19
  that I nonetheless think there's value in publishing, Like, yeah, there's gonna
• 1:21:24
  be contradictory stuff in there. Whatever I said most recently is the most accurate
• 1:21:29
  to how I think. Like, that's just like, and you know,
• 1:21:31
  this person's talking about like within the context of their own work. We're not
• 1:21:35
  talking about like you know, bad behavior, apologism or anything, but like,
• 1:21:40
  right, yeah, yeah, people do evolve and change and learn,
• 1:21:47
  and things are clunky at the beginning and they get smoother with practice, one
• 1:21:51
  hopes, And yeah, you cannot start a character at ten. They have
• 1:21:57
  to start at one and work their way towards ten. Because so otherwise,
• 1:22:00
  what's the friction driving the plot? If everyone's perfect and has all their problems
• 1:22:03
  solved, then why are we here? What's the story? If for not
• 1:22:06
  solving a problem, what is the story? Then my neive has to be
• 1:22:11
  hypercritical. And now even Matt have to be hypocritical, right, brand has
• 1:22:15
  to you know, idealize people and put them up on a pedestal in a
• 1:22:19
  way that you know makes him fail. Parent has to have, you know,
• 1:22:24
  autism, It makes not very good with other people, right, Like
• 1:22:28
  they all have their things that they have to overcome. Yeah, and here
• 1:22:31
  we have to overcome the normal mode of Land, which is to not talk
• 1:22:38
  about his problems. Ni Neive manages to get him to share his unpleasant thoughts
• 1:22:43
  by being very polite and asking a question rather than demanding an answer, because
• 1:22:47
  that's how their marriage vows worked, and Land in an unusual display of communicativeness
• 1:22:55
  because it's his wife and she asks very nicely, actually shares his thoughts on
• 1:23:00
  what's happening, which is that Rand is fucking up royally by not focusing on
• 1:23:04
  the borderlands. And I kind of agree with him. He needs to resolve
• 1:23:09
  this thing with the shawn Chan, right like it needs to be over yeah,
• 1:23:13
  yeah, dancing around with the shan Chan forever is how we got to
• 1:23:15
  book eleven without having anything happen for like books and books and books, right,
• 1:23:20
  because that was the whole the path of Daggers, right is he went
• 1:23:24
  and lightening the sean Chan and it didn't do any good. He kind of
• 1:23:29
  beat them badly, but only one section of them and did as much damage
• 1:23:33
  to his own army. So what was the point, right he I mean
• 1:23:38
  it did stop them from advancing for a bit. Rand, Stop cleaning your
• 1:23:44
  room and go sit down and write the paper, right, write your procrastinat
• 1:23:47
  yes very much. Oh my god. It feels like you're doing work,
• 1:23:53
  but you're not. You're not. Yeah, yeah, absolutely not. The
• 1:23:57
  work that you desperately need to do is weading the garden again. So then
• 1:24:03
  Nimi hatches her plot and basically says, so you have to go back.
• 1:24:09
  I always knew this would happen, and so I've been plotting, I mean
• 1:24:12
  planning, I mean thinking I could help you out. Yeah, And then
• 1:24:16
  she very carefully says, I will take you to the border lands. Your
• 1:24:21
  duty lies there. You want to go to Shinar question mark. She very
• 1:24:29
  carefully punctuates that series of set so that way she says, I will take
• 1:24:33
  you to the borderlands. You want to get to Shinar ergo. I will
• 1:24:39
  take you as far away from Shinar as I can get you and still be
• 1:24:43
  in the borderlands. And still be in the borderlands. Like she is so
• 1:24:46
  careful in this kid's is by punctuation matters. I also love this a borderland
• 1:24:53
  saying I heard from you what are you fine? What? What fucking fi
• 1:25:00
  times a book? Oh my god, I'm pretty sure he says it before
• 1:25:02
  he goes to bed, and when he gets up in the morning, she
• 1:25:04
  probably hears like I heard it from you once earlier this week or this this
• 1:25:09
  today, in the last hour, right, death is lighter than a feather,
• 1:25:14
  duty heavier than a mountain, I mean. And it's so weird because
• 1:25:17
  she says her duty is to stay with Rand and keep Alivia from killing him,
• 1:25:23
  which like feels like the least part of what she does because Olivia is
• 1:25:28
  not trying to kill Rand, and Ninive has nothing to do with why she's
• 1:25:31
  not trying to kill Rand because she's not actually trying to kill Rand. She's
• 1:25:35
  trying to help Rand, which means helping him die. And it's just like,
• 1:25:39
  Ninive, you're doing so much for Rand, Why is this what you're
• 1:25:43
  claiming? But she never does what she's supposed to do. That's the thing
• 1:25:47
  is Nieva's like, I'm gonna go do this, she doesn't do it.
• 1:25:49
  Like that's true, that's true. And also I think what she's trying to
• 1:25:53
  do is give an excuse to Land, right that might not be what she
• 1:25:57
  necessarily intends to do one hundred percent. It is on the she plans on
• 1:26:00
  doing, because she's telling the truth, but it's not something that she necessarily
• 1:26:04
  she thinks. That's why Land will go and give her like let leave her
• 1:26:10
  behind. Is like this duty to help Rand, right, because that's what
• 1:26:13
  Land got tangled up in this whole thing to begin with, right, is
• 1:26:16
  his love of Thynive and his duty to help Rand. I feel like she
• 1:26:19
  could have just said that her duty was to stay with Rand and support him.
• 1:26:24
  I just feel like that's so much more sul to what she's doing and
• 1:26:28
  understandable than like, the woman who's not trying to murder Rand will only not
• 1:26:31
  murder him if I'm there. It's just like, I don't know, I
• 1:26:34
  find it. I find it odd. But she is doing a lot for
• 1:26:40
  Rand, So I mean the ultimate point is fine because she does need to
• 1:26:43
  stay with him, and Land says, I accept this if you're sure,
• 1:26:46
  and Niaive very eyes to die, wiggles her way out of that because she's
• 1:26:54
  not sure. But she just rhetorical questions her way out of answering, and
• 1:27:00
  they pack, He packs and she changes clothes and they head out. She
• 1:27:06
  goes and looks at maps too, because she has to familiarize herself what the
• 1:27:11
  area's going to. But you can do that if you're going for just like
• 1:27:13
  a general geography thing. You can just look at a map and say I
• 1:27:15
  want to be at the foot of this hill overlooking the ocean or whatever.
• 1:27:19
  There's a very important promise she gets from land first though. Oh yes,
• 1:27:23
  oh yes, yes, I want to promise from you that you'll ride to
• 1:27:29
  foul Moran before you enter the blight, and if anyone wants to ride with
• 1:27:32
  you, you'll let him him thinking, oh, you're going to drop me
• 1:27:38
  in the south of Shinar and I'm going to have to ride, you know,
• 1:27:41
  across a couple hundred miles to get there, right, Like fine,
• 1:27:46
  I get it right. You're gonna delay me a little bit, that's fine,
• 1:27:50
  there'll be a journey. Not realizing not only is she going to deposit
• 1:27:56
  him a couple hundred miles away, but a couple of thousand miles away,
• 1:28:00
  and he's gonna have to ride across the thousands of miles because he's essentially riding
• 1:28:04
  across the continent. Right, yep, it's like depositing. It's like someone's
• 1:28:10
  like, I want to go to Canada to Nova Scotia. Let's say Canada,
• 1:28:16
  and they and you say, all right, well, i'll take you
• 1:28:19
  to the border of America and Canada. You want to go to Nova Scotia,
• 1:28:25
  I'll take you to the border, and you take them to Seattle,
• 1:28:29
  right right, yeah, yeah, And I say, you promised me you're
• 1:28:33
  going to walk to Nova Scotia from where I drop you off. I'll take
• 1:28:38
  you to the border. But you promised me you walked it to Halifax.
• 1:28:41
  Yeah. Yeah, And they're like, okay, I'll walk across Nova Scotia,
• 1:28:45
  not realizing nope, you got to walk across the entire freaking continent.
• 1:28:48
  Yeah. And then that example, you'd have to cross a big ass mountain
• 1:28:54
  range and a couple of smaller ones. One assumes that Land is being asked
• 1:28:59
  to do something not too dissimilar in terms of his topographic range. He's going
• 1:29:03
  to be asked to really brave some shit. There's the reason it takes some
• 1:29:08
  the whole book to travel across that area when gathers quite quite an army,
• 1:29:13
  right right, aside from the part where she's you know, spreading word across
• 1:29:16
  the whole thing, there's just a lot of time because he has to travel
• 1:29:19
  a lot of different to write. It was very hard dealing with a husband
• 1:29:24
  if you could not lie even when it was absolutely necessary. I need I
• 1:29:30
  that I could not have my marriage be like that. I mean, I
• 1:29:33
  can lie by omission because I have emotional intimacy issues, but like that's different.
• 1:29:42
  But that's different different. This idea that you have to lie to people
• 1:29:45
  about what you're doing and why you're doing it, like in this very logistical
• 1:29:48
  way, like about things that actually matter, is just like I don't have
• 1:29:56
  the energy for that. I just I don't have the mental power to do
• 1:30:00
  that sort of thing. It's one of the few ways that I really feel
• 1:30:02
  that Robert Jordan falls into the boomer humor category of like, yeah, haha,
• 1:30:10
  wife bad, must lie to her, I have to go into the
• 1:30:13
  office, goes golfing all day, right, like that level of just like
• 1:30:16
  I need peace, so I'm going to lie to get my peace. Yeah,
• 1:30:20
  because otherwise because I can't talk to them maturely and say, hey,
• 1:30:24
  I need a little bit of time to go do things I want to do.
• 1:30:27
  Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. It feels like a dated piece of humor
• 1:30:31
  that doesn't need to apply for sure, which yeah, boom, that's all.
• 1:30:38
  Yeah, that's it's like, sorry, that was that was funny in
• 1:30:41
  the day, and that's what that was was acceptable, is funny, and
• 1:30:44
  now we've decided that it's kind of weird and we like our spouses. We're
• 1:30:49
  not forced because because culture changes, right, we are not forced to get
• 1:30:54
  married at a young age to the first person who comes along, because it's
• 1:30:58
  expected that you get married and have kids to the young age. Despite the
• 1:31:00
  fact that you did it, I did the opposite. We're basically the opposite
• 1:31:04
  ends of the spectrum, right, like, yeah, well I didn't have
• 1:31:08
  kids though that's true, I got married super young, but I didn't have
• 1:31:11
  to didn't have the kids, so that that is the one weird monkey wrench
• 1:31:15
  to the model. But yes, yes, broadly speaking, So I'm just
• 1:31:18
  going to ask, you know, as someone who's getting married to someone who's
• 1:31:21
  been married, is lying to your spouse helpful in a marriage? No?
• 1:31:26
  Not? Well, Okay, there's one context, and that's when planning surprise
• 1:31:29
  birthday parties. Okay, there are sometimes in order to get certain gifts and
• 1:31:34
  other things arranged, you do have to just do a little bit of lying.
• 1:31:39
  But like that's that's it. That's it. The only time I've lied
• 1:31:44
  to never was the surperprise proposal. Yeah, exactly, exactly. That is
• 1:31:47
  an acceptable exception because you got ites and she could tell I was. She
• 1:31:54
  was like, I knew you were sneaking around. I was worried. She
• 1:31:57
  like was legitimately worried that I was cheating for a minute because of the way,
• 1:32:00
  because I'm a terrible liar, I'm awful at it. I was obviously
• 1:32:04
  lying. And she's had, you know, ex boyfriend's Jeet Honor, so
• 1:32:08
  she's like, what's going on. Something's going on. So then when I
• 1:32:12
  sprung an on her, she was like, oh okay, like, yes,
• 1:32:14
  you were secretly texting with a girl it was your sister because logistics,
• 1:32:21
  yeah. Yeah. But all that to say, no, I find honesty
• 1:32:27
  is the best policy. If you want to have a happy and harmonious year's
• 1:32:31
  long relationship with your best friend and cohabitate with them, you really you really
• 1:32:35
  gotta prioritize honesty, even when it feels really really like staring at the sun.
• 1:32:41
  You really gotta gotta do that. I don't think lying is how you
• 1:32:45
  manage a marriage successfully, Like there is certainly keeping your brutal honesty to yourself
• 1:32:51
  sometimes. Yes, that is, yes, part of a harmonious marriage.
• 1:32:56
  But again, that is not what Nieve's talking about. Nivea is talking about
• 1:33:00
  just straight up lying about your intentions. And I don't I don't think that
• 1:33:02
  that's helpful. Yeah, there's some bread I ate today that got made that
• 1:33:06
  she put a lot of work into. I ate that bread, and I
• 1:33:14
  didn't say it. I didn't say work. Bread's tricky. Let's put it
• 1:33:20
  that way. It is Brandon has crossed a threshold into being a bread like
• 1:33:25
  wizard, but it took a lot of time, a lot a lot of
• 1:33:30
  time. We'll add the gluten free complication on top of that, right,
• 1:33:32
  that makes bread. Yeah, No, A big part of what he's learned
• 1:33:36
  is how to make the gluten work. So right, Yeah, so take
• 1:33:40
  gluten out of the equation. Whole different science, a whole different and it's
• 1:33:44
  not nearly developed either. So yeah, shall we return to things that will
• 1:33:47
  not get edited out? We have a nice public kiss kiss me. Yeah,
• 1:33:51
  yeah, full blown ninetive Land makeout session in the stable yard. It's
• 1:33:56
  great. Sometime later mm hmmm. In a lot of ways, it's sort
• 1:34:01
  of the last time they get sexy as hell, right, like, yeah,
• 1:34:05
  it's the last time that they interact in a meaningful way for the whole
• 1:34:09
  books. Mm hmmm mm hmmm. Nini doesn't trust Olivia, right, Land
• 1:34:15
  says Rand trust her, that's all I need to know. Which we went
• 1:34:18
  into that whole trust thing already, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then
• 1:34:21
  and then there's just this ridiculous series of lines from Robert jordan work. He
• 1:34:26
  thinks he's being tongue in cheek, the black stallions his calm as a writer.
• 1:34:30
  And now that Land was on his back, she could understand that Land
• 1:34:33
  had a very calming effect on her too. Usually sometimes it's exactly the opposite
• 1:34:40
  effect. I'm just like on her back, really, Jordan, Really,
• 1:34:45
  we're gonna we're gonna make we're gonna think about about Land and ninive in in
• 1:34:48
  that position. Huh. We're doing that. We're doing that, all right,
• 1:34:53
  Okay, well, very very clever, very subtle. No right,
• 1:34:57
  no, no, it was nothing subtle about that. Maybe I missed it
• 1:35:00
  as a kid, but no, these books came out after I was an
• 1:35:02
  adult. There it's like, okay, all right. And then and then,
• 1:35:08
  of course, while they're having this makeup session, and this discussion in
• 1:35:11
  the background. There is this like absolute comedy of them trying to get the
• 1:35:15
  horse sattled, and then the horse is called now that lands on. It's
• 1:35:17
  just like the way that this could visually be playing out is just even more
• 1:35:23
  comic than it is on the page if you actually blocked this out as like
• 1:35:26
  a stage production, like oh my god, everyone freaking out the background,
• 1:35:30
  and then like them lovingly kissing in the foreground, completely oblivious to everything going
• 1:35:35
  on, and then suddenly this just weirdly raunchy like moment with the horse,
• 1:35:43
  just like why why are we doing this? But it's just Robert Jordan would
• 1:35:45
  have wanted it that way because he literally wrote it, Oh you lady have
• 1:35:53
  too much free time, and you can finish that quote well, I still
• 1:36:00
  have yet to acquire a dog, so you know. So okay, there's
• 1:36:09
  there's something we are going on with the traveling weaves. Yep, two things
• 1:36:14
  going on traveling weaves. One the idea that she creates a weave that short
• 1:36:18
  enough that she forces them to dismount, unweaves it and reopens a weave that
• 1:36:24
  lets them remount that's tall enough for them to mount and go through. Second,
• 1:36:30
  how the fuck does she make a gateway at her destination? Are we
• 1:36:38
  in that retcon where if you make a gateway to somewhere that lets you know
• 1:36:41
  it well enough to then make a gateway anywhere else from that position. Yep,
• 1:36:45
  Yeah, yeah, we have crossed into retcon territory. Yeah, that's
• 1:36:50
  the only thing that explains it. And I think only what happens later is
• 1:36:54
  that you can do that short gateway, like if you can see where you're
• 1:36:57
  going, you can do a short hop, and that lets you know a
• 1:37:00
  place long enough to do the long hop exactly exactly right, And so now
• 1:37:03
  we're still you have to do long hop and then a long hop. But
• 1:37:06
  like she clearly knows well the place well enough to leave from her camp because
• 1:37:13
  she stays there. Yeah. I was imagining that the gateway was in the
• 1:37:16
  stable yard, but it's not. They have to ride out to where the
• 1:37:19
  traveling ground is. That's why they're up on their horses in the first place.
• 1:37:25
  But then she deliberately creates a gateway too short for them to ride through,
• 1:37:29
  so that Lamb has to dismount, but then he doesn't take the time
• 1:37:32
  to remount and dash through the thing after her. She can remount and and
• 1:37:39
  and do all that, like while he's busy staring at the ocean, I
• 1:37:42
  guess, which just seems very I don't know, I'm surprised that he is
• 1:37:45
  so slow on the uptake, but yeah, the fact that she simply gets
• 1:37:50
  off and weaves another gateway is feels wrong to me. Yeah, it feels
• 1:37:56
  like this is the beginning of the now we're being clever with gateways section,
• 1:38:00
  which like Sanderson obviously runs with, but this does feel like the beginning of
• 1:38:03
  Oh I didn't think of that loophole. How convenient because basically they walk through
• 1:38:08
  a hole in the air and then she makes it rotate to show a different
• 1:38:12
  location on the other end, but it's the same on this end, right,
• 1:38:15
  So it's like because she's learned this spot right because she made a place
• 1:38:17
  to it, so now she can like turn it around and make it open
• 1:38:20
  up the other way. But yeah, then she makes it bigger and remounts,
• 1:38:25
  which, like remounting without a mounting block or someone to help you up
• 1:38:29
  is actually kind of hard. Like I don't know if you've ever tried getting
• 1:38:31
  up onto a horse, but like it's a long way, like you have
• 1:38:34
  to put your leg really far up to get to the stirrup, Like,
• 1:38:39
  you have to be hell as strong to do that without some kind of boost
• 1:38:42
  or block or something. So I'm impressed she can do that. I mean,
• 1:38:45
  but they also ride all the time, every day they've been riding for
• 1:38:49
  how many years they've spent on the road. I give them some credit for
• 1:38:54
  being skilled riders at this point and able to boost themselves up into a saddle
• 1:38:59
  without a block. I suppose also she's niney she lifts herself up with pure
• 1:39:02
  stubbornness. It's fine, that's super valid, super valid. Or maybe she
• 1:39:08
  channeled the block, or maybe she channeled a little block of air right,
• 1:39:13
  she was actually channeling right, why not you know we have a block of
• 1:39:16
  air to step on two. I mean, honestly, that's what I'd be
• 1:39:18
  doing all the time as a short person. I would be steps tooling myself
• 1:39:23
  around with the power all the time. One possibility I thought of is that
• 1:39:27
  she's come here and stayed long enough to learn the place, and then wove
• 1:39:30
  a gateway back and so that that way when she goes, she can come
• 1:39:33
  back immediately. She explicitly went to a library to look at maps while Lamb
• 1:39:39
  was backing his bags. There's no way she had ended right right right.
• 1:39:43
  So of course Lamb like takes a few steps and like looks around and goes,
• 1:39:45
  wait a minute, wait a minute, this is Saldea where you put
• 1:39:49
  me in Washington. What's going on exactly? Like out on like the Olympic
• 1:39:55
  Peninsula, like way out on the far end of the Olympic Isla, Like
• 1:40:00
  it's so far away Nova Scotia. I love the Nova Scotia because Nova Scotia
• 1:40:08
  is where I was born. See this, here's here's my little mental right
• 1:40:12
  like here, Nova Scotia is my malchi air and I was born there,
• 1:40:15
  but I haven't gone back because I'm a king in exile. That's actually my
• 1:40:19
  story. I didn't want you to know. Don't tell anybody from what what?
• 1:40:25
  What kind of trollics have taken over in Nova Scotia lately? Bears.
• 1:40:30
  They're all bears up there. We all choose the bear, so let's go,
• 1:40:33
  let's go back to go. Would you choose the trollc that's the question.
• 1:40:42
  The trolls are man bears their boats, so that there's there's too much
• 1:40:46
  a man in the mix, man bear pig, So yeah, Ninieve says
• 1:40:56
  no goodbye kisses, because I am actually kind of dumping you right now,
• 1:41:00
  not right, yeah, Like I'm just like running away and leaving you annoyed,
• 1:41:04
  and you're gonna get over it by the time we see each other again.
• 1:41:08
  I mean, it's basically what Matt does to the Gallum, just a
• 1:41:11
  little less violent, a lot less falling, but yeah, very very similar.
• 1:41:16
  It's like, you go through the gateway and I'm not going to see
• 1:41:18
  you again. Yeah, And where do you think she where? Does she
• 1:41:20
  make the gateway too? When she bounces out? Do you think that she
• 1:41:25
  knew where she was going in Shinar or wherever? Yes, because again she
• 1:41:30
  was looking at the maps, right, So she's planning out her journey to
• 1:41:32
  go bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce right, because again,
• 1:41:35
  she makes the fucking gateways every time she goes to her destination. So she
• 1:41:40
  has a series of destinations that she's going to go to to set up the
• 1:41:45
  pathway basically for Land to be caught, because every place that he's going to
• 1:41:49
  stop on the way, she's like, look out for Land, He's coming
• 1:41:53
  right, right. And then the news is spreading and then you get people
• 1:41:56
  that are like out looking for him in the first place, and yeah,
• 1:41:58
  yeah, all of that, so yeah, I guess she just gateway to
• 1:42:01
  the next town one hundred miles over, next city center, then just yeah,
• 1:42:06
  worked her way to the east. So okay, So we switched to
• 1:42:24
  a POV, and it's a few hours past midday, midday. What time
• 1:42:28
  does she gateway him out? They gateway out around twilight at night. Or
• 1:42:32
  Land says that it is a few hours until twilight. Probably takes them an
• 1:42:38
  hour to get their stuff together and ride out, so it's getting on towards
• 1:42:41
  evening when they leave. And so yeah, when we do this POV switch
• 1:42:45
  here in a sec we're several hours later. This is perhaps not her first
• 1:42:50
  trip today or her first visit. This is perhaps one of the visits in
• 1:42:54
  the middle of her day because also they just traveled a good couple of time
• 1:42:59
  zones right by going all the way to the far western edge of the continent.
• 1:43:03
  Right, Yeah, it would have been quite a bit earlier. But
• 1:43:06
  this is a few hours past midday, so this is gonna be. This
• 1:43:11
  has gotta be the next day after she drops off Land, I could see
• 1:43:15
  her taking a whole day to do her golden crane seating across the continent,
• 1:43:20
  because it's a lot. I mean, she says she's got to be back
• 1:43:24
  in Tier by tonight, so I think she actually does it all on one
• 1:43:27
  day. She doesn't stay overnight anywhere. So I'm guessing that when she went
• 1:43:32
  west, this might actually be one of the first places she stops. And
• 1:43:38
  it is in the west, because where is this the queens Lands. Yeah,
• 1:43:43
  they're in cel Daia, They're on the sea wall. So she goes
• 1:43:45
  to So, yeah, she leaves land and goes to the nearest city center
• 1:43:48
  and that is where the next POV picks up is the nearest city center.
• 1:43:53
  And so yeah, because she went from early evening to midday. Yeah,
• 1:43:57
  she went from you know, Texas to Washington, a couple hours different.
• 1:44:02
  But that's not right. That's only a couple hours. Mm hmmm, Yeah,
• 1:44:06
  it shouldn't be that long. How many time zones are we talking in
• 1:44:10
  this in this context? Where were they? Oh gosh, what country were
• 1:44:15
  they in? Uh? Initially here? Yeah, that is that is diagonally
• 1:44:20
  across the continent. So if we assume that the continent is half a day's
• 1:44:27
  worth of time zones, then that works only a few hours past midday and
• 1:44:32
  early evening. Yeah, that could work. If it was a few hours
• 1:44:36
  past mid day, could be three. And if it was like twilight assumed,
• 1:44:41
  then that was six. So you know, from Florida to Washington would
• 1:44:46
  be three hours. Yeah, okay, i'll buy it. I'll buy it
• 1:44:49
  that with the time change, that works. But she goes directly from one
• 1:44:53
  place to the other. What's what this guy's name, al Dragorin is now
• 1:44:58
  al dragor In is how they say which dragon? And it's like okay,
• 1:45:02
  so they have one name, right, okay, all right? What I
• 1:45:10
  feel like it's almost a joke about like the Irish how it's all like O'Brien
• 1:45:13
  or sure you know some some sort of like everyone there has the same last
• 1:45:18
  name where it sounds all the same because they're all related to each other.
• 1:45:21
  So he's definitely Malcary. I'm silly commentary on regional names. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:45:27
  yeah, that's how you can tell it's malchurri Is because it sounds almost
• 1:45:29
  like Land's name. H that's my best guess, I'll take it. So
• 1:45:33
  he is a jewel merchant, This Wylin al Drageron and Waylon al Drageron and
• 1:45:43
  he's a jewel merchant. He's leveraging his reputation as a big, scary Malchiri
• 1:45:47
  who were apparently all seen as like violent people, which seems like a strange
• 1:45:54
  reputation to have, but whatever, it gets him a good sale. He's
• 1:45:58
  a vibe and he's all about the shiny. He's fine. He's fine.
• 1:46:01
  Yeah, he's fine. I mean, I feel like Malchierre in a world
• 1:46:05
  of borderlands full of violence, Malchierre living on their own and the ones that
• 1:46:09
  are still alive or surviving without a lot of support, like they're gonna be
• 1:46:13
  unexpectedly violent occasionally, like not often, but enough to get a reputation,
• 1:46:18
  right, Like yeah, and he's like just rides the reputation where he's not
• 1:46:24
  actually that kind of person. He was a toddler when the war happened.
• 1:46:28
  He just has it because his uncles has the headory, because his uncles gave
• 1:46:30
  it to him. Like, but you know, he he vibes on his
• 1:46:34
  like a little bit of cultural heritage. It's like, oh, that's cool.
• 1:46:38
  Whatever. I thought. He was pretty skilled with the sword, right,
• 1:46:45
  He's seldom been forced to the sword, which means he has and it
• 1:46:48
  was widely known that he could and would, so I imagine him to be
• 1:46:51
  highly trained. And I don't imagine his uncle's giving him the door unless he'd
• 1:46:56
  earned it. I imagine he has the ability to fight. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:47:00
  it's this sudden, unpredictable violence that I'm like, he doesn't seem like
• 1:47:02
  an unpredictably violent person. He seems like a very predictably violent person. Like
• 1:47:08
  if you fuck with him, he will you will find out, right right.
• 1:47:12
  I think it's just the reputation of like when he just when Malkire decided
• 1:47:15
  to be violent, they finish it. Yeah, And there's also this idea
• 1:47:18
  that they're all super traumatized by the loss of Malkir and like, you know,
• 1:47:23
  the Eyes to Die, like won't participate with the White or the Channelers
• 1:47:26
  won't participate with the White Tower anymore, and like the men are just like
• 1:47:30
  angry and violent, Like they've all got this big trauma basically from the loss
• 1:47:34
  of Malkire, and no one wants to mess with that traumatized bear. And
• 1:47:40
  so we sort of get to go with him on this whole transition where he's
• 1:47:45
  selling a bunch of gems for more than he thought he would get them for.
• 1:47:49
  It's a fun world building like general day in the life kind of scene.
• 1:47:55
  Yeah, yeah, he sells de lely hoanors and goes, I don't
• 1:47:57
  think they have enough guards for the amount of gems they've got. I don't
• 1:48:00
  have to worry because I'm malchiere, but they have to worry because they're gonna
• 1:48:02
  get robbed. There's a bunch of robbers out because things have gotten worse,
• 1:48:06
  right, and the weirdness of like why are your bodyguards carrying your wealth?
• 1:48:10
  Like how are they going to guard your body if they're holding the lock box?
• 1:48:13
  Like it's just it's silly, but whatever, they're illly owners. I
• 1:48:15
  don't care racism, And so then uh, he shows up, and then
• 1:48:19
  this woman shows up with a bunch of incomprehensible jewelry with gems he doesn't recognize.
• 1:48:25
  Some gems he recognizes, others he doesn't. And then there's one piece
• 1:48:29
  of jewelry that like freaks him out, and then his eyes jerk to her
• 1:48:31
  face, and then he suffers his second shot because she's got the red dut
• 1:48:35
  and it's like a whole achirie thing, and we're all just like it's a
• 1:48:39
  nighty, but we're getting to see her from a total stranger's perspective, which
• 1:48:44
  is always fun and just like all the levels up, she's gone from like
• 1:48:47
  rural village wisdom to isid eye with battle armor, married dot silk dress.
• 1:48:57
  Just ready and just like ready is just rolling up right, let's get yeah,
• 1:49:06
  let's see. Yeah, all her spell slots are full. She is
• 1:49:09
  ready to go. And so she basically says, I want you to send
• 1:49:15
  uh, you've got a bunch of pigeons right like you and which because you
• 1:49:18
  have to keep the pigeons because they have to fly back to the place of
• 1:49:21
  origin, right, so you have to get that sort of delivery, and
• 1:49:27
  like you have to find somebody with a lot of pigeons. So she's saying,
• 1:49:30
  basically, and your malchiary, right. So she's looking for malchiary who
• 1:49:33
  has a lot of correspondence, and she's mostly just looking for whoever has the
• 1:49:36
  most correspondence, and because reasons, it happens to be a Malchiri. Man.
• 1:49:43
  I don't think she's looking for malchyri per se. I think that she
• 1:49:46
  just took advantage of that. Well. I think she was going to make
• 1:49:50
  this pitch to anyone who seems to have borderland or pride, and because plot
• 1:49:55
  reasons, the first one she found had a head doory, so she was
• 1:49:58
  able to lean in super hard. But I don't know. Maybe she was
• 1:50:00
  seeking out Malchyri specifically. I don't think so, though, because she makes
• 1:50:04
  the appeal to all the Borderlanders, because she saw how the fal Darins responded
• 1:50:09
  to Land in book one, and so yeah, he basically says, you
• 1:50:13
  know, she says, you recognize this, and of course he does.
• 1:50:15
  It's Land's ring and like knowing that because he's like, that's a lot of
• 1:50:19
  messages, but I'll do it, and she's like, okay, but also
• 1:50:21
  extra spice, you recognize this other ring, Like first you recognize the one
• 1:50:26
  ring, Now you gotta recognize this other ring, the golden crane that authenticates
• 1:50:31
  her message, because without that second ring, it wouldn't be authentic, right,
• 1:50:36
  And of course that message is my name is ninive Ti Almira Mandrager.
• 1:50:42
  And the message I once sent is this my husband rides from World's End toward
• 1:50:46
  Tarwin's Gap, toward Tarma Guiden. Will he ride alone? Land told me
• 1:50:54
  once that Malkir lives so long as one man wears the hidori In pledge that
• 1:50:58
  he will fight the Shadow. So long as one woman wears the Kais sign
• 1:51:01
  in pledge that she will send her sons to fight the Shadow. I wear
• 1:51:06
  the Kai sign Master Al Dragar, and my husband wears the HADORI. So
• 1:51:11
  do you will, Land men Dragon and ride to the last battle alone.
• 1:51:16
  Ah, I'm tearing up. I'm tearing up. Yeah, just sacrifice and
• 1:51:26
  the sending someone to battle and bringing up the ghost of a dead country to
• 1:51:30
  fight for her husband, this thing that he thought was abandoned and that she
• 1:51:34
  knows is not and is basically supplying the rallying call of the thing that he
• 1:51:39
  has given up. And like Land knows that there are remnants out there,
• 1:51:44
  but he has always said basically, there's so few of us left. If
• 1:51:48
  I lead us into battle, I will I will lead the extinction of the
• 1:51:53
  rest of the Malkire. Yeah. And basically the malk here are responding and
• 1:51:59
  saying, yeah, that's our right, just like Manethain did way back in
• 1:52:02
  the day. Yeah. I mean technically they didn't go extinct, but they
• 1:52:06
  made that choice to risk it all in the same way. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:52:11
  And she's giving Land the one thing that he desperately needs but can't give
• 1:52:15
  himself. Which is the support of the borderlands. What he needs is all
• 1:52:19
  the borderlands to rally around him because he is Aragorn and he needs to,
• 1:52:25
  you know, unite the kingdoms of men, and he just can't bring himself
• 1:52:30
  to do that. He just can't. But she can. And who's the
• 1:52:34
  perfect person to unite the kingdoms, right, the one who doesn't lead a
• 1:52:39
  kingdom, all the rest of them can follow because he's no threat. He
• 1:52:44
  doesn't have his own armies, he doesn't have his own a throne, but
• 1:52:47
  he has the authority of having that throne. Yeah, and the skills of
• 1:52:53
  being raised basically as a fighter in the border lands and being a warder,
• 1:52:57
  and like warders are people the stories made of, so like he's a king
• 1:53:00
  in a warder and it's just, you know, he's got all the legends
• 1:53:05
  that he could have. If anyone was going to be a freaking hero of
• 1:53:11
  the Horn, I thought Land would be on that list, right, And
• 1:53:14
  ninieve you know, she fails to heal Rand the land in and of itself,
• 1:53:19
  but she does resurrect a nation basically, Like I mean, that's that's
• 1:53:27
  pretty good. It's not healing the entire planet as a whole, but resurrecting
• 1:53:31
  a nation out of sheer gumption is an accomplishment and in a lot of ways,
• 1:53:39
  she is the mother to the next generation, like literally and you know,
• 1:53:45
  metaphorically, the mother to the next generation of malcare. Yeah, however
• 1:53:48
  many babies she has or doesn't have, she will be seen as the mother
• 1:53:53
  of the nation for the next several centuries of Malchaire. And we do know
• 1:53:59
  it comes back because it's cleansed during the last battle. It becomes livable land
• 1:54:02
  again, and yep, it gets renewed. And I'm assuming there's a fair
• 1:54:06
  amount of immigration. Oh yeah, yeah. A lot of parts of the
• 1:54:11
  world have been ravaged and are a mess, and people want to spread out,
• 1:54:15
  and the shan Chand threat is still going to be a thing, like,
• 1:54:16
  oh yeah, there's going to be a lot of people who want to
• 1:54:19
  go homesteady in the newly deep lighted malk Here. Not to mention it's close
• 1:54:24
  to the Ieal nation, right, the old Ieal nation, and Rudian is
• 1:54:29
  pretty close. Actually it's malk Here, although everything's close now because we've got
• 1:54:32
  gateways. But yeah, yeah, she's that's going to be a nation of
• 1:54:38
  pioneers who don't have to do anything problematic to be pioneers. They can just
• 1:54:44
  go move into new Land and it'll be great. And then I want to
• 1:54:47
  read the next paragraph. Yeah, he was laughing, shaking with it,
• 1:54:50
  and yet he could feel tears rolling down his cheeks. It was madness,
• 1:54:55
  complete madness, but he could not help himself. I cannot Dan Surety for
• 1:55:00
  anyone else, but I swear to you, under the light and by my
• 1:55:03
  hope of rebirth and salvation, he will not ride alone for a moment.
• 1:55:09
  She studied his face and then nodded once firmly and turned away. He flung
• 1:55:13
  out a hand after her. May I offer you wine, my lady.
• 1:55:16
  My wife will want to meet you. Alydia was Saldean, but she definitely
• 1:55:21
  would want to meet the wife of the uncrowned king. Thank you, Master.
• 1:55:27
  I'll Dragrin, but I have several more towns to visit today, and
• 1:55:30
  I must be back in tier tonight. He blinked at her back as she
• 1:55:32
  glided towards the door, gathering her cloak. She had several more towns to
• 1:55:36
  visit today, and she had to be back in Tear tonight. Truly,
• 1:55:42
  I said I were capable of marvels silence, hung in the common room.
• 1:55:47
  They had not been keeping their voices low, and even the girl with the
• 1:55:50
  dulcimer had ceased playing her hammers. Everyone was staring at him. Most of
• 1:55:56
  the outlanders had their mouths hanging open. Well Managan Coronellan, he demanded,
• 1:56:02
  do you still remember who you are? Do you still do you remember your
• 1:56:05
  blood? Who rides with me for Tarwin's Gap. For a moment, he
• 1:56:11
  thought neither man would speak, But then Goronellan was on his feet, tears
• 1:56:15
  glistening in his eyes. The golden Crane flies for Tarman Guiden, he said
• 1:56:20
  softly. The Golden Crane flies for Tarman Guiden. Managan shouted, leaping up
• 1:56:27
  so fast he overturned his share, laughing. Al Drageran joined them, all
• 1:56:31
  three shouting at the top of their lungs. The Golden Crane flies for Tarmin
• 1:56:36
  Guiden. I love it. I love it, I fucking love it.
• 1:56:42
  And everyone likes that. Everyone cheered, Everyone had a good time. Yeah,
• 1:56:46
  I'm tearing up a little bit reading that. It is. It's just
• 1:56:49
  so good. It is the announcement. It is the final battle, right,
• 1:56:54
  Tarman Guiden has begun. The Golden Crane flies for Tarman Guiden. Yeah,
• 1:56:59
  it's the beginning of the last Battle that we have been promised so many
• 1:57:01
  times. And I am so happy Robert Jordan started the last battle. Yes,
• 1:57:06
  in his writing, Yes, it's that. It's not some subtle Oh,
• 1:57:11
  you can point to exactly this moment because we're spoilers and we can subtly
• 1:57:15
  tell and d Then Sanderson got to actually blow the trumpets. No, Jordan
• 1:57:18
  got to say, here it is. This is the moment. I'm the
• 1:57:23
  gun is going off to start the race, like here we go. And
• 1:57:27
  it to have it be in his pros, knowing that this is the last
• 1:57:30
  book we get from him is really special. And that ends the chapter,
• 1:57:34
  and that ends the chapter. Two and a half hours of recording. This
• 1:57:39
  has been a doozy, but it deserved it. The Golden Crane deserved that
• 1:57:45
  kind of time. It was a long chapter. Yeah, next chapter is
• 1:57:48
  not a short one either. Right. We are in the Jordan lance,
• 1:57:53
  right, we are in the ending of this book where everything is significant and
• 1:58:00
  I am here for it and I love it, and we are I don't
• 1:58:02
  care if we have long recordings. It's great, it's great, it's fantastic.
• 1:58:06
  It's my schedule hates it, but it's fine. I just stopped being
• 1:58:12
  such a funk off and everything will be fine. It's fantastic. I'm so
• 1:58:16
  glad that we're here. It's really great, having a having a great,
• 1:58:20
  great time. Okay, recording us on and I want to ask you,
• 1:58:58
  did you see the Northern lights? A No. I woke up. I
• 1:59:02
  woke up, and I looked out my window and I was in the middle
• 1:59:06
  of the city and I could see nothing because I really couldn't see the horizon
• 1:59:13
  and everything was pretty lit up, and so I didn't really go outside and
• 1:59:17
  look. Apparently my coworkers who worked night shift said they did go outside and
• 1:59:21
  they could see it in the sky especially, and they took pictures of it,
• 1:59:25
  and it was there. And I regret not going outside and actually taking
• 1:59:29
  a closer look now that I know, I assumed it was just one of
• 1:59:31
  those things where they said it might be visible, and I looked up and
• 1:59:34
  it wasn't visible. So you know, there's no real point in like putting
• 1:59:39
  in a lot of effort. Plus I had to work it four point thirty
• 1:59:41
  in the morning, and it was just I literally woke up in the middle
• 1:59:44
  of the night and was like I don't want to wake up. So I
• 1:59:46
  had that moment and h yeah, no, no, I have regrets that
• 1:59:50
  I didn't actually see it or get to take pictures of it, because I
• 1:59:54
  love night sky phenomen mountain like that, and the whole science behind it is
• 1:59:58
  really freaking cool, and yeah, how about you do you get to see
• 2:00:01
  it? Kinda yeah? I do live, like I said, you know,
• 2:00:06
  I live out in the country, so it is ostensibly dark, but
• 2:00:10
  our neighbors have this thing where they have porch lights that are bright and they
• 2:00:15
  don't feel like turning them off, and so we kind of had those beaming
• 2:00:19
  into our eyeballs when we went to look to the northeast and that was great.
• 2:00:25
  But we went out originally and there was this weird, milky white glow
• 2:00:30
  that was almost like clouds, but it was kind of different, and we're
• 2:00:33
  like, all right, weird. We went back in waited until like eleven
• 2:00:36
  or whatever when it was supposed to happen, and then we turned off all
• 2:00:39
  the lights in our house and went outside and looked and there was totally like
• 2:00:44
  pulses of red and green lights in the sky. We couldn't see it like
• 2:00:46
  properly, like it wasn't like the curtains. It really was felt very lackluster
• 2:00:51
  because these photons from our neighbors just kept beaming us straight in the eyeball.
• 2:00:56
  We should have like tried to find somewhere darker, but we did see it.
• 2:01:00
  It was a faint but definitely happening thing and it was very very cool.
• 2:01:04
  But lots of our neighbors posted better pictures than what we saw because they
• 2:01:10
  just had a darker vantage to stand out. And then it totally didn't come
• 2:01:14
  the second night at all. So but no, it was eerie to see
• 2:01:17
  it, and it was just like an eclipse. It was amazing to know
• 2:01:21
  what was happening while also seeing something that just broke my monkey brain just like
• 2:01:26
  my animal brain was like that. I'm like, ah, sights it was.
• 2:01:30
  It was very fantastic, And that's why I want it because I that
• 2:01:32
  happened during the eclipse, because I saw the moon as a spherical object hanging
• 2:01:38
  in the sky and it broke my brain a little bit, and like you
• 2:01:42
  know, you sort of see the three dnus of it, and like that's
• 2:01:45
  something I wanted again with the lights and I didn't get to And sometimes I
• 2:01:49
  wish I wasn't so tired all the time, yea, And that didn't have
• 2:01:54
  to work at you know, early hours, and that I had time to
• 2:01:57
  stay up late and then sleep in the next day. And by the way,
• 2:02:00
  Patreon sport, Yeah, yeah, no, it's just man, yeah,
• 2:02:09
  I mean you were saying before, you know, the atmosphere is really
• 2:02:11
  really thin. But like the sense of unreality that the lights give you is
• 2:02:15
  how thick the atmosphere is compared to what we are, right, It's you
• 2:02:19
  know, you see the eclipse, you see how round the moon is,
• 2:02:24
  you see the northern lights, you see how tall the atmosphere is, which
• 2:02:27
  is like, it is very, very very thin. But also we are
• 2:02:30
  so infinitesimal compared to the planet. You look at the planet, you're like,
• 2:02:34
  oh, yeah, the skin is really thin, and it's like,
• 2:02:36
  and how small are the little tiny particles that claim to know what's going on?
• 2:02:41
  Right? You know, it's a tall atmosphere. Turns out, uh
• 2:02:45
  huh. And size is relative, right, Like the thickness of the atmosphere
• 2:02:49
  compared to the size of the globe versus the thickness of the atmosphere compared to
• 2:02:54
  the size of us, Right, like two very different things. And also
• 2:02:58
  just we're at this weird place in the middle of the size spectrum. Yeah,
• 2:03:03
  I've read a really interesting book a long time ago. I think I
• 2:03:08
  still have it, called The View from the Center of the Universe m And
• 2:03:12
  it was like, isn't it strange that we are smack dab in the middle
• 2:03:16
  of the size scale? Isn't that just a little interesting? I mean,
• 2:03:23
  in the same way that we're smack dab in the middle of the visible universe?
• 2:03:27
  Right, Like it's like, of course we're we can measure things about
• 2:03:31
  as relatively small as we can relatively but I know what you're saying, Like
• 2:03:34
  he said that the smallest thing is the plank length. The biggest thing is
• 2:03:38
  the size of the visible universe, right, and we're like basically right in
• 2:03:43
  the middle a lot rhythmically, Yeah, yeah, And I mean in the
• 2:03:45
  book, I think also did go into and we can also see equally in
• 2:03:49
  all directions, so we're literally in the center of the universe. It was
• 2:03:51
  just they were finding all these different ways in which to be like, we're
• 2:03:55
  in the middle. Is that not a profoundly interesting thing? And it was
• 2:04:00
  like, yeah, I mean I was like nineteen and I read it I
• 2:04:03
  was like, Wow, this is blowing my mind. Every single thing that
• 2:04:09
  they take this lens to. We're in the middle of the thing, yet
• 2:04:13
  again, like what the fuck? Like this is weird. I mean they
• 2:04:16
  came to some conclusions that were weird, but like you know, most of
• 2:04:21
  the book was just asking the question, which was like super valid. Yeah,
• 2:04:26
  I sometimes I wonder how much of that is just selection? Right,
• 2:04:29
  Like what do we see? We see things equal distance from us, so
• 2:04:32
  it looks like we're in the center. Well, that's the kind of the
• 2:04:35
  question, right, is this a coincidence or is this like is this something
• 2:04:39
  grander than a conceit of the limitations of existing? Like is this true?
• 2:04:45
  Or is this just an illusion of our perspective? Like that is the question.
• 2:04:49
  I saw an interesting one that was talking about how the axis of the
• 2:04:55
  solar system right on which we spin is aligned with something called the axis of
• 2:05:00
  evil in the galaxy. Go watch the video. It's doctor Becky on YouTube.
• 2:05:06
  Anyway, Uh, it's cut. Most of that same kind of thing
• 2:05:12
  is just like the weirdness of how the moon is about the Moon and the
• 2:05:16
  Earth or the right size to make eclipses on each other, right right,
• 2:05:20
  right, These weird coincidence. Yeah, that's just it looks so intentional,
• 2:05:27
  like what what hmmm hmmm. It's just like you put all these things together
• 2:05:31
  and you're like, this this poses some existentially disturbing questions. It's fun stuff.
• 2:05:40
  I think it poses questions about how people find patterns and things, but
• 2:05:44
  which is also existentially disturbing in my opinion. Right, there's no way to
• 2:05:48
  collect all that information and not come away feeling like the ground's a little unstable,
• 2:05:53
  like either about the human psyche or about the world at large. One
• 2:05:56
  way or another, you're like, what's what? Hmmm? Well, and
• 2:06:00
  the more I learned about both, the more I realize how little we understand
• 2:06:02
  about both. True, so true, so true. Thank you for listening
• 2:06:09
  to The Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast. Rate us in the Apple Podcast app,
• 2:06:14
  or support us on Patreon. Is that good enough?