A Choice - Towers of Midnight chapter20 - EP556 - WoT Spoilers

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
This recording is going to be long as fuck, but
it's on. And then we have the other podcasts. I've
already got a picture from Doctor Pants. Thank y'all excellent.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Like the student that always turns in the homework at
the beginning of class and still instead of waiting for
the teacher to be like, hey, go ahead and turn
in your homework, it's like sitting there on the desk.
Not that it's all work. I really appreciate it, but
they always look so good, right, Yeah, Well, you know
I was a teacher. I like to be clear about

(00:51):
what the expectations are. I'm going to tell you what
I'm going to tell you that I'm going to tell you,
and I'm going to tell you what I told you.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I have applied that strategy to the used to SEW
podcast to do a little intro outro that like describes
what the episode will be and then what we covered
in the episode, like based on notes that I took
as I'm editing, you know, fractling outwardthing. But I was like,
I wanted to be very because like, especially when we started,
my mom often didn't really do much of an intro.
She would just go right into it, and I was like,
that's a little abrupt, totally, like we need an on

(01:19):
ramp into this. And now it's like a whole like
part of the rhythm of creating them. It's like, well,
there has to be a little capstone bookend thing to it.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
And I feel like with us, it's like we're doing
this chapter right like and that sort of is usually
our lead in because we don't have to do much
more than that.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, yeah, this is a very unique format.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, the prereinstructure of going through chapter by chapter is
certainly it gives us a structure that we didn't have
to invent ourselves.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Speaking structure, we're here today to do Nainieve's testing, which
is exciting.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Very exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
One of the the very first appearance I ever made
on this show was for her accepted test.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh wow, yeah, it's been that long since she was accepted.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, that was my very first scratchy connection into the show,
first time caller, short time listener. So it's like, yet again,
we're coming full circle around to something that reminds me
of the very first time I joined in. Now we're
here for her SHAWL test, which you know, we haven't
seen a Shawl test since New Spring, right, so we
will be referring to the New Spring set of chapters

(02:23):
quite a bit as we go through this, which is.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Going to be chapter nine and ten in New Spring
if you'd like to read along. But that was Moraine's
rising up to I said, I because we haven't seen
anybody else.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
No, those are the only two do we ever get?
And yeah, Moraines was about twenty years ago. None of
these women were necessarily involved in her raising because a
sitters of them weren't even eyes to die at the time.
Like a lot of the form of the test is
the same, not just the ritual, but like the kinds
of things they put her through. And Sanderson was obviously

(02:56):
cribbing from that. I think it makes sense in world
canonically that everyone will have to deal with an insect phobia.
I feel like you don't have to be a lazy
writer to like go for insect as like a thing
to torture people with. But Sanderson clearly did more than
follow the bare minimum of compatibility. He did a lot
of copy and paste in some ways.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
There was He definitely had New Spring open while he
was writing this chapter. Suicide by side. There's no doubt
in my mind, right, Like, there's too many similarities, and
including the one little error we found which got corrected. Teaser. Yeah,
but yeah, it's it's very clear that, like those two
are are he's using that as a template. And so
a lot of the environment, a lot of the approach,

(03:36):
a lot of the walk down, a lot of the
description of the terran rial, a lot of the structure
of going from star to star, all of that comes
from very obviously New Spring.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, so with that, I will start the reading for
chapter twenty a choice and the symbol is a six
pointed star set into tile.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Which I believe. Also, yeah, this is also the star
in New Spring, right, Okay, that makes sense in that chapter.
So you know, but I don't think we've seen it
very many other times. I think maybe once or twice
until I runri odd. It's a rare chapter icon.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, because it's got a very specific use case. You
have to be in a very specific headspace in order
to have the star apply.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
According to Encyclopedia Watt, there are only two chapters with
this icon.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Oh, this and the Testing.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
New Spring chapter nine.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yep, Okay, there you have it. It's literally an icon
created for this specific context of doing an isidye test.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
Which, for as much as I've complained about the icons,
I'm glad to see one that's like a kind of
rare instead of just another wolf dragon dice one.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
It could have been the Flame of Tarball one.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Right, Yeah, that's yeah, totally they could have done that
without a problem, the White Flame.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
All right, I read. You must not speak, Rozil said
to Nineve, the slender, long necked woman worn orange dress
slashed with yellow. At least speak only when spoken to,
you know the ceremony. Ninieve nodded, her heart beating treacherously
as they walked into the dungeon like depths of the
White Tower. Rosil was the new mistress of Novices and

(05:14):
a member of the Yellow Ajia. By coincidence, excellent excellent
Rosill said, might I suggest you move the ring to
the third finger of your left hand? You may suggest it,
Nineve said, but did not move the ring. She had
been named eyes today she would knock youve in on
that point. Roseill pursed her lips but said nothing further.

(05:36):
The woman had shown nine remarkable kindness during her short
time in the White Tower, which had been a relief.
Nineve had grown to expect that every Yellow sister would
regard her with disdain or at least indifference. Oh, they
thought she was talented, and many insistently being trained by her,
but they did not think of her as one of them.
Not yet.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
This woman was different, and being a burr in her
sandal was a good repayment. It is important to me, Rosil.
Ninieve explained that I not give any indication of disrespect
for the omrelin she named me eyes Sadai. To act
as if I were merely accept it would be to
undermine her words. This test is important. When the Omelin
raised me, she never said I need not be tested,

(06:19):
but I am eyes to die. Rosil cocked her head,
then nodded, yes, I see you are correct. Ninieve stopped
in the dim corridor. I want to thank you and
the others who have welcomed me these last days, Nier
and Marramore. I had not assumed I would find acceptance
here among you. There are some who resist change, dear

(06:42):
Rosil said, it will ever be so. But your new
weaves are impressive. More importantly, they're effective that earns you
a warm welcome from me nineve smiled. Now Rosil said,
raising a finger, you might be eyes to die in
the eyes of the Omelin in the tower, but tradition
and still holds no speaking for the rest of the ceremony.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Please.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
I had to do it through that read because it's
so funny, just the whiplash.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, I feel like it's we're attempding to redeem the
Isidye at this point in the story, right, We're tending
to show that they're not all bigoted, they're not all dumb,
they can't adapt to change. The ones that are left,
at least are a slightly better group than the ones
we've gotten rid of. We don't have a bunch of
black odd jaw sisters to be you know, mysteriously surly,
we don't have just a lot of problems that were

(07:32):
in the White Tower before, right, And you know, and
I think also there's a little bit of Brandon Sanderson
just trying to be like there are good ones. You know.
He does it with Bavara, he's doing it now with Rosil, right,
and these other two yellows who are supportive of Ninive.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
And I'm assuming those two names must be some fans
because two random names that have no particular.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, I'm meant to look that up when I do it.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Really, I think Rozil is a character that like just
exists in her own right.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Rosill has been around for a while. She's been Mistress
of Novices. She was appointed by Agwaine as Mistress of Novices,
and she has a couple of scenes that she's in,
including this one.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, and she was mentioned before this point, Yes, or Sanderson, so.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
Nier's name for a fan of the Wheel of Time
named Deborah whose user name was Nier Alman.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Nice. Nice, And then let me look up Marra Moore.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
Whenever I copy stuff out of eyebooks, it always puts
this big long disclaimer in the copy, so then I
got to pack even though copying one word, it pasts
like two sentences into the thing, Like I'm just trying
to copy a name? Why is copying paste like that?
Do not have a similar note about Marra Moore in
the wiki?

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Huh?

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Let me see if I google it. Nope, nothing, Huh.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Well, I'm going to assume that's a loss to detail
rather than a name that got made it for no reason.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
I mean, it's entirely possible that, like Sanderson, had names
in place, and then when he was able to give
people's name to just a RaSE names and replace them
and maybe it's not both of them, maybe just one person.
I don't know. Hard to say, Yeah, it's weird. It's
hard to say. It's hard to say. The documentation on
that isn't the strongest.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
So yeah, and I need's got the jitters. And they're
heading into a space that we have seen before. It's big,
it's imposing, and Ninive has to tell us directly that
it is a symbol of how big and imposing, because
that wasn't as obvious.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Right right? Oh man, I almost I almost feel like
I need to read the two sentences in the two
books just to get a kind of a comparison of
the writing style differences.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Do that because it's very obvious between these two. These
two moments are like a perfect laboratory to show the difference.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
So here's Sanderson's. Eventually, they arrived at a pair of
doors so large that Rosael had to use the one
power to open them in indication I need thought, folding
her arms, the vaunted hallways, the enormous door. This is
here to show accept the importance of what they are
about to do the enormous skate like doors swung open,
and I need forced herself to master her jitters. The
last battle was looming. She would pass this test. Here's

(10:09):
Jordan on the very lowest level. Marine stopped before paired
doors larger than any they had passed, as tall and
wide as fortress gates, but polished to glistening and lacking
iron straps. The Isidi channeled and flows of air swung
the doors open silently on well oiled hinges. Taking a
deep breath, Moraine followed her into a large round dome chamber.

(10:30):
So different, so different.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
One of them feels elegant and streamlined, and it was
not the first one.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
It really Yeah, there's a certain amount of just like
here's the door is so large, Rosa had to use
the one power to open them versus huge doors lacking straps,
isidi channeled. Right, those are all three of those are
statements of fact. This one says because of this, therefore
that right, And I feel like that's the real like

(11:00):
in one little statement, that's the difference between the two authors.
Sanderson will often say this happens because of that. Jordan
will give you both of those facts and trust you
to make the connection that one of those happens because
of the other one, and that also lets him give
you those facts in widely different places in the story,

(11:21):
and then you get the the enjoyment of discovering that
they're linked if you're paying attention. Yeah, Sanderson will always say, oh, yeah,
I'm bringing this up because remember back in chapter three
when I said this other thing, that's.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Why, right, And it feels so out of character for
Ninive to be like, Wow, they're really using the architecture
to like impress upon the accepted the importance of what
they're gonna do. Like that's not the kind of like
psychoanalytics that Ninive ever engages in. She's like, these people
are dumb and I want to hit them, Like that's
how Naive approaches things. Like maybe it's because she's so nervous.

(11:55):
She's like looking at weird, strange details and thinking about
them in weird ways. But it just feel so like
Nineve would never psychoanalyze the size of the doors. That's
just not what she does.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
And then okay, I have to keep doing comparisons. Right.
Head rised high. She entered the chamber. It was domed
with stand lamps around the perimeter. A large chair on
Grioll dominated the center. It was an oval, narrowed at
the top and bottom that sat unsupported. Many Tearranngrioll looked ordinary.
That was not the case here. This oval was obviously
something worked by the One Power. It was made of metal,

(12:29):
but the light changed colors as it reflected off the
silvery sides, making the thing seemed to glow and shift.
Going back to Jordan, blinking, her eyes went immediately to
the object center beneath the nome, a great oval ring,
narrow at top and bottom, its rounded rim little thicker
than her arm, well above a span in height and
perhaps a pace across at its widest. It glittered in

(12:52):
the lamplight, now silver, now gold, or green or blue,
with swirls of all, never the same. For more than
a moment, and a seemingly impossibility, it stood unsupported. That
was a Tarran Greal, a device made to use the
One Power in the long ago age of legends. Within it,
she would be tested, She would not fail.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
More similar, but I still see the same thing. Where
Jordan is making statements than Sanderson is making conclusions like
Jordan's just saying stuff and letting you connect it, whereas
Sanderson is really leading you. It's less obvious in that
those two passages than the other pair we looked at,
but it's still there.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
And for this one, I would say it's more that
the huge Sanderson gives us a very simplistic description of
an oval made of metal with changing colors. Jordan gave
us a full paragraph about the way the colors shifted
and the beauty and the silvery sides, and how high
it was and how wide it was and the thickness.

(13:50):
And this is just again, just the beauty in the
description of that versus Yeah, it's a fucking oval, right,
It's an oval that changes colors, you know, And I
just justs a joy in the description of a beautiful object.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Journey over Destination.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah, come on, Sanderson, you wrote that.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
I know, I know. Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
It's just it's a very interesting way to compare. We
don't often get to do a one to one comparison
in the scenes from Sanderson to Jordan. Right. Oftentimes we're
kind of saying, like, well, this is parents, it's probably Sanderson,
and like this feels more like Jordan. But here we
can really compare, Like the different way they attack. They
described the exact same scene, the exact same room, and

(14:38):
essentially the same thing happening at the same time.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
And you know that Jordan was gonna write this. This
is not a scene that Sanderson like decided would be cool.
Like everyone knew that Ninevea was gonna get and accept
was going to get her eyes to dietest. It was
probably going to be seen on page. Like, Jordan definitely
had some sketched out ideas of how this was going
to go from you years and years ago, right, Like

(15:01):
this was pretty much a foregone conclusion, unlike all the
parent stuff where it's like, eh, figure it out.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
I would agree with you that he probably knew he
was going to do this. I bet there was no
notes on.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
It, sure, but like you know, Land's going to be
a big part of it. You know it's going to
be one of the hardest tests ever administered. Right, there's
certain aspects of it that like Jordan's set us up
to know the conditions.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
Yes, absolutely, but no, you're.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Right he probably didn't actually write any of it because
it's like, well, I'll get there when I get there,
I don't need to write notes. I know what's going
to happen, like obviously.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
So Ninie's thinking to herself that Agwayne's going to be
among the most harsh, and she's correct.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, she's got all sitters, which would already make it harsh,
But then she's also got the Omerlin who's going to
be extra harsh, because I mean, this is this is
the Iel Omerlin in so many ways, you know, like,
this is going to be harsh. She's going to hold
her to an ieal level of standard.

Speaker 3 (15:50):
This in a way, though, takes me back to Agwayne
bringing up the trolocks in the World of Dreams on Ninive. Oh,
which I hate to reference that because that's an awful scene,
but like that, Agwayne didn't have to be there. Yeah,
she could have stayed away. And if she'd stayed away,

(16:11):
she wouldn't have had to be extra harsh on Ninive
and Niive wouldn't have had the two revers thing, she
wouldn't have had the land thing. And Agwaine's like, well,
I I wanted to be there to stop it. Well
you should have fucking stopped at them. Yeah, there is
a level of abuse to Agwayne being here That brings
me back to that moment that just it pisses me off.
It pisses me off a little bit that she's here,

(16:32):
in this moment administering the worst, most personal shit against
Ninive under the excuse that, well, it's expected of me
to be the harshest if I'm going to be here,
which I don't have to be here.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, to prove that I was right to raise you,
you need to suffer this abuse to prove to the
others that I was right. Yeah, being thrown back in
the ring with your abuser being so unapologetic like that
is a little rude. And then yeah, like when at
the end and Sarah says that was downright vengeful, and
you look at the other you know, like the red

(17:05):
sitter obviously is the vengeful one, and you know Robanda
is clearly so mean because she's a yellow sitter. Like,
is anyone going to dare to look at a Gwain
and be like, were you working some shit out there?

Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah? Yeah, were you?

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Were you trying to like get something back at your
old mentor Like no one's ever going to look at
a Gwin and think that except us apparently? What Yeah, Uh,
that's a really interesting thing to really drill into though,
That she didn't have to be there. She's like, oh,
look what you made me do? Like, no, you you
made you do that?

Speaker 3 (17:37):
Yeah, it very much feels like that. It's like you look,
look how badly you make me hurt you?

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yeah? Yeah, Oh Gwyn, why do you have to be
morally gray? So love it.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
Because she's thinking about her own power. She's not necessarily
thinking about Ninive as a friend and and and there's
there's a certain level of Ninive as a mother figure
is expected to take the abuse and just roll with it.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, and I mean she does five years later she's like,
thank you, mother, May I have another?

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Totally? And there is a certain you know, I think
about Ninive as very much the mother of the Emmonsfield five. Right,
She's the one who's there to take care of them
a little more mature. Yes, again, does sort of come up,
but as any daughter would come up and mature and
have to be on equal footing with their mother as adults. Right.

(18:31):
But Ninive as this mother figure her children in quotes,
don't consider the burden they're putting on her. The way
Rand uses her to cleanse the source, and the way
she nearly dies doing that. Right, the way you know,
there's a certain amount of just like, yeah, Ni neive
takes it and she is strong enough to take it.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah. She rolls out of this being like that was
good for me, Like, I don't.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Know, apparently, fuck yeah, it just helped me realize how
fucking tough I actually am and what I care about,
which is.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Lamba yeah, which I'm just like, it's she's tough. She's
tough as nails, tough as titanium nails. So she goes
through the little intro ceremony thing, also tweaking it right
the ring. First it was the ring, she's got the
ring on the right hand, and now she says she
wants to show that she is worthy, not to learn

(19:22):
if she is worthy, but to show that she is worthy.
This is again she's being very literal in how she's
interpreting this in such a way that she's loopulling her
way into not accepting all the bullshit of the eyes
to die while also taking their approval, which is kind
of fun. I kind of like that wordplay from her,
though I also, you know, am like, you're being very

(19:43):
autistically literal, and I need you just stop seeking their
approval and live your best life because.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
Let's see reading again. For what reason have you been
summoned here to be tried? That's the same, for what
reason should you be tried? Naieve says to show that
I am worthy? And then Morien says, so that I
may learn whether I am worthy?

Speaker 2 (20:05):
And again this is just the most autistic line ever.
She didn't say it to be arrogant. Once again, she
simply stated the truth as she saw itead raised her.
She wore the shawl. Why pretend that she didn't? And
like Ninive comes at the autistic kids table.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
Just read the ceremonies. It's written on the page. No
one's gonna like it's fine.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Okay, it's okay, it's fine.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
The other thing I really want to talk about was
the pointed star, the two overlapping triangles right on the
chapter icon. It's very much the split point star. There's
not the lines that form the two triangles, right. So
I do think that like the icon may be a
little deceptive, right because it doesn't really agree with the
description in the chapter.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
It's a six pointed star, but it's not two overlapping
triangles right right right though, I am as as now
I've got the quilting bug in my brain, I'm looking
at it, going can I quilt that? How can I? Yeah,
you can definitely kill it that I should do a
quilt of all the chapter are icons.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
Ooh, yes, that would be amazing. Oh no, what have
we done? Which and in our world is very much
what the star of David, right, the two overlapping triangles.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Form that two overlapping triangles is the most quintessential Jewish
symbol of all time.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Yes, right, So on one level, I don't know if
that's relevant at this point. I can't believe he did
not think about that when he was writing this as
that symbol.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Jordan repeatedly describes it as two overlapping triangles, which is
not what this symbol is. This is a six pointed star.
Those are different ways of describing very similar outlines, but
the inner part is very different. And yes, I've always
thought it was a little strange that he had those
two slightly incongruous descriptions overlapping but what evs.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
So, what I was thinking about is a couple of things,
portal stones and snaks and foxes, and specifically the symbols
that we see surrounding the portal stones and the snakes
of foxes. For example, Rand's symbol for our world is
a upside down triangle with an arrow through it. I

(22:07):
can't remember it's broken or not. They go through all
four options. I can't remember which one is the right one.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
But triangles are a big part of the base symbology there.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Yeah, and with snakes and foxes, you have a triangle
with a snake running through it. Right, But again, it
feels like these are like, Oh, if we're going our
world seems to be this triangle with the arrow through it.
What if we're going to a close world and that's
two triangles, so it's related to ours through the triangle
and then you have an upside down triangle. Is this
other symbol on top.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Of that it's the upside down?

Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yeah, it's the upside down version of it. Right.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Oh, I like that. I like that our world is
a triangle and these other worlds are in inverse, so
you kind of have two triangles positioned in an esthetically
pleasing way to symbolize that. I like that.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
And in some way that's referencing the world of dreams
that they're going into, right, like, because this is related
to the world of dreams. Because again, Sanderson says that
straight out, even though we speculated about it.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Well, and even if he didn't say it straight out,
the way he describes a lot of what she does
with her mind is like he didn't have to say
it straight out because he wrote it. He wrote it
subtly and overtly that that's what was happening, which.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
Is Sanderson signature.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
But yeah, and then you know, doing the upside, it's
such a fun symbol, like a six pointed star. The
two overlapping triangles is fun. And if you get if
you do triangles overlapping the other way to make the
good dimensional thing, then you're flirting with a whole other symbol,
and you don't want to flirt with that symbol. That's
not a good symbol. There's some neo Nazi row things
where they triangles stacked together can can go some bad places.

(23:36):
Gotcha in that lexicon?

Speaker 3 (23:38):
I mean, I've seen it where if you slide one
of the triangles up so the points are together, then
it's an hourglass. And if you slide one of the
triangles down so that the bases are touching, then you
have a diamond, right, And so as I have inevitably
referenced many times. Sluggy online comic uses some triangle symbology

(23:59):
with its god because one of them is the time god,
and so he's got the two triangles pointed. And then
there's also they go back in time, and there's actually
two pyramids, ones floating upside down in the sky above
the other one, and that's the pyramid of the gods,
and the one on bottom is the pyramid of man.
And you can transfer at the point from one to
the other. But that whole thing makes, of course an
hourglass symbol. Sure sure, right, so which represents time and

(24:22):
gods and all that kind of stuff. So you know,
I think I just really I don't know why the
symology here, really really sort of wanted to get deep
into it. It's one sentence. It doesn't really matter that much.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Triangles are cool, Okay. Everyone knows that food tastes better
when it's in a triangular form. And triangles are like
the strongest structure in terms of just do you want
to make something strong?

Speaker 3 (24:42):
Triangles involved and hexagons are the bestigons, but they're made.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Up of triangles, right absolutely.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
And triangles are stable. We live in a three dimensional world,
so we need three lines, Like, there's just there's so
many reasons why you know, triangles are significant, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
And it's a very base ingredient to quilting. He's starting
with triangles and then going upward from there and assembling
triangles on triangles on triangles is a huge way to do.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
Quilting geometry in general, right, I mean Pythagorean theorem, Right,
I mean almost our entire knowledge of the triangulation of
distance to stars in the sky, Like everything we do
is based on triangles. Like it's such a fundamental part
of everything else we do in math, our.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Entire like sensory system, right, like the concept of parallax,
the concept of having two different sensory inputs for ears
or eyes, and like, right, knowing all of that triangles, triangles,
it's so true.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
So then we get this weave of spirit that she
gets touched with before she goes in, And it's not
explicitly stated, but I assume it's why she's able. So
here's the question. Does the weave of spirit let her
remember the things she's able to remember, otherwise she would
have no memories, or does it get rid of her
memories that she would normally have?

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Right, Because the weave affects her memory, but in what way?
I think it must be both. I think it must
be a suppression of some sets of memories and a
hyper focus on others. It's got to be a pushing
and pulling at the same time.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
It almost feels a little bit like compulsion.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
It is definitely a subunit of the overall compulsion weave. Absolutely.
Oh that's gross. Oh that's gross. That's gross. Hey, I said, ie,
you know what, y'all are perverts.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
Ugh. My generous way of interpreting it is that going
into this turan grail wipes your memories, and with experimentation,
they've able to restore a few key Someone figured out
a weave where we can't give you all your memories back,
but we can give you a couple of things to
remember while you're in there. And so that's why she's
able to remember how many weaves she's done. And the

(26:47):
thing about the stars, right, because it's all the stuff
that's basically said between the beginning of the weave and
the ending of the weave is like, we're going to
lock those into your memory, so that even though you
forget everything else about what's going on, at least remember
these couple.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Of commands, remember what must be remembered, not what you
want to remember, not what you think would be handy,
but what must be remembered. Hm.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
And so I feel like that's a little more generous
way of being, like, Okay, they're just giving you these things.
They start the weave, then they talk about going to
the stars. Only when you reach it, may you embrace
the source. Weaving must begin immediately. You know that she
gets basically all the rules between the beginning of the
channeling of that and the ending.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
It's kind of like Varrein's version of compulsion right where
she sets it up and then she triggers the weave
a little bit, gives the instructions, and then finishes it.
It's kind of like that.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
It's almost like she used that as maybe the basis
because you know, maybe that helped her a little bit.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Right, possibly, possibly. Now that's really interesting because it makes sense,
right that compulsion is made of a lot of other
skills that have to get compiled together little modules, and
like you can use those modules in on their own
in isolation to treat other ailments or conditions. And yeah,
we get in the uh accept a test, we get
discussions about sending women in with protection, and then they

(28:04):
got screwed up and they sent women in without protection
and they were much better off. So yeah, somehow they
figured out how to throw a couple of instructions in
there for what must be remembered. But fascinating, I wonder
how many people's like childhoods, they completely wiped out before
they figured out, you know, how to module that.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
How many people came back like not remembering.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
Yeah, right, They're like, I'm your wife. Uh, I've never
met you in my life. So now we get to
the mistake.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Yes, So after this point, and I was reading and
I was like going, you know, cause I'm reading New Spring,
and I'm reading the book and I've got the digital copy,
and so I'm reading it and she's about to enter,
and Rosel took the clothing. The other sisters were completely
absorbed in their work. The Taran griol began glowing a
pure white in the center and then started to revolve slowly,

(28:59):
grinding against the stone. In my mind immediately went, it's floating.
Why would it grind against the stone? That doesn't make
any sense. Plus, like, wouldn't the stone wear away? That
just seems like a weird not accurate. So then I
go back and look at New Spring again, much more beautiful,
descriptions of the whole thing, much more elaborate. I'll read
that the air in the opening of the ring suddenly

(29:20):
turned to a sheet of white. It seems somehow whiter
than the wool of her skirts, whiter than the snow
or the finest paper. Yet rather than reflect on the
stand lamps, it seemed to absorb some of their light,
making the chamber grow dim. And then the tall oval
ring began to revolve slowly on its base without the
slightest sound of stone grading against whatever it was made of,

(29:42):
and the grinding against the stone, and without the sound
of grinding against the stone. Like It's literally the same sentence,
just with the word without in it. And I think
when Sanderson had his notes open, he literally just missed
the word without.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
I mean I have missed words in that way many times.
I can totally imagine how it happened. And the funny
thing is.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
I was like all excited that I found this error and.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Wait, wait, look at this, look at this. It says
it started to revolve slowly, moving silently against the stone.
Because I have a later edition printing of the book.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
And so they did fix it and fix it.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Someone fixed it and get someone somewhere along the way
was like, this is a literal error. This is like
land sharpening a power route sword. This needs to be fixed,
and so it was.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
You can see the quotes are directly wrong between the
two books. But I'm very proud of myself for spotting
that one without having the correction.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Hell yeah, that's absolutely some deep nerd credit. And obviously
the audio books would have the original because they don't.
They don't re entit that stuff, So that one's going
to be if you listen to the audiobooks, you will
hear the wrong version. But it's okay, now.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
You know. So she goes in, and you know, you
got the structure of the testing that again, we saw

(31:11):
almost the same structure in New Spring, which is she
goes in, she's attacked, she walks calmly over to the star,
and she uses the wall of air to stop whatever's
attacking her. Right, pretty basic. First one sets up the stakes,
how it works, what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
It's the tutorial.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
It's the tutorial, Eveliss. We'll talk about that more later,
not on this podcast. And then this whole like she
enters into the next thing, her memory gets wiped again,
you know, and all she remembers is that she's completed
the first hundred. She has to walk to the star
and be calm. She can't channel till she gets there. Basically,
she remembers nothing but the rules and how many times

(31:52):
she's done this.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
And there's a reset to nudity at the beginning.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
It's whatever they want to clothe you in, right. Sometimes
it's nudity. Sometimes it's the clothing that makes you look ridiculous.
Sometimes they don't bother and just put you in whatever
is appropriate. Right, it's whoever's running that weave.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah, sometimes you're just whatever you were in the last one, right.
And then yeah, we start out with pretty mild trying
to help generalized people things and being attacked by monsters.
Though I do think it's interesting in the second vision
how the monsters don't look quite right. I'm guessing that's
because whoever's generating the trollics has never actually seen the

(32:30):
trollic in person.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
You know.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
It's like the paintings where they look at the paintings
and they go, well, you know, the trollcs are the
weapons do or don't look right. I feel like that's
this here is that I need is being attacked by
trollocs and she knows better than the test maker what
trollcs look like.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
That or just someone trying to make the trallks look scarier,
thicker for eyes hidden right, like trying to make that's
the only thing. Yeah, I agree with your thesis more.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Yeah, they look wrong to her, not souped up, but wrong.
It's like those medieval paintings where you can tell that
the author said, yes, I've seen horses. I've totally seen
horses before. Absolutely I know what a horse looks like.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Don't believe you.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
So she's yeah, doing the thing that I think Morain
figures out by the end of the test. But Ninive
starts out there with weaponizing the weaves, like immediately right
off the bat, just like I can make these weaves
big and bad. And I feel like Morain does get
there in the end with her test, but it's not
out of the gate.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
Moreene's testing is also not quite as brutal, Like it's
a little brutal because she's got a lighta there who's
being a total dick, But it's really more just the
last one, Like her hundredth one is really pretty mean,
but that's just right on out of the hundred, whereas
ninives are like.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
It's a lot more puzzles and emotional abuse for Morain.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
Yeah, and she gets stung and she gets scraped and
she gets cut, like she's not totally immune from the dangers.
But it does seem to be that the ongoing cruelty,
especially with ninive where they start like every single time
miss children, she has to abandon children in danger, right, Like,
they see what hurts her and lean on it hard
and it gets worse and worse and worse as the

(34:09):
testing goes on. That doesn't seem to be the case
with Maraine. Moraine seems to face a couple of bad ones,
but it doesn't seem to be this escalating. Well, you're
breaking the rules, so we're gonna get harder harsher on you,
which is gonna force you to break the rules more,
which is gonna make them hard. Like there was this
feedback loop in ninety eighths testing where the you know,
the more she was able to overcome by quote unquote

(34:31):
breaking the rules, the meaner they got with to her.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
And that right whereas, yeah, Elida was one woman on
a personal vendetta which involved a lot of like psychological
torture rather than just physically beating her the whole test.
Mm hmm, Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
So there's the forty seventh we we get after the
first two.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah, we pov switch or we time jump, because obviously
we're not gonna do one hundred of these things. So
we hop to roughly the middle at number forty seven,
and we start with her already so crazed that she's
just hurling herself off of cliffs without even flinching because
she can see that the gateway is like below. Muh huh, right,
Like she's already like clearly she has been pushed to

(35:12):
do some wild stuff and is very much in a
the rules of tel I Run Riot apply, right, She's
just trusting the process and not being like this is impossible.
She's like, Okay, no, this is clearly possible, because whatever,
it's fine. That's where we open this POV part and
she's starting to get the impression that someone wants her
to fail. This is where the tell I Run Riod
training is starting to show, because she's starting to gather

(35:36):
a larger impression of her circumstances, which is that she's
in a contest of wills with someone. Well, she's undergoing
this ordeal.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
And seems to be remembering it a little bit better. Right,
It's she's not getting wiped as every time she seems
to be like, yeah, she's getting a sense of all
these things going on as she's being white there. It's
like she's not being fully wiped every time. She's hanging
on to a little bit of knowledge.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Right, the void in her mind is starting to build
a picture by its articulation. So, yeah, she hears a
child screaming, she gets attacked by bugs. It's gross, but
still not the worst of what she's gonna get put through.
She's really starting to question being calm. This is also
the other important thing is she's really starting to question

(36:21):
the calmness and again very autistically like, but why why
this is dumb?

Speaker 3 (36:27):
And I think this is one of those where she says, oh,
we notice that children really hurt you. I think this
is the one where they notice that the children really
do make her like distressed.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
This, yes, now we get to number forty eight, and
forty eight is the one where children in active crying
distress begging for her help specifically become a feature rather
than oh, the sound of children in danger. No, now
it is four children who are begging for their lives
that she has to walk away from, and that will
now be the rest of her test. Every single test,

(36:56):
it seems, it is implied, involves some very on this
level of piteous child begging for their life, and she
just has to go through it over and over again.
It's awful. It kind of reminds me of the scene
in her accepted Test when she's in the two Rivers
and that evil wisdom has taken over and Maren is

(37:19):
like begging for help with the fact that there's this
evil woman who has taken over, like this mistress of
the orphanage, right, has left and not come back. There's
this tyrannical mother figure gone wrong that has abandoned the
mission and Ninive you know, has to walk away from that.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
And is poisoning actively poisoning children, yeah, right.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Right, and then Ninive has to walk away from that.
It's so I like the fact that it's that deep
of a callback to her accepted test, even though none
of these women were probably involved in that. This is
entirely Arthurial bleed through. But I'm fine with.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
It, well, I am unway. I'd like to see her
prove herself in another way other than just oh yeah,
we still need to make sure you can be and
the children for the cause, right, Like it's like, okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Well, it's just such a part of her subconscious fears
and it was part of her trauma with the eyes
to die that like, if her mind is contributing to
the algorithm, this makes a lot of sense as a callback.
But yes, it having it be overdone felt needlessly cruel
to us as the readers as well.

Speaker 3 (38:21):
So then we get to the eighty seventh one.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Yeah, we do a quick montage of all the horrible
things and then slow down again at I wrote eighty
one on mind. Yeah, eighty first weave okay, yere right,
and now we're in the Two Rivers. The eighty first
trial is the two Rivers, which is very well detailed
because Agwayne is the one feeding the details.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
In, right, and so she knows this is one that
really hurts, and it's the one that first breaks her calm. Right.
This is the point where she first runs to the
star instead of walking calmly to it.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
It has been almost twenty weaves since she started to question,
since she started to get angry, since we started to
put together, because it was forty seven to eighty one, right.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Yeah, so that's almost forty thirty five.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, okay, so it's been almost forty weaves that she's
been like, I know something's wrong. I know I'm in
a contest of wills. I know these rules are dumb.
And now, after like, yeah, almost half of the duration
of the test of thinking about that, now her home
in full detail is in danger, and she's like, fuck it,
I'm going to run. I'm going to disobey the rules

(39:25):
that make no sense because these people's lives matter more.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
And so she embraces the source. She runs, and while
she's running, she embraces the source. She embraced the source,
and something seemed to try and stop her, something like
a shield. She pushed it aside with difficulty, and power
flooded her. I'm like, I'm not sure if that's Teller
on riodd, because i know that's sort of what Agwayne
says it is. It might just be her overwhelming strength
pushing aside a shield, right, because you know, if you're

(39:50):
strong enough, you can break a shield.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
Where do you think this shield is coming from? Is
that like a deliberate creation of an isidie or is
it just like a built in safety feature of the ternal.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
I think it has to do I wanted to be
the person who's who's making the event, right, that has
related to their strength. But I don't think they're actively
making the shield. I think the shield is a result
of telleranriod. It's just a weave type situation at best.
It has to do with the memory weave that's put
into her. Right, there's nothing physically stopping her. It's just

(40:23):
like you know, you're not supposed to There's there's a
physical there's a there's a mental block against channeling before
you get to the star because of that that weave,
and that weave, like we said, may have some aspects
of compulsion and may have some aspects of like actually
having a shield on her, like this conditional shield, right,
Like maybe there is something with that in that weave.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, because I just couldn't see a human on the
other side responding that quickly to her choice to channel.
It felt like it had to be something that like, Yeah,
the world or the turn Greol was was manifesting. But yeah,
clearly it's overridden either by her skill until I run
or by her overwhelming power. Either way, it's inadequate to

(41:03):
the task of keeping her from channeling. And as we
see later with the bail fire, maybe part of the
reason for that is that, Yeah, the way that it
can facilitate or the way that it can provide the
stimuli of channeling is strained by bailfire. Bailfire is hard
to simulate. Bailfire is bail fire, right.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
Right, and it's destroying things. Yeah, yeah, that's the always
the question is would bail fire it seems to be
destroying things that are not necessarily it's doing more damage
than it should. Right. It punches into the ground, right, exactly,
it and so the ground is simulated and the bailfire
is destroying the simulation of the ground rather than destroying
the ground.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Exactly. It's like if you're in a star Trek holodeck
and you somehow manage to damage the holow deck itself
instead of damaging like whatever the holoduck is making you
think you're seeing, like if you actually are, like, oh
that's a wall. I broke the wall. Now now now.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
The projection's not working.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, it's kind of like that, Like, normally you're fine,
but sometimes you get a weapon that's too big and
powerful and then the pull of deck shuts down and
everyone's confused.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
I very much enjoy the vastly increasing the strength of
the very simple weaved great giant rings of fire to
burn the trucks with. Like that's that's again directly from
the New Spring version of it, where Raine is using
the weaves to protect herself and use them against the
enemies and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, and also so ninive just make it bigger and
hit people with it, and she still thinks this is
more important than the two rivers, right, she still abandons
people because she's still committed to the test. But like, yeah,
the controls are slipping hard now, and so she passes
from the eighty first, we do another time jump over

(42:49):
the remaining twenty and we get to the hundred. Yeah,
remaining thirty, and we get to the hundredth she is
now braidless, absolutely exhausted, burned, scratched and broken in every way.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
Basically, Can I just say, like, I'm really disappointed we
didn't get to see her braid.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
Yes, distracted it's such an.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Integral part, Like when I go back, like I didn't
even realize that she lost her braid until much later
when she talked about how she reached up to grab
it and it was too short, and I was like, wait,
when did you lose that? And it's like, oh, during
the thing, I had to go back and reread multiple
times to be like when did when did a braid
come off? I cannot leave. It's like killing a main
character off screen. Nine's braid is such a main character

(43:34):
that burning it off on one of these missions off
screen feels just absolutely cowardly to me.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
Absolutely, Like it was annoying when Matt killed kol it
An off screen, but whatever, he was a like half
rate villain anyhow, Like it's fine. Nieves's braid is like
the sixth member of the band. Okay, how dare you?
How dare you? It makes me mad too, that hair
deserves more respect makes me so mad, totally totally. I mean,

(44:04):
we got to see Carrie Ona's hair getting boiled off
in that Nightmare or whatever, you know. I mean she
cut it after because it was all damaged, but like
we literally saw that with a random eyes to die
dingbat but we can't see it. Friend, I neve like
that braid deserves better. It's fine to have her lose
it as like this massive, horrific, oh my god, no

(44:25):
one is safe kind of moment. I'm fine with the desecration,
but to have it be off page is disrespectful.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Somehow the braid was removed.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Absolutely. Maybe he just like couldn't write it without it
feeling like weirdly fetishistic and was just like, you know
what we're not. I can't, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
But you know, just something where she's like she's on
the star, something's attacking her. She has to use the
weave to fight back, but they're clinging on her braid,
and it's like, oh, she has to create like a
bubble around herself or something to protect herself, and that
in her braid's outside the bubble and so it gets
cut off.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
Yeah totally. You know, in order to get free, she
has to use the weave to like slice her own
hair off, Like yeah, totally. That would have been great.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
And having that be like, oh, yeah, someone knows that
she values her hair right and creates a situation where
her hair has to come off. That would have been
an interesting test, can you abandon your hair?

Speaker 2 (45:20):
I think it's really cool that you're so upset about this,
given how much head hair you have. I think it's
it's really it's really cool that you're so You're so
going home for protecting and I needs luscious luck.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Listen, I have been growing this hair out for like
five or six hours at this point, and it is like,
I value what I have. I wouldn't want it to
get cut off until you know, tomorrow when I shave
it again. I am bald as a cuball folks right now, okase, well,

(45:51):
for a while now, before I met my wife, actually
she would not know what I looked like. She sees
old photos of me with hair. She's like, ah, I'm
glad you shaved.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Good move.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
Yeah, no, it's uh. I cannot recommend it highly enough
if you're thinning. It's been much better for me. Also
saves me much money on haircuts.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
I just have Brandon do my hair right so right.
That saves me money. I have a very simple haircut though.
It's either you leave it alone or you make it
all as short as possible, like every six weeks. It's
two settings. Anyway, n names braid rip so she gets
offered the opportunity to go naked or dresses and accepted.

(46:33):
She chooses nudity because she will not be an accepted
no matter what. This is very symbolic. And then they
give her a yellow dress and she will put that on.
She will take the time to put a yellow dress on.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
Well, and you're saying they, yes, this is a Gwain again.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, I'm confused about how much it's a collaborative process
versus like a one baton pass kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (46:58):
It really feels like it's a one baton pass that
one person like, because she did say I was the
two rivers, I was land, I was those visions right.
It seems like they take turns and then every time.
I also think that if who's collaborative, it would be
less evil, right, because everyone test by committee would be
more bland.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Sure, So that means that like every seventh test would
have been a little bit less fucked up because Saren
was so mad at all the rest of them by
the end, I mean, she was probably giving like relatively
less bad.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
Ones hopefully hopefully. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
Other way, she's just as guilty of the thing that
she's angry about. So okay, So I've always kind of
imagined it as like a jam session, where like one
person's leading, but everyone else is still playing. It's not
like a solo a cappella thing.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
Maybe maybe, but but I see that as too difficult
to coordinate fast enough that like basically there's it's like
when you have a circle, there's one person leading it
and that gets passed around.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah, that makes more sense. I wanted to be like
a jam circle though that strawberry cooler. But you're right,
But no, I think you're right. It would be blander
to have it be a collaborative process. It would be
very on brand for the is to dyes weird isolationist, petty,
vindictive attitude over the last three thousand years to have
it be like, okay, now it's your turn, deterch of

(48:25):
the girl in the middle, Okay, now it's your turn.
Now it's your turn, and everyone else is supplying power
but is otherwise helpless to influence each thing until it's
their turn.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
That's my head canon.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, that fits with the Isidyese personality as an institution
way better. I like it less, but that fits the canon.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
And that means that Agwayne here and again, this is
where I think she's trying to prove herself as the
ambulance seat is like, you're an excess, you know, let
me put you in accept address for this final thing.
But then when I need refuses to put that on,
she Agwaine says, Okay, then I'll give you an actual dress.
So I think the other I said, I would not
have given her a yellow dress to put on if

(49:04):
she'd refused the accepted dress.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Also, that means probably that she did allow the Land
simulation to help ninive because I noticed at the very
end that Land actually helps her up, Like after she
commits to like I would rather die like Igwayne through
Land is like, okay, fine, don't die. Come on, I
need you to not die. I'll have the simulation to
help you get through the door because I need you

(49:27):
to not die.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Right, And so the simulation is Land comes running out,
chased by dark hounds.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
They're in Malkyr. She's seeing the ruins of Malkir. It's
easy for her to get to and from the Star,
but then she sees Land in an impossible situation, fighting
too many dark hounds to possibly fight, and it would
be easy for her to get away from the test
except for the part where it's land because husband's stuff.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
And then here's a really important section, right, I think
this is super important. She blinked and looked down at
her hands. In the direct center of each palm was
a tiny scar, almost unnoticeable. Seeing them sparked a memory
in her. Yeah, I love you. This was a test.
She could remember that now, So this is the moment
she looks down her hands. Those are from the BlackBerry

(50:12):
bush that stabbed her during her accepted test.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Right, the way back comes but once unless you're Nive.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
Unless you're Niaive, And so this she broke that test,
and this is her breaking this one and having a
memory of that, right, this is her.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Yeah. I really liked that callback because it's such an
important part of her accepted test, the fact that she
basically broke it. Then she's breaking it now. It's so perfect.
And again I don't think Igwayne knew all of those details.
Like this is drawing out of Ninive's own experience, right,

(50:48):
Like her thoughts are not.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
I mean the scar's on her hands. Yeah, no, her
thoughts aren't being controlled, and her physical body.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
Is hers right like yeah, exactly, like this is all her,
This is her interpretation, her experience, her mind breaking through.
And I also love too that she, despite the fact
that she's exhausted and Lenda is startling her, she finished
the weave without even really thinking about it. Yeah, right,
Like she is such a nice to die She'll finish
the damn weave while she's having an existential crisis.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
Well, and it's also she is so goddamn powerful and
so talented that what is a challenge for everybody else
is child's play to her, Like doing these hundred weaves
the room, she had to study them, remember back in
their demand, she was forced to study them, and like
she just there. It's like when you get to work
and you're like, wait, did I drive here? Shit, I
don't remember. Yeah, it's that level of like she can

(51:35):
just weave them, it's no problem.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Yeah, yeah exactly. But now she's in this place of like,
am I abandoning my husband? No, it's a simulation. I
don't care, right, she's so exhausted and burned out emotionally
that she's just like, no, I'm saving my fake simulation husband.
You can't stop me, which.

Speaker 3 (51:55):
Mean was a little odd because for me, it's like, oh,
it's a simulation all right, beeasts see you like, this
is the level of like, once you realize the simulation,
shouldn't you just like walk be able to walk away
from it a little bit easier? But that's just me,
I think.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Well, she's also like wavering on the edge of like
just passing out from exhaustion, right, She's confused and muddled
and just refusing to play their game. And that it
really reminds me of rand here the way that she's
just like, I will not do what the eyes that
I want. I will become an icy rage machine. And
you know, it's that two rivers culture. You don't need
the genetics, you just need the culture to have this

(52:29):
be how when you get really pushed into a corner
and then yeah, she bail fires the entire simulation and
starts hitting control panels in the hall of deck walls.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
And I wished the reaction to that was a little more.
We barely held it together kind of in the way
that the resonance nearly destroyed the accepted test. I would
Likene with a gun like this. To me, it didn't
feel like there was that many They were like, oh,
that could have destabilized the Toron girl, She's like well
it didn't like yeah, but I think there should have
been more like yeah, because we barely held it to

(52:59):
get that we're all nearly dead from keeping you from
like at the last minute, destroying the Terrannreal and taking
us all out, Like we barely pulled you out of
that because of the bail fire. That would have hit
home a little more than test tisk don't do that.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Yeah, I definitely would have liked to be like, yeah,
you see this ding on the side of the turran
Greal that's indestructible. That was the time that we barely
kept bail fire from coming out when hitting the real world.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
And it would like to see the people who are
doing the weave just like on their knees from exhaustion,
like nearly dead from keeping the Tearranreal stabilized.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Well, they they're described that way, but it's just from
the test overall. They never say because of the bailfire.
It's just because the test was long and hard. It's
that the bailfire didn't actually make a difference anyway.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
And then there's this scene where she grabs land and
comes running out the doorway and he's gone, and honestly,
you know what This reminded me of more than anything else,
that scene in the show The show and her accepted test, yeah,
with her child.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
When I saw that in the show, I was like, oh,
like with Land and they accept in the said eye
test at the end. I see where they got that from,
and I'm not mad about it. The idea of trying
to bring someone through and having it fail is like, no,
that's that's good horror. That's a yes. But yes, I
told you. When I saw the show, I was like,
I know where that came from. I know it's this,
it's this.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
It's like you sacrifice everything to save them and get
them to your place of safety and then that just
ends them as well.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
Yeah, it was all a dream. Rip Away is brutal,
very effective gut punch oka.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
Her entire body was a fire with pain. Her shoulder,
legs and arms and back still bled. She was burned
to blisters and swaths across her body, and the greater
part of her braid was gone.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
And she has to get healed immediately before anything else
can happen, because she is like actively going into shock
as they all like get up and are trying to
recover from the weave getting released so they heal her,
and then they start arguing.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
Saren, Now, when someone please tell me what in the
name of creation itself that was. I've been part of
many a raising, even one where the woman didn't survive,
But I have never, in all of my days seen
a woman put through what this one just suffered.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Get them, Saren, get them.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, that wasn't properly, That wasn't proper. That was downright vengeful.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Almost any one of those tests beyond what I've seen
demanded of any other woman.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
Almost any one of them. Like again, back to Moraine
twenty years ago, any one of those would have been
her final boss battle.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
Exactly, and if you look back, that was her last one.
Was awful, but like it was one.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Right right, the boss battle was the one that she
barely thought she was survived, not literally every single one
did she survive by the skin of her teeth. It's
like she just did you know, video game on hard
mode on one save or something where everyone else got
to be on easy mode with endless saves.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
And then I kind of hate the next part, whether
they're arguing over whether or not she deserves to be
an ICID eye.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
Oh my god, I will smack every last one of them.
So I'm glad that Sarin ends up the deciding vote
because of the way that she defended her right out
of the gate. It's like, thank you for having it
be Saren who got to make that final call.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
And I underligned one should not demand calmness for the
mere sake of calmness, and a prohibition on running when
there are people you need to save is foolish.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, niceness and politeness are not
as important as actual justice and actual care and actual love.
Like right, that's what this is is. Again, it's just
very autistic literalism of like, but why why am I
being calm? If calm is just to soothe your fragile feelings,

(56:40):
then no, I don't care about that. Why would I care?

Speaker 3 (56:46):
Speaking of the autistic stuff, you flattered the rules. I
couldn't flap them. I didn't remember it. I'd been given them.
I could remember what I was supposed to do, but
not the reasons. That's why I broke the rules. I
thought they were just arbitrary. If I can't remember why,
then I'm not gonna do it. And when you keep
being like oh, this is like yeah, if I don't
understand why the rule exists, I'm not going to follow it.

(57:09):
And I think that's the difference, right between someone who
is just oh, it's a rule, I follow it because
it's a rule, versus I follow it because it's a
good rule, right, And whether it's a good rule or not,
you need no why.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Yeah, there's nothing like telling an autistic person why to
do a thing to get them locked in on doing
it that way. It's you know, and then also there's
the part of us. It's just like, well, it's the rule,
so I'm gonna I'm gonna stand behind this line, even
though empirically there's no need to, like like I can
just walk up to the counter, but no, I'm going
to stand behind the line until i'm you know, like,

(57:44):
there are arbitrary rules that we follow sometimes for no
goddamn reason because we're very, very good at following the rules.
But yeah, this whole like I thought it was arbitrary,
so I made a judgment call.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
Well, those rules are the rules I think you're talking about,
are rules that are kind of usually part of a
system that get people to we're like, okay, if this
is the system that we're all supposed to follow to
interact with other people will follow it, right, even though
it doesn't make sense. But that's because other people don't
make sense.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Right, exactly exactly. It's how we know to get what
we want. But yeah, she was in a place where
there was no sense of the rationale, so she did
what was efficient.

Speaker 3 (58:19):
And then Agwayne sort of says, oh, you've spent too
much time in the world of dreams, that's why you're
able to break it. And I don't know about that, Like,
I understand that that's what they're trying to imply, and
it is a very much world of dreams test. But
I think Ninie would have broken it whether or not
she'd spent that much time in the world of dreams.
I think she just in the same way that she
broke the accepted test.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Yeah, that's a really good argument, because I was gonna say, no,
she's used to being in other worlds where the rules
are bendy. But you're right, she did nothing different than
what she did in her accepted test, at which point
she'd never heard of tel I run riodd because that
was literally the day of arriving at the tower, right,
So yeah, it's good that you have until I ran

(59:00):
eryot excuse for purposes of talking with the other Ice
to Die. But yeah, actually it might have just been
that she's op end of statement. She's just op for
everything in all contexts.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
The stubborness, the stubbornness alone, right, like, if I don't
know why I have to do it, I'm not going
to do it, right, That's always going to be true
of Ninive.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
Yeah, and also like this is the contrast between Ninive
and the Ice to Die, right, this is what Rand
points out with like don't let them change you. Is
where she thinks, if losing my title is what would
be required to save someone's life, I'd do it every time.
Not saving them wouldn't be serving a higher good. It
would just be selfish. Like that's what the White Tower

(59:42):
has lost. The plot on is like decorum above all else,
form above literally all else, even results, form overfunction to
an absurd degree. And she's just like the dragon Reborn
told me that y'all lost the plot, and this is
me keeping on the plot. The real plot is to
be a servant of all, that's what matters. Being called

(01:00:05):
a servant of all is not what matters. Being a
servant of all is what matters?

Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Have you ever seen that it's circulating circulating around the internet,
but like the CIA's summary of how to sabotage a
business or how like if you're if you're working somewhere
and you want to make it like not function, and
it's doing things like following all the rules exactly, standing
on ceremony, calling lots of meetings, like doing all of

(01:00:32):
these things that are very much like you know, oh
I am supposed to do this, and if you you know,
malicious compliance essentially.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
Yeah, yeah, malicious compliance being seen as a virtue is
definitely the kind of bullshit that de shaw Mayo used
the Black Aja to thread the White Tower through with exactly.
For again, like we can argue about how deep all
the conspiracies run, but that attitude that has to be
partially inserted by the Black Auja and Deshamel, like it's

(01:01:02):
just so effective and yeah, like you said, it's it's
been articulated by bad people who have been paid good
government dollars to learn how to be bad people.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
Mm hmmmm hm. And so I feel like that's something
that I need is breaking through. Is this just sort
of I'm not going to be malicious I'm not going
to be compliant most maliciously, right, And like I feel
like so much of the tower is frozen because they're
stuck on they've been trained to be. And I see
there's a lot of corporations too, right, Like how do
you how these corporations suck? And it's like because you

(01:01:33):
have these people who create, and that's where like, yes,
it's the black go jab, but it's also just the
inherent bureaucracy, the inherent weight of the institution that has
existed and functioned for such a long time. And then
he was breaking those down.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Oh yeah, no, for sure. I came across an essay
several years ago about how America is a corporate structure
and we have a corporate rule book for like how
we exist as a society, and just kind of went through,
like here's how like corporates works, and then here's like
how the rules of like being a good little cog
in the capitalist machine and upholding white supremacy and all

(01:02:07):
of that like works. And it is like, point for
point the same thing. Here's the business rule book for
how we keep everyone in their relative positions in the
financial hierarchy. And uh, yeah, that really fits with this
whole White Tower idea of just like, these rules matter
a lot because they keep you oppressed and in the

(01:02:29):
point in the chain of being that the institution needs
you to be at. And Ninive is like, but that's
ineffective for my skill set, So I'm gonna be independent.
I mean, she literally says, I'm gonna go be with
Rand regardless of what titles you give me. Like I
know my skills and my power and my worth, and
the the dragon Reborn knows my skills and my power

(01:02:50):
and my worth, Like, I don't need you to certify me.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
And it's also like and a Grain's like it'd be
a bad idea not to certify someone who and enlists
Ninnieves resume, which is like more has done more than
any I said I in all of history in like
two years.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
And she's married to the king of malk here right, right,
names a queen. And then yeah, Ninieve actually says here
kind of what I was saying, because Sanderson does occasionally
lace it out in the page in a way I
agree with.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
I mean, he lays it all out.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
So yeah, I wonder if we sometimes put the White
Tower as an institution before the people, we serve. I
wonder if we let it become a goal in itself
instead of a means to help us achieve greater goals.
Is this not the experience of so many people who
go into like some kind of change making or activism
direction and then they end.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Up just you know, nonprofits everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Doing pr for people who didn't need help and not
actually fixing the problem that motivated them to join up
with the larger cause in the first place.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
I think a lot about the efforts to combat homelessness
here in Portland and stuff like that, because there are
so many institutions that are formed around the desire, to
very good desire to help the people who are homeless
in Portland, and a lot of them end up functioning
in a way where they are perpetuating the problem and

(01:04:15):
making money doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Yeah. Yeah, profitable charity two words that should not go together.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
Well, the organization itself is never making money, but the
CEO is running it who are making millions and millions
and millions of dollars are and so it just becomes
a very an institution that should eliminate itself, you know, right,
and it just has no motivation to do that, right, right,
And so I question how effective they are. In a
lot of cases, it's meetings about meetings about meetings to

(01:04:45):
talk about where to build stuff. And by the time
all the planning is done and the engineering is done
and the politics are done, you know, you build three
homes and how two families, you know, and it's like, oh,
we spent ten million dollars on what effectively feels like
a boonongle.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
Right, And then here's this other part in here that
is so related to that, Like, no homeless people are
ever in those meetings, right. They never actually go out
on the street and ask the literal homeless people what
they need and get it to them forthwith in two
business days.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
Because the answer is cash. The answer is cash.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
Exactly, because they just circle jerk about it. And here's
you know, from nine eve. So many of us do
this without families. Even while we try to guide the world,
we separate ourselves from it. We risk arrogance. We always
assume we know what is best, but risk making ourselves
unable to fathom the people we claim to serve. This
is a huge part of what I learned in geography.

(01:05:43):
My geography program was that you need to talk to
everyone who has a stake in the situation. Stakeholders means
people who are affected, not just the people who are investing.
And that was such a profound lens to bring to
that entire program. And that's what this is here too, Like,
if you're not talking to the people you're trying to serve,
you're doing it wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
And for companies, you need to talk to your employees.
You need to talk like, you can't just ignore your employees.
And so many companies are like, well, we serve the
shareholders and that's all we do, and that's all we're
ever gonna do. Yeah, vouji. Yes, the American system does
seem kind of backwards because it is kind of backwards
because it's based on a slavery first system and we

(01:06:25):
got off of that direct slavery system, but we got
into a system where you need to prove your worth constantly, yeah,
or else you end up homeless or in jail. And
if you're in jail, you can be a slave again.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Yeah, because we actually didn't get rid of slavery. We
got rid of slavery except for caveat caveat, caveat, and
it's like that's not getting.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
Read like and I was like, oh, well, you know,
at least it's just like it can't be that common, right,
And then you look at like we produce I think
the slavery labor in this country produces billions of dollars
worth of goods every year.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
There are more people in chains doing more or less
unpaid labor now than there were at the height of
chattel slavery. Like partly partially that is population growth, obviously.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
But right it's percent as the percentage of the population,
it's much smaller, but as overall numbers in our three
hundred and fifty million population country.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
It's a lot more people, more human hours of labor
being forcibly stolen and injected into the economy and the
creation of products. It's just extremely we're not done yet, America.
We didn't finish the assignment.

Speaker 3 (01:07:42):
No. If you and if you think all of that
free prison labor doesn't affect wages, you're dreaming right, Yes, absolutely,
because otherwise all those goods would have to we'd have
to pay somebody to produce those goods, and those would
all be jobs that we would have to pay people
for and the price of those goods would go up.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
And technically these people are being paid, So it's not
the you know, it's one of those literalism things. It's
not really slavery because they do get paid thirty five
cents a day. Okay, yeah, yeah, sure, totally different.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
Totally different. No, it's it's ridiculous. But then then they
get charged for things like phone calls in prison for
like and like ten dollars a phone call or something
like that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
So yeah, yeah, it's many podcasts worth of yelling about
how this is all absolute nonsense, not the soap box
that we have time for today. But there's a lot
of content out there if you want to learn about this.
We're not making it up. We are pulling from very
very direct reading and podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
Listening and news reporting.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
It might have been euphemizing thirty five cents a dame
for some things, but I think as.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
Little as a dollar an hour is a legitimate figure.
That is like an average figure that people are being paid.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
Yeah, that's less of a euphemism and more of actually accurate.
But yeah, I don't think I need to approve of
any of it personally.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
No, and I do think that that gosh, you know,
it's just the White Tower as an institution. She says
it as an institution. It's hard to just not be
like institutions, right, because we're putting the White Tower in
that category.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
It's an institution. It's three thousand years of academia and politicking.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
And then so the next thing I really have is
her Sarah complaining about the bailfire.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
They try to use this like carrot stick thing of like, well,
you have to promise not to ever use this if
you want your treat, if you want your cookie of
your shawl, you're gonna have to. And then he was like, no,
that's dumb and will get me killed. I do not
need your certification that much. Like and she literally says,
if this is the line that it will take to
get my certification, I would rather you didn't certify me.

(01:09:54):
I don't actually want your approval. If this is the
line of the sand you're gonna draw. Makes them back
down real fast.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
This is her walking away from the job interview because
the salary is not good, the benefits aren't good enough. Right.
They're like, you can weaken her.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
You're trying to bargain her down.

Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
She's like, you have no, no, you have to write
it into my contract that bailfire is something I can
use or I'm not joining this crew.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
Yeah, if you don't trust me to know when to
use a very dangerous wave and when not to, i'd
rather you not raise me just throws it back in
their faces and then yeah, they close the ceremony. Now
it's over. It's done. Her relative passing grade will not
be discussed in public or ever, because talking about your

(01:10:36):
feelings is against the isida ethos m hm.

Speaker 3 (01:10:39):
And that's just just like they're they're hazing, right, they're
doing through this hazing ritual, and you don't talk about
the hazing because then people won't want to be a
part of it. Maybe hazing is bad, but that's exactly
what this is, right, because this is different. This is
different than the accepted test. The accepted test is a
challenge that you face with no external input. This is

(01:11:00):
a bunch of people choosing to abuse you in the
moment for no reason other than to prove that you
can be abused and still channel.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:11:11):
But it's like essentially, you know, imagine in a prat
recite the oath that we make you memorize while we're
you know, beating you naked or you know, spraying you
with freezing cold water out in the snow naked, right
and recite the thing and like you have to prove
your loyalty to us, you have to go through this thing.

(01:11:33):
It's hazing, pure and simple.

Speaker 2 (01:11:35):
It's so similar to the ideal way too write. The
first test with the rings is very much about your future,
and it's very personal, and it's very just you. It's
between you and the tarangriol, whereas getting your second certification
is about, yeah, putting up with a bunch of bullying.

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):
And think about where Jordan came up through, right, think
about the schools he went to through, Like, I cannot
believe there wasn't a fair amount of hazeing, both in
the military and at the citadel.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
Yeah, I don't know much about all that, but that
seems like a reasonable extrapolation given the fact that this
pattern exists.

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):
Are you making assumptions there? But yes, But based on
the time of that he would have been going to
school then, because that was really before hazing was understood
as something as at being bad, right, and how many
people were actually going from it right right, like and
things like that, Right, I think there was a time
when like hazing was just like you joined the frat
and you got hazed, right like, that was a much
more normalized thing. You joined the military, you got hazed

(01:12:30):
right like. That was just there's a reason there's a
term for it called hazing, right like, It's it was
very common. Even many sports teams that I was a
part of had some level of that. It was a
little more ritualist, a little more embarrassment based, and a
little less danger based. There's there's been a switch, but
certainly growing up, like I remember joining the swim team

(01:12:53):
and having to perform in front of the team in
a way that I wasn't comfortable with.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
Yeah, Waldorf, I didn't have anything like that. We really didn't.
And then theater kids, at least the ones I interacted
with like that was not part of that entire branch
of the social world that I interacted with. I mean,
the closest I can think of is like being really
bad at improv, like in improv classes like that felt

(01:13:22):
like it was such a humiliating thing to like try
to like do improv as like a sheltered little freshman,
and like I did very badly at it because I
just very autistically, like just did not quite get the
overarching concept of what I was trying to do, and
it just felt but like that was me. That was
not intentionally hazing, that was the class. That was just
like what was supposed to happen. So I don't know

(01:13:43):
if I've ever actually experienced myself or anyone close to
me like told me about that. That's I don't like
how common it is. I've heard about it so much broadly.
I don't think this is good. I don't think this
is good for people. Stop it no.

Speaker 3 (01:13:59):
Jenerally, I mean why they're doing it? Right. There's a
certain amount of community through shared hardships. And there's two
ways to create hardships, right. There is a natural way
and there's an artificial way. And sometimes if you create
artificial hardships that everybody has gone through everyone in the
years before you, even if they only go through it

(01:14:19):
their first year, they have gone through it, and there's
a certain amount of I suffer that way as well
and welcome. That's what makes us different than It gives
you an inside on us versus them, insider versus outsider, right,
which is super easy to create in people because we're
naturally prone to it. And this is one of the
quickest ways to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
Yeah, No, Trauma bonding as a means of team building
is definitely real. And I will say there was definitely
some joking about that in the geology department with respect
to certain field camps, like, oh, have you survived Polita
Folds yet? If you have gone to that field camp,
you know that is an absolute night rid of mappen.
But it's it was more of a joke. It was, Yeah,

(01:15:01):
the natural thing.

Speaker 3 (01:15:02):
That's more natural because and it's also like you have
to go there because the work is there, and that's
the hard part is doing the work, and there's you're
not It's not like, oh, did you survive the camp?
That's that place where they make you sit outside for
extra days for no reason until your sun burned and
if you, you know, survive the extra punishment that has

(01:15:24):
nothing to do with the work that you're forced to
do or the bad conditions you're forced to do work in.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
I think I would just fail at a hazing ritual.
I think I'd be like, this is dumb, this I
don't want to I just I don't think I would
do very well at this. I'm glad I was never
attracted to groups that wanted that because that would have
been a weird rejection to navigate.

Speaker 3 (01:15:44):
It's it's as part of masking, right you You, if
you're masking hard enough, you can mask through something like
that and act the way other people are acting despite
not traumatizing it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
Maybe, yeah, doctor Pants, it's definitely. I was never sad.
I didn't want you to join a sorority because I
had heard weird things and I was like, you know what,
the ten miles of distance between me and anything approaching
that is fine. I'm okay, And for me it was
the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:16:11):
I was on the swim team my whole life, and
sports teams aren't quite as bad as sororities, but the
sports teams I were on had a lot of aspects
of fraternities and sororities in them.

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
I did have a babysitter high schooler who did get
thrown in a lake because she was the coxswain for
a winning row team, and that was the prize for winning,
was getting to throw or not the cockswains the collar.
That was the prize was the team that did the
row and got to throw their caller into the drink
if they won. It's not quite hazying, but still like

(01:16:45):
you will be subjected to an uncomfortable thing as part
of the team building exercise.

Speaker 3 (01:16:50):
When I was coaching summer league swimming, they if we won,
they got to throw the coach in the pool at
the end of the event. But that was fine because
it was hot to shit out. He wanted to get
thoughts down and.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
There was there was also, Yeah, there was a donation
drive at college where like the faculty would be like, okay,
whichever department like versus the most money, Like I'll get
pied in the face. Like that was a thing at
my little college. So there was like, you know, eight
faculty who were like, yes, I will be in the
rotation and like whoever like manages to raise enough money,
I'll you know take the hit and uh.

Speaker 3 (01:17:22):
And those those feel a little more like the coaches
kind of agree to that. You know, there's a certain
level of agreement of like if you do this, I'll
let you do that. There's consent involved, especially with.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
A power dynamic flip. Yeah, right, like there in charge
and they're like fine, I'll like let you have king
for a day. You're like like a Saturnalia like kind
of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're your student, My my my students
throwing me in the pool, right, that's a power and
balance different and then the other way right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:47):
But uh yeah, does this this here in the White
Tower seems a little more intense And yeah, I do
like how the the accepted test is much more about like,
this is about your inner reasons. The Charon Grill will
get into your subconscious and force you to do with
your inner reasons.

Speaker 3 (01:18:01):
For this past present future type situation.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Yeah, this is just how do you fit into the
social pecking order?

Speaker 3 (01:18:07):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
Yeah? And Ninive's answer to that is you and whose
army is going to make Only Land can make her
do anything.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
So we end this chapter with her making a gateway
to visit speaking of Land because there is that like
vision of Land at the end, to visit myrell.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
Yeah, She's like, Okay, I know I got to do
the meditation and everything before the startremay tomorrow, but first
I need to go threaten morel to get Land's bond.
She goes to the camp which is outside of the
Black Tower. Right, It's very fortunate that this embassy has
not been allowed in to do their job of bonding
Ashaman yet, because then Ninive wouldn't be able to get

(01:18:53):
to Morel.

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
Well, maybe it's actually unfortunate because if they were in there,
she would have had to get to Morel and she
would have just handled the whole Black Tower situation.

Speaker 2 (01:19:02):
Yeah, true, that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:19:05):
That could have been a much quicker plot line if
Ninieven walked in and be like, all right, dark friend,
I'm just shutting you down.

Speaker 2 (01:19:11):
That would have been good.

Speaker 3 (01:19:12):
Yeah, no, I'm out of who obviously would have been
a disaster, But like, yeah, I kind of imagine just
Ninive just being like, nope, just shutting down these twenty men,
No big deal, I've got my because if she has
a parrales net, she's basically indestructive. Like I could see
her taking down a lot of channelers with her parrales net.

Speaker 2 (01:19:30):
On and there's really not that many in charge there.
They don't have their full army of drones yet.

Speaker 3 (01:19:36):
But no, myrel is out camped outside because I don't
know if there's actually the dream spike on the Black
Tower yet, but she's just outside it. If it is.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
Yeah, this is still them waiting on permission to go
in from the asham On. And yeah, Morel is in
her tent, clearly having a fun time with one of
her orders. Right, she's wearing very little, he's wearing less,
and Niniva is interrupt I miss that very awkward.

Speaker 3 (01:20:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
Morel wore a blue nightgown that was almost translucent, and
one of her warders sat shirtless on the tent floor.
Inside they were like playing like you know games, they
were playing adult games. And Nineve is coming in there
very awkwardly, being like I need I need you to
do business for a sec real quick, and Morel tries
to brush her off, and then Ninive is awesome about it,

(01:20:24):
and by awesome I mean aggressive.

Speaker 3 (01:20:26):
Yeah no, this is just fun. It's this is definitely
one of those moments that's like a finally moment, like
Ninive finally. This is definitely a Sanderson checking this off,
like nine finally needs to be bonded to Land. Are
you kidding me? Why has this not happened yet? Why
did it not happen when Ninive was first raised, as
I said, I by Agwayne at that moment, she should
have gone down Marel and gotten the bond, like this

(01:20:47):
is long overdue. It also answered some questions about how
the bond works and like how you can transfer it.
You just need the two, I said, die in the
same place. The bond is this independent thing they can
pass around and sever and control from their end from
wherever they are. They don't need land there once it's
been formed. Handy.

Speaker 2 (01:21:07):
Yeah and yeah, I just kind of have like a
good readout of that victory lap moment that closes the chapter.
I don't really much to say about it other than
it fucking rules.

Speaker 3 (01:21:18):
I watched a movie last night, The Blackening. It's a
horror comedy, but the scene of myreel walking out it's
reminding me seen its two characters, you know, it's a
horror movie. So two characters go off in private have sex,
and then they like they come back and the girl
walks in and gets her friend a hug and she's like, girl,

(01:21:39):
you smell like cock even fucking And then he walks
in behind her and everyone goes, oh, like, I don't know.
I that just reminded me moreel walking out of the
tent with the water coming up behind. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:56):
Basically basically that basically that.

Speaker 3 (01:22:02):
Oh, that was a really funny movie. By the way,
I highly recommend it, both of me and never like
if you're looking for a good horror movie. The Blackening
you know all black characters addresses talks a lot about racism, right,
Like it's this sort of game is set up to
kill them and it's just deeply racist, and so they're
constantly like going into and like, yeah, it's very funny.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
Cool, not my genre, but glad that happened for you.

Speaker 3 (01:22:29):
Well it is October, so I'm sure, yes, some people
will enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
Sure, there's your movie recommendation from Watt spoilers.

Speaker 3 (01:22:36):
For and let me make sure I got the name
of that right before you publish this. Yes, the Blackening.

Speaker 2 (01:22:43):
All right, I'll put a link to the IMDb the.

Speaker 3 (01:22:49):
The tagline we can't all die first.

Speaker 2 (01:22:55):
Nice, nice, very good. Oh that's funny. I think I've
heard about this as a couple of years old, twenty
twenty two.

Speaker 3 (01:23:03):
Yeah, I feel like.

Speaker 2 (01:23:04):
I remember reading a review when it came out, so
when being like the number of like black people in
horror movie tropes being in incise decisively like just taken
apart and played with as a movie is Apparently it
was very good. I remember reading some from some black
commentator being like, well that was fun. That was a
really fun, like highlight reel of all the bullshit we

(01:23:24):
deal with in the horror genre, but.

Speaker 3 (01:23:26):
At the same time just very funny and also very
well done.

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
Right, yeah, exactly done in a way that was like
uplifting of the correct take, which is that's dumb. So
I do remember hearing about this, but yeah, it's just
not my ghenre.

Speaker 3 (01:23:37):
So totally fair. But if I would recommend it even
to people who are not big horror movie fans, right, Like,
I feel like the horror movie aspect of it is
almost beside the point.

Speaker 2 (01:23:54):
Sure, sure, it's commentary in the context of a horror movie. Yes, yes, right,
well I will go watch the trailer because I love
watching trailers. Maybe I'll watch it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:04):
So yeah, this is this is my argument. But yeah,
I think that's did you do the readout?

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
No, I'm ready to do the readout.

Speaker 3 (01:24:11):
Okay, I've distracted this. Sorry, damn, this is hard on
this episode, but I think it was worth Like, I
think there was a lot of good jumping off points
in this in this chapter.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
So no, I'm really glad that we did it in
such great detail and that we only did one chapter. Yes,
is definitely for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:24:29):
Yeah, well I looked at this and was like, yes,
we're definitely going to dive deep into nine eves test.
There's no doubt. I want to have the time and
not feel rushed.

Speaker 2 (01:24:37):
Yeah, yeah, all right, here's the readout. I neve caught
the woman's arm. I have never thanked you, she said,
though she had to grit her teeth to get the
words out.

Speaker 3 (01:24:48):
I do so.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
Now he lives because of you. I realized that, however, Morrell,
this is not a time to push me today. I
have seen people I love slaughtered. I have been forced
to consign children to living torment. I have been burned, scourged,
and harrowed. I swear to you, woman, if you do
not pass me lance borne to this very moment, I

(01:25:11):
will step into that tent and teach you the meaning
of obedience. Do not press me in the morning. I
swear the three oaths. I am free of them for
one more night. Morrel froze. Then she sighed and stepped
back out of the tent.

Speaker 3 (01:25:26):
So be it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):
She closed her eyes, weaving spirit and sending the weaves
into nineve. It felt like an object being shoved physically
into her mind. Naive gasped her surroundings spinning. Morrel turned
and slipped back into her tent. Ninives slid down until
she was sitting on the ground. Something was blossoming inside
her mind, an awareness, beautiful, wonderful. It was him and

(01:25:52):
he was still alive. Blessed light, she thought, eyes closed,
Thank you. She knows. Wow, she's been trusting He's alive
this whole time. Now she knows. Now she has an
up to the second meter of Land's aliveness. And just
I love her, like I have one more night free
of the three o's and if you don't think I

(01:26:12):
will use everything that the three o's forbids to get
this bond from you who are mistaken and Morell's just
like yeah, no, okay, all right, fine, like this is
this is not worth it. I want to go back
to fucking my order.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
I would have liked to see some discussion about Moraine
and her intentions and like that whole promise to Land
that you'll thank me in the end, right, Like something
like that would have been nice to see. And I
do like Ninive bullying her a little bit, but her
maybe coming back being like listen, Moraine intended for me
to hold onto this bond until and I need to

(01:26:49):
go until it came to me because I'm the man
he loves. That was her intention. You saved his life,
and she did do a little bit of that of you.
You saved his life, and I appreciate that. But talk
about Moraine because it would have made the hug a
little more payoffable.

Speaker 2 (01:27:05):
That would have helped, Yeah, because yeah, Morrell has more
backbone than that, and being like, look, I wasn't being
petty or vindictive or trying to keep him from you.
I was waiting for you to be ready, because that's
what I promised Moraine, and I promised to Moraine. Matters
more than helping you and Land get hooked up. Okay.
And then Ninieve could be like, well the promise fulfilled.
Give give now Morellet you're right, you're right, you pass

(01:27:27):
the test correct, Okay, I'm giving it. It would have
been fun for Morell to be less of a pushover
in this moment. But still Ninive's rant is lah perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:27:37):
Yes, yes, no, very good moment, I will I can nitpick,
but otherwise very well done. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
And of course Kate Reading's rendition of it is fantastic
because Kate does angry so good.

Speaker 3 (01:27:49):
Yes, it's more the more emotion there is, the more
fun it is to read I've already learned that just
from our right, Like my favorite characters are still the
insane ones. For some reason, I will say that myrel's
sexy order is new Hell Dromond, the one who started

(01:28:09):
this whole conversation. That's oh yeah, apparently the illly honor
that's her order.

Speaker 2 (01:28:15):
Yeah, big bear of a man, that's apparently what she likes.

Speaker 3 (01:28:20):
I mean, Land's not small.

Speaker 2 (01:28:22):
No, no, he is nat and uh yeah. We will
pick this up again next week with I think another doubleheader.
But we're getting into a meteor and media part of.

Speaker 3 (01:28:31):
The book, so yep. This is definitely hitting the Sandra
Lange a little bit. Like we are on that slide,
the shales moving, We're seeing rumblings like a lot more
exciting stuff is going on.

Speaker 2 (01:28:41):
So yeah, we will be back next week with more
of that. And for now we're gonna go work on
our secret project that we're being really not subtle about.

Speaker 3 (01:28:48):
Bye bye.

Speaker 2 (01:29:42):
Thank you for listening to the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast.
Please rate and review us on your podcast app, and
consider supporting us on Patreon for ad free episodes. Watt
Spoilers is a production of Fox and Raven Media. For
more podcasts from Fox and Draven Media. Visit our website
at Fox and even Media dot com.

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A Choice - Towers of Midnight chapter20 - EP556

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}A Choice - Towers of Midnight chapter20 - EP556