An Open Gate & The End of a Legend - Towers of Midnight chapter 21-22 - EP557 - WoT Spoilers

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is the weed Let Time Spoilers podcast. Holidays were
three days away from Halloween. It's very exciting, spooky, great.
I had a great Halloween party at my place that
was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Get that out of the way. Yeah, I don't have
scheduled conflicts exact Halloween exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, we did that last weekend, and well it's also like,
if we're doing it this weekend, that's kind of after Halloween.
And a lot of times I find if you do
a party after the actual holiday, people are done with
the holiday, They've moved on to the next one, they've
put their stuff away. Like, you're much more likely to
get attendance if you do the party of the week
or two before Halloween. People like, well, my Halloween costume's

(00:59):
not done yet, but I'll dry on it at the party,
or I'll wear one from last year at the party
or something like that. And so you can get just
by just better attendants at Halloween parties. That's my here's
my secret toath to throw in a decent party. Make
sure it's before the holiday, not after it.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
That makes sense. That makes sense, And.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
I feel like the same thing for birthdays, right, you
want to throw like I know you're not twelve. Birthdays
might be different because it sort of it doesn't happen
until it happens.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
I prefer celebrating birthdays after day. Yeah, like if you're
going to extend it. Yeah, it's like, no, I am twelve.
Now you can continue to shower me with praise for
achieving my new year for the next week or so.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Right, But if you celebrate ahead of time, then you
haven't achieved that milestone yet. Right, It's like you can't
you can't celebrate graduation day, right, yeah, exactly exactly. But
yearly holidays that come every year, I feel like you
should more celebrate before rather than after. Right, No one
celebrates Christmas on the twenty seventh. You want to celebrate
it on the twenty third, if you need to write,

(01:59):
like right, But then again, New Year's doesn't. It's more
of a birthday because it's a birthday for the year.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Holidays are complix.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
What and bell time? You always want to celebrate with
the poll on the day of. That's very important, no
matter what the weather is. Yeah, yeah, because how else
are you gonna get struck by lightning?

Speaker 2 (02:18):
This is true, and that is the most important part
of a harvest festival is getting struck by lightning?

Speaker 1 (02:25):
All right, do you want to dig into an open gate?

Speaker 2 (02:28):
So, honestly, that's a lot.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
That's a lot.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
It's not a lot here, but there's a lot of
pages we have to turn to get through.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yes, yes, this is a This is a low density
couple of chapters. Now, I do like how much he
is flushing out the world in these chapters. Right, this
feels a little like doing a good job of Robert
jordaning the descriptions. But usually Robert Jordan has more substance
mixed in with the descriptions. And again I tend to

(02:58):
find one or two things per scene that I want
to talk about rather than an intricate storytelling that's going on.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, and again we're in paren so we know that
we are in pure Sanderson. There's nothing Jordan threaded through this.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
The only really significant thing that I find about this
chapter is that Morgae finally gets an answer to what's
wrong with her. Yes, that is the reason. Oh my god,
characters are talking. We're getting a plot loop closing. This
is an important part of a growth arc. Everything else
is like, Yeah, the handwaving details of Sanderson just fleshing
out Paren's camp. But I like Morgaze finally knowing what's

(03:37):
wrong and being able to have that closure with Talin
for and all that.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
And just take some of that guilt, like, oh, it's
not my fault, right, Like, and this this feeling I'm
having for this man isn't real. It's magically induced.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Right. She's finally getting the diagnosis of having been in
an abusive relationship, right, right, She's finally learning that she
was dealing with psychosis the whole time. It makes everything
makes sense. It's great. But yeah, all the parent stuff
before that, about back and forth with the White Cloaks
and who's doing what's it? Where's it? It's yeah, low density.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
I guess I should read it saying because it's a
parent chapter if you want to, so, our symbol is
the Trolucks, because we do get the battle right later
on in different behavior Goblin Yeah, the goublin Gublin, Yeah,
which I do like that he's referencing. I do like
that they make the trlucks a little more threatening and
bring back the threat of Trollucks. In this chapters, he's

(04:31):
trying to make a large group of Trolucs attacking a
group of soldiers threatening again.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah. Yeah, the section with Iteralda in the middle between
the two parent sections, yeah, it is. It does have
a very eye of the world level of threat feel
to it. It's like Sanderson might have been writing it
all entirely out of his own head, but he really
was marinating in that first wave of terror that you
get when trollucks first show up at winter Night.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Or even when I'm thinking book four, right with the
battle for the Two Rivers, right, because that was Yeah,
the trolucs were threatening the farmers, right. They didn't have
any you know, a couple of isid eye channelers, but
that was it.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Right, Yeah, this is what it means to fight trollocks
when you're outnumbered and have very little magic or no magic,
very little magic to work with.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Which, despite the last battle being a magical battle, there's
of course going to be tons of fights like this
all over the place, right, right, just numbers of the
number of soldiers versus the number of magic users.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
And yeah, like doctor Pant says, it works really well
to show just how on the brink of the last
battle we are. This really you can smell their horrible
breath and see the hair like. That's how close the
trollocks are. They've been kind of distant and shapeless things
that get destroyed at a distance. Because magic. Now we
are up close and personal again, an open gate.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
We thought it best seen had said, to let one
of us give the full report. I have gathered information
from the others for presentation. Paren nodded absently. He sat
on cushions in the meeting pavilion, fay Yel at his side.
It was crammed full of people again, Carrie In is
still a mess. Of course, Sienid began the business like.

(06:12):
Green was a kurtwoman, not mean or disagreeable, but even
her interactions with her orders seemed like those of a
prosperous farmer with his workers. The sun throne has remained
unoccupied for far too long. Oh know that the Lord
Dragon has promised the throne to Elaine cand but she
has been struggling to secure her own throne. She has
finally done so by reports. She looked to parent for comment.

(06:35):
Smelling satisfied, he scratched at his beard. This was important
and he needed to pay attention, but thoughts of his
training in the Wolf's Dream just kept drawing his mind
so Elaine is queen. That must make rand happy. The
Lord Dragon's reaction is unknown, Senid continued, as if checking
off another item on the list. The wise ones made

(06:56):
no comments and asked no questions. They sat on their
cushions in a little cluster like rivets on a hinge.
Likely the maidens had already told them all of this.
I'm going to stop there because there's no real good
stopping point at this point. But I was enjoying the
little snod readings. Those were fun.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Oh, I like saying, d She's not the most interesting
or the most annoying, but she does work. She's not
just there to be an isodye placeholder. She actually does
like footwork on the ground, running around doing stuff with
other plot people, and just like going, oh, yeah, we
don't know how the Lord Dragon feels like Paren made
that comment rhetorically and she just answers it like it's

(07:35):
another item. I find that amusing.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
She's a lot of parents people work, right, Like, I
think there's a certain amount of like leading by example,
because he's always doing something, he's always working on something,
he never stops, and so they sort of picked that
up by example. Right, you have this this person who's driven.
And that's when when he's like, well, I don't know,
I'm not a good leader, everyone looks around and goes, yeah,
you lead by example. You don't know what you're doing,

(07:59):
but by being so effective, by being so driven, you
force the people around you to also be driven and effective.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
And you're willing to delegate, which is a huge part
of effective leadership.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Then you know when you don't know.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, huge. The humility to know when you need to
defer to an expert is like really critical for being
a leader. So they're basically talking about where is Rand.
That's kind of what the next long section is is
all the different cities he could be in and where
is he? And no one's wrong about anything. They're just
rehashing plot.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
It's a lot of recap stuff. Yeah, he talks about
going and he talks about, oh, we need to go
to Kyrie Inn and talk to the queen now that
she's secured her throat.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
And or and or right. But yeah, they're like, we
need to go to talk to a lane, Like wherever
Rand is is beside the point. We need to go
to and Or and talk to a lane and sort
it out from there. We'll meet up with Rand eventually.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Once we deal with these white cloaks, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
First the white cloaks, then the refugees, then stopping off
with the lane. Then we'll get to Rant. And Aleandra
is curious where she fits into that, and paren, does
you know the thing he did to Berlin, which is like,
you're an annoyance, You're a pain in my ass. I
want you to go away now that I'm done using
your soldiers from my own ends, which is rude and inappropriate.

(09:17):
And Aleandra doesn't appreciate it, but is also slower to
deal with it than Beryline because she's a less adroid ruler.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
But it doesn't take long before everybody's like, listen, last
battle is coming. We're gonna fight in last battle. We're
an army together who's used to working together. We have
a better chance just sticking together and fighting last battle
with you. Lead us into battle. Follow the dragon Reborn.
You are a following. By following you, we are following
the dragon Reborn. You are the You are his general.
He said you out to do this thing, and you know.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
And a pyramid shape. You are between us and the point.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Listen, and we know it's not.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
An MLM, but it's legally distinct from a pyramid scheme.
It just happens to be a pair of bid shaped.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's wed shaped. The wide part's at
the top. Okay, it's a funnel.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
So then we talk about the white Cloaks and how
I guess we're going to beat them up. Paren is
not yet decided to be sneaky about it. He thinks
he's decided to attack them. He will change his mind,
but he has not yet done that. He currently thinks
that he's going to attack them.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
He hasn't quite realized the trap that's set.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, he knows that it bothers him. He thinks about
what a shame it is to have, you know, regular
humans fighting each other when literal evil is coming. But
he hasn't yet quite put it together that this is
a setup. He's just niggling at the problem.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
The wise ones talk about the problem with the shawn
Chan and the captives in the air and the day
and sort of setting up the battle that is foretold
in Avienda's dream. Right, this blood feud between the Aeel
and the shawn Chan.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, it's a complicated thing to thread, right, because they
literally have no capacity to do anything. Right, the wise
ones with Parents' army have no capacity to do anything
about the wise ones being held by the shaun Chin.
So they go through the mind pretzel of saying, we'll
give it a year in a day. In a year
and a day, we will have an ultimatum sort it out,

(11:19):
and we can figure it out somehow, but we're just
gonna have to be mad about it until then. And
that is what a mind pretzel. Right, The shan Chan
sucked terribly. You know, they don't respect to hear in
a day wise ones aren't supposed to be taking guyshine
Like this is a terrible, terrible compromise. But literally, what
else can they do other than try to mind pretzel
themselves into some kind of peace until a solution can

(11:41):
be figured out? Like I could do anything from the
middle of Giladon.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Why are they not? They could be meeting with the
other wise ones in the dream and sort of talking
about it, like there could be this council going on
between the wise.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Ones, but they have to know to meet, right, Like
this is information they just got, and like they don't
do regular weekly meetings or whatever.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
Right, and and I forgot there are very few actual
dreamers among right, there's only the three, really, right, the
ones who were teaching. No, No, I'm getting that wrong.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
I think I think every clan has one or two.
But still you'd need for them to know to go
into the dream and be looking for a message at
the right time. And like, that's a lot of coordination,
you know. Again, once Rand has them all in one
spot and they can plan, then they can figure out
how to present an ultimatum that's effective. But for now
it's just I guess your guys shine for a year

(12:30):
and a day, Wise Ones.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
It's terrible, right, and at that point they might be
broken because of the leash.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Which I don't know how much the wise ones know
about the leash, but we as readers know that that's
gonna be a problem. Even for the hardest of a yield.
The shan chan might be more overwhelming than adeel stubbornness.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
Although you could say a GWayne one with idell stubbornness
kind of.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
She almost broke under the leash, and that was before
she had her ideal training, and then it almost broke
her again in the dream, except that she was able
to dream her way out of it. After the ayel stuff.
I don't I don't know, I don't know. I feel
like the sean Chan are like a force of nature
and you can resist for a period of time, but ultimately,

(13:17):
like I don't know, I don't know. I would hate
to see the AEO wise ones being broken or post
being broken on page I think that would be really hard.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
But we don't have that kind of time pass No.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
No, we don't know. Everything wraps up within just a
few months, so the year in the day is nowhere
near passed by the time that the books conclude.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
And so's they've sent some maidens to Kyrie and sorry
to Camlin to spy, but I didn't really get any
information out of that other than that Elaine is queen, right,
is that basically the only information they got from the
spies that they sent to Kamlin.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Well, and that there was a forsaken who was had
taken over. I mean that's the information that more Gazes
tire World hinges on is coming back with the rumors
about Gabriel.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
So parent knew that Parent confirms it. He's like, oh, yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
Well, but they still have to put all that information
together in one place, because you know, paren knew that
Rand kicked someone out, but whatever, it didn't really matter.
But now they're bringing this like, oh it was Robbie parents.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Like yeah, oh yeah, that does that does connect.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Some dots, huh.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Interesting, And that he was alias was Gabriel right like
that they give him both information, not just that it
was a for second, but it actually was the man
who you were shacked up with, right right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
This information has never been all laid out in one spot,
certainly not in parents camp.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
So she drops the teapot and like you know, storms off.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, she drops the tray and just walks away like
the most uncharacteristic, like I need a moment, please, thank you,
and just leaves without asking for permission, like doesn't clean
up as an embarrassed like she is one threat away
from a complete meltdown. And she goes off to find
a nice natural pool that reminds me of the fountain
that she likes to hang out at her palace. She

(15:03):
goes off and finds a natural feature that sort of
mirrors that. To think about it.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Mmm, I miss that, and I would saying find talin Bore.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
No, she does not go to find Talibor. She goes
to sit by a natural pool and think, and then
talin for finds.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
Her hmm, and she had no idea that was going
to happen.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Because that's him coming over to say I'm leaving.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Oh okay.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
He literally says, I'm coming to say goodbye. I have
to go to tear I can't be around you in
this unrequested state. And she goes, hold up, I had
just got some new information. I need a minute to process,
but can you please just hold on like five more
minutes And then he says, yeah, fine, I guess I will.
And you know, you know what's going to be happily

(15:44):
ever after blah blah.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Blah unless they all die in the last battle, which
they don't. We get information the Aschman are better right
from whatever that the bubble of evil red snake snake
sickness that was keeping them from making gateways earlier.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
The plots have lned enough that they're allowed to recover. Yeah,
that's what I'm getting from that.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
The pattern has decided, and so.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, now they can move a reasonable amount of people
through a gateway enough to start sending home the people
that do want to go home, which it turns out
is not many, but some people do, and now they're
up to capacity.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Because the shidow were essentially a great filter. They got
rid of anyone who was weak or sick. So you
just have a bunch of able bodied people who are
like looking for a fight. Essentially, you don't have a
lot of people you need to support and camp and
children and sickly people like none of that, right.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah. The amount of women and children and elders that
can't be combatants who are in this camp are very
much in scale with camp followers. You don't have a
refugee camp. You have a regular army camp with just
a lot of new soldiers. But yeah, they're like, oh yeah,
as the guy Shine are coming out of their shells,
they're pissed. They're pissed and they're ready to go.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
And when he says, guy Shine, these are wetlanders, right,
These aren't. These aren't ideal Guy Shining. These They are
just the people who were taken prisoner, who kind of
went into that stupor and now come out of it
and realize their lives were stolen from them and they
want revenge and they want to fight somebody, and they
don't have a lot to lose.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Roughly one hundred thousand people who have just gone through
hell and come out the other side, Like, don't be
too eager to send them away when you have a
battle coming up, just saying.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
And the chances are the Shadow destroyed whatever village or
town they were in, right, and killed everybody else who
was there, right.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
So many of those people have nowhere to return to,
certainly not before the last battle.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Uh. There's one thought here that parent has all too often, right,
So here, what was wrong with mcgedeon? Erratic behavior like
that was disturbing all too often it was followed by
some manifestation of the Dark One's power. And I always
that line sort of makes me think that maybe in
a lot of places they are killing anyone who acts erratically,

(17:55):
so the dark One can't like to stop the Dark
One from getting into them. And now I have to
wonder if there's a bunch of witch hunts going on
in places. Oh boy, right, that you have these like,
oh yeah, anyone who's erratic all of a sudden, Well,
we need to murder that person before they explode with beatles, right,
because we didn't last time. And that was a problem.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
Oh my god, I'd never thought about that.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
And then you can have these sort of moments in
places that are essentially you know, killing killing weird people
killing others. You know. Come mind, that was this like
whole dark friend thing where like you have the Last
Battle and dark friends are coming out of the woodwork, right, Like,
there could be really dark aspects of what's going on

(18:36):
in society and the number of innocent people who could
be getting murdered because they don't act normal or their
suspected dark friend or they live alone or they're a
wise woman.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Right, I mean this is kind of already the world
that we open up into book one. It's like if
the Dragon's paying is scrawled on your door in the
back country, you'll get lynched, right like that that's the
vibe we open with. So yeah, the escalation at this
point when people are literally like melting into lava pits
or whatever, Like, yeah, there's probably a lot of witch hunt, lynching,

(19:14):
hate crime type things happening on people who literally were
not gonna do a bubble of evil, but like Greg
did a bubble of evil last week, So clearly Tim
needs to go this week. Oh I that's dark and.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
How much that helps the dark one? Right as he's
breaking free.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Literally help the dark one break free faster, right, because
you're doing evil acts. Oh that's so dark, that's so dark.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
I do think that, like you could make the Last
Battle a much darker experience. Like there's all of this
starvation going on, and we don't really talk about the
people who are actually starving to death, like like, well,
it happened so quickly, and yeah, the food's going bad,
but people kind of stal eat the rotten food. Well,
we don't see a lot of people dying from disease
from eating that rotten food. See fields of dead bodies

(20:01):
of people being diseased. We don't see starvation where people are,
you know, we don't see cannibalism, We don't see There's
so many things that could be going on if the
world was falling apart for.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
Longer, Right, we don't see the warlord despots that just
are abusing people because they're the only one with food,
and yeah, just the hordes of skeletons wandering the countryside.
We get descriptions of refugees, but we don't really dig
into the true horrors of what a protracted famine looks like,
partially because of timeline reasons, and but yeah, there's because yeah,

(20:36):
it's one of those things where you think this big
world changing event is happening, everyone is thinking about it
and engaged with it. And that's one of Robert Jordan's
big thesises is No, that's actually not how the Apocalypse
goes down. Most people are not spending most of their
day thinking about the big world changing event. They're trying
to like feed their kids and get to work. Like

(20:56):
this is. This is a theme that Jordan's been playing
with since the beginning, but it does also make for
some blind spots in a book that needs to be
you know, choosy about what it shows. It's like, yeah,
you could read a lot of fanfic about how awful
this is in ways that just don't merit. Plot. No

(21:17):
parent notices Fagel and Berylain play acting at friends. Yes,
doesn't get it, but we see that that plan is
going and you.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Can tell by the sense that they're you know, hate
each other, but they're acting like friends. So he's like,
I don't know what's going on there, but it's working.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, the actual friendship hasn't started yet, they're still just
in the faked part.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
So yeah, Balwer does his thing. Information about the Sean
Chan being in league with Children of the Light, which, like,
I feel like that's even old news at this point
because it wasn't that like Walda who made that deal
and he's dead.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, And Baalwar says like, I know it's old news,
but it's important, and Parent says, I am so over it.
I'm so over it on behalf of the audience, Baalwer,
please leave it alone unless you have actual plot forwarding information.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
And then we get more pictures of Paren and Matt
and Rand and you know, essentially ransom notes on them, right.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
It's more like wanted posters than ransom notes. Sure sure,
sure yeah, And Ballwar says they're being passed around in
certain circles.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
That's the word I was looking for, was wanted poster.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
So Ballwar has some kind of connection to like the
underworld of Dark Friends, even though he's ostensibly not a
Dark Friend. He knows how to like get a copy
of their newsletter in town or something.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
I think he's just good at getting information. He's just
got informants. I think he's just that he knows things.
He has connections, like he's been the spymaster for pedrin
Niall who was one of the most manipulative people on
the continent.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Right, He's got connections, and those connections are not all
to the light side.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
No, no, definitely not. Eh. These photos I think are
coming from and Sindane because their task is to kill right,
because they were there was the Varren posters. These are
not the Varen posters.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Are these not the same?

Speaker 1 (23:09):
These are not the same. Varn's been found, Varen's gone
off to the like she's been gone for a while.
These are promising money. These are circulating among dark friends,
not just among the area. They've got Rand as well,
because she doesn't remember. Only She's like, I know Rand's
not in there because he's off doing his thing, So
I'm looking for Paren or Max. These have Rand in
them as well. So these are set up by Sindane

(23:32):
and Ogeddion who have orders to kill the two helpers, right,
basically take one of them out, take down the tripod.
And these are very much circulating among dark friends, not
just among the genuine popu genuine pop.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
So yeah, Paren's like, who the hell are you really?
And Baalwark gives a truthful yet still very obfuscated it's
very eyes to die. I worked for a man I respected.
He was killed by the children of the Light. They
might recognize me on site. All of those things are

(24:07):
true statements. Yes, none of them say I was the
secretary for the head Haunch show Children of the Light
fuck face for the last forty years.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yes, he was killed by the children Light, and he
was among the children of the Light. He was one
of the children of the Light.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
I want to like baal War, I really do. But
he facilitated the White Cloaks being as effective and bad
as they were for decades because of working for Nile.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
And yet you see his reasoning here. Money means nothing
to me. The information that is what important facts and discoveries.
They are like nuggets of gold. I would give that
cold to a common banker to make coins, but I
forgive but I prefer to give it to the master
craftsmen to make something of beauty. And that's what he
saw Pedronile, Pedro Nile took that information and was plotting

(24:54):
and had a plan to take over the continent with
the information that Balwar was giving him. And Balvar doesn't
care if the Nazis are taking over. He just wants
to see his information put to good use.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, that's the part where he says, a master craftsman
to make a thing of beauty, and I'm like, fascism.
Fascism is a thing of beauty to you. Like, again,
I want to like you, but you need to have
a little more moral compass than to say it's an
elaborate scheme. Therefore I want it to exist.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
In this case. In that particular instance, he's talking about
parent making the thing of beauty, which is the army
that he's forged together. He's talking about parent in this
situation as the person who's the master craftsman.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Well, that's fine, because we like parent, yes, But I'm
just saying he shifted allegiance from Nile to parent as
though they are a similar quality of man, and that
really makes me question his critical thinking and like judgment skills.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
But I would argue that what he's saying here is
before I had someone who's intelligent, and now I have
someone who's intelligent and good, and I much prefer to
be with someone who's intelligent and good, even though the
intelligence is the point, right, you need to be able
to do both.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Think he should have shopped himself around to a better
ruler than the white cloaks if I just, I really
I want to like him, but I question how much
I can like him if yeah, he doesn't mind that
the Nazis are taking ever because his chemical lab is
still going to get funding to make weapons of war.
Like I just, I don't want to like you, dude.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, but how many scientists right like you think that
your side is the good side, so you support your
side with your best scientific efforts, and how many wars?
Can you know? How many scientists in America work because
the funding comes from the military, right, how much of
scientific Almost all of them? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
It's it's the thing where all the different chemical warfare
engineer guys hung out and we're fine with each other
as colleagues after World War Two, even though they were
on opposite sides. I forget the name of the one guy,
but like spent the latter part of his life just
like swapping notes and stuff with other colleagues who happened

(27:11):
to be on the other side of the war at
the time, and like just didn't really see anything in
Congress because they were just like, well, I wanted to
do chemical engineering, like I just wanted to be And
it's like wasn't an issue between them as colleagues. It's
that it's totally that And yes, obviously we do love
our German rocket scientists, big fans of that obviously.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
I mean, and even look at now like what we
cooperate with the Russians heavily with the NASA Space program
and they're fighting war on Ukraine that we were supporting
out the opposite sides up right, Like, uh huh, I.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Just I just feel like Ballwer had agency as a
person to go where he wanted, and he chose to
stay where he didn't have to stay. If there's no
reason why he had to stay working for the White Cloaks.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
He also helped get more Gayze out, don't forget that.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
I'm pretty sure he also helped get her entangled credit.
So again, he could have had the moral clarity to
know he shouldn't have been working for those fuckers long
with four more Gaze ever wandered in. It's the thing
about him not wanting to get paid more because it
would be sneaky sneaky, or it would be not sneaky sneaky.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Think that's how they can tell I'm not just a
secretary if you're pay me more they'll be able to
It's like not safe for me for me to earn
more money.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah, which I do appreciate the part where he's like, no,
I really am in this for the love of the game,
Like I do not want nice things on the side,
I just want the love of the game, which is cool.
And to answer Fouji's question of what flavor of autism
is Ballwer, I say, yes, how does the flavor of
autism that Ballwer has the engineer kind, the I don't

(28:52):
see people, I just see systems kind.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
And so we end this sort of POV of Parent
with him going hm, the first time he found himself
wondering if he was going to need an army to
keep himself safe. You think you have forsaken after you?
I mean until you learn to teleport and do the
you know, animem oops on behind you thing, right, and
then he's kind of all super powerful. But before that
moment he needs an army to keep him safe.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, well, Parent is very slow to realize things. We
know this about him, all right, So POV switch up
to the battle in Maradon.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Right, and that was the one we had before where
there's a there's a camp a city, walled city behind it, Aeralda.
They're up on a hill. They've been firing down that
hill onto the monsters, but they're getting pushed off that
hill in this moment.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
They started the retreat. When we were with them last,
he was deciding to retreat. Now we're sort of two
thirds of the way through the retreat process. The trollocks
are crusting over the hill, but he's still steadily retreating
from the base of the hill. They're planning on breaking
around the city and going farther down in south and

(30:13):
just leaving the city to its own devices with the Tralucs,
because that's apparently what the city wants, and.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Hoping the Trluks attack the city instead of them. Right, yeah, please,
we're going away just to go ahead and attack the
city and leave us alone.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
And the plan is that if they can get far
enough away to disengage, they can use a gateway to
hop to their next chosen fighting point. It's not like
they're going to just retreat step by step. This is
a plan. He has a fallback solution. But you know,
it would make a lot of sense if the city
opened itself up, and it does by the end of
this POV. But as with most things in this battle,
it's always a little too little, too late, right.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Well, and if you remember, we'll find this out in
later chapters. But the city is being run by a
dark friend, and so the guy who runs out and
saves them the reason at the end of the chapter,
he says, will probably you know, it's basically my death
sentence is he did it against orders. So he's going
to be executed.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
Yeah, And there's even a section later where I Toeralda says, well,
there's surely your queen can give you a pardon. You
did the right thing, and he's like, no, I will
demand a trader's death because I know that I did
the wrong, right thing for the right wrong reason.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
And it doesn't ram be like, okay, I'll put you
on the front lines if you want to death, like
go fight the last battle basically.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Right, yeah, I got places for this energy.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Trust me, you'll die. If you want to die, I
can make you die and make that worthwhile. I don't
know if he's actually says that. I can't remember that's
canon or not.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
I don't I don't recall.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, so they talk about the triple pikeline. We get
a lot of details about that. Interesting here we get
a little bit more about trollics, right, we get the
minds as the dragon sworn, as the Army starts calling.
It's like, now they're starting to interact with these trollics,
and we're getting a whole nother generation of nicknames, and
you know, it's a new group of people interacting with these.

(32:02):
And also I feel like it's a little bit like, oh,
this is where Nark comes from, because he was a
wolf headed.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Definitely, like, no, no, no, Nark was not an anachronism. Mmm, no, no,
that wolf headed Trulucks have always been on the edge
of humans speaking. People have always that Nark was not
an aberration, not an eye of the world ism at all, No, sir.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
And there's a couple of places here, And I notice
these last three books where Santisen kind of explains away
I the world isms that have been forgotten.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
I kind of love it. I kind of love the
callbacks where he's like, no, no, no, I can make this work.
I have the authorial flexibility now to make some of
these eye of the worldisms actually fit the cannon. And
I like it.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Gonna explain the boy. So yeah, this was a good
one where it's like, oh yeah, no, there totally are
the wolf headed trulucks that can talk, and we have
found a bunch of those, and we give them a
name called mines because they're smarter than the rest and
there's a step below the fades and in terms of
like directing the rest of the troops. And it's like, okay,
this has never come up when land, with all the
Borderlanders and all the time rauls and all the fighting.

(33:04):
I'll take it.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
It's fine, it's fine saying. Next thing I've got is
his second in command, Lydrin, just losing his shit and
basically breaking the retreat. The retreat's going really well, everyone's
holding their shit together, and then this one guy kind
of loses his mind and everything starts to fall apart

(33:25):
pretty dramatically.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Why do you think do you think he just loses
his mind or do you think that's a compulsion thing
or I.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Mean, the way that it just unzips the whole situation
makes me wonder if, yes, someone managed to lob a
little blip of evil into that guy's head, just one
last little little drop of the taint flying off of
a dragcar spittle, just like getting in his eye and
like pushing him that bit over the edge or his
mind just broke. Because this is a terrible situation.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
What is it possible Grendel is already fucking with Ydrada
and the opportunity to well, no, because we don't know.
He's not one of the last four commanders right like
that hasn't really formed up yet.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
He is known as a great captain, that reputation does exist,
but this is his second in command who is going down.
And I think Grandall's still busy doing other stuff at
this point. But I wouldn't be surprised if, like, maybe
there's a dread lord who's like hurling compulsion weaves out
there in the hopes that it'll catch someone, or maybe
there's some kind of despair aura that the fades can

(34:30):
generate a thirteen of them, or like on a battle
ground for a day or something like. I would like
to think that Lyndrin didn't just break. I'd like to
think that there's some sort of evil. This is the
weak point. If we can break this one link, then
you know, and.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
On zips, because there's two things that go wrong, right
Lindron is one. The other one is the horn that
blows for retreat that's not supposed to be able to blow,
which to me again feels like there has to be
if not compulsion, if feel like dark friends at the
very least.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Right, I was wondering about the horns too, because we
don't know who gives the order, and there's no reason
to think. I mean, it seems like it's just an accident.
Someone just made that call on their own because they
were so desperate, which again, maybe that's what happened to Lligerent, right,
just so desperate that your entire chain of reasoning falls
apart and you start making, you know, rat in a

(35:22):
cage calls. But I like the idea that there's some
sort of evil influence that's tipping people to make the
wrong choice, maybe compulsion, maybe something milder, But it is
a really effective one two punch. And we also know
we know that there are dark friends watching from behind them,

(35:42):
right up in a tower in the town. There are
dark friends watching able to communicate, like maybe they're able
to like do something from their end or provide information
to the other side in such a way that certain
things can get affected. Like I don't know, but I
I wanted to be more than just random chaos. I
want it to be machinations of evil.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
I think Dark Friends is a really good explanation for
what's going on here. Like, I think you've got someone
who realized that if they blew the horns, they could
be like, whoops, my bad. But then like that would
cause complete chaos, And that's just so so stereotypical dark
friend behavior. And they hide the evil with incompetence.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, I was scared for my life. That's why I
had to make the irrational, bad decision. Sure you did.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Now with Lindron, it's a little bit harder because he
is clearly committing suicide, right, He's jumping out into the
traulucs and dying.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
So we have every reason to believe he was not
a dark Friend. Yeah right, but you know, and also
I mean, yeah, people can just lose their minds in
terrible situations, and it might just be a measure of
how bad it is that even the Great Captain's second
in command can't stand up to the pressure.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
So what follows is a pretty cool, i mean, just
very scary eydrawll to fighting trolcs nearly dying battle scene.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yeah, the horror becomes a character just long enough for
you to care and then it dies immediately. Yeah, it's
a really intense, awesome sequence. We've got the symbol of
the Goblin band. I'm like, okay, Goblin cool. That's that again,
a very like callback to like I Have the World
and Book four with the names of trolock bands being

(37:20):
the names of various like creepy Crawleys from ar Mythology.
I noticed a pair of names. I'm like, I wonder
if these are fan names. I don't know. There's a
lot of pairs of names in these two chapters, but
lots of people dying.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Which names were those?

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Wellborn and Lahan, two of his honor Guard they just die.
I just every time I see a pair of names,
I wonder if they're you know, the fan inserts, but
also they just died.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Wellborn is named for Brent Welborne, a fan of the
Wheel of Time.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Okay, and Lahan l e h.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
Y n e n is name for Brian Leyhan, fan
of the Wheel of Time.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Okay. So those two guys show up for the sentence
it took them to.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Die yep, which is very typical. That's how he puts
those people in as he's like, oh, you get to
die in the Wheel of time. Congratulations.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
We have another pair of names a couple of paragraphs later,
who ride off on horses help and cartaris Help Key.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
H E l M k E name for Christopher Helmkey
a fan of the Wheel of Time.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Okay. And the next one is c U T A
r I s.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
There is no note saying he was named after somebody
in particular.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Okay, next name, what about c A P p r
E capri cap pere, cap pre capre.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
That's an animal found in the waste. That's cappar. Oh yeah,
I'm not finding anything, okay.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
And then that guy's supposed to go to Allen's cavalry.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
A l I N. No note about who he's supposed
to be if he's named after somebody, Okay.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
The next one is Sorrenton s O r r E
n t N.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
And it's all just on the wiki. Name for Ed Sorrento,
a fan of the Wheel of Time. Nice Sorrentino.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
The next okay, there's even there's so many names here
we just look them all up. The next one is
Stavin st A v E N.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
And just because there's no note in the wiki doesn't
mean they're not named for somebody, sure, Yeah, yeah, Stavin
is named for Stephen Connelly.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Okay. The next one is R. E. T. T. Rhett
Rhett Petcht nice. And then the last one that I've
seen here is Timoth, which I'm assuming is a riff
off of Timothy T. Y M O t H.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Timothy Brown.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Yeah, so that that's an Aushamon that got sent off
to burn the second set of siege equipment. He managed
to really do a number on the trollocks that way,
so that was very fun. I was reading through this, going,
that's a lot of names. Surely this is mostly fans,
and I am gratified that we found out. Yes, they
are mostly fans.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, and those are fans who are doing I think
basically they're beta readers, right, those are people who are
helping him by reading through these books, this this book
as it was being written and providing feedback.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, this podcast hadn't started yet when when all of
that was happening, so he couldn't have found us. I mean,
I hadn't joined the fandom at that point, so.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
Right, right, Yeah, It's funny how much time has passed since,
like Janderson was writing these books, right, because I was
like two thousand and eight. Wild Samson's whole career has
come since then, basically, you know, other than this born.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Yeah, he was a little baby author when this started.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
So I draw this saved by.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yoeli yurly is how they pronounced it in the book.
Where they got the R from? I don't know, but
that's how they pronounce it in the audio book is yurly.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yo yo Eli yo Lai.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
I don't understand this name. There's some rule out there
somehow that demands that you put an R into the
spelling y o e l i. You're supposed to pronounce
that yearly. According to Michael and Kate.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
I think they just mixed Upalda with the through that
R and there by accident as they were reading it
could have been.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
But yeah, he comes out and saves e Toeralda at
the last minute, and does so in a very grim manner,
because you know, he had to kill some of his
own and put his own lord into custody in order
to do that.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
And so they ride into the safety of the town
besieged by several hundred thousand shadow spawn. Now that there's
no one to stop them from pouring through the pass.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
Yeah, oh, two more names. We've got two more names here,
Bartall b A R.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
E T T A L named after Robert Burrett, a
fan of the Wheal of Time.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
And then last name Connall C O N.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
N E L Sean O'Connell.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Nice. So those are two members of I Troalda's honor
guard that survived the battle and go in with him
to Maredon.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
So yeah, basically that's a lot of people who got
named and they're not dropped in this chapter.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
That was like an entire legion of fans just getting
dropped in and immediately pull ver Us with our friends
by the shadow spot. That's one of the scenes where
he was like, oh, yeah, I can get a lot
of you in here, like, everyone take a number, let's go.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Let's kill some folks off. Yeah, all right, let's go. Yeah,
you're gonna you're gonna fight the last battle and you're
gonna like it, basically because you need the big names
to die in the actual last battle. This is sort
of the skirmish.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah, it would be no good to have people we
care about dying in a battle around a city we
didn't care about. That would be weird. But yeah, right,
Toalda and his broken leg get rescued in that will
allow us to stretch the city into a more dramatic
fight in the end.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
And then we end the chapter with Morgase realizing that
and the more Geese and Talan vor love story right,
the will they won't they? And she finally realizes, Oh
my god, I've been manipulated by my former lover. It
is not my fault. I still have feelings for him.
I am compelled. I hate him, but I love him,
but I hate loving him. It's I feel like days

(42:57):
of our lives should be playing over the background.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
At least in this case. There's actual magic involved, and
that's true narcissism, gaslighting.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
My evil twin fell in love with the forsaken.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
Yeah, it's it's annoying because it's the Talan war plot,
but it's good because it's actual plot. Closing communication in
my wheel of time, you know, Talindvorce says, I've reached
a conclusion in an ultimatum, more Gay says, I have
information that I'm just going to share with you in
a straightforward, simple sentence. And as much as I don't

(43:31):
like their love story, I like seeing it go somewhere
instead of just spinning around the dream, right.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Right, right. And I do like her sort of thinking
about Taran Gell and how oh when he died hunting,
she had been already a long way towards being independent.
And it's like, yeah, and he was going to kill
you for it, and if Tom hadn't taken him out,
you would be dead. Right. He did not like the
fact that you had that independence, and he was planning
on taking you out and taking over the throne.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
Right.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
So it's like you don't even know how much the
men were taking advantage of you. You're thinking about how
much the men in your life took advantage of you,
and you don't even.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Know the half of it, right, right, And you know,
I do also like, especially as I don't like Talen
for I really don't. I do like him saying this
is my problem with what's happening here, and she is
able to say, well, that's because you don't understand. You
think that you're in competition with Gabriel, and that's giving

(44:27):
you like little man syndrome, and like that's not what's happening.
That's not what's happening at all. And it's just so
I don't know. I feel like there's potential for me
to like Tollin for now that he knows the facts.
I don't, but like there's the potential for it.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
My problem with talan w is kind of the same
thing that I have a problem with Gowan, where he's told, hey,
you know, if someone's gonna love you, you need to
go out and make your own life and they can
love you for what you are doing, right. You can't
make your entire life about them and expect them to
love you, because that's ridiculous. And so I feel like

(45:07):
Talon bar is doing the same thing. He's making his
entire life about more Gaze and then what is there
for her to love about him, because he's just reflecting
her back at herself.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Right, which she says is kind of what she needs.
She needs a man who loves her for her and
not for other aspects of like her station or whatever.
But yeah, I still do think it's not a super
sustainable way to be in a relationship with someone. I mean,
it's good that he likes her for her, but also
he fell in love with her when she was a queen,

(45:37):
so I don't really know that he likes her for her.
I'm not totally.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
Convinced he's continued to like her kind of like except
he doesn't like the way she acts or what she
does or yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
He just wants her to change everything. Yeah, that way
she can be beautiful for him. I'm I like the
plot moving forward, I don't like what the plot is.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
Right, right, That's kind of how I feel. Their relationship
always felt very weird, and there's a power dynamic going
on there that's like kind of trying to be the
reverse of a male you know, older male king and
a younger female you know person, But like tali I
guess tali War is just the eye candy in this situation, right.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Like, except he's still the one doing the pursuing. So
I just, oh, well, at least there was communication.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
We love time, and I do like her, Like this
is one of those things that like you and I
and everyone of course have known since book five, right,
like Robbie, you know, like that whole when the khn moment, right,
that's such a famous moment, and like the idea that
she wouldn't realize that that's what's going on when it's
been common knowledge for twenty years to us. It's Yeah,

(46:48):
It's just it's a weird. It's a weird realization to
have a character realized relevant information this late into the series,
when being proximal to one of the main characters the
entire time, not just like out in the Boonies, right,
Like she's basically been with paring a big chunk of
this time, and like it's taken her this long to
realize that.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
I like that Sanderson respected her enough to give her
the information in a really unequivocal way. She doesn't have
to piece it together, like it just gets dumped in
her lap. I like that Sanderson respected her enough to
not keep her in the dark any longer.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
But well, but I would have liked to her to
piece it together earlier. Maybe earlier, But like, it would
have been cool if she didn't have to be like
she's supposed to be this smart, you know, political savvy
person who can put together small details and figure out
you know, grand schemes, and she was a great queen
and all this kind of stuff, and she didn't figure
out that there was a forsaken in Caitland when that

(47:40):
was the most common rumor on the street.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Well, he was specifically altering her mind to not suspect him.
If it had been any other queen getting manipulated, she
probably would have put it together from afar, but she
was specifically the target.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
And I guess that tells you how much about the
target being targeted abuse can affect your mind and here
of what's actually going on. And that brings us to
chapter twenty two.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
All right, less than an hour, we're on to chapter
two of today, which is chapter twenty two of the book.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
One of the longest chapter I is I've seen in
a long time.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Very long chapter, and it's called the End of a Legend,
which I did not really quite figure out what that
meant until I read through today. I was never really
sure what that title meant because no legends get ended
in this chapter, and I was like, what do you
mean there's no legends getting ended? This is just a
midpoint connector chapter. And I finally realized today. It's talking
about how there are different ends to legends, and Matt

(48:51):
learns and end to a legend, not every legend, not
every legend ends on a happy note. The end of
a legend might be kind of shitty. That's what the
chapter title is about.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
This is Brigida dying yeah, it's Brigida dying in the Tower.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Of Gangai, exactly exactly right.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
That was her. She was a legend and she died
in Tower Gangjai and that was a bad end.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
But it's like in my mind before, it was always
like the end of a legend, like a character is
gonna die, And it's like, no, it's just the concept
of the fact that legends end. That that's what we're
playing with here. I don't know. Maybe I'm the only
one who didn't get that, but I wanted to share
my ignorance.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
It took me a moment of thinking.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
So we open with everyone's favorite character, having everyone's favorite thoughts,
doing everyone's favorite plot. One guess oh, when complaining.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
All right, I'll read this in at night, Gowin couldn't
see the white towers wound in darkness, One couldn't tell
the difference between a beautifully intricate mule and a wall
full of mismatched titles at night, the most beautiful of
tav Allan's buildings became another. Do it's not to the
holes and scars and the white towel well patch with

(50:05):
I don't know what I'm.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Doing, just mocking, going so hard you've lost the plot.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
In time, I totally lost the plot. It was really bad.
It's just white or black at night. It didn't really matter.
Some people like leaving in the darkness to the open
Some people for the curtains of darkness to the open
windows of daylight because they let them see the world
in all shadow. I mean, it's just, it's so it's
really juvenile, this idea. I mean, like, I want it

(50:34):
to be deep, and then what do you mean you
prefer darkness so you can see things in shadow? I
don't Why are you so edgy and yet still still stupid.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
He's an edge lord who just discovered Nietzsche. You know,
he's like, yeah, man, did you know that if you
put eyeliner on, you look really like cool? Like he's
just I mean, there's a reason why I chose to
write an American idiot from the Goblins perspective, you know, when
I did that for a widle a couple of years ago.

(51:06):
He's such a little baby edge lord. He has no
original thoughts, but so much angst, and I just really
don't like him. I can't tell that the tower's white
or black.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
It's the white tower. What do you mean, like I don't.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Yeah, like why are you Why are you so changeable
that the state of the weather is enough to completely
change your entire moral compass, Like, have a little more
fiber than that.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
So he's sort of just stalking around the tower right.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Like he's on a midnight lunch. Okay, it's the cutsy
Soldiery term. Yeah, he's got professional insomnia because he's.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
Been guarding the door at night. So that's just he's
on the night time, Like he's awake at night and
sleeping during the day and that's just the schedule he's
been on because he feels like he needs to protect
a GWayne at night.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Yeah, so he's doing his rounds, trying to talklf out
of going to check on her, which he ultimately fails at.
You know, it's a through line of the chapter, is
him trying to stave off going to check on her,
which he ultimately fails to do.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
What you're saying, Gwin has no self control whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
He has a small amount of self control. He makes
it for like multiple interactions before he goes to her door.
We have like a whole chapter to get through before
he fucks it up.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
So he has a whole conversation with some of the
former young lings, which I don't even know why they're
talking to him, right, they should see him as a traitor,
like this is there's some weirdness going on, Like but
I know the Towers reunited, but like he left them
and he killed basically would have killed somebody to do it.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Well, he killed their teacher in order to bring them
all together in the first place, so there's like a
real seriously twisted trauma bond holding them all together. It's strange,
and these guys have now drifted so far away from
the original mission that they don't even want to be
warders anymore. So like the shifting allegiances are shifty, right,

(52:58):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
Right that you can see like they were basically hung
out to dry by Alida, and it's like we just
don't really necessarily we still want to be part of
the Tower, but we don't necessarily trust individual Isidi anymore,
which I'm like, go somewhere else. It's not as other armies.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
I think it's because they want to stay together and
Tarvallen is one of the only like non nationalistic armies
I guess. I mean, like they would have a hard like,
I don't know, we haven't seen like hardcore nationalism amongst
any of the armies like tam went and fought in
multiple other war like. It's yeah, I don't I don't
really get this other that. I think Sanderson was just

(53:34):
trying to give some more closure to Gollin's plot and
the whole thing with the young Wings. And it would
have been weird if they just all ditched him without
any more plot. So Sanderson's like trying to make like
a more fleshed out separation. We get some more names
here that might be more beta readers.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
I give them, turn them over.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
The first one is Mazone m A z O n E.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
Eric Mazone, a fan of the Wheel of Time.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Next name is celarc ce l A. R. K.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Fitzgerald Clark, a fan of the Wheel of Time.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Final name Zang z.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
A ng Han Zhang, a fan of the Wheel of Time.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Boom boom boom. So these three fans of the Wheel
of Time get to exist in the Wheel of Time,
and they get to tell Gwen that they don't like
their job and they want a different job, and Gowen
promises to figure that out for them, and yeah, he
uses that as a thing with Chew Bayne later and
they basically form a new cohort of tower Guards out

(54:34):
of former Young Wings, and everyone's happy, no loose strings.
It's a good chance for soldiery things to happen. It's
it's good, it's fine. It's just yeah, I don't really
know why we need to hear other than Sanderson felt
bad about Gowen. I was like, let's give him something
nice to do.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Yeah, well, it's a way to round out off the
Young Wings plotline, right, like, Okay, they're their division of
the Tower Guard. That's where they're going to fight from
now on. We can just treat them as part of
the Tower Regard. And the only plot.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Is ended right right, It's not left hanging, it's actually
folded in and woven in. Oh, KABOUCHI imagine being a
Watt fan who gets to be part of the books
and you end up having to talk to.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
Gowen and he gives you advice.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Sanderson take me out, And I didn't want it like.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
This, not like this, not like this.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
There's honestly, okay, there is one little part of what
Gowen says to them that I do like, and I
hate to like it, but I do like it.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
So he's talking to Silark about how they don't all
want to be warders, and he says there's no shame
in choosing a different path, and Silark says, the others
make it sound like there is, and Gowen immediately comes
back with the others are wrong, and I'm just like,
correct correct. Other people's sense of shame about what you

(55:53):
choose to do with your life is not your business.
You need to do what's right for you. People have
different paths, and God's just right here in his little
Edged Lord twenty something phase, being like, no, you got
to live your life. You've got to live your truth.
Don't let other people dictate what you should do with
your life. And I'm like, I can't help, but applaud.
I cannot help, but applaud at him just saying the

(56:14):
others are wrong. People who would shame you for your
life choices are wrong, just full stop. They're wrong. I
love it. I hate that, I love it, but I
love it. Gowin says, something right like a broken clock.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
So then he meets with uh. He goes off and
meets with Gareth Brynn. So and we've had the brand
Gawain conversation a few times, right, So we're sort of
going back to that conversation they've talked about about where
Gareth Brn is like, you need to find your purpose
in life, you need to Basically the advice this guy
just gave to the tower Guard or to the young Lings, right,
is basically directly from Gareth Brynn in previous chapters.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Look, it's a lot easier to give advice than it
is to take it. You can pass through some real
good advice without it actually sticking to your brain, though
if you do it often enough, it does start to stick,
I say, as a coach. But yeah, we've had this
conversation with Brynn before. It's good to have it again

(57:07):
because apparently we need to reiterate it that you need
to not make your entire life wrapped up in someone
else's talent for m H. And then there's this really
awesome part where Gowan's asking for advice and Brynn is
offering the opener to some advice, and Gowan's lashing out
and Brynn says, I have only made observations, though I

(57:29):
think it is curious that you conclude that you should
leave her alone. Mm hmmm. It's almost like you do
know the answer and you're just in denial, like a whiny,
little but hurt baby.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Yeah, there's good advice.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Right.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
He's like, what do you want, Gowan? And he says, Agwayne,
I want to be a warder And he's like, which
is it? Do you want her or do you want
to be a warder? Because those are similar but different,
And that's you know, and that's sort of the difference
between Lan who was Maureen's warder but never hers.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Right, Yeah, they were really really close and yet not
like that Ninive there was a spot for an I
need to move into, like right there, mm hmmmm. She
did not supplant Moreen in any way. In Lance's heart.
She took up space that Morien was not occupying.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
And I do wish the two of them had just
remained lovers and not order.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
I said, I Lylewyn is on her way, She's gonna
be here soon, and then Gwen can just work with
Domon to help keep Lylewyn, saying while she deals with
being a Gwayne's order, right, Lylewyn could just have a
two man team backing her up in her job. That
would have been so much better and then yeah, Gawain
could have just been the eye candy. He could have

(58:38):
been the men of the situation. Go read a book
and play with your knives.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
And how much it would have been helpful to Agwayne
to have an advisor who knows the shan chan when
dealing with them.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Right, and also to have an intimate advisor who's not
a like part of her like infrastructure, like just her husband.
Just just be the husband. I think that's enough of
a job.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
And I like this little bit. Your instincts are usually good,
just like your mothers were, but because of that, you've
never had to face what to do when your instincts
lead you in the wrong direction. And to me, that
reminds me of a kid who never really has to
study to get good grades and then goes off to
college and all of a sudden they have to figure
out like, oh wait, how do I study? I don't
know how to do that. I never had to do that.
I'm talented enough. I've never had to do that. And

(59:21):
that's sort of how gonwin. He's never really he's talented enough.
He just kind of goes with his gut and he's
never really had to think about how to make a decision.
And so now when he's faced with the decision where
his gut isn't giving him good advice, he doesn't know
how to work through it.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Right, right, exactly, No, I man, So I went to
Waldorf School until eighth grade, right, and then I did
two years of public high school, two different high schools,
and then I got my ged and then I went
to college. Those two years of high school were so underwhelming.
I didn't have to work for it at all. I'd

(59:56):
have to study at all. Waldorf. It's not the same
kind of education. It's a completely like creative, organic like
there's a process, there's stuff you have to learn, but
they do teach you how to study, not in a
how to pass school test. It's a different kind of studying,
but nonetheless how to learn. It's not studying, really, I

(01:00:16):
wouldn't call it studying, But I did learn how to
learn in a way that set me up very well
for the kind of learning that college would introduce to me.
That weird gap in the middle with public high school
was so strange. I was the level of ease to
gamify that is happening, right. It's not because I was smart,
It's because the thing was clearly set up to be

(01:00:37):
gamified by anyone who wanted to gamify it, And it
was such a weird, weird change of pace after having
been taught you have to be creative and original in
order to regurgitate the lessons, because otherwise how will we
know that you learned them? And then you go to
college and you know there's a bit of gamification in
the lower classes. But as you get towards the end

(01:00:58):
of your degree, like, the need to be original is
very much what is at least in the program I
was in, Like, you have to be original otherwise you're
not gonna be able to process the information. And yeah,
I can't imagine how hard it would be to show
up at university never having been told Now you just
need to figure out how to say it in your
own words. That's the assignment. High school didn't have that

(01:01:19):
the two years I went to it. It's just that's.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Oh, it was creepy and sort of a comparison between
there's also comparison here between Gawa and gallad Right, Galla
doesn't get everything a great deal of thought. He's worked
out his quote of morality ahead of time. That way
he knows how he's going to respond in any situation
until he comes across the situation where he hasn't actually
worked it out ahead of time.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
Yeah. This, so we we're having a very like Gowen
is adhd and God is autism baptism. Like I have
thought out every possible branch that this conversation could take
me on. I know what all of my answers are
like until you throw me a curveball, because that's how
life is. Whereas, yeah, Gawen is just like I'll do
whatever feels right. That's the very adhd thing where Yeah,

(01:01:59):
often your instincts are good, your pattern recognition is good,
you will make the right call. But when you don't,
you have no idea what to do next.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Whereas with the planning, it's like, oh, I've planned everything
out until I'm presented with situation I haven't planned for,
and then I need to go away and go think
about it for three days and have multiple meetings with
paren until I figure out what to do next.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Right, yea right, Yeah, Galad dot Ex has failed to execute.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Yeah, and here's the sentence where Brinn says, no woman
wants that in a man. It seems to me that
men who spend time making something of themselves rather than
professing their devotion. Are the ones who get somewhere both
with women and with life itself.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Yeah, which I definitely feel a little bit of sanderson
fourth wall breaking talking to fans of the fantasy genre
who don't maybe understand how relationships work in the real world.
Because he might be a big old nerd, but he
is married. He knows a thing or two about the
opposite gender.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
I also think there's a little bit of preachiness there though,
because there is this like, because he is this personure it's.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
An overcorrection, but it's too a real thing. I feel,
I feel a real thing being addressed. Just yeah, sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
Then Suon comes in and I had I have nothing
except that, Like, she's in a relationship with Brenn, Like,
I hate how.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Much she's been diminished to brings tea and flirts and scolds,
Oh she's mothering him. Isn't it funny how she looks
so much younger. I'm like, that's the Omerlin seat former.
But still, like, why is her only job to like
bustle in with some tea and kiss Breyne on the
head and shoe going off? Like what what? How the

(01:03:38):
Mighty have fallen. I don't like it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Yeah, that was a weird one. No, I didn't like
it either. And the way like now now Algwayne doesn't
mean me, so I'm just gonna go off and be
like housewife. And it's like, and I have the power back,
So I guess that's okay too. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Yeah, this is the point at which it's like, it's
really hard to like what Suan sarc is doing at
this point.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Yeah, didn't like Suan. Don't really like Suon for the
rest of the series, like her and Brind's death and everything.
They're like, oh, we whoops, we separated one too many times.
Now we have to die like.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Dumb, Yeah, we're The best case scenario is that she
gets to live in a happily straight marriage where she
looks half her husband's age. That's the best case scenario,
and instead we get an inglorious, barely on page death. Like, yeah,
there's really not anything fun with Swan for the rest
of the series.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
For such a major POV throughout the series, who got
so much screen time. I really am disappointed with how
she got handled in these books.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Yeah, at this point, at this point, the disappointment is
in full swing. Sucks all right, Speaking of disappointing, Gowan
is going to go first appear cool and then completely
step in it and ruin everything instead.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Well, he does discover the assassin, right, he discovers one
of the blood knives. He chases it around, throws a
knife at him. He figures out that the shadows are
where they're hiding, right, Like, he kind of figures out
the mechanisms of the blood knives and how it gives
them a boost to speed and a hidden speed, and
he chases one off. And then once he chases it off,
he goes, oh, maybe it already kill Dagwayne. Let me

(01:05:14):
go run into a room and check on her, And
he immediately falls into the trap meant for the forsaken.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
Right, anyone who weors to walk through the door, which
apparently no one had done yet.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Right, and that would have included the assassins, right like,
it would have captured the blood knives.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
Absolutely, and then she would have known she had two
hazards to.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
Worry about, exactly exactly so the whole like, oh, he
saves her from blood knives later, yeah, but like he
kind of ruined her trap for them, tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Yeah, No, it would have been better if he had
left well enough alone, because her waves were perfectly adequate
to protect herself, because she's not a dumb little girl,
You dumb little boy.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
And that's a lot of pages that I just summarized.
I don't know if you had anything else in there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Now. It's a fun action sequence if you want to
see GWA learn about the mechanics of the blood knives.
But I liked your summary, I'm happy to move on.

(01:06:17):
We are now switching locales entirely over to Matt in
and Or.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
And this is Matt preparing for the attack on the
Tower of Ganjai. So they're trying to figure out any
advantage they can get anyway in that sort of thing.
They're trying to, you know, basically get information about saving Moraine.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
And collecting the materials. Yes, they're gathering intel, they're gathering materials.
They're winding up. They are not ready to take on
the goal on yet because Elaine has not yet delivered
the awesome news of duplicate medallions. Matt is still feeling
very naked without the medallion. But yeah, we are gearing
up for multiple epic heroic adventures while also bitching heroically

(01:06:59):
about how much everyone is hearing about all of his
heroic adventures. It's very funny. He's literally gearing up to
do interdimensional hostage rescuing while being angry that people are
talking about how he's walked into Death's realm to demand answers.
It's very funny. And he's talking to an old man
at a bar, and it's just like every bar has
an old man that will just like, yammer your ear

(01:07:20):
off if you buy him a drink. This is true.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
And he's hiding under a scarf, right, that's his disguise
is basically a scarf over his head. That's best I
can tell. I don't really fully understand how he's supposed
to be wearing it. That's hiding his features.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
He's wrapped it around the bottom half of his face,
so only his eyes are showing. He's kind of going
with like that bandit look.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
And for part of me is like, how is he
hiding the missing eye? But that hasn't happened.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
Yet, because it's in the future.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
In the future, and I read these out of order
way too often. That's the problem, Prince. And so he
gets told, you know that whole thing where you're at
a bar and the guy talked to you is like,
oh yeah, that Prince of Ravens guy, and it's like,
oh yeah, that's me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
Mm hmmmm. Yeah, he's hearing about himself in rumor from
a barfly. It's great.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
He thinks a lot about he's walking through Low Camlin,
which has sprung up as essentially becoming its own city,
which that's not gonna last for very long because the
trucks are gonna burn it down.

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
Yeah. He thinks about how it's going to need another
wall built around it in another couple of years, and
I'm like, oh, maybe in another decade when it's completely rebuilt.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
Yeah, because it's pretty much toasted. That's back at the
end of this book because of that letter you're carrying
around that you need to freaking open up.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
Literally, you are holding the answer to saving this place
in your pocket. But no, I don't like Ace Today.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
Checks out a serving girl who's good for Tom Honus,
and we see from I think from Bergida's POV that
she's like, well, he's not slapping him anymore, but he's
still looking.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
Yeah. I will have a soap box to drag out
when we get to that line.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
Okay, He's joined by Noel. Right, Jane aka Jane VARs writer.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
You're gonna be more famous than Jane Frestrider pretty soon there.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
How would you know? I heard him talk about it,
because he's admitted to being Jane's cousin cousin at this point,
yeah my roll.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
Yeah, He's like, how would you know how hard it
is to be talked about all the time? Oh, Jane
complained about it. It's like, your cover story is shit,
my dude.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
It's really really thin. Tom, Tom's like, how is Matt
not even? I was even Matt not figured this out right?

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
Right? Tom already knows at this point. I'm pretty sure
it's dropped enough hints at this point that Tom doesn't
need to have even heard this comment to have put
it together.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
Tom is known for a while. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
I also love how Tom shows up and Matt thinks, like,
you know, I'd offer to make Tom a backstory, but
he just you know, coughed politely and said he already
had a backstory worked out. He's like, no, Matt, I
don't need three pages of your D and D fanfic.
I am literally a court bard. I got this.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
I got it. I can cover it up. I can
make it up on the fly. I don't don't need
to realize. And no one cares about backstory either, right.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Literally, nobody, No, It is the best part about setting
up a new D and D character for you, for
nobody else.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
Does it matter because you have to know how you're
going to react to things based on your background, but
nobody else needs to know exactly. So we're getting a
sort of gamification of how to beat the snakes and foxes,
right and sot they're talking about, well, we've got the
rhyme from.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
Oliver, Well, we've got the run from the game. Right,
it's literally the opening of the game. Olver had that
story from Brigida about how to get in using the knife.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
Totally totally.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
They're talking about how to break the rules and Tom's like, well,
maybe we should, you know, try to bargain with them,
to which Matt is like, have you met the concept
of devils? We're not doing that, And you know, Brigida
emphasizes that later, like, do not bargain with them on
their terms. You have to bargain on your terms. She says,
don't bargain at all. And we know that technically there
is a bargain because he does exchange his eye for morain,

(01:10:54):
like it is a bargain, but it's a bargain on
his terms, right, it's within the bounds of the prophecy,
not the way that you know any other way.

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):
Well, and I always imagine a bargain was made for
the people who went through the doorways, right, because if
you go through the doorways, you were bound by whatever
bargain was made when those doorways were rade, and that
includes no blood shall be shed. However, someone who made
that bargain didn't think about rope hanging deaths or other
sorts of non blood shed deaths, bludgeoning deaths, that sort

(01:11:24):
of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
Well, I was I was talking about he gives up
his eye. I mean, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
Absolutely absolutely yeah no, But there's there's another bargain, right,
So that I realized that there must have been this
other bargain at some point, right, because here they talking
about it. If we knew what the eyes that I had,
the snakes and fox wanted, the reason they were willing
to bargain, right, that bargain comes from going through the
twisted red stone doorways. Those were created at some point
by an I said eye, and at some point a

(01:11:50):
bargain was made that you follow the three rules. If
you come in right, there's that hole. Do you have fire,
do you have musical instruments?

Speaker 3 (01:11:58):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
And so bargain is, and then you're you're safe. You're
protected to some degree until you reach the room and
make that like all that was. Somebody made that bargain
right when they created the stone doorways. But if you
go in through the Tower of Genji, you are not
protected by that bargain in the slightest. But that bargain
is the reason that Matt was hung and not.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
Stabbed right, And I think to a certain extent, that's
part of why he's able to get away with the
bargain to get Marinus, because it's I mean, giving up
half the light of the world to save the world.
They kind of set that in motion. That was set
in motion under the auspices of the twisted stone doorways.
So even though he came in through the tower this time,

(01:12:40):
if he can manage to, you know, get to the
Great Hall and give up half the light of the world,
he's gonna have to be allowed a chance to save
the world.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Right, it's in the rules it's in the rules. But
he does make a good point here that where he's like,
they know I have to come back. They see the future, right,
there's a chance that they can get me then, and
so they are willing to let me go on the
chance that they can get me back.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
Yeah. This is the thing about these kinds of devils
is they are lawful evil. They have to follow the rules.
There is no never mind we change the rules. There's
no Calvin ball when dealing with these kinds of creatures.

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
Well, and one of the things I really like, and
we don't realize this until much later, but he asked
for a way out, and they gave him the Ashendary,
but then they didn't make him use it to get out,
so he wouldn't realize it was a key, so that
he couldn't use it when he came back, right, And
so they literally not only gave him a way out,
but they then kicked him out on top of that,

(01:13:34):
which was not part of the bargain. But that was
their way of hiding that the Ashindarai.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
Was the key, right, which is the entire reason Jane
forrest Ryder does because if he'd known it was a key,
then they could have bailed before Jane died.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
Right, Yeah, he just buys them time for Matt to
realize that. Which that's a very Sanderson thing, right, This,
Like you get in this situation where there is no
escape and you realize something that you could have realized
at any point, but because you realize it in this moment,
it saves the day.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
So it's kind of like Wizard of Oz, you had
the shoes with you the whole time.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
Yes, yes, Sanderson loves to give you the key to
your survival and have you have it the whole time,
and just if you just realized it. That's such a
Sanderson plot point.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
You know, I hated it in Wizard of Oz and
I still hate it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
Well, especially if you look at Stormlite archive. Right, that
is all about swearing oaths at an opportune moment, right,
And so basically his characters can reason through their oh's
and oh, I need to be loyal to these people
for this reason, and I can come to this moral
realization that gives me a boost of power. So there's
so many moments in the Stormlight archive where his characters

(01:14:48):
are down on their luck, about to be defeated and
they go wait, a minute. I need to sacrifice for
other people and then they get more powerful and survive.

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
Yeah, I've never wanted to play a paladin. This all
makes a sense, a kind of sense.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
Kaladin the paladin, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Oh yeah, Marsa pens bring you up a good point
in chat too. They also signed the key like it
was a letter or a contract, further disguising its key
like properties. Right, the ashin Darai has the cool script
on it that feels like a letterhead on like a
participation trophy, sound something you'd put on a key.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
Unless it's like the key to the city, which I
suppose it kind of is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
I mean, it's the key to the realm and key
to the entire portal between dimensions.

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
And so do you think the al fin can watch
through his eyes? Do you think they can read his thoughts? Like?
How much access to him do you think they have
once he's gone through the twisted Stone Tarankreil, Because they're
able to implant thoughts from someone, thoughts, memories, perceptions from
anyone who goes to the Twisted Stone doorway right right
up until their death. Right, this is the thing he remembered,

(01:15:54):
This is his realization right, because he remembers dying. There's
no way to get someone's memories of dying after or
they die, so you must be able to read their
mind at the moment of death, which means once you
pass through that doorway, the snakes and foxes have a
connection to you and can read your mind at any
point in your life, your past, your future, maybe not
or your past, but any point. I think it's any

(01:16:15):
point after you go through the doorway. They can they
know exactly what's going through your head.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
Yeah, I wonder if there's though some sort of limitation on,
like they can capture it all after you're dead, but
like while it's still recording, while you're still in motion,
it's like not accessible. Like I don't know they can
they get a real time update or like do they
only get like packetized chunks like when you go to

(01:16:41):
sleep or something.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
I think they know what's coming.

Speaker 2 (01:16:44):
I mean, why should there be rules for these guys?

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
Right? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
Why should there be rules? They exist in a non
Euclidean relationship to the real world.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
Right, they exist in a fifth dimensional space. Right, Space
and time do not make sense in the world, Like
he's there for nine days even though we only see
him there for like an hour or so when he
goes through the gateway, right, Like, there's a lot of space,
doesn't Walls turn when they shouldn't, Angles don't make sense.

(01:17:14):
There's all sorts of weird stuff going on with time
and space.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
So yeah, it makes the most sense that they're up
to date with everything that he's thinking and doing. And yeah,
he goes through that other in that other scene that
there's no memories of childhoods from all the people who
have gone through. They only have information from the moment
you enter their world until death. They don't they can't
go backwards. Time still has an arrow to it for them,

(01:17:39):
like it's different than ours, but it's not going backwards.

Speaker 1 (01:17:42):
And we've seen that a lot in the wheel of time, right,
the time and wheel of time will often move at
different speeds right where you can move faster or slower,
but never backwards the time. The arrow of time is
always forward. And that's you know, that's a very realistic
way of looking at it, right, because it is ground
and physics. Right, we know Robert Jordan's a physicist, We

(01:18:04):
know I had a physicist background, and we know that like, yes,
you can have dark holes. You can have mass at
slow time, you can have acceleration that slows time. Time
can always move at different speeds, but it's always moving forward.
And it kind of makes sense. You have these pocket
dimensions that you can pop into and like where time
moves slower, Right, that just makes sense to me. You
can be closer to a gravity.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Well, yeah, totally. So Yeah, they kind of go through
their materials and Noel coming along. How they're going to
break the rules.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
We've got fireworks, we've got music, We've got iron. Now
here's one thing I want to ask you about. Shouldn't
I feel like steel should count as iron? You know,
it's just iron with a like chromium atoms in it,
It's still steel.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
M I was just listening to a podcast the other
day talking about kind of Halloween theme stuff is kind
of like origin of and stuff, and it was like,
why iron, Well, because iron can point the way north.
That's why iron has magical property magnetic terms of It's like,
why is it relevant to European folklore and fay stuff.

(01:19:14):
It's like, well, because it's a rock that literally will
point the way home. So if we're going by those
rules for why is it relevant to fay stuff. Then
steel wouldn't cut it because you put a steel needle
in water, it's not going to point north, right, there's
got too much other stuff in it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:29):
But you know what, I think it depends on the steel.
I think it depends on well, the kind of steel
you're using, because you can still have magnetic steel, not
all of it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
Sure, Yeah, yeah, I guess steel should count.

Speaker 1 (01:19:42):
And I've seen different fandoms where it does, right, where
they're like, yeah, you know, anything made out of iron
or steel, anything made of iron, right, So steel or
you know, any other alloy that has enough iron in
it is a problem for them. But in this case,
it does appear that it just has to be pure iron.
And to me, there's a little bit of like, well,
iron rust, so it's reactive in a way that steel

(01:20:03):
might not be. And so maybe that reactivity is important.
It's also, you know, a myth, and it doesn't have
to make sense, right, It could just be maybe steel
would work, but they're not sure about it. Fair enough,
I don't think it does. I think they use a
steel blade and it doesn't do shit.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
Yeah, Now that's that's an interesting because, yeah, how different
imaginary worlds choose to use shared lore is part of
how folklore exists and how it works and how it
is a living collective document that you know, people share,
and it's.

Speaker 1 (01:20:34):
The reason it's not science, right, because you know, Pascal's
triangle is Pascal's triangle no matter what culture you're in,
and you can go back in time and see every culture.
Write the fucker down, right, it's super important to mathematics,
and no matter where you are, you discover Pascal's triangle.
There's not a universal law to iron.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
No, but there is a universal fascination with the fae
that is really interesting to see how that fascination permutates.
And yeah, it's interesting that these fae apparently are only
reactive to one hundred percent iron. They don't do alloys.
Alloys take it down below the threshold of screwing them up.

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):
But then again, this is the bait. You know, wheel
time is the basis for our myths, and they fade
the legends, so you know, it's possible you get misinformation
in there.

Speaker 2 (01:21:19):
Yeah, or it's possible that Sanderson didn't know that that
was the level of nuance he needed to address, and
like iron, moving on anyway, I.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
Think it's fine iron to bind, Like, that's that's what
it doesn't say stealed to bind. It doesn't say iron,
iron alloys. It says iron. And it's an element, right,
there's something about like, oh, it's an element. It's not
like an alloy. It's not a compound. It's it's just
an element, and it's one of those elements that somehow,
and iron is kind of a special element, right because

(01:21:51):
it's the the element that is the lowest, lowest atomic energy.
I'm not sure if I'm saying that right, but like
in stars, right, as atoms fuse together, it's not let, No,
it's iron iron. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:03):
I feel like I remember learning this and being very
confused by it when I learned it. So that tracks.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
Essentially, as atoms bind together, the nucleus of iron binds
together if it's smaller than iron, right, If the atoms
are smaller than iron, it actually releases energy when you
bind them together, right, And that can cause more elements
to bind together, which causes it. And that's where basically
our sun is fueling itself by fusing together elements until

(01:22:30):
it forms iron iron. If you try and fuse anything
with iron, it takes more energy than you get out
of it. And that's the first time that trying to
make an element with a bigger atomic number requires more
energy input than energy output. And so all of a
sudden you have this inversion where essentially iron is this
lowest common denominator in terms of atomic energy, right, and

(01:22:53):
so the only way to get higher atomic number elements
is through supernovas and explosions where you kind of compare
act iron more than is natural, and that's why you
end up with supernova and black hole mergers and neutron
star mergers. Like to make gold, you basically a neutron
star merger. That's the only thing energetic enough to force
those atoms together, the nucleus of the atoms together.

Speaker 2 (01:23:14):
Yeah. I do vaguely remember this from third term chemistry
and just being like what, yeah, so hard to wrap
my head around, but no I remember this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:25):
Yeah, Iron as an element is pretty cool because it's
kind of the last natural I don't say natural, the
last element that's formed in stars without big explosions and supernova.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
That does kind of make it special as an element,
especially if we're talking about interdimensional properties in this like
Fay context.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
Yeah, right, right, and any element that's a higher atomic
number than iron is going to be much more rare
than something with a lower atomic number than.

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):
Iron, right right, right, yeah, and be the result of yeah,
much more impressive things. It's pretty cool to think about
the conditions necessary to make gold at them, because it's impressive.
It's you don't just get that in your your garden
variety star. It's a pretty particular set of circumstances.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
And then just how much our modern society is based
on iron and steel and like the ability to to
it's just so strong for weight.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
Oh yeah, you know what else is trippy is there's
like so much gold in the Earth's mantle, Like most
of it has is in the Earth's mantle. It's not
even available to be had in the crust. But for
mathy reasons, we have been able to figure out how
much is in like the mantle mass of the Earth,
and it's a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:24:32):
Actually not in water, right, I mean again, it's not
water molecules right, there are oh, molecules and hydrogen ions, but.

Speaker 2 (01:24:40):
Yeah, hydrous minerals and solutions and fluids and other things
that are beyond comprehension because of how much pressure and
heat is going on down there.

Speaker 1 (01:24:50):
Anyway, this is not a geology lesson.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
Let's talk about it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
Apparently, geology and science. That's why you came to Aeel
of Time.

Speaker 2 (01:24:59):
Yeah, yes, come for the lowest stay for the science.
So yeah. Basically, they finish their conversation and Matt heads
out into rain, a rain like event that sounds very
Pacific northwest. Yes, yes, gorizzling ambivalently is the kind of
rain where things that are undercover still get wet because

(01:25:19):
the rain isn't coming down vertically. It's just the air
is wet and there's little tiny particles just drifting everywhere,
and nothing is dry.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
It's why we make fun of people. He use umbrellas
up here.

Speaker 2 (01:25:31):
It's pointless, yes, exactly. This is the weather that makes
umbrella so silly.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
So he's got a couple of things going on. He's
carrying a sword as a distraction from his staff. He's
got dice thundering in his head. I don't know if
we've seen that start, but that is going on. Do
you know what these stop on? I forget to look
that up. I feel like this is the Tower of
AGENI dice, right.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
I don't remember when the dice stop exactly, but I
think you're right that dice do stop while he's in
the tower, So that's got to be these It's got
a big tower dice, which I guess makes sense because
his fate is not to be part of the defense
of Camlan. So the letter would not be related to
the dice in his head, as much as one wishes
it would be.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
It's not right, right, And so he's got the He
has the baron we know mention of the letter. He's
not going to give that up. We see a moment
of Rand, and I was trying hard to place this.
Matt saw him sitting on a fine chair, staring down
at the floor in front of himself in a dark room,
a single lamp flickering. He looked worn and exhausted, his
eyes wide, his expression grim. I'm really struggling to place

(01:26:36):
what the timeline is here? What room is he in
where there's just a single lantern? What is he grim about?
Is this post veins of gold? Rand? Is this pre
veins of gold? Rand? The looking grim seems to imply
its pre veins of gold? But I can't think of
a single time when he's sitting in a single room.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
Well, and also, like, didn't we agree earlier that Matt
and the Lane are farther along in the timeline than paren.

Speaker 1 (01:27:04):
Yeah, right, because Elane's done her thing where she's yeah,
she's she's felt post Veins of Gold at this point. Yeah, exactly,
because she's like, oh no, he's warm, So this has
to be post Veins of Gold because she's felt him
and Matt is in her timeline.

Speaker 2 (01:27:19):
So my thought was that this is a moment where
he's really feeling all the negative emotions in a post
Fans of Gold state, but he's actually like dealing with
like a hard day, Like I don't know, he's like
still not getting to deal with Lan or he hasn't
seen Maredon yet, I don't think, but like something has

(01:27:40):
happened and he's just dealing with those feelings and just
kind of having a moment. Like just because he's post
Fans of Gold doesn't mean he's always calm and happy
and surrounded by people and having a good time. It
means that he can have a good time and can
also like genuinely experience a rough time. So I'd like
to think that this is him just of being like,

(01:28:00):
I need a moment to just have some rough emotions
and just kind of process that by myself and not
have it be in the brooding, isolating way it has been,
but be in the more just sometimes you need to
be by yourself to think your thoughts. And maybe this
is Maredon. I don't think it is, but the timelines
are squirrely Maredon. He isn't going to come to defend

(01:28:23):
to Maradon's defense for like another week or two. I
think they're in the city for quite a while before
Rand comes to save them. But I'm pretty sure it's
post fans of Gold and everything else I'm not sure about.

Speaker 1 (01:28:35):
I agree with you on that doing our best. So
he realizes in this moment that like Oliver knows how
to get into the tower because Brigita told him, and
of course Brigita would know because she's a hero of
the Horn. He's like, why haven't I been questioning Brigita
about all of this. She's a great source of information.
And it's like, yeah, that's actually a good point. Then again,
the things we like about Sanderson he has the characters

(01:28:55):
actually talk to each other. He goes to Brigida and says,
you are a hero. You know stuff about the tower.
Tell me about it. Instead of being like, I don't
want to bring it up because it's.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
Sensitive, right, right, And also again I feel like Sanderson
probably thought of this when he was a fan of
the books, yes, and was like, why doesn't he ask her?
And then he got handed the pen and said, fuck, yes,
now he can ask her.

Speaker 1 (01:29:15):
Yeah, he asks right right. So then on his way
to Burgido, there's this weird moment where there's nobody in
the streets, which I don't really understand why there's nobody
in the streets except this one dude getting robbed who
turns out to be a dark friend who's hunting him.
So he saves the dark friend. The dark friend realizes
who he is and then attacks him immediately after that.

Speaker 2 (01:29:37):
It's really weird and I don't know what to make
of it. You summed it up accurately, but I don't
know what to make of any of it, because.

Speaker 1 (01:29:46):
What town are they in right now? Right? He's in Camlin, Right,
He's in Camelin, So why And he's like, Wow, there's
no bad activity on the street. It's just dead on
the streets. And I don't can't think of any reason
why Camlin would be abandoned even late at night. It's
a big city.

Speaker 2 (01:30:02):
I also think it's weird that he's so unnerved by
the idea that there isn't crime happening. It's like, right
inhospitable not to get mugged on the streets of New York. Like,
I don't what, Like it's a strange interaction. It's weird.
I get that there's no one out on the street
because it is two in the morning and kind of raining.
It's a great time for no one to be out.

(01:30:25):
Don't get why he finds that disturbing. And then the
part where he feels the need to like go batman
on a robbery, Like why why are you doing like
casual vigilantism on your way to meet up with a friend?
And then why is that vigilantism directed at people who
actually want to attack you? Like was it all a setup?

(01:30:45):
Like is the entire was the city block clear so
that the robbery could be put in his path to
trick him? Like that seems really elaborate and fast and strange.
What's happening here? Why are we doing this?

Speaker 1 (01:30:57):
Yeah? I'm right there with you. I have more questions
about this trunk was written in It feels like a
piece taken out of a different chapter, out of a
different moment, and stuck into this chapter.

Speaker 2 (01:31:09):
Yeah, I don't. Yeah, it feels like it. Yeah again, Yeah,
athlent totally. It does feel like the setup before the
hunt for the Golum, but it's not. I don't see
why we need foreshadowing for the concept of walking through
the city streets at night.

Speaker 1 (01:31:24):
It.

Speaker 2 (01:31:24):
Yeah, it doesn't feel necessary. It feels like a weird
side quest that could have been cut.

Speaker 1 (01:31:30):
So to me, what it is is introducing the pictures, right,
because we saw Paren discover the photos of him in
the last chapter, and this is how Matt is supposed
to discover that those photos are circulating and he's being hunted.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
But like he kind of knew that from the Varren
thing already.

Speaker 1 (01:31:49):
But it's not the Varren thing. This is different.

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):
But she still warned him about this exact thing.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
Right, right, because she got the photos from being shown
it as a dark friend, right, So the source of
the photos is kind of the same.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
Yeah, Like she's already told him that this is a
thing that's happening, So I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):
Yeah, So he stabs the guy in the eyes, you know,
by accident. I guess even though he threw two knives,
he had.

Speaker 2 (01:32:16):
One knife in each eye because he's lucky. His luck
feet has leveled up again. I guess that's what we're
here to show. And yeah, he heads off into the
rain and we pov switched to Bergida at approximately the
same time. Who is doing bodyguard duty at a opera.

Speaker 1 (01:32:36):
One more thing to say about Matt. The way he
defends himself with the scarf, which is whatever's on hand.
It's a very Jackie Chan in the whole, like yeah, totally, yeah,
he's being knife and he's like, oh I got a scarf,
quick stab the scarf, not me, and then takes the
guy out with the scarf.

Speaker 2 (01:32:50):
Which not mad about because Jackie Chan's fun. And Sanderson
writes that sort of thing well, and it fits with
Matt's character. Now we're gonna swing over to Brigida at

(01:33:12):
approximately the same time, doing bodyguard duty at literally an opera.
Literally they're at the opera, they're doing the opera thing.
Sanderson did not like to just write single Gleaman and
court bards playing the flute. He wanted to write a
full opera scene.

Speaker 1 (01:33:28):
So but I also feel like that is something Sanderson
is doing Sanderson turns that is also something Jordan was doing, right,
Jordan created the Big Top circus.

Speaker 2 (01:33:36):
Oh he even introduced players back then, didn't he.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
Yeah, he introduced players and like it was starting to
create plays. And that's really more what this is. You know, yes,
it's opera, but it's also the beginning of plays and
like playhouses, and you're getting almost setting up like Shakespeare.

Speaker 2 (01:33:51):
Right, yeah, no, exactly exactly. I've been to opera. I've
been to a bajillion different kinds of musical theater. I've
been to regular non musis theater, like Jordan definitely set
this up. But Sanderson decided he wanted to go for
an opera scene. He could have gone with any he
would have done Shakespeare in the Park, but no, we
have a shrieking Aria with a dramatic death and little

(01:34:14):
candles around the front of the thing. It's it's so
it's great, unlike.

Speaker 1 (01:34:18):
How Brigide is. Like God, I hope this fashion of
seeing players represent people passes quickly. And you know what's
so funny to me is this is how I feel
about audiobooks, right, I feel like I love an audio
book that is told by a single bard doing multiple voices, right,
For example, Dongeon, Carler, Carl, which I'm going to bring
up again, that's one actor for the most part. There's

(01:34:39):
one or two other actors later on some of the
later books who do a few voices, but for the
most part, that's one person telling the story as though
he's a bard, right. And then they're like, oh, we
want you to do these storytelling audio books with sound
effects in multiple voice actors, and I hate them. I
hate the fad that is multip people doing multiple players.

(01:35:01):
It's very hard to understand. Everyone's at a different volume.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):
Full cast soundscape.

Speaker 1 (01:35:06):
Yeah, all those radio plays, right, Like, do not like them?
And so I very much. I'm like, oh yeah, Brigida,
I get you. I get you. It's let's actually focus
on the story told by one person, and it's going
to be better than having all these random actors play
these different characters. How dumb of an idea is that?

Speaker 2 (01:35:24):
Yeah, yeah, I have fallen in love with exactly one
radio play ever, and that was early on in my
audiobook obsessed era, And yeah, now I find the concept
totally unsettling. I even find too much voice affectation to
be a real hit or miss. So yeah, I definitely
feel a Brigida on the You kids, get off my

(01:35:46):
lawn with your bullshit gimmicky bells and whistles and give
me some good old fashioned narration.

Speaker 1 (01:35:53):
Tell me the story.

Speaker 2 (01:35:54):
Totally feel it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:55):
Yeah, And at some level I do feel out of
way about our movies. It's like, I'm so sick of
jo actors and special effects. Tell me a good story. Yeah,
we get a little bit of gut wrenching memory forgetting
right Brigada's forgetting her memories. She barely remembers guidl Caine,
you know, And I think we know later. What's happening

(01:36:16):
is she's kind of her physical presence because she's stayed
alive this whole time, she's been able to leak back
into tell her run Riod, and like everything she's losing
is sort of anchored to her. But I feel like
it's intel he run Riod so that when she dies
she can go back and become Burgida of legend.

Speaker 2 (01:36:33):
Yeah, she has too many memories for one person to hold.
They have to go somewhere else in order to exist
and back to tell I run Riod makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:36:41):
But I think if she died right away without being
bonded order, she would not have had a chance to
leak back into tell her run Riod. She would have
just died in that moment and been taken out of
the pattern.

Speaker 2 (01:36:51):
That makes sense, and the opera that's being done seems
to be some sort of I'm not sure if it's
a you know, Romeo and jul style thing or some
other kind of deal, but it's all about the death
of a princess, and that's you know, poignant giving. Given
that you know, the nation of and Or just managed
to put a succession crisis to rest without the death

(01:37:15):
of a princess.

Speaker 1 (01:37:16):
It does seem a bit of a weird story to
be telling right after a secession war.

Speaker 2 (01:37:21):
I think it's just because it's a really old story,
because you'll notice that the title of the story is
the Death of Princess Walishen, and we've only ever seen
the word princess in these books. One other time, when
Elaine was thinking about one of the people that they
met on their way back to Camlin, who because this
is not calling her your highness, and Elaine kept trying
to explain, like, you can't call me your highness. I'm

(01:37:42):
not queen yet, you can call me daughter heir. You
can even call me princess. It's a very old fashioned term,
but you can call me that. That's the only other
time the word princess has ever been used. So the
fact that in the title of this story tells us
that this is an old folk tale, and I'm guessing
that's why they picked it is because it's like it's
not a modern, controversial, current events kind of story, Like
this is a story we all grew up on. This

(01:38:03):
is part of the lore of.

Speaker 1 (01:38:04):
And Or and this Guard's women. Kyla bent is named
for Kyla Bentley, a fan of The Wheel of Time.

Speaker 2 (01:38:12):
Oh, she actually gets a lot of page time too.
She interacts with Burgida for a bit and is like
very much present. Oh good for you, Kayla.

Speaker 1 (01:38:20):
And then Brigida. I love this line from Brigida. How
did you protect a woman who seemed at times so
determined to see herself dead? And yet Lane is so
very capable. So there's that little bit of struggle that
Brigida has because Elaine is a getting into trap machine,
right like getting kidnapped, getting but she's very effective at grueling.
She's very effective at getting out of those traps as well.

Speaker 2 (01:38:42):
Well, mainly because she has friends like Matt and Burgda.
But yeah, and then she has this really foreshadowing line
she'd be good for and or assuming Brigida could keep
that golden haired head from being lopped off its neck,
I'm like, Oh, Brigita, that's how she.

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):
Gets her own gold Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:39:01):
Called the marrina gets left off it's neck.

Speaker 1 (01:39:03):
It's so's I miss that. That's a good catch.

Speaker 2 (01:39:07):
Sanderson put that there on purpose. I feel like at
that moment, Sanderson was like, I know exactly how Brigida died.

Speaker 1 (01:39:13):
Foreshadowing.

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
He does like to do that, which is say, I
have the characters say things that are like going to
happen to them later.

Speaker 2 (01:39:19):
Yeah, and I mean I like it. I think that's
a good thing for a spoiler's podcast to be able
to catch. And then yeah, Kayla brings news of a
disturbance to try to give Brigita a break from, you know,
listening to a soprano doing yet another long aria and
yeah it's Matt. It's a it's a great little moment

(01:39:40):
where Brigida gets to go hang out with Matt.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
And this moment of Matt dicing with the soldiers while
he waits for her and knowing like this to me
is just this is distilled Sanderson writing, right, this is core,
Like this is something he loves to do with his
humorous characters, to have them hang out with the common
soldiers as a method to get somebody's attention. Bouji, I

(01:40:03):
like that my body is a machine that turns traps
into sprung traps.

Speaker 2 (01:40:09):
Yeah. I thought this even without knowing Sanderson's style when
I read this the first time. It's one of those
moments where I was like, oh, I can tell I'm
not in Kansas anymore. Like I can just tell that
this is peak Sanderson, even though I've never read the
man's work before, aside from the prior book in this trilogy, like, oh,
we are in deep deep Sanderson attitude and territory, and

(01:40:30):
it feels like Matt. It does seem like the kind
of thing Matt would do.

Speaker 1 (01:40:33):
But it's yeah, it's end's well written and all that
kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:40:37):
Yeah, It's one of those moments where, even as a
very first time reader, I was like, oh, oh, this
is Sanderson, pure, pure Sanderson.

Speaker 1 (01:40:45):
And then Brigida shows up and they they hang they
take off and she says, uh Raven prince. I don't
want to talk about it. Why not because I'm getting
too bloody famous for my own good. That's why. Wait
until it tracks you across generations. She said. I love
that little interaction because they're both super right. He's basically
gonna be Odin. She's you know, Brigita the Amazon archer. Right,

(01:41:08):
there are these incredible legendary stereotypes in our world, and
they're kind of talking about, oh my god, I don't
want to be famous. Well, too fucking bad, you're about
to be generationally famous. And I just I like that
little reaction between It's like two celebrities being like, yeah,
I just wait for it.

Speaker 2 (01:41:25):
Mm hmm, yeah, no for sure. And then they have
the or she has a thought to herself later but like, oh,
Matt's seen the Finn. That's what all of this is about.
We've talked about his memories. I should have put it together,
and yeah, it's nice to have their camaraderie as colleagues
of a very specific niche club where you have spare
memories that aren't really yours in your head and you're

(01:41:47):
connected to the horde, and it's it's so fun to
see their rapport talking about that, and I.

Speaker 1 (01:41:53):
Love that she clocks that the sword is decoy right away,
so he doesn't carry a sword. Oh decoy from the staff, gotcha, right?
He immediately blocks that, Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (01:42:02):
Then yeah, he takes her out for a drink and
she's like, fine, but I have to drink milk because
you know, I'm using any excuse I can to not
be a raging alcoholic.

Speaker 1 (01:42:11):
Well, and I think they are. They don't want a LA.
It's a legitimate concern, right that. Like if you know
alcohol is bad for a baby, and you know that
if your order drinks, you feel it, which is not
normal for other orders, right, male orders, they don't get
the mirroring. So is it possible that somehow your body
is affected by the alcohol and then the baby's body
is affected by the alcohol? Right, and developmentally that could

(01:42:32):
be a problem.

Speaker 2 (01:42:33):
The magic is misogynistic, got it?

Speaker 1 (01:42:36):
No, just the author who wrote it?

Speaker 2 (01:42:38):
Fair enough? Fair enough, But I.

Speaker 1 (01:42:41):
Mean that does seem to be like there is this
connection between the female orders and their isid I that
is not between male orders and their isid. Ee.

Speaker 2 (01:42:48):
Yeah, I prefer to think of it as Brigida just
looking for an excuse to stop being an alcoholic and
needing an external reason to hold yourself in check.

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
To me, it has the same source of women falling
in to the same period pattern. Is this idea that
there's this mirroring going on in terms of emotions and
periods and stuff like that, except.

Speaker 2 (01:43:08):
That actually has a grain of truth to it, whereas
there's no you know, real mechanic for bonding to compare to.

Speaker 1 (01:43:16):
But that's what I'm wondering, Like, that's where he's started
to say. He's anchoring this mirroring in that sort of
period mirroring that that Yeah, anyway.

Speaker 4 (01:43:26):
Light blinded fall went before it takes to as Andrew's balls,
I mean, Marsa Pan's right, we don't ever see.

Speaker 2 (01:43:38):
The Osham on bonding women or men and experimenting with
this sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:43:42):
So, yeah, men bonding other men.

Speaker 2 (01:43:44):
You know, I'd be really funny if same gender bonding
just always made the alcohol thing go, that would be
really funny. I also do respect Purgida's decisions to not
get a lane drunk during a negotiation, even like pregnancy,
aside just the cognitive load of suddenly getting tipsy when
you're trying to be like politically astute, tough.

Speaker 1 (01:44:02):
Well, and I think the drinking thing is more of
a symptom of the feedback, right, because they have this
emotional feedback where one can get angry, can make the
other one angry, which can make the other one angry.
And like there is this resonance between them that doesn't
that is blocked or at least dampened between I said,
I and her mail orders. And then I love this
little exchange. There's this issue, what isu the Tower of Gunjai.

(01:44:23):
That's not an issue. You stay away from it. I can't,
of course you can. It's a flaming building, Matt. It
can't exactly chase you down.

Speaker 2 (01:44:31):
It is funny. It is funny.

Speaker 1 (01:44:33):
It's like when I stumble over my own feet and
like the ground reached out and grabbed me. Couldn't not
my fault yep yeap. So there's some good exchanges, there's
some funny. I like their relationship and this exchange helps it. Right.
I do think that there's they're at that level of
comfort with each other where they can joke around like
old army buddies. Yeah, and she's like, look at that bartender,
he's hot, and it's like missing several teeth. The most

(01:44:56):
of his hair, and she's like, oh yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (01:44:58):
Sre we get the amazing line. She likes ugly beer
as much as she likes ugly men, and I'm just like,
I love Burgida so much. She's just like, give me
that gnarly, yeasty stick of fork in it beer and
also give me a one eyed, scraggle toothed barely at
a hair man to serve it, just like you are

(01:45:19):
ridiculous man, and.

Speaker 1 (01:45:20):
I love Matts. I've never seen an uglier man, Brigida.
You haven't been around long enough, because I've seen him
uglier and they look good.

Speaker 2 (01:45:27):
This is the best looking man in this location. That's
all like wow wow. But you know, there's a lid
for every pot. Brigida is the archetypal proof of that.

Speaker 1 (01:45:39):
She's a lid to a lot of ulitded pots out there.

Speaker 2 (01:45:42):
I guess, I guess, But she only wants that one
pot tight.

Speaker 1 (01:45:47):
I guess well, and it does. It comes back to
the fact that her soulmate is ugliest sin traditionally.

Speaker 2 (01:45:54):
Right, right, And it's just they all look like him
in that regard, And you know that's that's how being
in love with someone across many lifetimes works.

Speaker 1 (01:46:02):
Apparently, she notices that Matt looks at a girl's black side,
but doesn't actually slap it like he normally would, so.

Speaker 2 (01:46:08):
This line uncharacteristically. Yeah, he didn't slap her ass. This
line helped a lot of us who've been calling out
what Ali has called Matt's sogyny. We felt very gratified
by this line because Brigita, a whole ass woman, is

(01:46:31):
saying it is uncharacteristic for Matt to not unconsensually touch
someone who is working. This is not a thing that
he just started doing under Sanderson. This is not a
thing we've been imagining. This is something that is uncharacteristic of.

Speaker 1 (01:46:50):
Him to not do a lot of taking people have
taken refuge behind the idea that he's only doing it
to people who are interested. It's stated multiple times he
has a knack for only harassing people who are willing
to be harassed.

Speaker 2 (01:47:05):
No bugs, Bunny Gift, No, absolutely not. That is some bullshit. Yeah.
I'm a man, and I can tell when a working
woman doesn't mind the fact that I just sexually assaulted
her in front of her boss. Totally legit. Yeah, I
just I find the idea that he only goes after
women who want to be accosted to just be the

(01:47:28):
most like somewhere between cowardly and straight up in cell energy, like, no,
have some more respect for your adult autonomy and agency.

Speaker 1 (01:47:38):
Well, and I think this is trying to suggest that
he has grown right, that there is a certain amount
of like he understands that's wrong, He understands that he
should be doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:47:47):
No, he understands that that is cheating on his wife.
That is not the same thing. He has not grown
in the slightest with respect to respecting women's bodies. He
just thinks that it's disrespectful to your wife to assault
a women. Like that's it. That is not redeeming. That's
not growth, that's just more misogyny. Like I'm glad he's

(01:48:08):
not slapping women's asses, but he's still leering at them.
And the only reason he's not doing it is because
he thinks that his wife might slap him if he
did that. Like, it's just I it's so funny that
Sanderson would be the one giving all of this fuel
to the feminist age, but like, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:48:24):
Real, right, I wanted to see him mature a little
bit more here in this moment. I want to see
him have different reasons for restraining himself. Now, it still
might be oh, once you marry a woman, only then
do you realize women or people? Right, But at least
I would like him to realize that would be better
than this, that would be better than this.

Speaker 2 (01:48:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, it's it's the most disappointing level
of not really growth that you could have. And it's
just so it's just so unequivocal to me that this
is who Brigida has always.

Speaker 1 (01:48:55):
Known, especially after all the tail and stuff. Yeah, yeah,
you know, I'd like to see a little more reflection
on that.

Speaker 2 (01:49:02):
Yeah, a little more maybe only an enthusiastic yes is
what I'm interested in now, you know. Anyway does a
very short lived soapbox. But I did need to get
it out and just pound it for a moment. Put
it away now.

Speaker 1 (01:49:16):
So they start talking about the Alefin and the Elfin,
and he's like, so, how did you survive? Right? How
did you get out? And her answers, I didn't. I died.
If you go in, you're dead, right. There's if you
go in not through the gateways, the treaties won't be
in effect. So the ale Fin and the elfin can
draw blood. Normally you only have to worry about tricks
with pits or ropes since they can't. Hey, how did

(01:49:36):
you get hanged anyway? Yeah, that's a little interaction there,
that's kind of Yeah, she's like, oh, yeah, ropes, that
might have been why now the fact she didn't make
that connection earlier, but I guess they haven't really talked
about the snakes in the boxes before.

Speaker 2 (01:49:51):
No, it was not a good memory for her. It's
not like she was going to bring it up out
of Yeah, exactly, exactly, and yeah, this is where she says,
that's the end of that particular legend. That's where the
title of the thing is, like, sometimes the end is
you die. Sometimes that's the end. It's not you don't
always get through, and that's you know.

Speaker 1 (01:50:10):
And then she tries to make it seem impossible by saying, oh,
only one out of a thousand people come out. I
think it's even less than that, but.

Speaker 2 (01:50:16):
I mean that's like a forty days and forty night's
kind of number that didn't actually have any mathematical basis
behind it.

Speaker 1 (01:50:21):
And so he throws up coins and they all land
face up right. Two dozen, Yeah, just out of curiosity.
What do you think the odds of all two dozen
coins landing face up are?

Speaker 2 (01:50:33):
I have no idea. The only reason that I passed
statistics was because Brandon did my homework for me. I
have no idea how to estimate that.

Speaker 1 (01:50:41):
So each coin has a fifty to fifty shot, right,
and there are twenty four of them. So if you
have one coin, the chances of getting a face up
is one out of two yep, two coins getting them
both face up, Well, you multiply those together, so it's
one out of four. Okay, three coins. You multiply those together,
so two times two times two is eight, right, so

(01:51:02):
one out of eight. Yeah, twenty four coins. You multiply
two times two times two times two twenty four times,
so that's two to the twenty fourth quick Math says
that is one in sixteen point seven million.

Speaker 2 (01:51:15):
Okay, that does seem more comparable to the odds of
getting through Finland without losing. That's way better than one
in a thousand, As he says, one in one thousand
is good odds because he can get one in a
one point six million.

Speaker 1 (01:51:30):
One in sixteen million, right there, just randomly throwing a
one in sixteen million chance.

Speaker 2 (01:51:35):
Yeah, that's I believe him when he says that he
can beat the fin on their home turf.

Speaker 1 (01:51:41):
As long as he's got you know, odds on his side.

Speaker 2 (01:51:44):
As long as he can figure out how to bring
random chance into the mix. That's the only way to
cheat effectively.

Speaker 1 (01:51:51):
And he almost screws himself up by using dice because
dice only haves six options, and he needs an infinite
number of options random options. And that's where the spinning
it with his eyes closed works better for him.

Speaker 2 (01:52:02):
But it also helps when you're in an arms race
of trickery to change tactics every now and then so
the dice do buy him necessary time.

Speaker 1 (01:52:11):
There's this line here. There was that one time when
she's been forced to grow old together peacefully, the most
boring life she'd ever known, though at the time, ignorant
of her greater, grander part in the pattern, she'd been
happy with it.

Speaker 2 (01:52:23):
Oh my god, that whole little insight into Brigida and
Guide are like, no, we need to burn out and
die young and tragic epic flames, rock star heroic. Oh god,
the idea of retiring comfortably for fifty years to just
be happy. Ew, I'm like right, you're weird. But yeah,
I like you, but you're weird. Like your taste in

(01:52:44):
men is nothing as weird as your taste in life, you.

Speaker 1 (01:52:47):
Know, but I think that that's it's important to be
Like but she was happy with it and like without
knowing the grander purpose, the bigger life. Like they were
very happy together, but.

Speaker 2 (01:52:59):
Like only one life in a thousand have they ever
been allowed to just like live into old age? Like
what did you do to piss off the wheel man?

Speaker 1 (01:53:08):
Like geez well, I mean according to her, that's what
she wants, right, Like, that's not something that the like,
I wouldn't want to do that again, that was a waste.

Speaker 2 (01:53:18):
There is a world in which she is the frontman
and a really hardcore like rock band, just like she
is twenty seven club all the way totally.

Speaker 1 (01:53:28):
Oh yeah, like flicker flicker flicker, where there's like no
peaceful lives pretty much.

Speaker 2 (01:53:33):
Yeah. She even has a paragraph that kind of reminded
me of that. Early on in this she had been
a guard, a noble thief, a lady, a peasant, a killer,
and a savior. It's like you trying to get the
flicker flicker rhythm going on.

Speaker 1 (01:53:46):
There Sanderson, And there is a little bit to be said, right,
because there's multiple situations where our characters get to see
how their lives could have played out, and that information
guides them in the future, even if they can't remember
it all. Think of the Portalstone Flicker Flicker flicker, Right,
that's one of them, the Wise Ones, apprentice going through

(01:54:09):
the Three Rings. Yeah, that's one of them. Matt living
a bunch of lives, which isn't exactly the same thing
Brigida here having memories from all these different lives, but
the way they're kind of fading from her memory because
one person can't hold all those memories. Even though it's slower.
It's in the same way that the people who go
through Flicker Flicker Flicker are the people who go through

(01:54:31):
the Apprentice rings lose those memories over time.

Speaker 2 (01:54:35):
Yeah, yeah, that's true, and.

Speaker 1 (01:54:36):
They only have memories from their own lives and then
sort of vague intuitions based around the memories and the
experiences they have.

Speaker 2 (01:54:43):
Yeah, we also don't know. The reason that she was
in the tower in that story was because Geidel had
had a head injury after some battle and they were
in there for months trying to get to the point
of getting him healed of a traumatic brain injury. I
just thought that that little detail is extra grueling. It's

(01:55:04):
not heroic to try to take someone with like balance
and memory issues through a maze for months. That's not
the heroic dungeons and dragons battle. That's grueling and grinding
and hard and miserable and doesn't make a good story. Actually,
I don't think that's not a good legend. That's dismal.
No wonder the story is not still being told around

(01:55:25):
these parts, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:55:26):
Well, it's the kind of typical we wandered for forty
days and forty nights, right, Like, there's a bit of
a you could do a biblical type theme to it. All.
The two months is going to be even longer than that, right,
and then even longer so assuming they lasted like another
month after their supplies ran out, right before they starved
to death, assuming they can get water.

Speaker 2 (01:55:48):
I guess the fin would probably have wanted to give
them enough water and food to really drag the game
out for as long as possible for the ratings, you know,
do it for the gram.

Speaker 1 (01:55:56):
Yes, so she gives them some advice, right, fire can
you can cheat? But fire musical grow will grow less
effective as they get used to them. We get some
sort of again, he lays out, like they need emotion.
That's why they built a portal into the world. That's
why they work with us. They feed off our emotion,
and they don't really generate their own, right.

Speaker 2 (01:56:15):
And also that the tower is the nexus between the
snakes and the foxes, and sometimes they're working together, sometimes
they're not. But if you go through the tower, you'll
access both of them, whereas each door only goes to
one world.

Speaker 1 (01:56:28):
Well, and to me that goes back to the snakes
and the foxes are a spider web, and I can't remember,
I can't remember which is which. But one of them
live on the radial strands and the other one lives
on the circular strands, right, And so where do those intersect, Well,
at the center, there's a spot where all the radial
scent lines come together and the circles come together, and

(01:56:50):
you can actually when you go through the Tower of Genji,
you have access to both of those worlds because you're
at their intersection, whereas if you go through the stone doorway,
you're only in one store. When Delroy one leads to
the ale Fin. The other one leads to the eel Fin,
and we see that geometry when Matt goes through the tower,
right like, we see how he's able to look out

(01:57:10):
the window and kind of see the other world, and
then they interact.

Speaker 2 (01:57:14):
It's cool. I like getting the interdimensional lore dumps from
our multi generational heroes. It's fun. But that's all I
got for the rest of the chapter, just to have
a Yeah, last little tiny bit of readout that you know,
cliffhangers us over into the next chapter, which we will
be getting to next week. She raised her mug to

(01:57:35):
drink the last of her milk. The mug never got there.
She froze when she felt a jolt of emotion from
a lane anger fury, pain or get a. Slammed the
mug down on the table, then threw coins down and
stood up, cursing what Matt said on his feet in
an eyeblink. Elaine in trouble again. She's hurt, bloody ashes,

(01:57:56):
Matt snapped, grabbing his coat and staff as they ran
for the exit. And we will pick up with Elaine's
bad decisions next week.

Speaker 1 (01:58:04):
Damn it, track hands, stop making bad decisions.

Speaker 2 (01:58:07):
Never never, ever, That's what they do.

Speaker 1 (01:58:11):
Thanks so much. Talk to you guys next week.

Speaker 3 (01:58:14):
Let's go record the other podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:59:07):
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 Raven Media, visit our website
at foxendravenmedia dot com.

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An Open Gate & The End of a Legend - Towers of Midnight chapter 21-22 - EP557

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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;}An Open Gate & The End of a Legend - Towers of Midnight chapter 21-22 - EP557