Distinctions - Towers of Midnight prologue pt2 - EP545 - WoT Spoilers

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is the Wheel of Time spoilers bloodcast speaking of
dying in this house. So we talk about the Borderlands.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well, first we have to talk about Gallid and Faine. Yeah,
first we have to talk about Faine. I mean, before
we can talk about Fane, we have to talk about Galad.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Why is that such a funny name to say I don't.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Know something about all the deeds? Yeah, I guess because
he's such a dick. He's actually not being a dick
in this He's being pretty cool in this session.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Because this is really where he changes, right, I.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Mean, I would argue he started to change at the
beginning of last book when he killed Valda. But yes,
this which is the new Galade, continuing to stay the
course of the New Goalade.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Although this is one of those moments where I really
he gets arrested and then the next time we see him,
he's being broken out by the people who support him,
and I would have that's one of those things where ah,
that was all off screen. I would have liked to
see some of that, because like austinaw is this big
threat right in this chapter and then the next chapter, oh,
Austina was dead. He was killed off screen? And you're like, oh, well,

(01:26):
that's kind of disappointing.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah. Yeah, it would have been cool to see some
like parallels with a Gwayin and Galad and how they
handle captivity and torture and all that. It would have
been fun to be like, oh, like, there's there's a
man and he's a white cloak and he's having these
like amazing parallels to how the omerline handled her unjust
punishments like that would have been good, a good use
of page time. But alas, we have to imagine it.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
But alas so, yeah, this is prologue Part two. I
think we're gonna get through the rest of the prologue.
Today is the plan, and we're gonna start off with
Gala Damandro Gallard Domandra, Lord Captain, Commander of the Children
of the Yet Light yanked his booted foot free of
the ankle deep mud with a slurping sound bite. Mees

(02:12):
buzzed in the muggy air. The stench of mud and
stagnant water threatened to gag him with each breath as
he led his horse to drier ground. On the path
behind him trudged a long, twisting column, four men wide,
each one as muddled sweaty and weary as he was.
They were on the border of Giladan and Altara, in

(02:34):
a swampy wetland where the oaks and spice woods had
given way to laurels and spidery cypress. Their nile roots
spread like spindly fingers. The stinking air was hot despite
the shade and cloud cover, and thick it was like
breathing in a foul soup. Gallad steamed beneath his breastplate

(02:54):
and his mail, his conical helmet hanging from his saddle,
his skin itching from the rhyme and salty sweat. Miserable
though it was, this route was the best way, Asanawa
would not attempt it. Gollud wiped his brow with the
back of his hand and tried to walk with his
head held high for the benefit of those who followed him,
seven thousand men, children who had chosen him rather than

(03:19):
the song chan in Vedas.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
It was so posh as we do are a very
righteous retreat to the rear.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
I'm trying stuff, man, I'm trying stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
No, I like it. I like it. It fits Galad,
especially here with his leg Well. I have to look
honorable and strong and give my speech to the men
so that they can be inspired and children of the
light last battle. I get that that was a really
appropriate attitude for how he's thinking of himself here.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
I mean, you know, the Kate Riding has started giving
the Endorans the British accent in these last books pretty heavily,
which you know, it feels like a little bit of
a change, but not that much. Like it's very subtle.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
It's like she's leaning into what was there already. She
just like turned it up seven hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
But and for me, I can justify it to be like, oh,
when a lane's out on the road, of course she
kind of like reduces some of the aristotic acts. But
you know Galad of course, and in the Palace you're
going to see much more of that and much more,
you know, as they're actually queens and stuff, they're going
to play that up a little bit. So that's that's
my reasoning behind it.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
I like it. I like it. Gold's leading seven thousand
rebellious children through the swamp and he thinks that they're
going in circles or that the maps are wrong, but
actually they're being led in circles by traders and the
whole Ascidama won't anticipate it is like, well, actually his
plants initiated it, right, right, you know.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
That's the other reason. It's like, dude, Galad, you got
fooled easy, right, Like he's so trusting, he's so trusting.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, we were getting a correction in
chat that watfact said that, yes, and Dorn's were specifically
supposed to have English accents. In our ja's imagining, that
is very much how that always was, which makes sense
because you know, he's got Elizabeth the first ruling, the
capital scence.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's very obvious that that and
Dorian is you know, old school Elizabethan England, right for sure.
And then you've got like the two Rivers that's a
little more farmy, a little.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
More apparently it's supposed to be Welsh according to that
same source. Sure, so that uh yeah, that feels correct.
Fuck you England, you don't own us.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, that feels accurate.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
We have a dragon on our flag. I guess technically
that you Rivers has a wolf, but you know what
I mean.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah, and then you've got like, you know, a bunch
of the southern states that represent Italy and Greece and
like you can really go We've we've done this before
where we've looked at all of the various countries and
like it's basically Europe flipped backwards.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yep, right, yep, yep, very much so. So yeah, Goalt
is kind of as he's hiking through, he's thinking about
the last battle and how they're going to need to
quit dicking around with human politics and go face ultimate
evil and make alliance with us to die, and not
worry about the other children that are allied with the
shan Shin, and like we really just need to go

(06:15):
north and find wherever it is that the dragon at
all is doing the battle. And you know he's got
children being like fighting with the dragon. What He's like, Hello,
have none of you actually read the classical education books
that we all had to read.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Well, And Galad is really, i think for the first time,
questioning himself. Right, there is this moment where he's like,
this is this crazy world where the sky was cloud
of black, where good men died, the strange twistings of
the pattern where Vald the Lord Captain commander before Galad
had turned out to be a murder and a rapist
and He's like, this is a crazy world. I feel it,
and I'm not sure that my compass is necessarily the right.

(06:53):
You know, I thought following the white cloaks and going
for the light and going for you know, good, was
following the white cloak way. But it turns out, you know,
Lord Captain Commander was a murderer and a rapist, so
maybe not like it turns out our dear leader as
a rapist, Like that's maybe something you should reconsider following him.

(07:14):
If he turns out to be a rapist in the
highest seat in the land, maybe you shouldn't be voting
for him.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah. Yeah, we all believed in this meritocracy where you
just have to follow the rules and then everyone is
rewarded according to their contributions and lawful good right exactly
exactly is that lawful good naivete mm hmm. And then yeah,
he's really going through like now he's in charge of

(07:41):
people and he's being forced to you know. It's it's
the thing that Brand was trying to talk to Gowin
about whom to serve, whom to give your loyalty and
allegiance to. It's it's that conversation but iterated through glad
and it's like, huh, yeah, I have to pick a
different organization to put my unquestioning trusted, which is like, no,

(08:03):
don't put your own questioning trust in anything. But you
know baby steps well.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
And also this he's like, there's there's practically the last
battle is going on, like that has to change things,
Like we can no longer stick with the status quo
because of the last battle, which is something that of
course the old leaders don't want to hear. They want
to just status quo it the whole time. You know,
they want to be very conservative about their opinions.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Right, well, clearly it's been working for them. Why would
they want to give up their ill gotten gains just
to make life better for the rest of people.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
I Mean, the problem is when the status quo is
leading to world ending climate change, I mean last battles
and you need to change what you're doing or else
you're just going to end up at the end of
the world. And sure you'll make some money in the meantime,
and oh, you may die before the last battle's over,
so who cares. But like there's the rest of the

(08:55):
world to think about. And if you give up on
the rest of the world to make money, like you're
a bad person, you know.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
I feel like the peasants might have something to say
about that en mass before you get into your gold
plated coffin. But whatever, it's none of bad business. It's
not like I live in this world. It's all fantasy.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, this is a fantasy world, one hundred percent, no
relevance to every day.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, Boujie seriously studying biology, be like this is fine,
dog in fire.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
The world's on fire, everything's getting hotter.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
But yeah, that's definitely where Goalata is at. Is like
he thought everything was fine and he is finally waking
up to the fact that the house is on fire,
and he's like, oh, I am not sure what to
do about that, but there's seven thousand soldiers looking at
me to figure it out without looking uncertain, so stiff
upper lip engage.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
And I know. The solution is not to be fighting
with the shawn Chan right, like they are not our enemies.
We need to be fighting the dark One despite the
fact that they, you know, and we're we need to
come to terms of the fact that we're gonna have
to work with channelers, right just because their channelers doesn't
make them inherently evil, which is something that like, yes, Galade,
your mother was raised in the White Tower, you grew

(10:09):
up around Alida, which I mean, okay, fair enough evil, right,
Like I get that, but like, you know, at the
same time, he really grew up. It's like someone who
grew up in a diverse neighborhood joining the KKK and
going like, yeah, but I knew these people and they
were my friends, so I don't really believe your ideology.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, Golode's adopted mom was raised in the thing. I
actually I guess both of them because they're both channelers.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Technically was Goalode's was Randon Goalod's mother was ty granded channeler.
I don't think she was. I think she was from
a line of channelers, but I don't think she ever.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
I mean, she would have gone to the White Tower,
because daughter heirs go to the White Tower, right right, right,
But God, I had a different point than I got
distracted by that. But yeah, it's like he's he's coming
to the realization that you cannot have purity politics in
your coalition. Thanks coming to the realization that we're going
to have to work with people on whom we disagree about.

(11:09):
Some pretty profound attitudes towards life, the universe and everything
and how society should be run. We're going to have
to allow those diversity of opinions to exist while we
all unify behind dealing with the existential planet destroying evil
that threatens our ability to have different attitudes about channeling

(11:32):
and other things that people can be very divisive about.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
It's why I forgive the working with the Shawn Chan
is the like, no, we're not a fan of the slavery,
we're not a fan of the caste system. Like there
are problems with the shawn Chan that we have to
ignore while we fight off the dark one, right, Like
it's just and nobody's happy about it, and it does
lead to conflict afterwards, right, Anyone can look at the
Russia US relationship after World War Two or it was like, yeah,

(12:00):
we have to deal with the Germans and then we'll
deal with the Russia relationship afterwards, and that hasn't really
worked out for.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Us, right, like right, right, but like that other issue
needed dealt with exactly exactly, yeah, exactly. Galta is going
through the come to Jesus moment that the entire establishment
left needs to go through. Yeah, it's and it's it's
you know, he's a little slow about it. It takes
him maybe more plot cycles than I could wish for

(12:27):
him to come through all of this, but he is
ultimately going through a very important and necessary transition into
being a much more effective leader. This is the beginning
of a transition that does I think stick the landing
in a way that a lot of these other plots
we've been complaining about recently kind of don't stick the landing.
I do think Galad's transformation.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Does, if only because he doesn't go through any of
it before these books. Really it's very little love it right, Like,
he's a very static character for a long time, and
then Brandon comes in and is able to like do
his evolution, where some of the other characters, if he
resets them back to where they were in book five,

(13:06):
I feel.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Like, yeah, with Glad, you don't notice the difference. That's valid.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
So the troops are getting all sweaty and hot and
gross because they're stuck in this swamp that appears to
be going for far longer than it shows on the
maps because Dark One's influence and swamps are expanding.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
And lying scouts I think lying scouts is worth the issue.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Oh, I always you know, I thought it was another
example of the dark One changing I did.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Too, but like they went into the swamp because of
the lying scouts, and you really rely on scouts to
interpret maps, so I think that they were able to
hide their lies behind Oh, the dark ones just twisting
the d I don't know. I'm pretty sure that's what's happening,
or it's both.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
It's could be both, but you're right, it's the swamp
is probably small, and they're going in circles, and so
it's like they think they're going straight, but they're actually
going in circles, which makes the swamp seem much much
bigger than it actually is.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
That's that's my interpretation because Goalad says that the scouts
the bad the traders guess we're the ones who suggested entering.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
The swamp, and there's no suns, there's no way to
tell what direction you're going.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yeah, the great whiteness is like, well, we know that
that's Southish and that's Northish, but that doesn't give you
a lot of east west fidelity at all. Yeah, So
Galad does some gentle propaganda to keep the men's spirits up,
which you know, in dire circumstances whatever, lean on your
your group mottos and ethos to be like, yeah, we

(14:32):
can do this. Like normally, I think it's kind of weird.
Propaganda's mind games, but you know, when you're hiking through
a swamp, you do what you gotta do. It's okay.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
We get some like propaganda from Bayar who's like, we
will have hundreds of thousands of troops because we are
the children of the light and the light. It's that
like magical thinking that like, because we're in the right,
we will just have all these troops. It's like, where
are they going to come from?

Speaker 2 (14:54):
I'm gonna shoot up a church and then the race
war will start and then we're gonna win. Okay, sure,
step four profit.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
That's buyer, definitely Step four profit. And he's like, where's
step three, man, where's step three? Yeah? And that's where
you know, Gallad pulls them back in and it's like,
we're probably gonna have to work with some other people.
We're not just going to be able to do it
by ourselves because there's not enough of us and we
keep splitting and killing each other.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he has the same Uh, this is
one of those moments where you're like, oh, he should
team up with Parent because he says every human that
we kill is a blow for the dark One, and
it's like, oh, oh, him and Parent need to team
up because they both have the same attitude that human
on human violence is the dumbest thing you could be
doing on the eve of the Last Battle.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Which I mean, it's clearly intended as foreshadowing to them
getting together, right, because that's this whole plot arc, is
the two of them meshing, getting together and realizing like, oh,
we have the same goal, which is preserve human life
for the last battle.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah. Yeah, this is I think when you're like, oh,
that's where this is going. That's how we're going to
resolve a lot of these plot threads. Is Gollad and
Parent are going to have a romance.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
So as they're hiking, they come across a bunch of
bodies in a river. Those are from here we go
dead mules. Did I talk about this in the episode
or was that just.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
An very briefly for the last episode, But here are
the dead mules, So you should probably reiterate that point, right.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
So the issue basically someone asked Robert Jordan about writing
Southern material, and he basically said, because he wrote the
under a different pen name, he wrote some early American
era Southern literature, right, He's like, in the Southern novel,
you always got to have a dead mule. I don't
know if that's a reference to one of his other

(16:39):
books or what he's like. And I've got to include
them somewhere in the wheel of time. And so in
an interview he said that he'd managed to include dead
mules in the prologue for a Memory of Light, and
so here is the place where the dead mules appear.
So this again seems to be evidence that the Gallied
POV at least was written probably more by Jordan than

(17:00):
by Sanderson, because he if he wrote the dead mules
in the rolog he probably wrote this.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Scene much nodding, much nodding.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yes, So that's the whole point of that. As I
wanted to say, is this feels like a you know,
it feels Jordanesque to me.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yes, it does, and that gives us a strong sense
of we're not completely blowing smoke up our own asses,
like no, it is.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
It is more Jordanian, unlike the next two povs which
feel very Sanderson to me. And there's a lot of evidence,
especially in the second, the last POV, because there's so
much reuse of Stormline archive stuff. I'll point that out
as we get to it, specifically, like TN is a
reuse character name and they talk about cooks and stuff
like that.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
But yeah, yeah, Then the next thing I have is
that you can tell that Galad and Elaine are related
because he wants a good bath. He's walking through the
thing and he's like, I just want a bath, and
I'm like, okay, So he's half sibling to Elayne, right,
They're shared parent is their dad, which means that Teringale

(18:03):
was also a bath person.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
I mean, it might just be having been raised in
a palace where you can get a bath at any
time with no work whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
No, it's definitely epigenetic. Okay, this has to be genic.
There's no way. It's cultural. Absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
It's it's not like the only other person we know
who loves bath is related to them or anything. Moraine
see domondread right, d exactly the domondreads.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah, nobody else in this entire world likes baths. Only
this one family has invented baths and it's an important
part of their particular family experience. That's the simplest explanation
I can think of.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Everyone else just does bucket scrubs and is fine with it.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Or saunas, Yeah, well sweat tense not me, No, thank you.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
I've done enough saunas. I know I don't like them.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
It's a very particular way. Well, I've never done the
like sauna where you're getting scraped, right, I feel like
that's the difference, is there, Like screw the grime off
as they sweat.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
I just can't deal with being overheated. So I don't
care what you do or don't do to my skin.
It's the being overheated inside my skin that is the problem.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
I think they work really well because it's like cold
at night and so you can, like if you get overheated,
you step outside and just like get frozen by the
cold night.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
And I know the amazing tingling, rushing adrenaline sensation of
going from a sweating hot room into like a water bag,
like a cold water bag. Like I've done it. I
know how it feels. But I have such sensory issues
with being overheated. The na Nah, but I know that
they are in so many ways a superior way of

(19:39):
dealing with like your health and your cleanliness, and like,
there's a good reason why there's so popular around the world.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
I do like a good jump into a hot tub
and then a cold pool. I've done that a bunch
when I was bad access to hot tubs more than
sawmus so that that can be fun. Same same sort
of idea where you get yourself sweating and then you
jump and you get sort of the shock to your
system to cool yourself down.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
I don't like transitions.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yeah, that's like transition therapy.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah. Like again, I know what it feels like. I've
done it enough times to know what I'm missing out on.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
I just.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Can't we just be moderate.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
They're talking about stopping at midday, but they're way past
midday because they've totally lost track of time and they
expected to be out of the swamp before midday.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah. And then and Galata explains that he's planning on
taking them to some estates he owns an and Or,
even though and Or is not broadly friendly to the
children of the Light. He's like, but I have a
couple of estates we can go to and hang out.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
It's like, I know somebody who might have to go
to my country.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
We'll go to my house on the lake. It's just like, okay,
fucking one percenter.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
He does this whole like, is Rand Althor the dragon reborn?
He's a puppet of the tower. Well, he's better be
the dragon reborn because it's clear that the last battle
is coming, so you know, essentially, you know, in my mind,
he's like, we gotta put our money on dragon on
Rand Alphor is the dragon reborn because this is clearly
the land is breaking.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, and I appreciate having someone think through the questions
around Rand in like a kind of unique way. Like
most people are like they just don't want to believe
because they don't want it to be the end of
the world. But Galt is very critically being like, someone,
is the dragon reborn at this point? Is it Althor?
Let's critically and analyze it, because most people are just like, well,

(21:29):
if the dragon's reborn, it's clearly Althor, and Gold's like, well,
let's let's separate these assumptions and actually examine them on
their own merits then reach a conclusion.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
And I appreciate that, of course, then I love is like,
but that doesn't mean he couldn't still be controlled by
the isid eye.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Well, given how much Rand spends stressing about worrying about
being controlled by the iside, I mean that's not a
bad take. Like the isid ie are all up in there.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, I mean Moraine Codswain right, Like he's had a
lot of land here.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah. Again, it's just like I love how Golaude is.
For all that he's normally a very binary black and
white thinker, he's also like, maybe there's some nuance to
these assumptions that we could tease out.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Which is that's what making Gallaude such a good character
is that he is adding nuance into his worldview, and
that's something you don't get from someone who's normally a
black and white That's his journey, right, that's his character arc,
is to go from a black and white thinker to
someone who has nuance and can compromise and can work
with parent and be involved in the last battle and
be a hero even when maybe he's not doing it

(22:32):
under his ideal circumstances.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah. Yeah, and uh yeah, they get on out of
the bug and into the frying pan.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Side and relief relishing the thought of being out in
the open again. He stepped from the trees. Only then
did an enormous force of troops begin to appear, climbing
over a rise directly to his right.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Just like very cinematic levels of timing there.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
And these are the questioners, right, the yeah, less troopy troops.
I'm always like, couldn't you just don't them? Don't that
they the worst troops like the questioners suck? You could
just take them down?

Speaker 4 (23:11):
Well?

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Is I think it's it's the questioners and all of
the other children who didn't know how they needed to
split when Galad did them. I'm pretty sure this is
more than just the questioners, because again it's it's very
the parallels between Galad and Aguayin with the way that
their orders are splitting down the middle. There's so many
parallels there. So I'm pretty sure that the bulk of

(23:33):
all the children went with the questioner contingent well.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
And also the larger number were foot soldiers, not wearing
the white of children but instead the simple brown leathers
a meditians, likely provided by the shan Chan. So there's
a huge force of shan Chan Amediitians there.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Right, not even children of any variety.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
No, yeah, yeah, just archers ready to shoot them down
if they fight back. So, of course the questioners don't
have their own troops. They borrow them from the shan.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Chan naturally, because they are the worst troops they really are. Yeah, no,
that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Ten thousand fresh troops, right, and he's got his like
six to seven thousand.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
You are all tired and exhausted and yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
And most of those are he's what three to four
thousand children and six to eight thousand foot half of
those with bows. So you've got three thousand, four thousand
people with bows to go up against your I mean
they just mow them down.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
I mean they are cavalry, so they would take a
lot of those archers down with them.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
But there's but there's troops and another cavalry.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, the sean Chan and the questioners are happy to
throw those Amidusians into the meat grinder. It's like, it's fine,
they don't care.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
I love this this interaction. You are a trader child
born hauled. Yes, I suppose it could be perceived that
way where he's like, but that's empathy, right, He's like,
I understand how you could see it that way, you're wrong,
but I can't understand how you can see it that way.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, right, which is like, yeah, yeah, I love I
love Glad. Glad really does not take it personally even
when other people do. And then Austin Awa rolls up
being the worst, basically being like guilty before proof, right,
because it's because Glad. He's been like, well, I'm not
a dark friend, and you need to treat me a
certain kind of way because I'm not a dark friend,
and Austin I was like, dark friends deserve no mercy.

(25:19):
It's like, but you haven't even tried him yet. No,
even by your own stupid laws, you haven't even done
the thing yet. You're already behaving as though the judgment
has been done, Like why does anyone take you seriously?
You are such a hypocrite it hurts.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
And I think it's caught in the trap of being like,
you're all dark friends. And he's like, all seven thousand troops,
half the force of the Children of the Light are
dark friends. And he's like, well, they're led by dark friends.
And it's like this very squirrely like.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
And like they like they haven't been killing entire villages
for having harbored one dark friend. We're gonna murder the
six year old child because they had a dark friend
in their village, Like, you know, it's just that the hypocrisy,
the lust for violence that these people have is just
so inhuman, so unnerving. And then also and I was like, yeah,

(26:08):
when you killed Valda in front of all of us
as witnesses under the light, clearly you drew on the
powers of shadow to overcome the light. And it's just
like that was the most sacred and correct duel you
could possibly have asked for it.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
I saw the dragons fang sprout on your forehead.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
You know, you did the devil inquisition trial, Like, what
come on? They consorted with the devil. I saw them
at their devil's rights, fucking the devil with their cast
What were you doing at the devil's rights, sir?

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Anyway, which one Claude goes. So this was a duel
fought under the light. And if the shadow is stronger,
there's no way if the shadow could be stronger than
light in that circumstance. So even if I did sprout
the devil's horn on my you know, forehead or whatever,
I should though still a law because it was a
fight under the light. If I was wrong, therefore shut

(27:04):
the fuck.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Up, Like yeah, like, you're either denying the light or
you're lying, right, So.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Which one is it? Oh, you're lying well both maybe?

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah, Well, I mean I think Ostuinawa has definitely drunk
his own koolid, you know, not quite as bad as
the prophet, but you know, in that vein in that
way totally.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
And then I love this reiteration my mother is dead, right,
So the whole basis for this fight, which is so funny,
is that his mother's dead, which she's not.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
I mean, legally she's kinda dead.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
And he did raper so I admitted to that, which
is enough. But yeah, I wish he'd stuck to that
more as like, oh, he killed my mother, because there's
that moment when he she's revealed later, and I wish
there'd been a little self reflection to be like, should
I have killed Balda? Maybe there is I think there
is a moment.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Where yeah, no, there is, there is, But yeah, it
would have been fun if he'd lingered more on the
violence was done to my mother. Then my mother is
currently no longer alive. Yeah, and yeah, then he proposes
to much much like a GWayne. He proposes, like, here's
how we can you know, come back together, as you know,
brothers separated for a time rather than killing each other.

(28:13):
And I'm just like a Gway. And you married the
wrong brother.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, so true, so true.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
You had to marry anyone. You seriously married the wrong brother.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
It is so funny though, that she did kind of
marry someone who could be considered a brother of Rand,
right because they both have the same brother. Right, So
if you share a brother, are they not brothers in
a way? Right? Their family for sure of some kind.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
If you have multiple in laws, don't they just cancel
out multiple in laws in that equation. You could just
cancel that entirely and just say brother.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yeah, Like she basically a Gwayne's whole relationship was to
crush on three brothers. That she went from Rand to
Gallade to Gawain.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Y'all need a bigger gene pool. Yeah. So Paren, sorry,
Galad acts like Paren and says, I will submit with caveats,
you know, basically treating himself for his people very much.
What Paren was kind of negotiating in book four with
the White Cloaks.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
And what he and what he negotiates later with Golot. Right,
there's a lot of parallels between what's happening here and
the relationship that Paren puts himself basically in the situation
that Gold is in, which you know, maybe is one
of the reasons why Golott has a bunch of empathy
towards him later, right.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Right, right, Like, well that's what I would have done, yeah,
And then and then he says, the dragon be born
walks the land, to which Alsinawa says heresy, to which
Gold says, yeah and true, what are you gonna do
about it? It might be heresy, but it's also true.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
So and I think that's the difference between Gold and
the other white cloaks is like they stop with, oh,
it's heresy, therefore that we're just going to ignore it,
whereas he's like, yeah, but if even if you don't
like it, the truth is still the truth, right, Like.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
You can deny gravity or a house on fire all
you want, but it's still going to like affect your
meat suit.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
It's gonna happen, right right, You're still gonna fall, like.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
You can you cannot believe in fire all you want,
but it will burn you.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
And so glade in order to stop bloodshed, submits right.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
And orders his seven thousand to let him be taken, beaten,
dragged out of sight, presumably under threat of being murdered
at any moment. He orders them to let that happen.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Which they don't.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
They do for a day a day.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah yeah, but when next we see them, Austin all
is dead.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yeah, but he gets pulled off of his horse and
stripped of his armor, beaten, He promises he will never
lie about being a dark friend, because you know, it's
who he is, and he gets beaten into unconsciousness and
then yeah, when we join him next, his soldiers decided
that they were unwilling to tolerate that and fixed it
while he was out called. I think there's also some

(31:02):
like in and out, he does get tortured, but it's
all off screen, right, He doesn't mention that there was
some torture sessions in there, but like more or less,
he just passes out and then comes to with troum
being like, hey, we decided we didn't like custome knowledge, so.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
So goodbye everybody, which for such a shithead, I would
have related to see him get killed.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like COOLi di in like, how dare
you not die? Like graphically on page please?

Speaker 1 (31:31):
I want my revenge.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
And with that we moved to creepy, creepy, icky, icky,
have fun Fain.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
I love Patent Vaine. I really wish there was more
of them in the series, right, Like, I think he
made such a good active, chaotic anti hero but anti
bad guy fights. Everybody has all this power, and I
just I think he could have. There's so much potential
with Fain in terms of the structure of the world

(32:17):
and everything.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
It's amazing. He's such a fascinating character, and Sanderson clearly
really liked writing Faine. Like Sanderson, I think has the
same sort of hands rubbing together glee that you have
about getting to be in the Faine space.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
And as much as I don't like the way he
killed Faine, I thought I think he thought it was
going to be really clever.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Sure, yeah, yeah, he might have flubbed on that, but
I think he enjoyed writing him nonetheless.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Totally totally should you do a creepy voice?

Speaker 4 (32:44):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (32:45):
Okay, fine, okay, boy, like you needed.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
To your army. The creature that had once been bad
in Faine walks down the side of a hill. The
brown weeds grew in broken patches, like the scrub on
the chin of a beggar. The sky was black a tempest.
He liked that, though he hated the one who caused it, hatred,

(33:13):
it was the proof that he still lived, the one
emotion left, the only emotion. It was all there could be, consuming, thrilling, beautiful, warming, violent, hatred, wonderful.
It was the storm that gave him strength, the purpose

(33:33):
that drove him. Althor would die by his hand, and
perhaps after that the dark one one ful.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Give that man an award from the appropriate category. I
don't even know which, the Oscar an Emmy, Tony, I
don't know what the right one is. But it's good.
It's good. It's so creepy because you really capture the
like there's seven different people a competing for the man's
inner voice.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
Not that I can't be consistent in my accent, it's
that I'm representing seven different people.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
Yes, very good, entirely on purpose, entirely on.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Purpose, Yeah yeah, yeah, I just love him right like
and then because he's merging with Mashadar and like, there's
that just insand in like and machine shin right there's
all three of those elements in there, so I get
to add a little bit of the Machine Shin voice
that I like to do, the screaming, like the yeah screams,

(34:31):
wonderful streams are screens. Yeah, all that right, And then
in that consuming, thrilling, beautiful warming, there's like that same
cadence of Machine Shin in his voice. It's so uh Yeah,
he's fun, real scary.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
It's real scary, and yeah he is in his most
feral state. I would say he's really like Max Ferrell
at this point, wandering through deeper and deeper into the blaight,
kind of gathering up his thrall army. He's reached the
bare knife phase of his relationship with the Dagger. He
doesn't use the sheath anymore.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
He's really his body. He is a seed of Mashidar, right,
the hate that is Mashidar.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
Right.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
It was tied to shat Our Logoth. And when Rand
destroyed shat Our Logoth, he destroyed Mashidar right, because it
couldn't exist outside the place.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Except for the little bit in the Dagger.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Except for the bit in the Dagger and the soul
of more Death who got into padent Fane, right, and
you need both because one is the mind and one
is the.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Power, right, Yeah, because you've got more Death and Machin Shin,
both of those creatures from air at Hall are both
inhabiting fame. They're not the same thing, Maschidar.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Yeah, so Machi and Shin is also in there, and
that's what like, there's also like then this whole problem
that the reason that he wasn't one hundred percent taken
over by more Death and didn't become more Death and
became something else is because he already had this like
taint of the dark in him.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
Yeah, which I think. And he also he got to
match In Shin before he got to masha Dar. Yeah,
he got trapped in the ways.

Speaker 3 (36:10):
Early and after no, because he follows.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
He gets he gets he gets the dagger.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
He gets the dagger first and then they go through
the waygate afterwards and he follows them through. So Mashadar
protects them from Machine Shin. But there's definitely an influence there.
If anything, he influences Machine Shin, right, Like.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Truly match Engin was trapped in there with.

Speaker 5 (36:31):
Him, yes, exactly, but yeah, he's become the seed essentially
of Mashadar, right, he's become and so he is, and
we see it later.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
He's looking for a place to essentially put down roots
and become another city and start to grow again.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, he's he's planktonic evil right now. He's drifting around
looking for a place to land and actually settled in roots.
And he's heading north because there's a lot of vibes
up there that might make for fertile ground. You know,
I think is why he's headed there.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Well, I mean I think the main reason is he says,
I'm not following randall Thora anymore. I know he's going
to be here at this time too, Yeah, and so
I'm just going to wait for him until, you know,
like I know where the last battle is going to happen.
I know he's got to show up at shale Gohoul.
So I'm just going to park my ass near shale
Gool and be ready for it when he shows up
so I can grab him.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, that is actually why he's going there. And he's
also just killed a worm casual, yes, right right, because
the way just for funzie. It's just a little recreational
worm slaughter.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
Which I think is just to show how dangerous. He is, right,
like exactly the only other I mean, if we talk
about River of Souls, which is not necessarily in this book,
but we'll have to talk about when we're actually going
to read that. We may have to do that between
books because that's when Demandred goes and slays a worm
and gets the chalice.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah. So yeah, contrasting Demondred going in there and having
like a big epic power battle versus Fege with his
dagger going in there and shredding the thing. I was like, oh,
oh no, You're so much more powerful than Forsaken, oh
dear well.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
And I think his his touch is just poison to
anything that's related to the Dark One, right, he just
has this ability to corrupt anything, you know. We see
him with his corrupt trolls, which we saw the trollucs
get their pocks and boils when they went into Mashidar,
into shadow logos and get touched by Mashidar.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Right, No, we saw that on the islands in the ways,
right when they were all stone basically from the old traps.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yes, that's right, Yes, yeah, so that's oh man, It's
always I always wonder how much of famee is Mashidar.
How much of him is maching Shin? How much is
the dark one? Like he's all He's a bubbling cauldron
of evils.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
He's all evils and none. Yeah, the omorline of evil.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah, and that's why I just wish he was more effective.
I wish it was there was more moments where he
popped up, like he creates a little bit of chaos.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, he should have been a bigger factor. And like,
oh no, there's actually a third axis on this battle,
exactly a binary axis. And no, there's actually a full
blown third party that is neither good nor evil, like
the Finn kind of almost fulfilled that function, like mentally, right,
the concept is that they are aside from the medieval thing,
but they also don't have nearly as much like load

(39:26):
bearing plot hanging on them as Feine does.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Right, And he's just there's so much of He's involved
with Matt, he's involved with Rand. He's like he's such
a you know, he's there in the beginning. It's really
set up for him to be important at the last battle,
the fin you know, they come in a little bit later.
They're they're not quite.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
As they do a lot, but yeah, yeah, less of
a Chekov's gun. They're like a Chekhov's like little pistol,
whereas Fain is like a Chekhos bazouka.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
And the Finn kind of show up in the last battle.
Parent sees them fighting in his like when he's flicker
flicker flicking.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
That they're not fighting anyone in the real world. They're
just fighting like other creatures on other planes. Like it's confusing.
It's fine. I like it. I like the weirdness of it,
but like, yeah, they just don't have the same direct
threat aspect as Faine does.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
So yeah, what we There's a big long sequence where
he corrupts murderal and trollocks who approach them thinking they
found a sucker because it's a lone dude in the
middle of the you know.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Right, and then he eats them all for breakfast.

Speaker 5 (40:25):
Right.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
He leaves the fade behind. He only takes the trolls
the fade. He just leaves dead.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
But he is He's essentially sucking the souls out of them, right.
The Mashadar, at least as far as I know, the
Maschidar in Shadow Logos was made up of the souls
of the citizens of the city and then anyone who
wanders in, right, and like it grows with souls, and
so Fain is essentially stealing trollic souls, right, which in

(40:52):
of themselves are kind of stolen souls. Right, Like there's
a huge you know, the theory that every trollec created
steals the that would have been reincarnated. Right. And the
whole reason you have murdrawl is because those are the
souls of the channelers who get stolen, right, And that's
why the percentage of murdraw matches the percentage of channelers.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Well, maybe we can head canon that when Fain like
gets them away from the Dark One, that means that
once this life surface is over, they actually are freed again.
That's like part of how he's anti evil is because
like the souls are no longer.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
And not that he ate the souls.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
Well just I mean whatever he does with them, but
just that the dark One no longer has that hold,
Like he actually can like fully break them away from
the Dark One into whatever he's doing. But like you know,
he actually can negate the part where the Dark One
stole them. He's stealing them to his side.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah, that's like out of the pot into the fire
for sure, Like, I don't know if I want to
be a part of Machidar. Like that sucks.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah yeah, probably not a whole lot better.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
The screaming souls of Maschidar.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
M yeah, yeah, he probably won't let them go after
a period of service. That wouldn't be on brand.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Which which Semile was the one who ended up in
shadow logos who ran, didn't killed, but got sucked up
by Mashadar. Right, so I'm going to head canon that
he actually got killed when Rand cleansed the source because
his soul was like part of oh yeah yeah, or
at least he was eliminated totally at that point whatever
remnant of soul was part of Mashadar.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
Yeah, I don't think the Dark One was able to
retrieve Sawmel at any point because yeah, goes into Mashadar
and then gets bail fire or not bail fired, but
you know, cleansing eliminated.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Because there's I want to say, it's a it's a
Jordan answered a question where he basically said someone's like, hey,
could Samoil come back, and he was like, no, his
soul was corrupted, and any soul that was brought back
would be likewise corrupted, and therefore there's no way for
the dark One to bring him back because he is
touched by Mashidar and that actually affected his soul before

(42:58):
it killed him. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Whatever Fine is doing is definitely that, though in the
case of Troloc, they were already tainted twisted souls, so
you know, again frying pan fire, whatever.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
But yeah, they become his slaves, right, and that's how
he forms his army. Is anyone who attacks him, you know,
it's a zombie army. You attack it, you become part
of it, and it gets bigger and stronger.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and then Faine can get through whatever
army he needs to get through in order to get
to Rand and you know what is it? Stab through
the eye, open at the gut and consumed by handfuls
while drinking his blood as his friends. Yeah, okay, all right, buddy.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Oh and he leaves the Murdrawl because he actually his
touch instantly kills Murdrawl.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Oh right, it's not a choice, it's just a fact.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
It's dead totally already he touched it, so it's completely fried.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
Right, Yeah, Because he's like, oh it's too bad, I
would have liked to have a few nails I would
have liked to put to use on this right, like
you're lucky.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Reference back to the murderrawl hanging in the door.

Speaker 3 (44:04):
Right like, yes, yes, the door draw, the door drawl.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
But I love the fact that like mrdraw, which are
notoriously hard to kill, and even when you do kill them,
they thrash around until sunrise or sunset, and it's like, oh,
but one touch from Fane and they're gone totally, No,
the connection is severed. They are no longer part of
this world.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yeah. Yeah, from being the scariest creature of all to
being instact killed at a touch, like how the mighty
have fallen as Faine has become an antagonist and.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
That reminds me verifying that my friends are not like Fane.
Before I let them hang out in private, I thought
you were supposed to bring food to eat, not eat
your friends.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
Then we head to the last POV of the prologue,
which is a one off Borderlander character who manages to
be a lovely little vignette story on his own. It
feels so Sanderson, and I'm not even mad about it.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
No, and this is extremely Sanderson for me. I feel
like there's a bunch of little nods to his other
writing in here that makes me go, oh, this is
a very Sanderson pov. Everything from the names to like
the way the oh, it's really important to have a
good cook, right, That's a huge theme in Stormlight Archive.
It's like, how does Taladin rescue his teammates from their

(45:38):
depression and nihilism. He finds someone who's a good cook
and gets them tasty food and that's enough to like
shake them out of like nihilism about the world is
going to end and there's no point, right, It's like
food makes a difference.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
Yeah. No, I remember there's a great book and then
movie adaptation of Shackleton's trip to South Pole or to Antarctica,
and I remember, I don't remember if it's in the book.
I remember in the movie when he's putting together his crew,
he specifically makes sure to get a good cook. Like
I remember, there's like the little you know, the little

(46:13):
vignette as he gets each of the crew members, like
the getting the cook is important and the cook has
a great moment like later on in the story. He's
a very like important character for like the comic relief
of the whole thing. But yeah, it's I remember reading
this being like, hey, hey, that was Shackleton's idea that
happened in the real world, the concept of like you
need a good cook because otherwise this Antarctic mission is

(46:36):
not gonna work. Yeah, it's it's very important.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
Well, I feel like just on ships in general, it's
like there's the captain, the first mate, and then the
cook and then everybody else.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure, I'm.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Not really gonna read us into this one. I don't
think there's really anything particularly.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
No, I don't think there's any There's not a good
voice to do here.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
So yeah, we're with with this. Melaran Rye you want
to call.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
It Melan Narin is how the audiobook says it.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
So he's been the commander of this tower for ten years.
You know, this is the the Fires of Gondor are
lit essentially, right, This is.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
That moment the fires of Gondor are lit. Right, Yeah,
that's more what this is. This is a real question
mark going on.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
It really feels to me that the Dark One watched
The Lord of the Rings and went okay.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
No, yeah, the Dark One sat down, did a full
movie benj and was like taking notes.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
Yeah, thinking this was like, we okay, we need to
interrupt the chain of fires, the signal fires that are
going to tell them we're coming, right, Like, that's really
important that they don't have that information.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
Yeah, Like we cannot have Ara Gorn busting through the doors. Like, no,
we cannot have that. That will rally the troops too hard.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
There's a reference here. He's talking about Bariga, a merchant
who was bringing his caravan to the tower to trade.
That guy actually appears in the epilogue of this book.
He's the one. He shows up and he runs into
Aeel with strange red veils and points teeth and then
it cuts so he shows up to the tower trying

(48:05):
to trade and is killed by evil.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
I yeel oh wow cool, that's fun, little tiny it'sy
bitsy callbacks to things that barely existed. I love it.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
Yeah. He mentions he's on his way in this in
this chapter, and then he shows up in the epilogue.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
Nice. Nice, which makes sense because this tower clearly falls right,
So it makes sense that the merchant who was planning
on coming also meets a grizzly end. I'll yeah, a
slightly different one.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah. So he's thinking about getting him drunk and you know,
maybe recruiting him for a year. Like it's just it's
a it's a little bit of a slice of life
for the Borderlanders, where like death is a constant threat,
but you still like have to get life done and
still live life and still have these like need to
trade with merchants and you know, keep your mail on
rotation and all that kind of stuff, and have manhood ceremonies.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
This is one of my favorite parts about Sanderson coming
into the series, was that he starts to giving us
these slice of life things in places that like we
know that this was happening the whole time, Like the
Borderlands have been fleshed out in so many respects, but
never this respect. He's not inventing anything. He's just writing
in all the details that we've been you know, vaguely

(49:15):
head cannoning, and I just it's one of my favorite
parts about what he brought to concluding this massive series.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
And it can feel a little fan fiction he sometimes
if done poorly, but I think he does it well
enough that it mostly just falls into my head canon.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
Really well, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
So there's a lot about his son in this chapter.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
As well, right like, yeah, yeah, preparing for his son's
manhood ceremony. And then the chapter ends with I guess
you're a man three days early because you are not
going to live until your actual birthday.

Speaker 1 (49:48):
Well and also because you made that you willingly made
that choice, yes, to sacrifice your own life so that
someone who you felt whose life had more value than
yours could live.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Right, yeah, which is yeah, I mean that's the most
manly thing a Borderlander can do. So give the give
the man his sword, even if it is three days early.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
Very a tale of two cities. Right, it's a better
thing I have ever done. Right, We're going to his
own death to save the life of another.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Person, right, which, again to your point about like death
is constantly present in the Borderlands, right like a child
who's only about to turn fourteen is like, well, I
mean I've done the math, and clearly my classmate should
get out ahead of me, right, Like, It's it's just
it's they've been thinking like that their whole lives.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
There is that interesting. I've seen this a lot in
old war movies too, where I mean it's the whole,
the whole premise of saving private Ryan. Right, Why are
they saving Private Ryan. All of his brothers are dead.
He's the last surviving family member, so it's worth it
to go in and save him because his mother. And
they say here, his mother has had three other of
her sons die, like it's worth it to save the

(50:57):
last one. And I'm like, is it? But like what
if someone only had one kid? We don't do that.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
For the Look, the math of sacrifice is not something
that you can really like make the equation balance logically,
because then you're into this weird hierarchy of whose life
is worth more? Right, right, just weird it's weird beings thing.
But yeah, I mean people that go into those sorts
of life and death careers like they have the right
to figure out those equations on their own and not

(51:24):
justify it to the rest of us.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
I guess, yeah. Yeah. There's a pretty good description of
the tower and the fact that like the fourth floor
is a trap because there is no way from the
fourth to the fifth floor. You have to go back
down to the second, or there's away from the third
to the fourth, so you have to go down to
the second to skip over the third, so and go
like outside on a like yeah, do it on the
outside of the building so you can be shot at.

(51:47):
So it's like, yeah, this is this whole description of
like how the defense is kind of it kind of
helps you picture how the defense is going to go
as they're getting swarmed, right, and how they're going to
murder lots and lots and lots of these trollics. But
it isn't really gonna matter because there are so many
of them that they're going to get overrun. Right.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Yeah, it's like being on a on a tower in
a flood, Like, yeah, you can keep the you can
keep backing up, but eventually you're gonna get overrun. But yeah, again,
Sanderson's so good at making me see things, like he's
helping me visualize the engineering of this and kind of
reminds me of a little bit of early descriptions at
the Stone of Tier. Right, there's all these like levels
of fallback position. There's not just one line of defense,

(52:26):
Like every hallway is the next step backwards on that
line of defense. Like you don't get this without the
hallways of flowing in blood.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
Yeah, they might take it, but they're gonna pay for
every inch that they take.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
And also, I mean there's more getting into the like
every day of the Borderlanders, right, Like they live in
architecture that is that intense all the time. That's what
it means to be a Borderlander soldier. It's not just
horseback riding and honor codes. It's also like having to
hike up the outer stairs because that's how the building
is structured.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
And killing Trollock's right, you got this guy Jargon, He's
got the fifty knots, the trollek.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Hills, a lifetime of killing Trollacs and he's up to fifty.
And you're like, I'm pretty sure Land has killed fifty
like in the course of these books.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Oh yeah, easily, easily.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
You know, this is a regular mirror mortal kind of
kill count.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
But like, but also then take that out of the
context of the like ridiculousness of these books where they're
just slaughtering tralocs left and right, where it's like, oh, yeah,
you go out and if you fight in a battle
and you kill a trolloc or two, that's a big deal, right, Like,
and to do that fifty different times, Like you are
at the front of a lot of battles, killing a

(53:34):
lot of trollics, and a lot of different moments in history,
and you've survived a ton of attacks since he was fourteen, right, Like,
that's that is a veteran of many, many, many, many battles.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
Yeah, that is that is an unstoppable force. He has
a proven track record of being literally unstoppable in a
world where land is not what everyone else is measuring against.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Right, And then you think back to like how many
soldiers do people act kill on the battlefield, Like if
you hear numbers in the teens, that person was a
monster in actual battle, right, Like it's you just you're
lucky to kill one or two, right, if that's kind
of how battle.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Works, where like right, the hand to hand combat with
sharp objects, situation arrows at relatively close range. Yeah righteah, right,
maybe a horse if you're lucky these guys, you know,
they take a horse into battle. But yeah, it's hard
to live through fighting a creature that is one hundred
and fifty percent your size and has more weapons than

(54:34):
you and.

Speaker 5 (54:35):
To do that.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Yeah, however, many dozens of times he's done. It's like, okay,
so this man will not be falling until the very
end of the battle, clearly, And yeah, so they get
a flash from a different tower, right, the beacons have
gone door lit, and they go for confirmation and there
is no confirmation, and that is a problem.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
Which one would assume it's because they were overrun and
they got one single flash out before they were fully overrun.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Right, Yeah, that's what I'm assuming as well, someone desperately
managed to get the signal out and they hoped that
that would be enough, and unfortunately it was not because
they weren't able to confirm.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Well, not so much that, as the tower to the
south was also overrun that too.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, but I'm just imagining like someone did get the
signal out thinking they were doing something good, and then
it's like, oh, oh, all of that desperation that could
have been the whole last forty minutes of an action
movie for nothing, because yeah, the Southern tower was overrun first.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
And we never see the runners show up anywhere.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
No, we assume that they all get eaten on the road.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
Because they're going to the Southern tower, right, and so
there's a bunch of talks waiting for them. Right.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
So Keemlin does this self sacrifice thing for his friend,
but his friend gets absolutely chewed up.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
One would assume doesn't mean, yeah, his friend is murdered
as well.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Yeah, they probably both die within an hour of each other,
just separated by several dozen miles.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
And so yeah, they get the flash from Northwest tower.
They try and flash the South tower, the next one
along the chain. It of course doesn't work because they're
both probably overrun. And so basically he's like he pretty
much knows what's going on. I think he's like, oh, well,
the only reason.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
His spidy senses are all.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
He's like, oh, okay, we're fucked right, Like, we have.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
A lot of safeguards to make sure that this confusion
doesn't escalate. And the confusion is escalating.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
So he sends three runners, I think is my understanding. Yeah,
because he says three of three messengers and one of light,
three on foot in one of light.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
He's desperately trying to do his part to get the
message out, but yeah, it probably doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
He also is prepared for Drakhar. He's like, you know,
gets marchers up on the roof in case there's flying
things coming. So he's smart, right, He's doing all the
right things, but he's just totally outmanned. He's got like
two hundred and fifty soldiers fighting against thousands and thousands
and thousands of troulics.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Yeah, no, it's not even really a last There is
no stand to be made. There's so few of them
compared to the on rushing force.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
And he even thinks like, if he'd been the one
won't making an assault, he'd have done anything he could
to sneak around and take out one of the southern
towers first. That was the best way to make sure
no messages got back to the Capitol. And it's like, yeah,
that's that's what happened. You're spot on.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
He knows exactly what's happening. All of his instincts are
pointed to the right direction, and yeah, he's he's simply
in a losing position. That's all he's got. And he
thinks about like the Queen and the larger situation in
the world, and also all of his instincts are correct.
The dragon has been reborn, the queen believes the storm
is coming right Like every single conclusion he makes on

(57:36):
minimal information, he is spot on about. And that's how
you know he's gonna die, because you can't be that
correct and live out the POV.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
And this is really good foreshadowing with like the darknesses
advancing and beneath the darkness is the force of Trolics
that you can't see, and like you again, Sanderson is
so visual. You can see this darkness and the representation
of the forces of evil flooding into the border Landers
and starting the last battle, and like you really are
like this is in a lot of ways the first

(58:07):
assault of the Last Battle, right, this is the first
time the dark ones forces are surging forward.

Speaker 5 (58:14):
Like.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
It's not the gap, which makes sense, right, the beginning
of this prologue, everything else was like Rand being ranned
and figuring a shit out and like the Forsaken. But
at this moment, the last Battle has started, and because
we're going back in time, a lot of this is
occurring while Rand is figuring a shit out.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Right, right, Yeah, yeah, no, for sure, shit is hitting
the fan. This is the moment of the very first
particle of Fico material making actual contact with the rotating blade.
We've been watching it come for a while, but this
is the actual point of contact.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
We've been spelling the farts, right, but like, this is
where the shit's hitting the fan. Yeah yeah, So he
thinks about how the messengers are going to go to
the next town and if that didn't stand, the boys
will continue on all the way the capitol if needed.
And I'm just like, I don't think they made it
past the first tower.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
I don't think so either. It would be a major
missed opportunity for Sanderson to have written in the notes
that he had them get through and then to not
have a joyful reunion scene or a tearful reunions or something.
Now they have to have died otherwise it isn't a payoff.
And then yeah, his son comes up into the room
and he's like, excuse me. I was having a moment
of feeling good about sending you away, and yeah, you're

(59:24):
making me feel weird about that.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
And so yeah, t in the name of this character
t I a N is remarkably close to t in
Ti e N, the brother of Kaladin in the Stormlight Archive,
who is a small Slight boy who gets recruited into
the army and is killed pretty early on I see,
and that's the driving force behind a lot of Kaladin's

(59:49):
guilt because he was supposed to protect him and everything
like that. So like Tian in both, like it's almost
the same character in both. In Stormlight Archive, and here
is this naming a small slight boy who eyes in
battle at too young of an age. Yeah, that's again
just one of those evident things that make me go
oh yeah. Sanderson definitely wrote this, like there's no doubt that,

(01:00:09):
like this character is something that like he had because
he was writing Stormline Archive in his head long before
he actually wrote anything down. Oh, and there's no doubt that,
like some of the ideas that later got into stormlit
Archive got used here in his Last Battle sequences.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Yeah, it'd be impossible to completely scrub all that out
even if he had wanted to, which I doubt he
did because why would you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
So it's hard for me to be like, oh, this
is he and the boy from Stormline Archive. That's cute.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Sure yeah, so yeah, Molinaran is like, what a manly
decision of you. Let's have your manhood ceremony now, and
then yeah we get a Borderlander manhood ceremony.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Athlon. Is letting me know that he had already written
the Way of King's Prime by the time he started
writing this stuff. So Wave King's Prime was when he
wrote down like essentially what we all did is like
in our twenties is we wrote a really bad novel
with all the like ideas in it, you know, and
then he wrote a universe based off that really bad
novel and said, no one can ever read this really
bad novel because all the characters changed, a lot of

(01:01:10):
stuff is in canon like this. You know, it's he
totally pulled it apart and brutalized it to create the
books that he created.

Speaker 5 (01:01:16):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
I think he actually did publish Real King's Prime though, right.
That's the thing is like he did publish it and
let people read it, but I started to and so
much is different to the books. It's just very confusing
because like the characters have different names and you know,
it's like he mixed some stuff up and it's just
it's not worth reading. Though Michael and Kate read it,
that's cut. I didn't know that it's on YouTube. Interesting. Yeah,

(01:01:38):
I never really got that into it because I was like,
you know what, I just want the original, the actual story.
I don't need. His same thing with one of his
books he wrote basically, he wrote drafts of it online
and so he had people basically the every draft was
published and people were reading along, and he had he
was crowd publishing the editing of his book, and so

(01:01:59):
there's actually a lot of versions of it out there.
There used to be a lot more because he was
doing it all in public and the book was free
to download. It only later got picked up by a
publisher and put out there, So he was like trying
a different way of publishing books.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
Interesting. I like that he's not afraid to experiment with
really unconventional publishing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
No, he's really not. And eventually he got good enough
that he was basically able to bully them into doing Warbreaker. Sorry.
Warbreaker is the one that he did in drafts in public,
and then later he's able to bully them and be like, uh,
he's like bullying Audible.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Right, which I love that, Like I have my issues
with Sanderson, but like, please somebody bully Audible totally. So yeah,
all the men on the Tower really get a lot
of oomph and warmth and solidarity from being part of
this manhood ritual. It's kind of like Gallaude giving his
little speech to his white cloaks, right, like, we're in

(01:02:54):
a really shitty situation, but a good speech, a good moment,
a good like leaning on our order and our cannon
and our way of being. It's it's going to strengthen
our hearts. We're gonna deal with this shitty situation with
a little more cheer well.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
And I like the ceremony because it very much mirrors
the spit into the Site Blinder's Eye ceremony of the AEEL. Right,
how long do you fight until my last breath joins
the northern winds? When do you stop watching? Never?

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Yeah? Yeah, it is very I like cousins to the
IEEL in terms of their hardcore anti evil. Yeah, spit
in sight blinders eye until my breath joins the northern winds.
It's good.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
This would actually be a pretty good like you know,
how we've done like the first sister ceremony and stuff
like that. This would be like and marriage ceremonies get
adopted a fair amount out of real time. This one
could be adopted pretty well. It's short.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Yeah, maybe maybe the Black Tower guys would incorporate that.
They always do like a pinning ceremony at walt Con,
which I've I've managed to watch, like most of the
pitting ceremonies at wat Con. Somehow, I always in the
atrium when they do that, And it's so.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
Cool because they do it around the sing along.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
I think, well, maybe that's it. Yeah, they do it
in like, yeah, the half hour before the singalong, and
I'm always you know, like first one there because I
will not be missing that sing along if both my
legs and my larynx are broken.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
So basically right after the ceremony, the draw cart comes
out of the sky and the attack starts.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Yeah, like they clip the belt and boom the attack. Yeah,
right then. Yeah, we will be revisiting that battle sequence
later with Ealda. Toalda really gives us the chapters on
chapters of access to how this battle goes. But you
can imagine how this battle goes. And when we do
chicken with Iteraldi, I do kind of remember back to
this and I go, oh, this is what malannar and

(01:04:44):
Kemlin were dealing with, except that they didn't have main
character status to like help them survive. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
They also didn't have a city to retreat into. They
didn't have the number of troops. This is an isolated
you know, rock and a sea of the sea of
trolocks seemed against this foe. The tower would eventually fall,
The trolks would keep coming wave after wave, but every
man atop the tower knew his duty. They'd kill shadow
spawn as long as they could, hoping to buy enough

(01:05:11):
time for the messages to do some good. Melonarn was
a man of the Borderlanders, same as his father, same
as his son beside him. They knew their task. You
held until you were relieved. That's all there was to it,
or you die.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
It's such a bummer knowing that they are never relieved.
Heath Tower is not reclaimed before the end of the
last I assume at some point people go to the
tumbled ruins of what was heath Tower, you know in
the fourth Age, and they put up a memorial. But like,
these men are never relieved.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
Well, and the tower system no longer is needed after
the last.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
Battle, right, Yeah, again, it's going to be like a
nice park with a beautiful memorial to the fallen dead.
But it's not going to be. No one's going to
come back and relieve them. They're all just going to die.
And it's so dismal.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
What great writing it really?

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
Yeah, I when I think about the prologue of this book,
that's the scene I always forget that there's more to it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, it's heath Tower. That's Yeah, that's
the part that sticks, which again I just love how
characters who we never have seen before and will never
seen again are able to be the most memorable part
of such a rich reading section. It's the characters that
have no other history or context that like really stick

(01:06:26):
in your brain. It's amazing, and.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
I think Jordan did a much better job of that
in his early books. I feel like in these later
books we got to the point where some of the
characters were just He's like, sure, you've got backstory for him,
you're not telling us what it is, you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Know, right right where. Sanderson really admired that, I think,
and really like brought that back in a way that Yeah,
Jordan kind of ran out of steam for that, and
Sanderson was like, no, no, no, no, no, that's like a
huge part of why I got into writing in the
first place.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Let's do this the same thing. Though. But when I
read Sanderson's books, his early books have a lot more
of those little min nyuets in there and like characters
I care about, and later on, I feel like, especially
in Stormled Archive, like there's fewer and fewer those I
can't think of those side characters nearly as much.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
Yeah, well this is a lot earlier in his writing career.
So yeah, interesting, So here that inspiring authors don't stop
doing that they're sad.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
I think it's just you get there's a lot of
weight of your existing plot and characters, and it's just
it's difficult to come up with those moments when you
are way down by all of this other series that
you're written and all this other promises, all the other
checkof guns, all the other you know, foreshadowing. All that

(01:07:44):
stuff needs to you know, be sort of come around,
and so it's harder to introduce new characters and stuff
like that. And one of the things I really do
like and appreciate about Sanderson taking over is that we
got more of that than I think we would have,
right Like, there's no doubt we would not have had
the Androl and Pavara that we have without Sanderson and
a few other characters as well. But I think with that,
I don't have anything else to say about the prologue.

(01:08:07):
We're ready to jump into the book. And that was
a pretty good succinct prologue, right.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
I mean, I wouldn't call it succinct, but it was good.
It was dense, There was a lot that happened. I
definitely it gets you spun up and ready for a book,
right it does?

Speaker 3 (01:08:20):
Yeah, yeah, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
Refreshes your memory of all the good stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
Yeah for succinct, I guess, just guess that each POV
sort of had a purpose and had a few things
to say and said them very well.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
Right, Like, it's a solid start to a new book.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
I didn't get the end of this and go, why
did I Why did you tell me about those characters?
I don't understand? Like now again, am I like a
little frustrated with the parent and Gallid pov? And like
are we going to spend a lot of time trying
to get them together and reconciled? And is that not
my favorite plot line? It's really not.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
We're going to need to do some chapter compression to
get through that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
But then I love what Paren does when he gets
all super right, So you know, there's just a lot
of good parent in here to get to.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It's a good book
and yeah, solid start to it. So yeah, come back
next week for I think you said we need to
talk about our chapter compression, but apparently next week we're
already starting in on compressing chapters into multiheaders.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Chapter one is just a real lightweight chapter. It's pretty
short and it's let me see if I can bring
that up.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
We got to go through the whole book and work
that out.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
Encyclopedia Watt is down. That makes me sad. Fortunately the
Internet archive keeps a snapshot of it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
But yeah, with that, we should probably wrap this up
and get on out of here. Thank you everyone so
much for listening. As per usual, You're all great. Thank
you Patreons, Thank you Live listeners.

Speaker 4 (01:09:50):
We'll see y'all next week.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
Yeah, so, all right, recordings on. Is there anything we
need to tell? I guess I should tell people. My
cat has been missing for two weeks. I'm really not
happy about that. He is an indoor outdoor cat. We
let him out in the mornings and he always comes
back at night. For he never misses a meal.

Speaker 4 (01:10:50):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
There's been a handful of times where he's been gone
for one night, you know, but he always comes back
next morning complaining. And so, yeah, it's been about two weeks.
He went out and were actually at a wedding and
people were staying at our house, which usually isn't a
problem for him, but I think it's just a coincidence.
But he didn't come back that night and he hasn't
come back since, so.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
That sucks.

Speaker 1 (01:11:15):
And yeah, we put up signs, we've done all the contact,
all the places he's chipped, you know. And I think
one of the things that's really rough about a cat
going missing like this is they do come back so often. Right.
You hear stories from people who were like, yep, my
cat was gone for three weeks, he was gone for
two months. Like however long he was gone, he was
in somebody's house being taken care of. That's kind of
what I have to assume happened at this point, right,

(01:11:37):
because nobody's found a body. He knows, you know, he's
not the kind of cat that wanders very far. We
put we gps'd him for a while and he was like,
would stay within a block or two of a house.
He does not like this cat that's like wandering for
miles and miles and miles. So yeah, we just I
have to assume somebody picked him up and said, oh, look,
friendly cat, and that he's going to get out or
he's going to go to the vet some point and

(01:11:57):
get scanned and uh brought back to us.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
But that sucks in the meantime, though, really sucks.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
It sucks in the meantime because it's just a lot
of uncertainty and a lot of Yeah, just at what
point do you stop looking? At what point do I
not step outside and go? Is is he waiting at
the door waiting to be let in? It feels like
every time, you know, and so you know, everyone's I've
heard the number three weeks. A lot of people are like,
after about three weeks the cats come back because people
get sick of taking care of them. But we're at

(01:12:31):
two weeks now.

Speaker 6 (01:12:32):
So that's I'm sorry, that really sucks. Yeah, I don't
really have anything. It's it's August. I've had a great
party people in the woods.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
My mom is over here at my place for the
most of the month. She has her cat with her.
She's a cat person again. She's very happy about that.
It's a very tiny cat. He's dreamy, tiny Toto a cat.
But we're going to get a lot of sewing done
over the next three weeks, which is very exciting. So
I guess you guys can all expect to hear for

(01:13:06):
the next few recordings updates about my sewing machine. Assembly
and learning curve process.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
Ooh exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Yeah. Yeah, we're probably gonna start working on it tomorrow
because they just got here yesterday, so takes a minute
to you know, sett yea. But yeah, and then we're
going to go up to the Selett's pow wow this
weekend and we've got plans. We just it's we're going
to get a lot of stuff done hopefully. But yeah,
the Davis Vertical feed machine, definitely. I will be giving

(01:13:34):
y'all updates on assembling that and learning how to use
it and hopefully making curtains or maybe some like denim projects.
We're gonna we're gonna see. But uh yeah, that's kind
of what I'm setting up.

Speaker 3 (01:13:45):
For all right.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
Well, trying to think other than that. Yeah, I don't
really have any other life updates or anything like that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
I finally got my uh save what postcard postcards that
were given to me at Walt Com. I finally got
the in the mail today. Oh nice, which you know,
I kept telling myself it was okay. I was procrastinating
because they said that it's better if it all comes
in a trickle, like a steady trickle, rather than like
in like really sharp peaks and valleys, so like, well,
a bunch of people probably isn't theres stuff right after
walk on. So I'm helping.

Speaker 3 (01:14:14):
Yeah, actually.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
By by waiting till later, you know, I'm being I'm
being a real team player. But yeah, I got given
two of those at the con, so I finally got
those into the mail today, so I felt accomplished about that. Yeah,
blueberries are about done, but it's BlackBerry time. You were
telling me before we got on recording that you've been
picking out on some BlackBerry. Oh yeah, place I'm seeing

(01:14:38):
the bushes go off near my face. It's definitely the
month of blackberries.

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
Well, I discovered a new trail that's right by my house.
That's actually you know, I knew about a trail that
if I took a left, but then there's one where
it's like if you just pushed through a very thin
group of bushes, there's a whole nother trail on the
right that goes to a whole nother you know, patch
of BlackBerry bushes and abandoned train tracks and little field
out there that's right by my house. So I got
very excited about that. That was really really fun to

(01:15:04):
explore and check out especially with Harvey. As I was
looking for the cat. It's kind of how I found
it is I was out looking, you know, looking everywhere,
and found found a few new spaces. But that's you know,
I was exploring the neighborhood, which is which is I
haven't necessarily done as much as i'd like to because it's, uh,
it's funny when you move into new house. I spent
spending all the time on the house, and I haven't

(01:15:25):
really explored the neighborhood as much as i'd like to.
People like, oh, what restaurants? Where are you going? And
I'm like, I've really been home. I've been home a lot,
been very much a homebody when you buy a home.
But I've been really lucky with this house that it's
it was totally moving ready. I haven't had any of
those gotcha moments where you're like, uh, oh, didn't realize
that there was moisture in the basement or a bad thing,

(01:15:46):
or you know, my appliances work, the electricity works, the
plumbing works. You know, I've had to deal with a
clogged dry event is about the worst I've had to
deal with, and that's just normal maintenance. So I've been
really really lucky with the house. And there's one panel
of wood on the outside that has a fixture mounted
to it that's kind of rotting, so I need to

(01:16:07):
replace that. But you know, really minor things, especially for
the age of the house. So really really loving, loving
owning my own place. People always like, oh, the first
year is the worst, and like, it's been really nice.
It's been really nice. I don't know. I mean, maybe
I'm waiting for the other ball to drop, but no, hoa,
no landlords, my own space. It's been really nice.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
Yeah, no, our first first year. I mean yeah, it's
like all the stuff that we threw money into on
the house for the first several years of being here
has all been improvements to things that we want rather
than like, oh, no, we didn't realize this was a problem.
Like we moved in knowing there was no woodstove. We
were very clear on it, right right, right right, We
needed to fix it. That was a problem. But like
we knew going in, and it was like overall a

(01:16:52):
very fun process to have that put in and doing
the roof was like, well, obviously we want to do
the roof. We didn't need to wait for it to leak.
We just got in there ahead of it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Yeah. Like, I replaced the chandelier with a ceiling fan,
which I think is much prettier. I've hung some curtains.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
Nice. Nice.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
You know, still want to paint, but I haven't really
settled on colors yet. I don't think I've lived here
long enough.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
Yeah. Same, we need to paint because the paint job
in here is terrible. But like, yeah, we do need
to decide on colors, which so far has been a.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
Problem them talk the chandeliers all yours. If you want it,
it's sitting in our garage ready to be taken. You'll
have to re bend some of the chains. I had
to unbend to get it down, but uh yeah you can. Definitely.
It's a stand. It's a brushed silver for light chandelier.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
I pretty well it sounds like the one I've got
in my dining room.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
Okay, Can we discuss chandeliers over dining room tables and
how much I hate them? Like, because all right, first
of all, I what makes you think, electrician that you
know where I'm going to be putting my dining room table.
First of all right, you're stuck because and especially with

(01:18:07):
a chandelier. If you don't have a table there, you're
gonna bash your head on that thing. And I'm short,
I know tall people are gonna bash their head on
that and I oh, my god, they're the worst idea.
The light then, okay, let's talk about the light that
they provide. The lights at eye level, it's shining into
your eyes. Why would they do that. You want light
that's overhead shining down, or a lamp that's shining light

(01:18:30):
up on a wall so you have indirect light, right,
or so you have shaded light. But these chandeliers are
usually you know, big bright led bulbs, and we have
led bulbs. Of course you get this point light, which
makes it all that much worse in your eyes at
eye level that you're gonna bang your head on. It
forces you to decorate your house in a specific way.

(01:18:50):
And my god, a ceiling fan makes all the difference
for controlling your cooling and heating and regulating the evenness
in your house from top to bottom. Right, If you
don't know how to reverse your fan or why you
should do it, that's definitely something to think about, because
in the summer, you want to be blowing down and
basically in the winter, you want to be circulating the

(01:19:11):
other way, So I think of it count clockwise versus clockwise. Right,
you're changing the direction in which they are is circulating.
But it really makes a big difference for your heating
and cooling.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
If you have the no a fan makes such a
big difference, like because like we have a woodstove, right,
so like you have quite the column of heat that
rises to the top, and we have really tall not
really tall, but decently tall ceilings. And yeah, it evens
the house is heat out so much to have that
fan running. And yes, you do want to reverse it
in the summer, because it will still work technically if

(01:19:43):
you don't reverse it throughout the year. Like any movement
is better than no movement. But it does make a
really big difference when you're hot and ridiculous in the
summer just because you thought too hard, and then you
can have a breeze that blows across you. And like, also,
if you're talking about managing your heating and cooling, like
covering your windows makes such a difference, either to block

(01:20:03):
the sun out or to keep the heat in. Like,
it makes such a difference on managing your house's temperature.
If you can like adjust your window openness and closedness
across the course of a twenty four hour cycle to
take advantage of whichever heat regime is more appropriate.

Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
And double pain windows make a big difference if you
have good double pain windows.

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):
Oh yeah, it makes a big difference. But like I've
discovered my bedroom, the windows face north right, so there
is no direct sunlight into them except for like the
last hour of the afternoon. But all day there's no
direct light coming in those windows. But we have blackout curtains.
It keeps the house so much cooler if I pull
the blackout curtains over the north facing windows during the day,

(01:20:45):
like it turns out, radiation is radiation is radiation turns out.
So yeah, curtains, even on windows that don't have direct sunlight,
make a big difference.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
Well, And for us, the ceiling fan is so important
the living room because we have one of those one.
There's no walls on my first floor right it's kitchen,
living room, and then stairs basically, so that one fan
is able to control the basically the whole floor and
keep the whole floor a good condition. So that's made
actually a huge difference for our comfort on that level.
So I'm sure there's a thousand things like that that

(01:21:16):
I'm going to want to do over time as I
move in, But I am I am struggling to make
make it feel like I'm not renting, right. I think
that's one of the things I've rented for such a
long time. This is the first house I've owned, and
part of me is like, oh, I got to make
sure the landlord doesn't get angry when I paint do this,
or do that, And so there's there's I have to
change my mentality around that, and I haven't quite. Maybe

(01:21:36):
if I'm here for more than a year, I'll start.

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
To just start drawing on the wall, right, break the seal.
Just take a nice fat sharpie and just start doodling,
doodlingall and then and then it will break through your
brain from thinking of that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:49):
So, actually, what I wanted never to do, because she's
she's actually a pretty good artist, is I wanted her
to paint the mantle because the mantle's just like painted white,
and I was like, just just do like flowers or
doodles or something on the mantle so that we can
break the seal. And that was something we wanted to do,
but you know time.

Speaker 2 (01:22:08):
Yeah, no, exactly, you just got to start with something
that's like not a huge, massive, like weakened, consuming project,
just so that way, like your brain can start to
adjust to the fact that like I can do that,
I can put holes in the wall, I can whatever
the thing is.

Speaker 1 (01:22:21):
I think the only thing that they break and break
the seal, it break and break it. What has broken
the seal though, is Harvey's nails have definitely like scored.
The wood is definitely a soft pine, and Harvey's nails
have left marks all over it. So I'm like, well,
the floors are going to have to be refinished before
we sell the place. Like we's just we're at that
point where it's like, yeah, that's just a given at

(01:22:44):
this point, even though I have carpets down over most
of it, like there's enough spots that are fucked up
that it's like, no, the floors are gonna have to
be refinished. So just not worrying about them really that much.

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
Yeah, Yeah, for sure, for sure, because yeah, it's like
you're gonna live in the house and do whatever improvements
or changes or whatever, and then if when you decide
to sell it, then you can cross all the bridges
about resale value, et cetera, et cetera, Like it's not
a thing to burden yourself with.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Now, no, no, and the way the housing market is going,
I will die in this house. So you know there's
that I'm not going to worry about.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
Research value does not need to dominate your thinking.

Speaker 1 (01:23:24):
All right, speaking of dying in this house, So we
talk about the borderlands, Well, first.

Speaker 2 (01:23:30):
We have to talk about uh. 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

(01:23:51):
Fox and Draven Media, visit our website at Foxendravenmedia dot com.

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Distinctions - Towers of Midnight prologue pt2 - EP545

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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;}Distinctions - Towers of Midnight prologue pt2 - EP545