Return to Bandar Eban & Parley - Towers of Midnight chapters 25-26 - EP560

Rand deals with Schrondinger’s Wheat while Aradia deals with Min suddenly becoming irritating, and Perrin insists on more meetings while Seth has serious questions about the Whitecloaks’ value to Perrin or the plot in general.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast. All right,
recording is on, Recording is on on this honkin honkin
set of pages, Like, not a lot happens, but god,
there's a lot of pages.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
And I guess I should say sorry for missing last week.
I was fairly ill, so I pulled the plug on recording.
I wasn't going to make it for two hours.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Yeah, sorry to hear that. Glad that you are back, reconstituted,
upright hydrated. Yeah, really really glad that you're back with us.
That gap in our recording publishing schedule happened to fall
perfectly onto Thanksgiving, So anyone who didn't notice we put
out an episode on things Giving. You probably didn't because

(01:01):
you were Thanksgiving gyzing or whatever, unless you were boycotting
the holiday, in which case you know, props to you.
But yeah, that's why that gap was there.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
We're desperately looking for audio to distract you from your
family holiday. In that case, sorry we missed you.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Look, we've got five hundred plus episodes you can go
back and listen to if you need to listen to us.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Have you heard our opinion on this? Probably yeah, you
probably put together.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, but yeah, today We've got some very Sandersonian chapters
to get through. Yes, we're both here. I'm very very tired,
so Seth might be carrying a lot of the conversation,
but we are at least here.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
So I have things to say about these chapters, for sure.
And there are good points. As always, there's always good
things in the chapters that Sanderson writes, right, there's always
like a couple of moments that I really appreciate that
he does. There's also quite a bit to criticize in
these chapters.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, yeah, there's one or two things. I'm gonna have
to get my soapbox out.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
For all, right, But where does the term standing on
your soapbox come from?

Speaker 1 (02:01):
An era of demagoguery? I think in like the twenties.
I think during the era of like populism becoming really
a thing, people would literally get crates that soap would
be shipped in, and they would stand on them, like
in public spaces and yell about whatever the issue of
the day was. I'm pretty I read this several years ago,

(02:22):
but I remember, like, no, like it's a literal like
shipping crate that had like a soap brand, you know,
stenciled on it. And like people would stand on them
because they were starred. You have to hold a human
and they would, yeah, be enough elevated and it's easy
to carry around, right, like they're not heavy. I could
be wrong about a couple of the details, like when
that was, but I believe it is literally a shipping

(02:43):
crate for soap.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Just a way to get above your head, above the crowd.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
And yeah, to stand high, higher and be able to
project your voice and such as people like look who's shouting?
Oh that person, who's you know, eight feet tall instead
of six feet tall or whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
I was supposed to jumping up on a statue to
look after a woman with a plume.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Right, yeah, exactly exactly or needed like an actual stage
right being on the back of a moving carriage, you know.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
So we come into a city that has gotten dirty moucky, right.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, we're returning to band our Abon after Rand abandoned
it and it's it shows signs of having been abandoned. Also,
this is chapter twenty five with the sea folk goals.
That's the chapter symbol.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Sure, yes, sorry, we jumped right into that one.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, because we go talk to ce folk because again
the band our ebbond food situation right, right, sea folk component.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Even though they're kind of barely in this chapter but
sort of at the end.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Well, but they're a big part of why the food
situation right.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Is the way it is. Yeah, And what's the expression,
you're only three meals away from chaos? Right? So three
meals was a couple of days ago.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Not is nine missed meals.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Nine missed meals three days worth of meals.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, Civic orders is nine missed meals away from unraveling. Yus,
If if you don't get to eat for three days,
you will be looking for food very aggressively. And bandor
ebun has been long past that.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Because it's not even like, oh, they ate through their
stores of food. Their stores of food are all.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Bad, right, The food that they were gonna eat has
spoiled every time you go to get the next bag
of travel rations. It's also moldy like this, it's different.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
These are definitely Schrodinger's bags of wheat, right, Like, they're
not spoiled or unspoiled until you open them, and then
it depends on when you open them. Right. This is
just something observing causes the possibilities to collapse into a
single Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
When Rand tells the dock master, dude like, no, you
just didn't open enough, and the guy's like, excuse me,
that's not how statistics work. I am with the dock master.
I'm like, no, Rand, this was not a matter if
he just didn't open enough. As a matter of every
bag he opened, he collapsed. It's quantum state. That's what happened.
It's different. You're gaslighting him. Rand, be nice, because.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
It wouldn't have mattered at the time how many he opened.
They would have all been bad, exactly.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
If he had opened one bag and called it a day,
all the rest would be good. If he'd opened every
single bag and called it a day, none of it
would have been good. That's the fact.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
And like, Rand is the thing that is able to
change that chance, right, Like, that's the whole point. He
changes probabilities. That's what he's able to do as the
dragon reborn as a taverin right, This is he's getting
extra severe in here. His tvereness is turned up to
a thousand because he can just fuck with odds in
the same way that Matt's able to do with dice

(05:28):
and luck. Rand's just doing it with bags of grain
and potatoes and clouds.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Right, That's part of the opening of the chapter is like,
the clouds have done their eerily perfect circular melt away.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
And what are the odds of that? I mean, possible
but unlikely, right, And so that I think that's the
difference between tavereness and magic. Right. The taverness is always
something that could happen but is highly unlikely, whereas with
you know, the one power, you can do things that
are not otherwise possible.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Right, people will never get lifted up and thrown spontaneously.
Cloud could melt away in a perfect in a perfect circle.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
And I gotta say, this whole scene right where he
comes in and he sort of goes to the people
and says, hey, let's clean this place up and we
can make this city better. It's very much what Brandon
Sanderson did in The Laundress, right. His whole first novel
is essentially this storyline in a in a series, right,

(06:27):
people who are suffering, who have become dirty, who have
become zombie, like, you know, just need the fact that
if they cleaned themselves up and got to work and
did some hard work, they could improve their lives and
improve the city and why didn't they just think of
that themselves? And Arady's making a gagging face at me.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
That's so disgusting. We need a big, strong, clean, rich,
well apportioned man to come in and tell us dirty
stupid pores to just clean up our act, to get
in line and and everything will be better. I have
self respect now that I've washed my hands. Oh thank you, foreigner.

(07:06):
I wouldn't have known to wash my hands without your beneficence.
Like I just it's real gross.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Listen, get up and make your bed, and if you
do that first thing in the morning, the rest of
your day is gonna be perfect. If you didn't know that, Like.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, it's really it's pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
It's white saviorism, it's classism. It's oh yes, this woman
who's cleaning people up, who didn't think of that until
a man told her to do it, Like, I bet
you fucking anything that this woman who's gonna be in
isidye someday was already doing basic water hauling and hygiene
and trying to control disease. And Sanderson slash Rand is

(07:42):
just like, oh yeah, I inspired her to start doing that.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Sure, buddy, sure, buddy, that woman really needed your help.
Mm hmmm, mm hmmm. I love the rand it's really annoying.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, but he does have the one thing right that
they don't, which is the ability to open sacks of
grain and go, look, it was good all along.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Well, and he also does the you know, reasonably astute
thing of saying, let's bring resources up to the gate
and let these people access them and distribute them and
like have some agency. Like he does a little bit
of like top down white saviorism of coming in and
saving people. But then like he pulls back and he's like, no, no, no,
let's mostly give them agency. I'm still going to take

(08:27):
all the gold stars, but like let's pretend that they
have agency, which is, you know, nice. I guess it's
a little bit better than fucking Denaris striking off all
the chains and getting crowdsurfed around like the one white
girl that's there. I guess it's better. But it's also
so like magical story convenience, Like and then he has

(08:47):
a squad of people who just immediately have the skills
because isn't that convenient. It's like, Okay, now we're back
into familiar tavern just making everything smooth for Plym.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
I mean if this is and in a way, I
get it right because he's becoming super diverent. As the
Dark One enters the world, the Dark One is pushing
his finger down on the bad bad things happen balance
And now that Rand has his moment of epiphany, he
has the ability to push down the other way and
make good things happen randomly right, and make things just
magically work out for him. He is balancing that the

(09:20):
evil the Dark One is doing by locally creating these coincidences.
So I understand that, like from a plot sense, it
kind of makes sense for everything to just be working
out for him locally. Yeah, No, for sure, And if
that's what he's trying to do, I think he's doing
a wonderful job.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
And he also thinks about the shan Chan aspect of like,
you know, when I was here, I contrasting his rulership
with the shawan Cha. You know, this is a level
of reiteration. It's like, okay, fine, we got a come
full circle. You're allowed to reiterate this once. He does
reiterate it several times, not just once, but it is
a point worth remembering. And then we get to like

(09:56):
one of my least favorite men's sections, like ever, I
love men, y'all know I love men. But first of all,
in the audiobook, Michael and Kate have decided that Min's
canonically deep voice is now not deep, which drives me
crazy in and of itself from a perspective, from just
a performance perspective, but Min here is just the most

(10:21):
sexy lamp she's ever been.

Speaker 4 (10:24):
Rand, I see sunlight around you. You're gonna see everyone.
I believe in you. You're such a big, strong savior.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
I just it's so not her so much. I get
that Rand thinks he needs it, but I didn't need it.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
I want to write a book with that character as
the main character and make you read it just enough.
That was impressively creepy. Yeah no, but but actually have
that person be like an evil mastermind of the death
of a bunch of men. That's how I get you

(11:08):
to read it.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah no, I mean doing that as like a maniacal,
insane creeping boys could be fun, but doing it as
the this is a critique of my favorite character being
the worst.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah yeah, not men do this to men, And like
I almost even don't want to go into these viewings
because they're so badly generic.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Oh yeah, this is yes, there's nothing here. Oh there's sunshine,
there's people that will follow you. Everything's gonna be all
right in the end.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Okay, great, Like where's the mention of the fireflies, like
the let's keep track of those and the void and
that sort of thing. Instead, it's just this, like I
see the two rivers, ran, I've seen in with the
mark of the dragon's fang inlaid on the door, no
longer a symbol of darkness or hate, a sign of
victory and hope.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Also, I think she's lying because she didn't fucking see that.
She just said she saw that like this bullshit. That
is a bullshit vision. She never fucking saw that garbage.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
She hesitated, Yeah, she hesitated to make that shit up.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah. Like, the text does not describe what she sees.
It does not describe her internal experience. It's just her
saying the words that Rand needs to hear out of
her perfect Betty Boop face. Like, I just she is
a sexy lamp. Right now, all of these people are
gonna fight. I can see it. Yeah, it's the last
battle and everyone with like three working limbs is gonna

(12:25):
be fighting. And then Rand's like, could you maybe not
insult me so much? And she's like, no, this is
the one thing I get as a treat, just like, Okay,
it's very juvenile, but all right, I guess if that's
what makes you happy, keep calling him woolhead like whatever.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
And then she turns, so she gets some viewings of
the people in the city who basically are like, these
people will fight in the last battle, right like that,
they don't give up hope on them. You're gonna save
the city. The city is going to pull itself together
enough to fight in the last battle. Is essentially the
message she is able to give him, which.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Is just like, we didn't need a prophet to tell
us that. That's how books work, That's how the End
of the World hero marching through the city works. You
don't need a profit to make that happen.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
And this is this where she sees all the viewings
among all these people all at once, when she almost
never sees viewings you know, over non channelers.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Rant Tevere and Maxing is really even affecting her visions
right right totally.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
We get the sort of confrontation where she's like, he's like,
you see me as a killer, and she's like, no,
I don't, like just because you're strang and you really
strangled me. I know that, wasn't you right? Like yeah,
And they finally have that conversation, right, and she's.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Like, do you feel that in the bond. He's like no,
and all of us in the audience are like, yeah,
and have you been feeling that in the bond for
the past several weeks? No, No, this is such an
old conversation. Stop it. Oh yeah, we also had that.
There was a maiden earlier that I'm assuming is one
of those donor names. And then there's these two soldiers
that are some I'm assuming donor names.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, let me I can go through them.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
It's a cool name. Heida Heida Heidia, h e I
d I A. And then the other two names are
three names actually, vote Beck, red Board, and Durnham Durnham.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
I didn't find anything for Durnham appears to yes, just
be here. Sorry. The Encyclopedia Watt is down, so I'm
sort of pulling from a couple of different sources, though
not my usual source. Oh Lane, sorry, Lane, I don't
have anything about him. Being but okay, so I'm sorry,

(14:33):
that'll be fun to go together. I'm sorry. So there's
a couple of characters that I don't have anything for.
But what I can say is like, I don't have
anything for Lane. He appears to just be the leader.
But voter Beck is named for Nicholas voltro Beck, red
Board is named for David Redboard. Haidia is named for

(14:55):
Heidi soderqwist Quist. Later we get two river man named
Rob Sulter. He is named after Rob Saltier. And that
was all of the references that I had that I
was able to find for these for this chapter. Oh
Leerin Learin was the one who I was saying is

(15:16):
in Lord of Chaos. She's a maiden of the Spear,
so she's takes Paren and Fayel to see Rand in
Lord of Chaos, So she's just sort of a one
off name there, and then she's brought back in the
Gathering Storm and then here in Towers of Midnight, so
she's been sort of mentioned a few times. But I

(15:37):
gotta say, having said that, you pointed out this pattern
where the names are said once and then for the
rest of the paragraph. He constantly says one of them,
the other the man's his companion. The names are never
mentioned again, it's never specified which one is which, And
it's so obvious that he wrote that chapter and left

(15:58):
two blank spaces for the names to bed, and there's
no other effort to it. There's no mention of like
bringing those names back once or twice, or having those
characters appear later on in the chapter, or you know,
even even here one of them has a couple of lines,
but you don't know which one's talking because he just
says one of them said to his companion. And it's

(16:21):
just it's almost, since you pointed that out, it is
taking me out of the moment. It is this moment,
this moment where I'm like, Okay, here's two names people
don't care about. They're clearly named after fans, and you're
gonna do this song and dance to avoid just retyping
their names once slightly later on.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Well, I imagine he wrote it and was like, I've
got fifty names here, I got thirty names there, like
you know, we'll do it as part of the like
last round of copy edits or something like right, I
don't know, some weird order of operations Shenanigan's.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah, it really feels like they were dropped, Like those
were black spaces left until like the day before printing,
and they're like dropping the names, right.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, I have no idea how things work, but that's
what it feels like. It Like you said, low effort,
it feels low effort. I'm not sure it wasn't no effort,
but low effort.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Because again it's she's like, just say the name a
second time, or specify which of the two guys is talking.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
No, we need to reiterate that paren doesn't understand the
difference between an axe and a hammer for the seventh time.
That's what we need to spend our page count on.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
And so within an hour he had a group of
soldiers five hundred strong, Okay, Tavarin, that's called a mob.
And so they approach the docks.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Oh they've even got a leper that comes up to
the group, so that way Rand can pass off his
Jesus responsibilities to the eyes to die who are going
to come behind him. And then yeah, they head off
down to the dock to confront Schrodinger's wheat.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Well, yeah, there's just a bunch of ships there.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, so they get down there, and the dock master
has essentially barricaded the docks against people and forbidden the
ships to unload because he can see that when people
eat the grain, they die. So he's like, I'd rather
watch you all slowly starve in the hopes that food
will come tomorrow than let you all like poison yourselves today.
He's been stuck between literally a rock and a hard place,
and Rand just kind of waltzes in and it's like, you,

(18:05):
silly man, you didn't have to do that. The power
was in you the whole time. Just click your heels
three times and it'll all go away.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
He's like, did you check all the sacks? I checked enough,
But did you check the sacks? What are you talking about?

Speaker 3 (18:18):
What?

Speaker 2 (18:18):
Like, yeah, it's it's this.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
And then you know what Rand does. He spills the
food on the floor to make a point, like bitch, please.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
I mean, I know it's not very much food and
like whatever, but people are starving, right Like yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Like that was enough food for a small child to
get their first solid meal in a week and not
throw it up, Like you just let that fall on
the floor for the cinematic cinematography, Like I just whatever,
I mean, sure, athlon, but it's still low effort.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah. So I like that idea that he didn't want
to give any fans particular treatment by putting their names
in twice, but like, fuck, then don't use their names right, Like, yeah,
I I'll know. The whole thing feels. It feels very compromisy.
Like if you're writing a book based on art, why
this feels? Did you really need the fundraiser?

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Bob Sanderson likes to gamify every aspect of his books, right,
I'm going to release this chapter by chapter and get
your feedback before I write the next chapter. Like what,
I don't pay that close attention. Do't if that's exactly
how it works. But I've been inundated with enough Kickstarter
updates that I didn't ask for to have that impression.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
No, the other thing, Okay, think about this grain. It's
been killing the rats. Every time the rats bite into
a sack and chew through it, it's killing them.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, Rand, stop gaslighting this poor dog master.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
His response, what happened? We happen to open the exact
number of bad sacks without reaching one of the good ones.
That's ridiculous, Not ridiculous, simply implausible. Okay, Sherlock elms.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Like bitch please. Yeah, Like he apparently understands that apologizing
to Irland's not going to be good enough, but gaslighting
him is apparently fine.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
It's totally fine.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yeah, And I do like Ireline being like, you know, like,
what have I been doing. I've been trying to keep
people from starving themselves? What have you been doing that?

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Dragon?

Speaker 1 (20:12):
It's like when Morell just like totally goes off on
him after like the c Folk bargain and she's like,
you left in the middle of the argument. You can't
be mad that the bargain didn't go to the way
you want. It's the same energy, and I'm like, I
need more characters to unload on rant like that this
is necessary. Like I am glad that he's getting yelled at,
even though he is zen now so it doesn't have

(20:33):
quite the same impression on him, but like whatever, it's
still satisfying.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
So he appoints a Realian steward of the city and
Dernham as the commander because they're the.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Only ones that didn't leave, right. He like appointed the
merchant councils, like you have to do an election and
make it all legal and every single one of those
rats just bailed and like here's the people who stayed.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, and that was a whole big thing. He spent forever,
fucking he spelt like half a book assembling that merchants council.
That was the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
And according to Ireland, they left in a day, twenty
four hours they were gone.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
And Sanderson also likes to do that. He likes to
set up goals for the characters to spend like half
a book working on and be like, Oh, that didn't
matter anyway, We're going to do this other thing over here. Yeah,
he does that.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
A lot, Like I'm all for red herrings and killing
off important characters so that way you don't feel secure
about who's left.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
But like there's a limit, and I feel like he
hit that there.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
I really like also Ireland's complaint we won't reach the
last battle, right, He's like, we're starving to the point
that we aren't even gonna make it to the last battle,
And that to me is just like that's the bleakest thing.
As the world is ending and you know this massive cataclysm,
it's like what if you literally can't even get to participating,
Like that's the bleakest outcome of.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
All And I read something online. I don't know how
true this is, but I'm spreading rumors that part of
Jordan's original plan to end the Last Battle relatively quickly
was basically this, that Rand was going to come to
a realization very quickly that the Dark One was destroying
the world and we weren't going to make it the
last battle, and that's why he would break the seals

(22:08):
prematurely to start the last Battle, because otherwise we'd all
be dead before it even started. And that's then you
were going to sort of have this like premature start
to the last battle.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
I mean, that would have been a good like breaking
break glass in case of fire kind of emergency escape
patch on his writing process, right like at any any book,
he can just be like, oh, and now starvations making
the lines cross, we got a last battle right now.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Because he certainly foreshadowed starvation quite a bit, and with
the food spoiling, which is happening before Sanderson, right, that
was that was very much going on for a while.
So yeah, I can really see that being the the
oh my god, we just need to fight this now,
like because otherwise we're going to be dead and we're
gonna lose our strength, because he even sort of talks
about it a couple of times in these books where
he does mention like, oh my god, we can't delay

(22:52):
any longer. We are starving, we are having these problems. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, And it's a big part of why Parent is
gathering in armies because there's a bunch of people being
like I would fight in the last battle tomorrow than
starve today. That's a big part of what why Parent
has such an army to bring in.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
It's a big part of why the US has such
an army.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, we'll feed you right up until you get blown up.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
But that's pretty much the end of the chapter for me.
I don't have anything else to say about it.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, rand says everyone who I've touched today, and all
of the grain I've looked at today, all of that
is going to be good and perfect. I'll stay for
twenty four hours to make the spell magic cement lock
and then on to the next thing. And then Min
does more weird sexy lampshit. It's like I'm surprised by
him every day. All look at my crossed stitch with

(23:41):
it inspirational quote. Here's my kitten picture that says just
hang in there. Wow, and then the chapter ends wow,
Like I did not sleep very well last night. You guys,
my filter is low.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
I think we should have you not sleep more often.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
This is great, I love men, But that means I'm
going to fiercely defend her when she gets written badly.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah. There's nothing worse than your favorite character being poorly
portrayed or doing something that you think goes against their
core you know, beliefs or the tenets that make them
make them who they are.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, so with less than half an hour on the clock,
you want to go to the next chap. Jesus all
that bitching and whining for me, and we didn't even
get to half an hour.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
Wow. I did my fair amount of bitching and whining
about the name characters.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Hm.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
Like I said at the top, we got a lot
of pages to get through, but not a lot of
content probably. So now we're going to go into the

(24:56):
peakiest of peaks Anderson that we could possibly have.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Shall we have another meeting between the White Cloaks and
parent to rehash about the ideas all over again.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
About but this time we identify Gallot right and more
gaze time, everyone is aware of whom Galad is up
to and including more Gaze, and she.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
Gets called out. So that's that's that is something that
has been foreshadowed for a long time, right, more Gaze
coming out of the closet and basically being recognized as
the queen instead of parent servant, Like that's been set
up by Jordan a long long time ago, and that
there is payoff to that for me.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, I mean and even to an extent, like I
feel like Jordan's set up a strong potential that Gallad
would find More Gaze. I feel like that the breadcrumbs
for that were there before Sanderson.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
Right right, But the rest of it, oh oh boy.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
And I do love the intensity of feeling between Goalad
and more Gaze, Like as someone with two step parents
with whom I have, you know, very like strong intense
familial relationships with it's I really like that And she's like,
oh yeah, I know, like stepparent child relations are just
as strong. Like if there is a parental bond, there's
a parental bond. It does not have to do with biology,
It has to do with your emotional relationship. And I

(26:11):
don't know, it's kind of like not the characters I
would have thought would bring that through, like Gallad being like, yeah,
stepparents are cool, but like it works, it works for me.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
They're not always evil stepparents. They're not.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
They're really not. Sometimes they're doing their best and they
don't fuck it up horribly in the process.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
It's just parents usually fuck it up in the process.
Stepparents are not. Yeah, a little bit bit right. It
turns out being a parent's hard. So I've been told, yeah,
but you.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Know more Gaze talks about how she loves him as
much as the children she actually had. Gallaud like doesn't
ever talk about feeling like distant or held back from her,
Like he lost his mom really early and she stepped
in with a wholly open heart and like the relationship's good.
M So I like that part of this, but everything
else is like, yes, parent, we know you don't understand

(26:59):
how acts in Hammer's work. Congratulations. I mean literally, remember
the last time we were with parent and he like
used a wood axe to like chop wood without thinking
about the conflict once and then he's up here being
the Yeah, the acts and the hammer different. I just
thought of that for the first time. This chapter right.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Right, right, not the whole book that was all based
around him cutting off someone's hand and throwing the axe away,
because he's never you know, I mean, I would say
he's trying to reflect on that moment. But yeah, so
it starts off with the Ashman basically saying we can't
make gateways or skim which I do like that he
threw in skimming as well, right, that was that was nice,

(27:41):
But essentially that means we know the dome is up,
don't The dream spike has been activated.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
In its final location for purposes of this conflict of
the trap. Yes, yes, the trap is now positioned.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Right right, And essentially it would have sprung if the
White Cloaks weren't there because they're kind of in the way,
and the shadow Spawn don't want to attack both at once.
They want to surprise Paren and his soldiers as they
troop through there, So they're waiting for this conflict end
to attack, right.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, they're assuming that the White Cloaks and Paren will
sort of soften each other up and then the trap
proper can spring.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Right right, But in the meantime, nobody's traveling anywhere, right.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
The ausmorn like, yeah, we just haven't practiced enough. And
I'm like, guys, I need you to take the oath
against lying because that was a lie like we've seen
you make. So this is not an issue. A practice
like this is something different than a lack of experience.
Like a parent thinks about his army with a bunch
of very classic metaphors. They're like boulders, like sapling, oaks

(28:35):
like adders. He's you know, looking at his troops being like, yeah,
analogy montage, I'm so literate, so literary.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
And how he's letting all he's letting the women train,
he's letting people if they want to fight, and he
has this moment of he's like, if they want to
fight in the last battle, who wanted to stop them?
And then goes and I need to send them home.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Look, he's protective of everyone and he lets fail be
anywhere near him at all. Very beneficent, very you know.
Love love to just see him letting his wife make
choices really great, awesome.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
By shoving her in the back with all the isid
ion channelers, whether she's away from everybody, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah, very respectful, super you know, caring about her agency. Yep, Yeah,
love that. Love that.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Listen to understanding thing. You have to understand its parts
and its purpose.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
But the hammer was different.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
The acts only kills, but the hammer can either create
or kill. That is the difference. Thank you Sanderson for
spelling that out.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah, you can choose not to kill. I'm able to
choose choice. Wow, it's like the power of friendship going
to carry us through too, Like come.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
On, classic tale instead of show. Yeah. No, this is
again the showing that we saw when he cut off
the man's hand and threw away the axe. That was
the moment. He didn't need to really ever think about
it ever again.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
But then we have this, this lovely little piece of
hip hopocracy. The Shidow needed killing, but I don't know
if the White Cloaks do. Let's not spend eighteen pages
pondering the hypocrisy of that statement, because I would argue
that the White Cloks need killing more than the Shadow,
because they've been doing what they've been doing for generations.
The Shadow have been running rampant over the countryside for

(30:18):
the past six months. The White Cloaks have existed for
I don't know how many centuries, but more than one,
to judge by the way they talk about their founder,
like They're way more of an established hate group that
causes problems than the Shadow running rampant. Like, maybe they
both need to be killed, but like, I don't know
if the White Cloaks need they need killed. They are
a hate group, They're an avowed hate group. Their entire

(30:40):
goal in life is to torture and kill people. Kill
them all, please and thank you. At least if you're
going to just throw all million Shadow under the bus,
I think we can also throw the KKK under.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
The bus, right, because don't forget, the Shadow is also
a clan of men, women.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Children, people who joined their society because their clan was
doing things that didn't agree with. Like, it's so the
Shidow needed killing because they're scary foreigners.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
The brotherless joined the shidow because they didn't believe in
your white savior, uh huhh.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
And therefore they're all just equally culpable. And in the
fact that your wife, your single white woman prize, had
taken off of its pedestal, and so you just get
to do a fucking scorched earth policy on an entire
population of displaced foreigners to get your one precious pussy back.

(31:30):
I love Fayo but like, come the fuck on, parently,
I'm allowed to just kill thousands of people to get
my wife back, Like she's a grown ass adult person,
Please be reasonable.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
That's why I really would have liked it if he
had taken down if the Brotherless had gotten her out,
gotten her to him in the course of the battle.
He took down the Shadow, but then recruits all the
Brotherless to fight for him underneath Rand indirectly where he's like, well,
you're not fighting for Rand, but you're fighting for me,
and that's how you get to toticipate in the last battle,

(32:01):
and he brings this whole cohort of ideal back into
the fold and into the fight kind of.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
Like how a lot of the ideeld that get hit
with the the emptiness, the bleakness. Yeah, how a lot
of them end up joining up with the Tuatha on
and then end up essentially being part of the like
medical triage in the back. Sure it's like coming through
and like dealing with who's wounded at the end, and
like they are essentially helping They've been looped back around

(32:27):
through some means that would have been.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Great, and some of them wake up. I think they
do say that some of them come out of their
stupor meaner and angrier and ready to fight, right Like,
some of them are like coming out of that stupor
that they've been in for like two years, ready to
fight in the last battle.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
I mean, when you've got pair and pointing you at
a wall of trolls, it's hard to hold onto despondency,
right right, like those golden eyes, those slavering jaws, Like, yeah,
I think pick it up a spear again is about
the move for me?

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Right, Yeah, this is the end of the world. There's
a little bit of like, Okay, it's the end of
the world. Sure, personal like honor maybe needs to be
put aside for a moment.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
I also really would have liked it if Paren had
done his dream level up sooner to get putt Fayeel out,
you know, if he had done his whole montage training
with Hopper and like snuck Fyel and the others out
through the dream and been wafled up on the dream
before and just left the Shadow to stew in their
own juices.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
No, right, yeah, because if he had his teleport skills,
he could have just teleported in, gotten her out, teleported out, Like.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, he could have taken all of the guys shine
out in the course of like three nights. That could
have just vanished into literal thin air because Paren has
like dimension hopping brain. But alas we have to go
with kill foreigners foreigner's bed. Also, the KKK is redeemable, right.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
I think that's that's what's so hard about the white
cloaks is just like they just don't have any redeemable
qualities and they're not even good troops, Like, what do
you what's the point of rescuing them. It's not like
they're they're they're even crappy cannon fodder.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
To prove that white men on horses in white robes
who think that they're right about everything can be redeemed
if you talk to them real nice and smile real pretty.
They just have to be nice to them and they
will solve the male loneliness epidemic.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
The whole point of this chapter is how easily it
would be for Paren to wipe them out because they're
so ineffective as troops.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
I know, I don't think Sanderson understands a lot of
the things that we are critiquing a right, all right,
So Paren does his big flash bang booming voice thing. Oh,
that would be really dumb if we showed all of
our hand right at the very opening thing. But also
now we've proven that we could kill you. Also, do
you want to meet now?

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah? And don't get me wrong, I like this move.
I really this is a moment that sticks with me
the whole like just flexing to be like, Okay, you
want to attack, let's show you what you can do.
Because it doesn't They can still use the Auschman to
attack if they charge, they can still use their bows.
And they wasted some arrows, but not that many. They
presumably have an infinite number because you know.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
D and D rules.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, yeah, DND rules, Right, it'll actually count those things anymore.
They're just they're just always there when you reach form.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
Not until the final battle, when the last five seconds
are going to take the last fifteen minutes of the
movie to get through, right.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
Right right then everything else you have enough cut scenes
to reclaim your rows or make more or whatever. Yeah,
but yeah, you gave away our advantage. I'm like, well, yeah,
they gave it away, But like, what else are the
White Cloaks going to do except charge? Right? They have
no choice?

Speaker 1 (35:13):
Well, in fairness, Arganda is a charging is the strategy
kind of guy. He doesn't know how to operate with
more than charge as an option. So in fairness, he
is well matched to the white cloaks.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
And one would assume gallad Has could do more if
he had, But yet all he has is people on
horseback against channelers and bowmen. Like what else is he
going to do?

Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, he doesn't have archers, no at all. So yeah,
and which is why he capitulates, right, he has his decisions,
his mind's been made up. But then he's told like
face slaughter or talk to me again, and he's like, fine,
I'll talk.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
Or the archers he does have, you know, don't have
the two rivers length, so they can be attacked for
quite some time before they can return fire, before they
get close enough.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Right like horse bows, right, So they're not good in
a distance fight.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
No, So it's like, yeah, they can essentially be white
out on the on approach, and the ones that do
make it through, I'm sure will be easily taken down.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Horses are large targets.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, and if you fuck up the ground, the horse's
charges doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah, horses are running around on their middle finger. They're
very easy to screw up.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
So true, isn't that creepy?

Speaker 1 (36:17):
It is? It is those anatomical drugs where it's like, oh, yeah,
they're just rocking around on this like they're like saying
fuck you, but in a really like.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
On way, like ballerinas telling you to go fuck yourself.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
Yeah. So it's it's easy to see when you see
a human arm and a horse's leg, it is easy
to understand why they get broken so easily. Like, oh,
that's a lot of animal to have balanced on the
tip of one finger. You're a big horse.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, imagine like an horses get to what six pounds,
eight hundred pounds.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Something like that. They can crush your foot without meaning to.
They're that heavy, and.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
They're doing that all on one toe on.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
One on the middle finger. It's so bent back, and
then their ankle is like halfway up the leg. It's ridiculous. Anyway,
courses in war are amazing until they're not, and they're
a major liability. So rolls up and is like, wow,
you're so different, so decisive, and parents like, I'm literally
being the most indecisive I could possibly be right now.

(37:15):
But sure, great.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
There was this line where she says, something's changed about you.
I'm trying to figure out what, and I honestly, I'm
not sure what she's talking about. Right. Is this the
moment when he decides not to kill them like he
has Is she referring to the moment when he realizes
then axe is not for killing. Is that supposed to
be a major epiphany that something has changed in in
this moment because he finally realized because he said it

(37:38):
out loud to himself instead of when he threw away
the axe.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
That's the best I got is that paren had a
moment of revelation, and I fail instantly clocks it again.
I think he just kind of made a decision, and
she was like, oh, you've you've gotten down off the fence.
I can tell that you're no longer hovering on the fence.
You've now picked a side. But I just I don't
buy it. I think that's what's I think that's what
Sanderson's selling, but I'm not buying fair enough.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Yeah, I agree that there is a moment there where
we're supposed to see this as a major revelation that
he's finally figured out the axe and the hammer thing,
and it just doesn't. It's it's not earned exactly.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
And Fayil doesn't he even have the ability to smell
his emotions, so you know, as Athlone said and chuck,
she could smell self revelation obviously.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Which takes me to the Glod pov switch.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
All right, Yeah, let's go over to an almost equally
frustrating character in this scene.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
So Glode is all like, oh, I was prepared for
ice at I channeling because you can just give them
a polite nod and say I will not kill you
and they're not going to attack back.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
In the middle of a battle, just g nod politely
and walk away. That's a super realistic way that battle works.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Catch totally totally. But he's sort of saying, oh, they've
got channelers that aren't tied by the oaths, and I'm
that's making him rethink because he's you know, got half
a brain on like the rest of the white Cloaks
that have no brain where he's like, oh, maybe a
charge at channelers isn't such a good idea.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Maybe a run uphill at archers and channelers is not
gonna go well for me. Hmmm yeah, real orange cat
energy right here, He's getting his one day with the
brain cell.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
And so he sort of is like, fine, well, Parlay,
Bornhauled and Buyer are really pissed off about it because
well Bayer at least has been brain thrilled by Grendall. Right, Yeah,
I was kind of looking for like moments of by
our compulsion evidence. I really only found like one, like
his eyes burned with a wild zeal that match Borne

(39:59):
holds Anger, And I'm like, okay, fine, the zeal could
be the compulsion, the hate, but.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
That's also the white Cloaks. It's the same thing that like.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Was all followers.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, like it's it's one of those things that the
human brain can throw up. I mean, honestly, if I couldn't, like,
I can barely remember which one of them is compulsed
because they are such a match set. Like I know
that like Bornhold because he's the younger Bornhold, he's the
one that like isn't as corrupted and like does the
ultimate status friend in the back. Like I can remember

(40:29):
that logically, but they behave in ways that are so
identical that yeah, I don't really think you can tell
the difference between the compulsion and the naturally came by
it honest hate, you know, like Bornhold is working from
incorrect information, but his hate is at least organically generated.
He thinks that Peri killed his father, and that's that's
you don't need magic for that. And Bayer, you know,

(40:51):
they can psyke each other up just fine without magic.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
Well, and if we go back, Bayer was the one
who like took him captive and had the acts, and.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
Like the younger Bornhold wasn't there in that whole first interaction.
It was only the elder Bornhold.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
And and Buyer who likes y. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Buyer was just a bad guy from from the.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Yep by our God. Yeah, and that's yeah. In this
the thing is like there seems to be some attempt
to redeem him a little bit here and be like, oh,
he's not as that bad.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
But he was bad before Grandell ever got her clause
into him, like he was let me help you escape
so that I can kill you while running away in
book one, like yeah, no, he's not redeemable.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
That's right. He threw the rock down and was like
try and escape, yes, and then yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Yeah, yeah, it's too inconvenient for us to take because
we can't stalk the princess and we can't stalk the
andoran noble kids if we're slowed down by taking you
into custody as a as a murderer. So we're just
gonna have to kill you. And like they're just the
way they do the extra judicial killing situation is so yeah, No,

(41:58):
there is no redeeming this guy. I like that Bornhold
the younger is redeemable because he is misled and there
is something to redeem there. But like Bayer gets way
too much, Oh is he redeemable screen time given that? No,
now he's a two dimensional villain.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Bayer definitely gives some like sprinkle some crack on him Johnson, right,
like shoot him down, plant some evidence, and call it
a day, and then you don't have to worry about
it anymore.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Yeah, exactly, exactly. This is a cop who does not
hesitate to plant drugs on people. That's who Buyer is.
I Er did not have to be convinced. Bornhold had
to be convinced. Bornhold had to be lied to that
this is what your dad really wanted. And then once
he realizes that his dad didn't want that, he's like,
excuse me, friend, I need to stab you in the back.
Now you lied to me.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
M hm.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Buyer was always very okay with the lion.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
And that is the moment where they like they try
and redeem Bornhold's by having him stab by her in
the back.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Which I mean, stabbing your closest buddy who's been psyching
you up into a hate frenzy for the past three
years in the back because he's going to kill the
guy you hate. Is a pretty big mark in the
redeeming call him like, that's a big act. It's a
very big act. Anyway, We're not there yet. For now,
we are at Gallude having his second impression of parent

(43:13):
and going, wow, I can really read this man very specifically.
He's a He's a simple countryman who's noble enough to
have elevated himself to Lord. How perfect. So what is
that hot chick doing next to him?

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Holy shit, she's so hot. I want to like play
Strangers in the Night in the background while we do
the segment right like strangers and the seeing each other
very much like slow motion eyes meeting.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
He's instantly like, why would this beautiful woman be following
a creature? Like he knows her, He knows her soul,
he knows everything there is to know by her she's
so fucking hot.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
But at the same moment we later get from her POV,
she's doing the same thing, like who's that hunk of
a man white cloak? And please don't attack him. He's
just so gorgeous. He can't be in a battle. That
would be such a waste. No.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, both of their hair is like blowing back in
a fan that no one else can see, right.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Yeah, yeah, sparkles and lens flair.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
And yeah, yeah exactly. Everyone else is just like, why
are they looking at each other like that?

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Totally people their friends are like snapping in their ear,
like hey, barely, barely.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Barely, right exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
Glode thinks he's being cool, but his like jaws just
like dropped open. Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
He's like, my name is dallad Galla meant, why.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Is everybody whispering in slow motion? Oh? We just do that.
When she walks in, it's fine.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
M and yeah, so now Paren finally gets a name
or Glad. This is technically before more Gaze walks in,
which is I guess why her gasp of recognition is
later is because she doesn't walk in until after the
introductions are right.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Right, they bring in the tea later. She's part of
the You know, they don't have the tea set up
beforehand for some reason, even though they have the pavillion
set up. You think they set up to tea too,
but I guess it's all so fast they didn't need
time to boil the water or something, right, Yeah, whatever,
So yeah, we spend pages doing proper introductions between all
the queens behind Parent.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
And the really funny thing though, was Goalad and Barely
and are clearly having like their meat cute moment, and
Parent just keeps interjecting like into it, like he has
no idea. He's third wheeling on to meet cute, like
they are trying to oh small talk about things, and
he's like, news update anyway, news update, I can offer clarification.

(45:38):
They're trying to flirt, sir.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Actually, you know, it ruinds me a lot of the
night I met Never and Travis was there and he
kept trying to talk to us, and we're like, excuse us,
we're flirting over here, and so are flirting. No, The
difference is I was I would say, Travis got the
hint very quickly and was like, you know, I'm gonna
head out and you too should stay, and he definitely
kept us. Yeah, he didn't miss the hints of my parent,

(46:06):
who's where it's going right over his head?

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Yeah, which in parents' case, it's definitely the autism. It's
definitely is. He is tunnel vision focused on getting this
meeting done and he is not going to notice spur
of the moment dynamics between people.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
And even if he did, he does not give a shit.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
Well, also that also.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
That he's like, that's not important, but he never picks.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
Up on it.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
He is shocked when Berlin starts hooking up with or
starts hanging out with a lot, He's like, why did
that happen? That makes no sense. It's like you can't
smell a rousal. You can smell jealousy, but you can't.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
Smell a rousal.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
I'm sorry, but that woman needs now underwear as of
right now. I'm sure you can tell. I don't know
what horning and smells like voujie, but if he can
smell indecision with a touch of defiance, he can definitely
smell horniness. No, we know what he takes horniness smells
it because he says, oh, that special extra fial smell

(47:00):
that she always gets. It's extra strong when she's extra passionate,
and it's like, Okay.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Maybe it smells different on different people.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Yeah, exactly, it's just more them. Whatever their smell is,
it gets stronger. That's what Horning in the smells like. Canonically, Yeah,
doctor pants, That's that's correct. I'm just saying like that
is one of the most like physiologically apparent quote unquote
emotions that you're gonna find. So with the amount of

(47:33):
reading people's minds with his nose that he's been doing,
like that level of a whoa should be pretty clear.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
That in fear, I feel like, are the two that
are really going to like make you know that your
heart's gonna race and you're gonna start sweating right sweating?

Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah, yeah, totally. Your eyes are going to like change
their dilation status.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
The casual racism Abara's wife regartt a goal out with suspicion. Yes,
she was obviously obviously Saldean by that nose anyway, a
Jewish princess.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
What Also, like how he he hears this news about
Elaine and rand probably hooking up and he's like, yeah,
that tracks I'm not even gonna address totally apparent potential
insult to my sister because that's actually probably true.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
I know her, that is, and she's like, I do
remember the way he she like looked at him in
the fucking garden, right.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
Like him exactly.

Speaker 3 (48:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Then they they iterate the debate, you did a murder,
I did a self defense wolves. Aren't people fuck you that?

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Oh my god, because that we're gonna go through that
argument so many times. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
And then the other name that's relevant here is Galad. Apparently,
in the course of all this has learned that a
GWayne was there. This is news to him, but he's like,
what a GWayne was there in that moment?

Speaker 2 (48:56):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Obviously she can't be a character witness because now she's
you know, mad pope.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
But uh, you know, magic Pope.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
I've been describing we have time to a lot of
non readers over the past few months, so I've gotten
really used to using like my euphemisms to describe it
to people who are not up on the lore.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Female magic pope. Yep, excuse me, T went down the
wrong pipe.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
That's not for breathing. Don't breathe that.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
I know I'm not supposed to breathe tea. You think
it was the smoking that would make me cough, But nope,
it's the tea.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
At least the smoke is meant to go in your lungs.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
No, it's really not. But we'll stick over that more
so than the tea.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
More than you intended to put it in your lungs.
Let's put it this way.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Fair enough, fair enough.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Whether or not your lungs agreed to that, its a
separate issue. Yeah, exactly. Matriarchal Vatican is the White Tower.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
Magic, matriarchical that matriarchal Vatican.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Everyone knows the Vatican's magic. That's a given.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Well, no it's not. It's blessed. Listen. Monks and sorcerers
are two very different classes. We've discussed this. You can't
overlap this. This is actually true.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
Yeah you should, though.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
So income the tea right incomes more gaze right tea at.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
A war party, these are uncultured swine who serves tea
and a war party people who need you to meet
your stepmother again for plot reasons, that's who.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
And so they discuss a trial and they're like, a
trial would be great, but we don't have anyone to
trust to actually judge the trial, because there we have
my people and your people, and I don't trust your
people and you don't trust my people. Yeah, And so
then more gaze pops out, and it turns out she
could be the perfect judge because apparently if he vouches
for her, everyone will trust her. It seems odd to me,
but okay.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
Look, it's a cult, and if you can co opt
the leader of the cult, then the rest will follow.
They're like horses. If you contame the stallion, the rest
of the herd will follow.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
No worry about his influence over her, having you know,
been her boss the past, you know, six months. No
worry about favoritism.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Look, queens are a different level of person. They are noble,
They are correct, They can do no wrong. Look at
how white and patrician her faces. Look at the angle
of that knows can she possibly be anything other than
a paragon of virtue.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
No objections over the fact that she trained in the
White Tower, and these don't men don't trust anyone who
trained in the White Tower.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
She's pretty and she was powerful Rago, She's good.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
No mention of the fact that his whole point of
killing Valda is because he killed this woman and they
all support him because of that. And then this woman
is alive and they're not going to worry about that
and be like, oh, hey, you killed our master and
you were wrong.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Yeah, Like does she not have prejudice against your entire organization?
That's like way more valid than helping you destroy the
man who's been like keeping her alive and safe for months.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
But I mean, just her presence undermines God's claim to
lead the White Cloaks.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Right, Well, he killed Walda on basis of assault and murder.
The assault still happened, Like that's still a fact.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
But if the murder didn't, wouldn't you then question if
the assault even happened and if he wasn't working together
with his mother to set up Valda to take leadership
over the White Cloaks in an illegitimate way in order to.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
The White Cloaks are very happy to handwave that, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
To then turn around and completely change their mission completely
ally with Channelers when it's being manipulated, Like these are
conspiracy minded theorists. They're not going to be like, oh,
Golaude's connection to the White Tower doesn't make sense, you know, Like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
It does feel like he should get stabbed in the
back by Traum at this point.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't like the change of loyalty
of the White Cloaks. Just doesn't they should They should
be need to be wiped out.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
It's not earned, it's not earned. No, it would be
fine if Gollad decided to abandon the White and join
up with Paren, and a few of his most loyal
people were like, yeah, fuck it, we're going with Galad
over the order, Like I could buy that, you know.
Fifteen of them come over and they're you know, incorporated,
slowly but just they all fall into lockstep as the

(53:14):
White Cloaks. Nah, not earned.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
No, I'd rather see him with a contingent of brotherless
and wiping the White Cloaks out than the other way around.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
And Galad, yeah, just kind of hiding there with his
tail between his legs, being like I fucked up. I
fucked up so much, I fucked up so bad.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
And they have them turn on him and have Paren
rescue Galad from the White Cloaks.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Paren rescues Galad. That would have been fun, right, Goalad
thinks his needs defending. Yeah, that would have been good.
That would have been real fun and we could have
gotten rid of all but the one good white cloak.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
But alas instead we get a trial.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
A bullshit trial. Yeah, I mean not in the sense it
is like legally bad, but just in thestense that there's
way too many pages spent on relitigating things that never
needed litigated, and.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Not to mention like skipping over all the white cloaks
you murdered when you rescued Gaul like, I'm just not
gonna mention that.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
I never gonna mention that skipping over all of the
villages that those people wiped out, skipping over the part
where anyway, we're litigating this to the point that we
could write a whole other Sanderson chapter about it. So
let's get to more gaze, more gaze and glad eye contact, gasp, hug,
holy shit, wow, great moment.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
M hm.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
And they don't. She doesn't even say anything hardly. She's
just like, yes, I will transition immediately to more gaze,
no problem anyway, Yeah, I am more gaze.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
That's not going to blow out my life at all.
Reiterates that she renounce the crown so she's not a
threat to a lane and then kind of and I
do like the one thing where she's like, I fear
more from the White Cloaks than I do from paren
Right she was.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
That's a good line. That's a good damn line.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
I have far more to fear from your associates than
from par and A. Bara. Yes, she did have reason
to distress the children, good reason. Yeah, you think that's
the whole point of you killing Valda is she was captured, manipulated, raped,
and assumed murdered.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yeah. I think the idea is that the assault is
that everyone knew she was being tortured because she was
literal again like you know, like needles under the fingernails,
kind of tortured, like they that everyone knew that, and
then they kind of assumed that she got killed. So
like him attacking the man for assaulting his mom is like, yeah,
I mean she was being tortured. Everyone knows that this
is going on for a while. It's not like it

(55:31):
was a secret to the White Cloaks.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
And this is also why it's so unbelievable that the
spymaster didn't know who she was, uh.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Huh, or didn't know Yeah, ball were not connecting the
Galad thing. It's just nope. And then and then Galad
has his very parent esque moment. I'm beginning to see
child byer.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
We must prove.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
Our claims, otherwise we're no better than us. Nawah Wow.
Man who decided to become part of a paramilitary force
that does extra judicial murder, you've discovered the concept that
the law matters. Princeling, who has a black and white
approach to morality and justice and has been a rules
lawyer since he was old enough to talk in complete sentences,

(56:14):
You've just discovered the concept that doing things without proper
legal justification is absolute fucking horse pucky. Okay, all right,
sure you hadn't. Does it never cred you before? I?

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Sure, fine, I'm sure more Gase never lected him on something.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Like that, not once, not once, but once, but sure,
grown man explain that to another grown man who also
is old enough and scary enough to have killed several
people because he thinks that he understands the law already.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
I think what pisses me off so much about these chapters,
in these sections is just how much it infantilizes the
characters and makes them feel like they don't know what
they should know and that they don't exist in a
world where they like are smart people who have agency.
It feels like they're just like forgetting things that they
should know, and it leaves weird holes in these characters.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
It makes stuff feel not earned, It makes stuff get
reiterated that shouldn't be reiterated. It's funky. But Parent does
manage to get all of his people in supplies released
as sort of collateral on doing the trial, which is
good leadership negotiation, I guess. And then they set a
date for three days and we get to close the chapter.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
Yeah, I guess. The only other thing I think I
forgot to say is in the previous chapter when Rand
was doing his whole like let's unite and fight back,
it felt very much like Terry Goodkind in one of
his books where the hero goes and do basically a
communist society and shows them the wonders of capitalism and
they all unite together and start building shit. And I

(57:52):
just wanted to say that and be like, there's a
book like that that Terry Goodkind wrote, and there's a
reason Terry Goodkind is trash. But Terry Goodkind has a
little more of the political implications, I think. But again,
it does feel just weird in that chapter it's got.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
A very eurocentric, top down, patriarchal this is the pyramid
we've all been living under kind of vibe were it's
just like, you don't got any fun plot twists, no
interesting twelve year old girls who are actually running the
most effective street gang that can hand you the city
on a silver platter. Already, none of that. A big

(58:27):
strong man with a chest of gold shows up and
starts telling people what to do, and everyone yes, sirs
their way into a neat, orderly formation.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
That's what we do.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
Anyway. I'm glad that some people in the audience apparently
like what we have to say, because God, that was
a lot of bitching.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Yeah it was. It was, you know what, And I'm sorry,
but sometimes it's just not good. And I hate to
be the one to say that, but like, it's just
there's parts of it that are not good.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
There's parts of it that are good, though I do
hope that we're giving oxygen to the parts that we like.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
There are parts of it that are very good. They're
parts of that are amazing. Yes, and I love that
it got finished, and I, by no means expect every
chapter to be perfect. When someone else is writing, taking
over for someone else and writing in a different style. However,
as you're going through it solely chapter by chapter and
not looking at it as a whole, there are peaks in,
there are valleys.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
Yeah, and that's why today's episode was an hour long.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
Hey, at least we didn't do that one chapter where
we skipped it and everyone got really angry at us.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
You get one of those per fourteen book series.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
We really had nothing to say about it. We were like,
I don't know, man, there's nothing going on.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
When I was putting together the compiled episodes for the
Patreon I got to that one and I was so
confused when the download just snapped by, and then I
loaded it into the end of my dow to put
it together, and I'm like, no, that file has to
be broken. They're not supposed to be that short. As
I listened to, I was like, oh, oh right, But
I never make three minute episodes. It's accept that one

(01:00:00):
time I did, except that one.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Time you did.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
All right, well, are you able to be done with
this and go do the other project?

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Yeah? I think so. Thanks for joining us once again.
I kind of want to do patreons, but I hate
to do them in front of such a depressing episode.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
We'll find another chapter.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
We'll find another chapter for pat. Yeah. Yeah, Thank you
so much for everyone who's been donating and contributing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
Really appreciate it all right, bye bye.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Thank you for listening to the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast.
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Spoilers is a production of Fox and Raven Media. For
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