The Seven Striped Lass & Blood in the Air - Towers of Midnight chapters 8 & 9 - EP550

Mat is barhopping, we are spotting fan inserts at every establishment, the gholam makes an unwelcome return, and we learn the term “lampshading” in real time.

Fifty Ways to Kill a Gholam: https://steelypips.org/wotfaq/1_dark/1.6_beasties/1.6.2_gholam.html 

News of the show rights reverting: https://fellowshipoffans.com/news/news-sony-amazon-relinquish-rights-to-the-wheel-of-time

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is the weedl of time spoilers Bloodcast.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
So we're doing another doubleheader today, shifting from Perrin to Matt.
And I promised that we would not be complaining last week.
I can't guarantee that I'm going to keep that promise.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I will probably not complain much about this is these
chapters are aggressively Matt. I think Sanderson is doing better
in these chapters. It's not perfect, but I do think
he's making up a lot. My only problem I have
found with this one is it's almost like he's spending
this first chapter saying, look, I know Matt. Look, I
figured out Matt. Look, I figured out Matt, and like

(00:59):
dropping all of these Matt references that Matt personality types
to the point where it is a little overdone.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, it's like he recognized how badly he overshot in
the last Matt appearance and he's trying to reel it
back in. But he's only like sixty percent of the
way there. In my opinion, there's still a lot of
that weird women are like goats Matt here. It's just fading. Yeah,
so I won't be complaining as much, but it is

(01:27):
still very like this is not the matt that I
was hoping to see. But we do get some good
Golomb stuff, which is fun. I do love a good
Isidi fighting Golomb situation because it's like the unstoppable force
versus a movable object.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, so this is the seven striped Lass, which I mean,
gotta be a reference to the Isid Eye in the
White Tower, right, like the.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Owner the name of the inn.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Yeah, but then it's a but it's a reference to
Oh yeah, the owner wants to be an ic at
eye may or may not be an agent.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
I'm convinced she's a wilder because there's no rats in
her in and she really wants to be a nice
to die and she calls herself the seventh Stride. Last
I'm just like, this is a wilder that figured out
her gift. This is my head Cannon. I really like her.
I also noticed that Sanderson was like women can be
barkeepers too in this chapter, because both of the bar keeps,

(02:23):
both of the bar owners that we see in this
chapter are both women, just like. I don't know how
many there were in all of the books before this,
but Sanderson's making sure to balance the average out here.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yeah, not if not many, not many if any, and
are symbol is the dice because it's about like.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Tatala onon is one satala Anon does exist.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
That's true. And aren't like all the women in Ebudar
and the innkeepers.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Oh right, that's the thing. Is this the thing in
a bar?

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Anyhow so and also you know I would assume the
where Aaron and Cottsway are from farmatting.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, I mean they run all the businesses period, so right,
including theans Yeah yeah, oh yeah, mom jeans nance and
Chad is also pointing out stripes can mean whipped, like
being whipped like so many stripes, like giving them stripes.
But seven feels very eyes to die.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
To me, so mmm mm hmmm, because like if you
replaced last with stole, would be the seven stripes stole.
But yeah, I could see that. That's yeah, someone's getting whipped.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
I would. It would make more sense if she hadn't
said that she had never gone to Tarvalan, right if
she said If she didn't say that, then it's like,
well maybe she did go and she did get whipped
and kicked out, But she says specifically that she's always
wanted to go, so I figure she can't have been
kicked out and for.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Someone who uh, you know. The reason why I'm like, oh,
this is probably more likely white Tower related than whipping related,
is this person does want to go to the White Tower,
right like, there is that connection where she owns the bar,
she named the bar. She wants to go to the
White Tower or go It's.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Kind of surprising she hasn't been recruited or interacted with
by an iside at this point, either to become a
novice or an Eyes and Ears. You think she would
have been picked up by them at this point, but
for whatever reason.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
And also there in Campbellyn where I said, I are
generally viewed favorably, So you can, you know, assume that
the name of the end is not a problem.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
You write less dramatic than if she was in tear.
This would be an incredibly aggressive title.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Exactly exactly all right, I'll ready said. Matt stood on
a worn stool, his arms leaning against a dark wooden
bar counter. The air smelled good of ale smoke and
of the washcloth that had recently wiped the counter. He
liked that there was something calming about a good, rowdy
tavern that was also kept clean, well as clean as

(04:37):
was reasonable. Anyway, no one liked a tavern that was
too clean, that made a place feel new, like a
coat that had never been worn, or a pipe that
had never been smoked. Matt flipped the folded letter between
two fingers of his right hand. That letter, on thick
paper was sealed with a glob of blood red wax.
He had been carrying it only a short time, but
it was already a source of as much aggravation to

(04:59):
him as any woman. Well maybe not nice to die,
but most any other woman that was saying a lot.
He stopped spinning the letter and taped it on the counter.
Burn Barren for doing this to him. She held him
by an oath, like a fish caught on a hook.
I think gott gonna stop there. There's a little more
Matt going on, but there's nothing there I wanted to

(05:20):
talk about that I think it's worth stopping.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
I mean, that is the scene Matt inbar anxious about letter.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Right. I like the line made a place feel like
a new coat that had never been worn, or a
pipe that had never been smoked. Because, especially in reference
to the show, because I agree that I think some
of those costumes seemed a little a little more aging
before they were worn on set. They felt a little
too much like a pipe that had never been smoked
in some situations. As much as I love the costume,
I'd like to see the shit beat out of before

(05:49):
people put them on.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
This is something I have an issue with with a
lot of TV, like way beyond Reel of Time is.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Ye, and it's not just Wheel of Time, it's it's
the air.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
It's like I totally bought the I'm fine with the
isaid I have magic. So their clothes are extra clean,
but the leather needs to look worn right right. The
horse equipment needs to look like it's been on the
horse more than once, like all of those little tiny
bits which the older of TV you look at, the
more well aged the stuff. As I mean, look at
freaking Lord of the Rings. They were literally sleeping in

(06:21):
their costumes for days, to the costume departments angst right
like those clothes were worn and now I saw a
video briefly online talking about the differences between old Snow
White and New snow White, because that New Snow White
movie just came out, and it was like specifically comparing
like the snow white dresses and just being like, why

(06:41):
why is it that the designs are getting simpler and
dumber and easier, And it's just it's in every little
bit of set, every little bit of set, every bit
of folly, every bit of prop. You can just see
the closer you get to present day, the less money
and the less time and the less wear and the
less attention to detail is being applied. And it's yeah,
as Matt says, it doesn't feel good.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Cost savings and shitification.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, No, you want the bar to
feel a little grimy, and it won't be grimy unless
you like have the crew set up and smoke indoors
in the set for a few days before you start filming.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Now, an aging clothes is a cost, you know, because
you you either have to wear them, which is not
what they do, or be go in and paint on
the dirt paint, you know, literally beat the shit out
of the costumes before you put them on people. And
you have to do it in a way that's consistent.
So when you have you have multiple versions of that costume,
and like all that requires a lot of money and
effort and care, and it's just easier to be like, well,

(07:38):
we like them clean looking, let's skip that.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Or not even that they liked them clean looking, But
the audiences won't boycott our product even if it's shitty,
Like people won't care enough to make the ROI worth it,
Like it all comes down to fucking ROI.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
This also the interesting is also I think a good
reference to who is that innkeeper? I think it was
an informant and his wife was a merchant, and he
owned the inn not to make money, but because it.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Was uh, it's intan Chico quillin quillin, Yes, the silver
garden of silver breezes.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Something like that. That's I think this almost feels like
a reference to that, because that was the end that
was too clean, right, that was no one wanted to
actually enjoy it because it was so clean and spotless
that everyone felt uncomfortable. And like then I felt that
way in people's houses too, where you walk in and
you're like, am I allowed to sit on your couch?
Is that like a thing that you can do because
the rest of your house is so clean and spotless.

(08:32):
I'm afraid that I'm gonna like smudge something or crinkle
something that's not supposed to be smudged. Or crinkled, and
then you're gonna have to like deal with it in
the moment because your house is a museum.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Right right, Yeah, you know that is a good a
good contrast. I like that callback as opposed to this
other one. This one is actually comfortably dirty.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
And then mention of the letter with the blood red wax,
when we talked about the fact that Varon's using the
blood red wax now when she was using I believe
yellow wax.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Or yeah, this means that it's one of her only
open if I haven't come back because I'm dead, Yeah, letters,
those letters out going. I hope I see this letter again.
I hope that I get to be the one to
take this wax back, but I probably won't. Yeah, And
this is the letter that will ultimately reveal that Camelin
is going to be attacked from the inside through the
way gate.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
And again, this is also back in time for what right,
we are significantly earlier in the timeline were before Veins
of gold. Alida is still the Amberlin like. There's a
couple of hints like that.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
The reunification rumor hits at the end of this section
or the end of these chapters. Today Okay, so Alida
is not still Homberline. I was actually going to ask
you about where we are in the timeline, because you know,
the next time we see Paren, we're jumping way way back, right,
And so I was really confused about where Matt sits
on the continuum from present day back to Paren.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Okay, so in the next chapter, I guess I did
look ahead in so not the next chapter of the
chapter after that with a Lane, she gets a missive
from Elida's emissaries. So, oh, okay, I was thinking we
were so yeah, we're jumping around so much. I really
do think we're still fairly early on. I think the
Matt Paren Elayne timeline is much earlier right now than

(10:16):
the rand niinieve land A GWayne timeline because we spent
so much time with those characters in the last book. Right,
this is this is really he split these characters up
and we got all of We got Randon A. GWayne
in the last book, and we're getting there was a
little Elane in that too, But Elaine, Paren and Matt

(10:40):
are catching up in this book.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, but the isid I leave to go rejoin the
Unified Tower at the end of this section with Matt.
So it's not that far back right.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
So Matt's maybe a little bit more Yeah, Matt's maybe
a little morehead.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
It's somewhere in the middle, right, because the reunification happens
like two weeks before Veins of Gold, Like those are
not the same day at all. Like there's a actually
a significant chunk of breathing room between those two events.
So I can see why Sanderson gave up on trying
to keep this perfectly.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Oh and recorrection from chat it's bendar ebb on that
that inn is it? Not Tenchiko? Thank you?

Speaker 3 (11:14):
But I mean, like, think about what Matt has to
do before Moraine shows up to the Fields of mary Lore,
which is like next week for Rand and Agwayne in
their timeline, aren't they Like.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yeah, how long is that between Veins of Gold and
the Fields of mary Law?

Speaker 3 (11:28):
Is that not long? Because he came down in the
beginning of this book, and like I said, all right,
let's go, you know, but Matt has to meet with
a Lane, build.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
The whole prototype processes, the whole.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Prototype process the dragons, build them, train his people on them,
go rescue Moraine, and then bring Rain back.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
I'm pretty sure he leaves the training to Tom Honis.
I'm pretty sure he just stays through the prototyping and
then hands it off to Tom Honis and the dragonears.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
But yeah, all that has to happen in the timeline
before the field's marilre.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
I mean, it's gotta be like three of our week's
i e. Two of Rantland weeks, right, twenty days. It
can't be that many more, But it can't be that
money less, right right right? I mean in the Tower
of Genji is like a long weekend. The actual Tower
of Genji doesn't take that long.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
That's true. Do they just get way in right and
then get way back out? So yeah, exactly, it's just
like a single night or two nights.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
They don't have to travel to the tower. That is
just an overnight flight. Yeah, I totally see Y Sanderson
would have given up, like this is not this is
not worth it.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
But but yeah, definitely feels a little out of Matt's timeline,
especially feels a little out of sync right now with
the other two, like he's somewhere in between.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, I think it's just straight up desynchronized. Yeah, he's
literally just floating around wherever the head cannon needs him
to be.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
And what do you think of that nickname Master Crimson
that he picks up.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Well, it goes well with being the leader of the
Band of the Red Hand and also focusing on a
letter with Red Wax, and also being generally in the
middle of blood, death and mayhem. It works. I think
it makes a lot of sense. It's simple.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
I wish it was just I don't know, I'm not
mass I wish he'd said, like, you know, brand Crimson
or something like that. The Master Crimson to me is like, oh,
is he gonna like be Zoro?

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Now?

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Like what's that?

Speaker 2 (13:16):
I would have preferred, you know, something like you know,
Frodo Baggins. That would have been fun.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
Yeah, sure, sure. And then there is this I think
you and I disagree on this, but there's this thread
that goes through this chapter where he's still he's smiling
at girls and then telling himself, Oh, I can't do
that anymore. I'm a married girl, I'm a married man.
I'm just smiling at these girls for Nilisian, for Tom,
for you know, so and so, right, like I'm not

(13:41):
actually looking at them, when it's clearly he's just still
looking and smiling at girls.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
I don't disagree with that at all. I don't discut
that all. I completely agree.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
I think we disagree on how much we like that.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Oh oh yeah. I if the women are like goats
chapter hadn't happened, I might have just thought it was
a fun, little burst of extra maddiness. But it feels
too much like that women are goats thing, and so
it just has a bad taste. But it could be cute.
I guess maybe it's kind of weird near the end.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
For me, it's like, Oh, he's having trouble breaking habits, right,
he has this habit of smiling and looking at girls,
and now he's married, he knows he's not supposed to
do that, but he still has the bad habit, and
so in his head he's saying, Oh, I'm only doing
it for my mates. I'm only looking for my mates
just to get them girls. And I like that level

(14:31):
of doing things without really thinking about it. It's just
it's almost I'd rather he was not noticing and thinking, oh,
I should be noticing them. I wonder why I'm not,
rather than the other way around, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, there's a yeah, there's something off about it, and
you're right. If it was like that, I would find
it much more endearing. If he was like, wow, she
has a nice ass, and.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Yet and I hadn't noticed they think about it. She's
excliding right next to me at face love, and I
hadn't noticed for minutes or you know, like that level
of like all I'm doing is thinking about Tuon instead
of these other women, and that's really weirding me out
because I'm so used to checking out these women, Like
there's a way to do that. That would have felt
a little more like, oh yeah, he's truly in love
with women. The best we get is him being like, well,

(15:17):
I'm not really into big, big boobs anymore. I like
women with a small chest, and I like women with
big you know.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah, there's a piece of it with that. He's like, huh,
I'm discovering that I don't like hair on women anymore.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
Right, right, literally bald women, a small chest and mean,
while every other girl he's been with has been described
as long, brown, beautiful hair and big boobs.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
Right.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeah, So there's a piece of that, and it is
all much more realistic than if he was just suddenly
like ice cold towards women and never thought about it.
A man like that would be really weird, right right,
I don't hate it as much as the women are
like goats rantom a.

Speaker 3 (15:50):
Long shot, and for stuff like that, he's always saying
it to other people, and that that's where I'm like,
how much does he believe? And how much is he
just spouting off?

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (16:00):
And there's a certain like charming wingman energy of like, hey,
tam honis you know how you're always worried you should
kiss a girl?

Speaker 3 (16:07):
Like?

Speaker 2 (16:07):
There's a certain like fun wingman party boy energy which
I don't hate to see.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
We get his dilemma about why he's not opening the
letter right that if he opens it, he has to
do what's inside of it, and he sees that as
a huge imposition and he'd rather deal with the devil
that he knows, which is he has to stay in
Camlin for a while, then deal with the devil he
doesn't know, which is open it and have to do
some crazy I sid eye task that he doesn't understand.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Meanwhile, the pattern is using this hot smart chick playing
with the letter and asking him about it to be
like will you please open it? Like you can just
feel the pattern being like, come on, girl. Just open
the letter. Just open it, Just open it. She's trying
to make him open it. Pattern's trying to make her
open it, like the way that Camelin almost gets saved
in this moment, except that she decides to put the

(16:55):
letter back down on the bar instead of opening it.
You know, it's we're so close. It's kind of fun.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
No, And I like her as a character, you know
this whole like admiring I Sidy, maybe having some powers
of her own, maybe being in an informant for the
IID eye right, like we know the paw of them everywhere,
and she's made her allegiance pretty wide open. It's hard
to believe no one would contact her, especially in Camlin.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Maybe that's why she doesn't have rats. Maybe that's the
like I'll you know, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
You'll have a rat free in and you'll send me
the best gossip.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
That would be My assumption is that she's a informant,
and then she has, like I said, Ie visit and
like cast Wards, he thrats out.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
I prefer my head canon, but it does require more
of a stretch of the imagination. The is a wilder,
wilder Yeah, that's a bigger stretch, but I like it
better because.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
I feel like as a Wilder, she would have been
discovered and they would have talked to her and been like,
now we don't take wilders.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Right, And if she's an informant, then they would have
recruited her. If she could be recruited. An informer makes
the bow sense. An informer with a kick ass anti pest.
We've definitely is the s plus the explanation. But I'm
going to continue to choose to believe that she's just
a very clever Wilder. So yeah, he continues to worry
about the letter and then leaves the bar to launder
through the streets and find a better game of dice.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
There's a good line where she's like, I want you
to introduce me to this I said I, and he's like,
I'll give you my word, and she's like, can I
trust you? He's like, we just had a whole conversation
about how if you opened a fucking letter like that
was the entire point in previous conversation. Did you not
realize that that I'm keeping my word to this woman
even though I don't want to, and it's really inconvenient
for me.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Again, the pattern is just begging him to break and
open the damn letter through any means necessary.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
Something else I didn't like is when you look at
someone at a bar and he goes, oh, he's got
fourteen empty mugs. He must have had fourteen beers. Does
no one bust the tables? No, no kitchen has fourteen
extra mugs sitting around that they can just lead them
sitting on the table. Unwashed mugs get picked up and
reused in a given night. What no one leaves fourteen
mugs sitting at a table like?

Speaker 2 (18:55):
I got the impression it was like a drinking contest thing.
So it's just one after the other after the other.
But even so, a busser would have come by by
time we get to the gear about your eighth beard,
enough time would have passed, just because it takes that
long to swallow.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, I agree. That does not feel like how restaurants work.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
And this is a nice restaurant too, right, This isn't
like the place he goes too later where it's all
dirty and shit. This is the clean place.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah, Like, they might have fourteen spare glasses, but that's
just because sometimes you break a lot in a row
and you need to have spares like that's yeah, I agree,
it's a little lot.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
That to me is an author writing about a bar
when he never goes into bars.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
That's proudly about right.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
That's run a little bit of lace, just a.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
Little bit, just a little bit, a tiny little bit.

Speaker 3 (19:43):
He's not wearing his hat. He's grown out of beard.
He's a little scruffy looking. He's trying to hide it.
You know. It's basically taking off his glasses and pretending he's,
you know, not Superman.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Anymore, right, right, exactly.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
He had already died once. He was fairly certain. You've
died at least twice, buddy.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
I know, right. And the end he goes to has
a great name. Also the dead man's breath, like, I'm sorry,
but that is a slap in barning. That is gnarly.
That is a grimy dive bar.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
You know what it's gonna smell like when you walk in?

Speaker 2 (20:12):
Uh huh. Also likes the line where he talks about
various bubbles of evil and paving stones attacking people and
if you can't trust the rocks under your feet, then
what can you trust? Yeah, this is part of why
I find earthquakes so fascinating because that is one of
the most existentially distressing things that can happen, is terra
firma is no longer firma. Like one of the scariest,

(20:34):
most confusing things that human brain can experience is the
ground moving.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Well, I think it's also a reference to the guy
getting sucked into the ground, remember, and only hats left.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Yeah, that so that which Matt literally saw. And also
like the rocks are the only thing you can trust
once all the metal melts at the beginning of the
next book.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
That's true. Yeah, earth. Yeah, he leaves his walking stick
by the door and that's where it stays for the
rest of the chapter. He never picks back up on
his way out. I'm not sure what the point of
the walking stick. Was, not sure why he had it.
Not sure. I mean it was may be a weapon.
He grabs the Ashendari later with the golamb, so maybe
like he had him leave it behind so he wouldn't
have the stick and the Ashendari. I get the feeling

(21:14):
that was a writing thing that he had him with
the Ashendari and someone was like, yeah, he can't carry
the Ashendari and came on, so he wrote in like,
oh he left it, he made it a walking stick,
and then he left it behind, and then he grabs
it at just the right moment when he attacks the golamb.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah. I was also wondering about the walking stick through line.
I'm like, this serves no purpose whatsoever. Why is this here?

Speaker 3 (21:32):
No?

Speaker 2 (21:32):
I an artifact of a writing mistake makes a lot
of sense.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
An artifact of the oshandari not being something you can
carry around all everywhere.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
It's a very distinctive weapon. It is not an incognito weapon.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
So they go into the dead man's breath, which again
like the description of a dive bar. To me is
like the wooden bar had nails, who heads jutted out
a fingernail or so high and jabbed you in the arm. No, police,
we'll pound that down, like, no.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
The wood should be so old and dry that it's
splintery and stabs him in the elbow. That way more realistic. Right, Yeah,
this very much is written like a man who's never
been in a bar. Yeah, certainly not a dive bar. Yeah,
he's been to restaurants with bars, but he's never been
to a grimy dive bar.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Right, and he doesn't know what makes a place to
Grimey in a dive bar, Bill talk about his lace.
Best to have Lopen pulled off his cuffs. Yeah, Lopin
is not going to be doing shit.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Oh alright, Lopen, he's probably dying more or less right now. Yeah.
So he rolls up to a dice game, and again
showing that Sanderson is very woke and very progressive, there's
a woman dicing, which Matt thinks is unusual.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
And so I couldn't find any evidence for this, but
I'm convinced Claire and the guy who's killed Jowdrey Jowdrey
were inserts of fans, right, because first of all, Claire
is a very common name, and she described his golden hair,
and I get the feeling that was an insert. And
Jowdery is like her husband who got killed in a

(23:02):
horrific way. Because Sandersen put in a lot of characters
of people who helped him out, but yet my googling
gave me nothing. So I am convinced, convinced that these
are real people that Sanderson stuck in because this is
the only reference to them. One of them dies horribly.
There's a description of their hair. One of the names
is very common American English name, you know, and Jowdery

(23:24):
is probably like Jeffrey or something like that just changed, right,
And so I'm one hundred percent convinced they're people like
beta readers because I know I know from his own
word a lot of the one off characters are based
on real people who helped him with the production. That
was his way of thanking the people who were helping
him with these books.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
And is there a comprehensive list somewhere or is.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
It just not that I found? Not that I found,
So you know, that's worth looking into. If anyone has
that list anywhere, I'd love to see it. I know
individuals who are in there and have said, oh, this
character is based on me, And I know that he
said he's done that, and I just don't have a
complete list.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
No, that that feels right.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
And he likes to kill off the people he includes
as well.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, I like it head cannon accepted or heart canon.
I don't know what kind of canon that is, but
I'd like it.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
So you've got Claire and Chaser who are playing the
card game, and again I don't know about Chaser might
be one of the group who knows all three one
off characters. They're only in this chapter.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yeah. Yeah, well Jowdrey isn't even here. He's just a
dead corpse in the conversation.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
Right right, mentioned in this chapter, right.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
But yeah, the point of that whole thing being that
Matt gets news that the Golam is back in town,
which is really important for plot.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Oh and here's a I did like this. Matt did
not smile at girls that way anymore. Besides, she did
not respond to any of his smiles anyway. But you're
saying like, yeah, obviously you did smile, like proving yourself
wrong within your own thought of like, I don't smile
like that, and she didn't respond to him anyway.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Oh, well, Chaser is definitively a fan insert.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
Okay, Okay, so I believe all three of them would be.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
We've got a what fandom article? So yeah, that totally
that this group, all of these names in this conversation,
the three people and the dead guy are all Yeah,
that totally makes sense.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
The three people, including the dead guy.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
I think, Oh, doesn't he sit down at a table
with three people? Whatever? It doesn't matter. Yeah, a game
being played by three men and a woman oh, okay,
that's technically four people, not including the dead man.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
We only get Chaser and her name. We don't get
the other two names.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Ah. Yes, So the named characters of this scene, all
of them, we are assuming based on the fact that
one is and the vibes are right, and.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
The fact that I called it without knowing that one is.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
Mmmmmmm.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Now that just feels And this is a really important
plot turn, right, Bringing the goal on back into the
story is important, So it would make sense to throw
some people's names in there at this important juncture. And
then Matt in response to this information, doesn't really look
at the dice as he throws them. So it's the
most random it could possibly be, and the dice to
do the most random thing possible, which is all three

(26:00):
land on their corners right as the dice kick off.
In his head, it's just this moment of like the
tavere and Lever just gets pushed really really hard. Someone
bumps it with their elbow.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
Right, And you get that with the odds being weird
because all the dice land on their corners.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Right, which, like dead is so random. They shouldn't have
the correct amount of force to stay on their corner.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Well, it's an instable local minimum, right, Like you have
this minimum where technically a dice can bounce on its corner,
but any perturbabation, any movement, any change, is going to
cause it to seek a different lowest energy state aka
flat on the ground. Like it's just and all three

(26:44):
of them doing it once. It's possible, but the odds
are basically zero, right, But that's matt specialty.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
But especially when you're tossing dice without even looking at them,
that's not how they're going to land. That's a trick shot.
You know, you can learn to throw like that, but
that's not something that's going to happen randomly unless you're Matt.
And the pattern is starting to break apart, and shit
is getting really intense. So yeah, Matt grabs his money
and skidaddle's before he has to answer any more awkward
questions about these fan inserts being murdered.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
Right, Yeah, the only line Claire has is what do
you know about jowdery? Claire demanded, she was reaching for
her waist. Matt would have bet gold against coppers. She
had a knife, there nothing, and he leaves and that's
like last week.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Hear, Yeah, yep. So yeah, he scoots out of there
looking to pick up Tom.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
Well, and especially because someone's looking at a paper and
you know, talking. Yeah, so there's someone who's looking for
You know that those images of him that Varren distributed
probably aren't the only ones that are being produced. Someone
else is looking for him.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, because the images exist, they're easy to copy. Now
that there's many copies right now, anyone who wants him
can use that.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
I also assume Grendal is not trying to chase him down.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
I was gonna ask about the Golam saying, the one
who controls me now wants you more than ever. Is
that Grandall or is that someone else?

Speaker 3 (27:59):
So I think it's more. But he remember he said
I would give you tools.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Right, which I thought was the dream Spike and Slayer,
because he says, I'll give you the man with two souls,
which is empirically not the Golamb.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
Right, right. So I think that Grendall is focused on
parn right, That's who she's trying to take down. Yeah,
but I think that Morden is able to give orders
to the Golam because I think it was Samuel's right.
But once Samuel disappeared slash died. I think it reverted
to Morden's.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah, So why is Mordon turning up the heat on
finding Matt because the golamb says, your desirability as a
target has gone up. Why is Morden doing that?

Speaker 3 (28:36):
Because he can't kill Rand because he's linked to him.
Ever since he's realized the crossing the streams has created
a link between him and Rand. Remember he says to
samrog Or, he says, like, I didn't I told you
not to hurt him, and he like flexes his hand
because his hand's all fucked up. So at some point
before then he realizes the connection between them, and if
Rand is killed, he will be killed as well.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
So he's cranking up the heat on the other two
boys in the effort to try to do the cut
one leg of the tripod exactly a fall down.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
There, exactly right. He's been concentrating on taking out Rand
this whole time, and now he's like, fuck, I can't
do that. Let me go ahead and concentrate on the
other two.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Right, which also in fairness, as you approach the final battle,
the guy gathering the army and the guy who is
many many generals compiled into one are both big military
assets that would be worth taking out.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
Right right now, and Parents gathering all the assets of
that whole section of rand land. Right And but in
a lot of ways, Matt is creating the technological basis
for the army that's going to make it a more advanced,
more modern army against.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
Can I make a force equalizer against Magic?

Speaker 3 (29:40):
Right? No, I would have loved I do think the
one thing that you could have done is it increased
the speed at which Matt and Paren brought their relative
forces and technology back to Rand, and have Rand sort
of unify them and have like Matt's cannons and maybe
even guns be given to all of Like the white
Cloaks might be more active force if you give them guns.

(30:02):
Can you imagine like giving your cop guns right now?

Speaker 2 (30:05):
I mean, but the white cloaks are a cavlory force
and you need horses to move cannons. Like it totally
makes sense.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Right, So I would have liked to see more of
that cross pollination between like the forces that Parent and
Matt brought together, and like Matt being like, oh man,
I've got these cool technologies. I just don't have the people.
And Parent being like I brought Malden and Geladn and
the two rivers and all of these people that are
just going to come streaming out of gateways for hours

(30:34):
and hours and hours and hours and hours.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah, that would have been great, But alas we will
be back with Matt. He thinks about as he's headed
towards picking up Tom, he thinks about how his letter
to Elaine hasn't gotten through yet, And at the end
of these two chapters he talks about how he's going
to have to send a stronger, more colorful, ridiculous to
get her attention because we know that Nori has just

(30:58):
shuffled his email office spam right, because he's just another
mercenary Captain any Lane has not had the chance to
see his letter, much less rejected.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Oh something else. By the goal, it seemed impossible it
could have gotten here this quickly. What do you think
about that wait points.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
I think they just doesn't have to eat or rest.
It can just run all night. I don't think it
operates accord to normal human speeds. Plus it could have
like grabbed a horse or a ride on a cart.
Like I just think that Matt underestmeates how fast it
can move in the more traditional sense. I don't think
it has magic.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Magic. I don't think it has magic, but I think
according with the new orders, it was also relocated and
he can't go through Well it can go through gateways, No.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
It can't. It's dark, it's shadows spawn. Just can't go
through gateways.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
How did they kill it again? Oh?

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Okay, fair enough, I can't go through gateway all right,
all right, okay, gateway forward, that would work, That would definitely.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
This is the only shadow spawn they can go through
gateways as far as we know.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Why does it get an exception.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Because otherwise it would be too easy to kill or
he didn't think of it when he was doing the
I mean, like that is I think one of the
many ways to kill a golam. You know, always always
look at the article fifty ways to kill a Golm.
Always a fun one. But yeah, no, it seems like
as shadow spawn. My guess is it's not strictly shadow spawn.
That it is made in a way that the Green

(32:21):
Men were made. It's an artificial construct.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Oh, not inherently evil, more like made of magic.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
Yeah, yeah, and then a lot of ways, like the
Golm is a vampire. Right, the Golam drinks blood, survives
and is sort of something other than shadow spawn. I
don't know. I'm not sure they seem to be. And
also they have a very unique relationship with side and insidear.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, I was thinking about how it interacts with the
medallion and how that's the only thing that can hurt it,
and the medallion is so unique in its ability to
just absorb and ignore magic that somehow there's something going
on there with their essence of being. And also it's
not made of normal flesh. Right, it looks like flesh,

(33:08):
but it does not interact like flesh.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
So, you know, my best guess is some somehow gateways
are an effect of the one power. Right, it's not
once in the same way that throwing something, you're imparting
magic momentum onto it. But once it has the moment,
the mass has the momentum, it can hit you. Right. Gateways, Yes,
it's a magic gateway, but once the hole is open,

(33:31):
you're just stepping from normal air to normal air. Why
does that kill traulics and fades and everything else. I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
Maybe it's because their souls are twisted and you have
to have like an intact soul in order to like
transpose yourself across space. Otherwise it's just there's a snag somehow,
And maybe the goal is so artificial it doesn't even
have a soul exactly, yeah, exactly, it's a construct. Like
you said, I mean not that Someshta didn't have a soul,

(34:02):
because obviously Semesha was a very good tree boy. But
I don't know. This some metaphysics here that I think
maybe even the great world building Sanderson didn't fully think
out for us.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Because I do kind of believe that the Gateway should
kill a Golam as shadow spawn.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, I'm just very I would like to hear a
scenario in which a Golamb is not shadow spawn? Is there?
What about its creation makes it distinct? Because I could
believe that there's some other reason for having made Golam
that was not inherently evil, the way that like trollocks
are evil, right, the entire inspiration behind them is to
be evil. Is there a Golam that wasn't?

Speaker 3 (34:41):
But Agenor made the Golam right, just like he made
all the shadow spawn, you know. My only assumption is
that he based them much more on the O gear
than on than the soul twisting.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
But like, O, gear have souls, right, they're aliens, But
like so I guess, yeah, the question just did the
nim have souls as constraints?

Speaker 3 (34:59):
So okay, here's the thought that maybe he used the
True Power in creating all the other shadow spawn, but
because he had a template, he was able to use
the One Power to create the Golams. The onngreole that
cancel the One Power are created with the One Power.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
Sure, yeah, okay, and.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
The Golam is essentially one of those constructs brought to life.
And so maybe he's like, oh, if I bring in this,
you know, I see these onngre all that can cancel
out the One Power. If I use that weave plus
the creation of the the Semeshta and bring those together,
and instead of giving it a soul, I use it
doesn't have a soul. It just uses the blood aka

(35:35):
the souls of of its victims. Maybe that's a way
to create something that's like not shadow spawn, but just
a really crappy version of a Semeshta.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
But we know that they only ever made six because
they were too dangerous. It's definitely not tech that was
widely adopted, so yeah, sure, why not.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Whereas all the other shadow spawns seem to be shall
we call them monster generators, right, they seem to be
able to just kind of pump them out based you know, oh,
are they breeding technically, but like they're coming from somewhere.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Right, Whereas the golamb were definitely like constructed in a
lab individually. Each one was prototype put together on a stand.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
Yeah, where it feels like all the other shadow spawd
can breed.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, they're self replicating, they're animals.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yeah, whereas the Golms are definitely not. So you know,
to me, I think it makes sense to say the
Golms are something else. There's something else that Agnor created
And yeah they're in the Shadow spawn because they're controlled
by the Shadow and they're evil, but they don't qualify
as the spawn of the Shadow who have the corrupted
souls mixed together.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
That makes sense because every other shadow spond has you know,
a heart and a brain and other organs that can
be damaged and destroyed, whereas the Golam is just pure
something all the way through. Yeah, it's much more like
technology than like an animal. Fascinating.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
So as Matt's sitting there playing heard about the goal
on He's basically planning, how am I going to kill this? Right,
it's time to stop and face the goal omb.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, He's like listing all the people that have died
and kind of psyching himself up, being like, I'm going
to kill you. I'm going to deal with you. I
Am not going to keep running for you. And then
he doubles down on that later when he has more
dead people to be sad about. But like, this is
the beginning of him starting to turn around and be
ready to fight.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
And really he encounters it in the next chapter, there's
a fight, but the time after that he kills it.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, this upcoming time, he doesn't ask for it when
he kills it. That was a fight he specifically went
out looking for. It's I love the cat and mouse
of him taking the golum down. I actually really like that,
even though it's so Sanderson, but I'm here for it.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
And unlike with Slayer where it's just teased over and
over and over again, it's like, once he sets out
to kill it, he kills it.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Yeah, Matt does not fuck around. Once he puts his
mind to killing someone, that someone is dead.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
HM. It's funny because I always the description of parent
is almost the what Matt's like, right, someone he ponders
everything and is very careful before he does things. In
a lot of ways. Yeah, he gambles in the moment
when he needs to because he understands odds, but only
because he's thought about every single scenario. Like then, oder
times we've seen Matt stay up at night planning out

(38:24):
every single scenario in his head over and over and
over again before the battle, Like he does that mmmmm,
whereas Parent doesn't really plan anything. He responds very instinctively
to things.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
But he thinks about everything. He says yes, sor really,
whereas Matt just spouts off whatever is top of mind. Yeah,
there's different kinds of impulsiveness.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
There's always ends near city gates, not the nicest ones,
but always the most profitable ones. I feel the same
way about airports, right, It was always hotels hotels around airports. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah, now they're no good, but they're close and they're cheap, and.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
In a lot of ways, airports are the modern city gate. Right,
that's the you have inspections, you stand in line, you
have guards like that is you know, we don't have borders,
but we certainly have high high security at our gates
aka which you fly into a gate, right.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Like, Yeah, there's just no equivalent at the road. There's
no like equivalent structure at the road, equivalency like between
like at cities. Obviously between nations there are, but like
at a city, you don't get stopped at the city gate.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
But I like the idea that, like mont planes are
are modern. That's how we get our cities is people
coming from Now cars are obviously a big open way,
but in some ways you can't really fly into this
country without going through an airport.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Well, it's a difference between a country and a city.
Our country is a continent wide. At a city is
you know, especially in this world, only a few square
miles in our world they can be many more square miles,
but in a fantasy world they're going to be like
ten square miles or whatever.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
You also have more city states, right, you have these
places that yes, it's a part of a country, but
in and of itself it kind of exists as as
a state.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Yeah, but we don't have wald cities anymore. And that's
when a gate really is a thing. That's an option.
But once you get airpower, Walled cities don't really make
sense anymore, and then you're back to airports are now
the gate.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
So he goes to hang out with Tom, and he
goes to the two Apples, which is one red and
one eating down to the core which is red and
light the end orn colors.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
It's cute. There's a lot of good bar iconography going
on in this chapter. And of course Tom is going
to a patriotic inn.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
Of course we get a reference like Matt had seen
tons of people play and Tom was better than on
any of them. Right, this court barred who came to
the two rivers who, Like in the beginning, you're like, oh,
he's just a gleaming like any other and it's like no, no, no,
he's special. His performances are way better than average, always
have been.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah, like this this is actually like I don't know
David Bowie, right, This is not just another musicians, not
a David Bowie cover band exactly, this is actual David Bowie.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
So he's playing a sad song. You know who's Tom
sorrowing for?

Speaker 2 (41:07):
I mean Moraine, either that or Owen, but I think
Moraine because he doesn't know if he'll ever see her again.
He knows he's gonna try, but he doesn't know if
he's going to succeed.

Speaker 3 (41:16):
So the only other person was like, maybe it's a
Dana Vienna reference. Oh yeah, But like, as he's moving
on to go rescue this new girl, he's leaving behind
the one he mourned for all this time, but right.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
The one that could have been the one snuffed out
too soon. Yeah, he was definitely he loved her as
an apprentice and as a woman, so he could definitely
be mourning for like I could have had an apprentice,
But Moraine is more top of mind that. The next
thing he says, can we go to the tower? Can
we go to the tower? Can we go to the tower?
Are we going to the tower yet?

Speaker 3 (41:48):
So yes, Moraine is my conclusion as well. There's a
bunch of people here because Camlin's you know, you're not
under the control of the dragon or the sean Chan
technically rumber Lane pulled down the dragon banners and then
she wrote right, so she's they're independent in that way,
so which is why she's got a lot of people
flocking there and the food isn't going bad because she

(42:09):
is on dragon side. Dragon does support her. His influence
is keeping the food from going too bad.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Yeah, as fast as fast. They have some funny physical
comedy where Matt tries to collect his money so they
can go soon, and Tom throws a knife at him
and then goes oop, sorry, I didn't see it was you,
and then Mac goes you, you may damage my coat,
and Tom's like, you're really continuing with this, You're not
a noble bullshit?

Speaker 3 (42:33):
Right now only nobles complain about their coats.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
The stitching is gonna show what farmer cares if the
stitching is gonna show.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
I'm no noble. You married one that literally makes you
a noble. You're a prince of the Ravens. Too bad,
And he even thinks at one point like, well, I
guess there's no avoiding nobles for me. I married a noble.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
I won't admit it out loud.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yeah a head. Just because he's asked to deal with
them doesn't mean he is one.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah yeah, so yeah. They walk back to the camp
talking about all the things go Lom and a Ginji related.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
And they don't bring their horses into the city because
horses are meat.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Horses are expensive and edible.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
It's like you don't bring your car to the bad
part of the neighborhood. You take the bus, because if
you know you have to leave it unlocked there, it's
probably gonna be broken into.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
I mean, if you leave it locked.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
I love Portland, but the property crime on cars is
pretty bad.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
You didn't need that catalytic converter.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
For that unbroken side window.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Why would you need an unbroken side window.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
I've learned don't leave change in your passenger seat or
anywhere exposed, because that's an instant broken window. That sucks. Otherwise,
I love Portland, but for a while the property crime
was really bad.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
I like how Matt can remember Camelin over all of
well not all of his memories, but over many of
his memories. He's like looking at Camlin and be like, oh, yeah,
I assaulted it that one time, and I tried to
attack it that other time. And man, that's a tough
city to bust into. Like I just I like the
seeming together of all his memories, but also just the
fact that Camlin's been around for a really long time.

(44:06):
It has seen some shit.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
They get confirmation of where the Tower of Gunjai is,
so a lot of conversation about Tower of Gunjai and
how we're gonna go do it a little bit of that,
like can you believe we left here and I'll go
hunting after those girls in tan Chico and everything that's
happened since then, uh huh uh huh.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
And then and then the varn part where Tom's like,
I don't trust Varon, there's something off about her, and
Matt says, I'm a pretty good judge of character, and
I like Arn. I think she's all right.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
She's not a dark friend in disguise or anything.

Speaker 4 (44:37):
Okay, Matt, Well, the funny thing is that Matt's right,
she is a good one. That's funny to me about
it is that Tom knows she's a dark friend, you know,
he's intuiting it. And then Matt knows that she's actually
a double agent working for our guys, really under it all. Like,
I just and obviously she's done bad things, like in

(44:58):
the course of her career doing that, But I just
love how they both are picking up on different pieces
of her subterfuge. Yes, they're both good at reading her,
they just come away with different impressions.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yes something is off, and yes she is a good person.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah, both things are true.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
Actually, both things are true.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yeah, I'm sure that Tom is picking up on the many,
many murders and war crimes that she has done over
the past seventy years, whereas Matt's picking up on her
like end goal ironic given that he has one of
her end goal letters in his hand and refuses to
open it.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Right, just do it. There's a reference to the thugs
who jumped him. Those were definitely dark friends, right, even
though again he's like, oh, thugs just just on as
good pickpockets. Like all the times in Camelin, all the
times he was in chat chased by dark friends. Every
time he's like, oh, they're after my purse. It's always
dark friends, Matt, It's always dark friends.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
I figure the reason that it is easy to brush
off as a regular robbery is because they were very
low level dark friends who had absolutely no chance and
were more or less self into sheeting like, yeah, man,
we can get him, Like you are the lowest level
thug in your entire city, Mafia. You're not taking this
guy down. He's not even going to realize you're bad guys,
Like that's how incompetent you are. But yeah, I cannot

(46:11):
believe he's ever been attacked by our regular, honest to
god criminal. No, they're always dark friends.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
And then he gets worried that as he gets back
to the camp that the three I sid I have
come back.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
I'm assuming that's because while they were in the city
they got wind of the fact that the tower has reunified,
because that's the next thing they come up to him
and say is we've heard the tower has been reunified,
so we got to bounce. So I'm assuming that's why
they came back early from their excursion one hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
And those three, I said, I are Teslin, Joline and Editsina.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah. Yeah, the red, the green and the shrinking yellow.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
I think yes, Ediscene is yellow.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
See Matt's upset that they're back in camp, but fortunately
they'll be gone as of like tomorrow morning, basically, so.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
And of course he has horses for them. He goes
to that whole thing where he's like, horses are too expensive,
and then when he's ready get rid of them, here
are your horses.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
I recounted. Uh huh hmmmmm, sure sure.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
And I like this so I want to read this
paragraph about memories because he says more and more, he
had simply accepted those memories as his own. He had
not asked for them, no matter what those bloody foxes claimed,
but he had paid for them with the scar on
his neck. They had been useful on one more than
one occasion, and the idea that they're just part of
him in a way that he doesn't have to think about, right.
I always thought that was a really good contrast to Rand,

(47:28):
who has these memories in his head but also has
a personality to go along with them, and like how
much that is? Oh, the personality is the insanity. The
memories are real, but this personality that comes along with them, well,
Matt doesn't have that, and he's not insane.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Right. If Matt had generals screaming at him what to
do in the moment, he would probably be having a
harder time too.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Write, right. Instead, he just accepts them as his memories,
his experiences, and he gets to live and act as
though he went through those events and learned from them.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Rand could have been doing that this whole time, understanding
that the voice and the memories are separate. That could
have been a thing he didn't obviously, but he could
have in theory, because yeah, he never talks about having
memories that are insane or distorted. He has traumatizing memories,
or he has memories of, you know, like Iliana's being
dead and all that, but he also has memories of

(48:20):
like climbing plum trees and growing up here and there
and meeting Forsaken before they were forsaken, like they're normal
memories in the sense you know.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
Well, he does say most of them are battle memories
at various times.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
No, Matt's memories are battle memories because the Finn picked
them up. But like Rand's memories from loose there and
are not distorted by insanity. They're just the memories of
a man who lived right right right.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
He lived that life. Yeah, he remembers that life, like.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
Some of it's traumatizing, but none of it's like warped
like you know Peta in the Hunger Games. Or he
gets his memories all like messed up on purpose. Like
we never get an impression that the memories are distorted
with Rand. It's just the voice that comes with them
memories that makes Rand think it's all bad.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
And this is different than flicker flicker flicker, where he
lived those lives, but he never took away any skills, right,
It's not like he got to actually absorb. He kind
of has memories from those, and the memories fade. It's
similar with going through the rings with the novices.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Yeah, yeah, with the apprentices for the wise apprentices. Yes, yeah,
you take away emotional growth, but you don't actually.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Have like skill right for living all those lives. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
So Matt gets to his tent and just before he
can go inside and get attacked by the golom, Tesla
shows up and gives us a slight stay of execution.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
And a real sort of reversal of typical isidie behavior,
which is she thanks him legitimately from the bottom of
her heart for all the help that he's provided, which
is just like rare. That's one of the reasons to
we like Teslin.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Because she has growth. She has growth, she has growth.
She goes from men are useless, this one in particular. Two,
I owe you a favor, and you can come to
the White Tower itself and color if you have to.
Like that is so much growth from any eyes to
die much less a red who really didn't have much
to do with the plot other than interact with Matt.

(50:10):
We like her because she's so unique, and also because yeah,
Matt getting appreciated for his work and getting the thanks
and actually accepting the thanks, as it doesn't happen that often.

Speaker 3 (50:22):
Nope. And then then he enters the tent and smells blood,
which leads us right into the next chapter, blood in
the air.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Not even an eye blink of distance between those two
things happening.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
And here we have the snake in the wheel as
our chapter icon for plot. Matt ducked immediately. That instinct
saved his life. As something swung through the air above
his head. Matt rolled to the side, his hand hitting
something wet as it touched the floor. Murder, hellowed murder
in the cab, bloody.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
Murder, he screams, bloody murder.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
Something moved toward him. The tent was completely black, but
he could not hear it. Matt stumbled, but luck was
with him again. As something swished near him. Matt hit
the ground rolled, flinging his hand to the side he
had left there. He came up beside his sleeping pallet,
his hand grasping at the long wooden half there. He
threw himself backwards to his feet, hauling the ashen dary

(51:29):
up then spun and slashed, not of the form moving
through the tent toward him, but at the wall. The
fabric cut easily, and Matt leaped out, clutching his long
bladed spear in one hand. With his other hand, he
reached for the leather strap at his neck, his fingernails
ripping at his skin. In his haste, he pulled the
foxhead medallion off and turned in the brush outside the tent.

(51:49):
A weak light came from the nearby lantern on a
post at an intersection of a camp pathways by it,
Matt made out the figure sliding out of the rip
in the tent, a figure to see the goalm looked
like a man, slender with sandy hair and unremarkable features.
The only thing distinct about the thing was the scar.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
On his cheek, a present from Matt.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
And that was when it accidentally fell out of his
shirt and burned him right. That's when he discovered what
the medallion could do.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Oh yeah, that wasn't even a deliberate scar. That scar
is the result of him learning that it can be
used as a weapon. But he hasn't. I think he
hits it somewhere else in that fight, and then he
hits it in this fight, but the chek scar isn't
is the accident?

Speaker 3 (52:32):
Is the accident? Yeah, you hear it sizzling a couple
of times, but like this one, I can imagine like
it fell out and landed on the cheek and they
both were both just like what and then and like
the goal like probably didn't like remember the first time
touching a stove. He was probably not expecting the pain
or the fire at.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
All, right, And he like throws Matt off of him
like ow yeah, and then yeah, he treats the thing
like it can hurt him, which is a completely unique
experience for the goal. The golamb has no preservation threat
assessment routines, Like he's had to figure that all out
in direct reaction to that.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
Moment ties the Ashendari to the half of the blade
so it can the blade becomes a weapon. I don't
think the blade itself actually like gets any of the properties.
It's not like the blade suddenly will touch him.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
It's just it just holds the object. Yeah, yeah, the medallion,
Yeah exactly. If he hits it would be really cool
if it activated the whole blade. But no, he literally
just has to smack the medallion onto the goal.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
Would that not be badass? If he discovered like a
slot in the base that he could put the medallion
into that then activated the whole Ashendari into a powerproof weapon.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
That would be so op.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
The gold talks. You should be proud, it whispered. The
one who now controls me wants you more than anyone else.
I have to ignore all others until I've tasted your blood.
We talked about that, thinking it's probably a shanele right
more it in.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
But yeah, it is a little bit of a contradiction though,
because it does say I'm not supposed to kill anyone
else until I've killed you, and then later it says
I'm going to kill a bunch of other people in
order to get to you. So I'm like, oh, which
is it? But it's not a nice to die. It's
allowed to lie, and it's killed.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
A bunch of people for food purposes, so it's not
like it's ignoring everybody else. It's still killing people to eat, right.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
I like that Matt has practiced with putting the medallion
onto the Ashendar. I appreciate that little bit of like, no,
he's actually like in front of the TV just practiced this,
not over and over again kind of thing. But he's
still stupid enough to attack because that's who he is
as a person.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
And then he's like, why did you kill Thailand? You
could have left her alone, And I like his response.
A bird must fly, a man must breathe, I must.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
Kill wind blows, rainfalls.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Golm kills. But it does give you a very guilt
free like this thing needs to die, right, that's it.
You're never going to negotiate with it. There is. It
doesn't want anything other than to kill.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
It's a force of nature. It's not yeah, it's a machine.
It's a force of nature. It is not a negotiable person.
It looks like a person, it is not a person.
You don't have to feel person feelings about killing it.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
And I've been told to kill them all. The man
with the mustache that's Tom, the aged one who interfered
last time, Nol, and the little dark skinned woman who
holds your affection, Tuon. And later he's like, how does
it know about Tuon? And I was curious if you
had any.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Theories dark friendery?

Speaker 3 (55:23):
Could it be Varren? It's not me? When I'm being like, oh,
it's Varren, it's not Vern. It's not Vern could have been, it's.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Not, It's probably not.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
Can you go back to that section and be like, yeah,
so even though we know it was dry, I'm just
gonna pretend. Let's pretend like we don't know that and
then talk about this as though Varren was the one.
We're just gonna pretend that we don't remember that, okay,
and then this next section we're gonna talk like Varren
is the one who did it. She hasn't betrayed the

(56:03):
dark side yet, right, So we always have this debate
how much before Varren is able to betray her oaths,
how much dark Frienderie, how much information does she pass
on about Matt?

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Where are we at with respect to her death? Because
her original opening to Matt, because in the letter to Matt,
she says I had hoped to return in a few
days and relieve you of it. And we are more
than a few days into the waiting period at this point,
which means she's dead already.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
Right, And we're gonna get rumors, like you said at
the end of this about the tower being right, like,
we already got those, so like, so we know she's dead,
So we know she's dead.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
She absolutely could have passed that information on at some
point just to stay in good standing, because I mean,
she is the shan Chan Empress. I don't really see why.
And I said I would want to protect that woman
from the Kalam, right, huh? I mean, because yeah, like
what we don't. Varren is the best positioned dark friend

(57:04):
to have passed that information along efficiently. But I hate
to think of Varon betraying one of our heroes as girlfriends.
But she is the head of the shan Chin Empire,
so I don't really care that much.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
And like what other dark friends has he interacted with
with Tuon right, like he was kind of there. They
were on their own, traveling avoiding everybody. As far as
I know, they're no dark friends, you know, unless unless
this is trying to set up you know, van In
type situation, because that is a bit later where that
you think Vannon could be a dark friend.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
But Oliver isn't mentioned, and Varren, as far as we know,
has no reason to know about Oliver, and also might
be inclined to refrain from mentioning the child's name given
that there's other good targets to offer up. So that
h I'd never really thought about it. I was just like, yeah,
dark friends, no things. But Varren does make a lot

(57:55):
of sense. But does Varren actually see too On? She
does because she comes to the camp. Hmm, so she
would have she would have seen and heard about Tuon
because isaid eye stuff, because Varren knows hmm. Wow, Varren
gave information and it went through very few hands before
it was passed down to the Golum.

Speaker 3 (58:14):
Makes sense what I think, that's what I think.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
I mean, Tom's right that there's something wrong about that woman.

Speaker 3 (58:19):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like we do just
get that reference to Varin as well. So so Matt's
being attacked. I love how Teslin is effective against the Golam.
She grabs the knife, not the Golam's hand. She pulls
bat out of the way, not trying to push the
Golam away. And remember this is all back to when
she threw pooh at Matt.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
I mean Atalie's and van Den are the ones who
figured that out. Tesla never threw poop at him. Oh,
different expedition.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
I could have sworn though that she was one of
the I said, I who was fucking with him at
some point.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
No, she respects him too much because of saving her
from the shan Chan thing.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
Oh, you're right, that wasn't her. But I thought those moments.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
I do believe she has observed the phenomenon directly. I
don't think she did it, but I do think. No,
it was Jolene that was doing it and Tesla and
yelled at her about it. Right, But Jolene is doing it,
so Teslain knows it works.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
Yes, that's I guess. That's what I was trying to say,
is there's those moments where like the iceid Eye were
fucking with his power and like messing with it, and
that very much helps her at this point because she knows,
oh this same rules as the medallion.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Right, and like Matt yells that to her in the moment,
you know, Weaves won't touch it because obviously, But yeah,
she's already thinking, let me grab furniture out of the
tent and just keep hitting the go along with chairs
and stuff. That'll keep it away from Matt. Yeah. I
you love to see power being used effectively. And yeah,
Matt thinks I would have been fine if you just
put me in the air to keep me safe. That
would have been okay. But we know that that's not

(59:40):
how the rules of channeling work. And he even thinks
about that.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
Well, and he even thinks that he's like, I've never
seen anyone lift anyone up more than a foot or so,
like I'm not never going to be high enough. I
think these two red arms are two more fan inserts.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
No they're not. They've they've been around since Jordan books. Yeah,
they've they've been around. This was one of the ones
that kind of hurt me because I'm like, they've never
really been front and center, but they've been around since
like early days of the formation of the band, and
they just get taken down like NPC red Shirts who
have never been on page before. It's so brutal.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
We look them up. I did not do that ahead
of time.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
It says here. Both men who had survived the time
of Oh, like they know they know what they're facing
because they saw Nlysian die and they still like try
to It tears my heart out, so siaed like Matt
tells them, like you know, no, don't. It's just such
a slow mow like reliving of what happened with with Nalician.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
Oh yeah, no, they know all about the goal from
Winter's Height, Winter's Heart and everything like that. I mean,
they're just, you know, they're Red Arms, right, They're these
existing guys who have been around in a bunch of
these scenes, not doing anything specific to them, but they've
been in a lot of these scenes.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
They're like the faces of the Red Arms. We have
to get new faces for the Red Arms now, but
before we can mourn them too much, Matt remembers that
there is a literal child who might have been hurt
and goes dashing back into the tent desperately looking for
where did all that blood come from? Is it olver?
And it's not over? But he still has to find
Lopen and two of his other Red Arms, and everything's

(01:01:11):
bloody and it's it's all very sad and upsetting.

Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
Riddlem and will Reeve, Are those also old school Red Arms?

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
No they are not. So maybe those are the fan
inserts that your spidy sensors are pointing to in the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:01:24):
I was like, I knew there were I felt like
there were two of them.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
And will Reeve, I don't know that that. I don't know.
Those feel like very I could.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Believe that looking them up now.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Every time that a random character dies. I'm just going
to assume it's one of the fan inserts, like literally
every single one. If I've never seen you before and
I'll never see you again, presumably you helped Sanderson write
the books.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Congratulations, Welling, nothing popping up like it did with Chase.
So that's of all these characters, Chase is the only
one that I've been able to see a note on
that actually confirms he was a fan insert.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
I want to believe.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
It's just what It's hard to see names that are
so modern and not go. Yeah, those are probably or
modern with a little bit of a twist to.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Them, especially when they did not have to be named
in order to be bodies right right, Like he could
have just been two red arms. We didn't have to
have names. Why are their names so? Yeah, Matt thinks
sad thoughts about Lopin. Lopin had only just started to
get over Nalsian's death. He's the reason that Matt was
able to get out of at Budar. Like, he's been
an important support character that Matt has mostly complained about,

(01:02:30):
and now he feels bad because you know, now he's dead.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
Yeah, he shouldn't have complained about him because he died
for you. You know, it's like he's now had two
bodies servants killed by the Golam, right, no, just one alive.
Didn't Lopin take over when Narium was killed.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Matt took on Lopen because Nlsian died. But Nalsian was
a fellow nobleman.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
Oh okay, but didn't Matt have one of his man
servants killed?

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Yeah? No, no, no, he's had two man servants this
whole time, and this is the time he got a
man servant killed.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Who's this other one?

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Narm?

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
Oh? Oh gee, I got Naram and Elysium mixed up.
I'm sorry to n words.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
It's name.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
I don't know where your problem is. Oh oh, no,
you're right, because because Matt says I need a new
serving man to Elane. So you're right. This is his
second serving man to get killed. I forgotten Narim died.
I'm a lot fan. I'm a bad fan.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
That's what I'm saying. Narim died. I just got the
name wrong, that's all, okay, all right?

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
No, fair enough, fair enough?

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
Uh? And I did find Riddam is named for Tom
for Tim Riddle, a fan of the Wheel of Time boom,
so he is a fan insert.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Yeah spidy senses on point.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
Yeah, well there's two of them together, that's the other one.
Yeah sure yeah, so Tim Riddle, congratulations.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
We found you. San Nole comes rushing up, apologizing to
Matt for scaring him by taking by having all for
sleeping somewhere else, like I'm so sorry. I should have
gotten him home, and Matt's like absolutely never apologized for
keeping him over at your house. He's alive, because thank
you so much for a grandpa's sleepover.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
Yeah. It's like if a car hits the house and
plows right through your kid's bedroom and he's like staying
at his grandparents' house and you're like, oh my god,
thank god.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Right, and they're like, oh, I'm sorry, we should have
called you, but like our phone died, and it's like,
don't care, don't care, it's fine, don't care, it's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
Yeah, but you have that moment in a panic because
he's you know, like, oh my god, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
He's supposed to be there, and you like go in
looking for the body, right, and like the Golam would
not have spared.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
A child, absolutely absolutely not.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
I like how they're they're thinking, you know, and they
jump later an hour later, blah blah blah. They're like,
we hope that he will never know how close he
came to dying. Yeah, I suspect he's going to find
out someday. Some day, some drunken Red Arm is going
to tell him when he's like nineteen, and he's going
to be like, wait, what happened? I was doing?

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
What I was a story? Oh my god? Well, because
I can just imagine Matt and Oliver being like, Oliver
is going to grow up and like be this adventurer, right,
so Matt is of course going to be involved with that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Yeah, and a lot of the other Red Arms. You know,
he's going to be visiting these guys wherever it is
that they decided to finally retire to. He's going to
go visit his uncles and whatever. And yeah, stories that
were not meant to be told to him will eventually
be told to him.

Speaker 3 (01:05:08):
Because he's gonna have to go off and find the
uh aeel who killed his parents.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Right, He's going to need to meet a lot of
side quest characters with little quest assignments along the way.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
Do you even figure out? I mean, like, because it's
it's basically like no way to find out which particular
iel killed his parents. Right, there's I always imagine like
he's going to go on this quest that will never
be possible to be fulfilled.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
Oh for sure, exactly. He can't let it go despite
the fact that even if it was possible to find
the man who killed his parents or his dad, like
I probably died at like do my as wells, right,
or you know one of the other many times y'all
just got fucking blasted.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
Yeah, Malden, because we know they were shido right, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
It was Shidow. So yeah, that person probably died at Maldon, honestly.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
And if he didn't, they're back in the waist, dying
slowly from the waist.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
And yeah, Oliver will never find them in the waist,
there's no. But that doesn't mean he won't meet every
interesting person in all of Middle Earth trying to find.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
Them, right, Right, So it's the quest for the Holy Grail.
The point is not to find the Holy Grail. The
point is to go on the quest, right exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
And he is going to write such a good book
at the end.

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
Of that, yeah, Rival Jane forst Writers.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Exactly, the first book to ever come close to touching
that book will be from.

Speaker 3 (01:06:20):
Oliver and he'll be like, so in my childhood I
was with Matt.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
And no one will believe him. Right, Oh right. So
here's the explanation for why Tuon is on the hit list.
Is because the Red Arm was captured and tortured by
the Golam.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
But I can't believe neither one of us don't remember that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
Yeah, I highlighted it in my notes, but that was
like a whole two hours ago. Why would I remember It's.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
Not me when I'm being like, oh, it's Barren, it's
not Barren, it's not Barren, could have been, it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
It's probably not.

Speaker 3 (01:06:53):
Can you go back to that section and be like, yeah,
so even though we know it was dry, I'm just
going to pretend. Let's pretend like we don't know that
and then talk about this as though Varren was the one.
We're just going to pretend that we don't remember that, Okay,
and then this next section we're going to talk like
Varren is the one who did it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
Editing alradio rather than.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
Just I could make that work editing already.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
By the way, we're wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
So, yeah, Darry was kidnapped, tortured, and one would assume
told them everything about Matt that he knew, except for Oliver.

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
Oliver was not mentioned on the hitlist. Did Dari protect Oliver?
Did the goal? I'm not care about Oliver. What's going
on there?

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
It might just be that the goal one of those
like didn't think to ask about children.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
Could be, could definitely be. And Darry was like, I'm
not going to volunteer a child's name if it's exactly
exactly going to help me get out of this moment
of torture. Yeah, well, I love being stupid on recording.
It's great, humbler.

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
The whole point of that is that you can added
to make yourself sound smarter.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Except when you make it a whole comedic bit.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
Well, fair enough, then you just you're hanging a hanging
a what's that term, not hanging a noose on it,
hanging a picture on.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Hanging yourself by your own petard, hoisting yourself by unpetard.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
No, that's not, although very close to what I was
trying to say. No, it's it's when there's a mistake
and instead of trying to cover it up, you frame
it and like show it off and be like.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Here's the mistake, and is there a term for that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
There's there's a there's a there's a literary term for it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
Yeah, happy accidents would be the Bob Ross way of
looking at it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:31):
But it's hanging as something this is.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
Actually new to me today.

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
I'm learning let's see, Oh my god, having.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
A bit of a mondala effect on yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
Yeah, this is really frustrating. Hmm all right, I don't know.
I can't find it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
Happy accidents. We know that one, but.

Speaker 3 (01:08:49):
It's it's specifically a phrase referring to if you've made
like a continuity error. Instead of like ignoring it, be like, oh, yeah,
that's a continuity error. We made that. We did that
for this reason, like have your characters go back and
address it or be like, I can't remember.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
It's like like an element of breaking the fourth wall
to it kind of thing, a.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
Little bit, a little bit of just being like, you know,
we know it's ridiculous, but ah fuck.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
I know the vibe you're talking about. I just can't
think of any phrase that encapsulates it succinctly, that has
a little pizzazz of a literary reference and roll with
it obviously is a way of expressing that but like
I can't think of it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
Yeah, I'm really struggling to It's one of those things
like put a sock on it or you know, Uh,
it's like just a dumb phrase.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
You know. Well, when you remember it as you're falling
asleep tonight, try to remember to text me about it tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
We'll do.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
We'll do, because I believe you. I just don't think
i've ever heard it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:46):
So Okay, back to the chapter. That's the chapter where
Matt's talking about hunting the golm right with Heslim.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Tom and Knowle. He's thinking about, Oh, if it's going
to go after two on, it wouldn't do that, right,
it wouldn't. There's only one way to keep it from
hurting my wife, kill it, right. This is this is
the he's been deciding he wants to fight it, like
all throughout this episode. This is when the decision is
fully set.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
When it threatened his wife.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
Yeah, when it almost hurt his kid and is actively
threatening his wife. Like now, the vague feeling that he
has to face it is concrete. It's not vague anymore.
And he says, I don't know what we're going to
do to kill it, but I know that there's an
article out there that has fifty ways to kill a
gall um listed on it, so we're going to just
work our way through all fifty and.

Speaker 3 (01:10:30):
They do like one. I do believe that pushing it
off a platform and letting it fall forever is one
of the ways.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
Yeah, I believe that is the lore of that story,
is that people did actually think of the way to
do it that ultimately gets used in the book Hang
a lantern on it. Yes, Mom Jeans has finally come
through with your with your phrase.

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
Thank you hanging lantern on I knew it was ancept
thing picture frame and I was like, that's not right,
it's hanging something on it. Hanging a lantern on it
is a writing technique where the writer acknowledges a potential
inconsistency issue in the story, reassuring the audience that they
are aware of it, and ask them to accept the
narrative as presented. This helps maintain trust and engagement with
the story, being like, I know this doesn't make sense now,

(01:11:11):
but I'm doing that on purpose because later it will
make sense. We're going to come back to that, or like, yes,
this is this is okay, all right?

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
So the phrase is either hanging a lantern on it
or lamp shading. I have never heard that phrase before.

Speaker 3 (01:11:26):
Yes, lamp shading. Yes, I've heard it called lamp shading before.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
Okay, fascint, Thank you Mom Jeans And also amazing serendiputy,
you were holding a lantern and a frame while this
conversation was going down on the recording. That's amazing. The
pattern was with us on that one. Really needed us
to get that literary reference. All right, awesome, I have
learned to do phrase today, lamp shading.

Speaker 3 (01:11:51):
Jimmy was not a lander Matt laundry mat this Sunday,
but it's already been established that Jimmy goes to the
laundermat every Saturday. The lantern jim Sarah knows Jimmy's there
to create intrigue by pointing out clues. Sarah was at
the lunery mount until noon, but there was no sign
of Jimmy Odd odd right, that level of like character
noticing something inconsistent and not just like stating in the

(01:12:12):
narration and never going back to it. Okay, so you're
pointing it out in a way that's saying I'm going
to address this.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
Later, making it narratively obvious, like you, No, you didn't
catch me in an inconsistency. I got to it first.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
All right, cool, why were we even talking about that?
I've completely lost the thread of why that was brought.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
Up Varren and dairy.

Speaker 3 (01:12:33):
Oh maybe, yeah, yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
The whole editing process to like make it fine, right right, right,
right right, we're like meta meta meta now med at
this point, right right.

Speaker 3 (01:12:43):
I'm hanging a lantern on my mistake about dairy and
making it funnier because yes, got it, lamp shading, my ass.

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):
But is it a sexy lamp? That's what I want
to know.

Speaker 3 (01:12:55):
Well, and you can gas light about a lamp shade?

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
Oh shit, you can.

Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
No, No, I always knew that was a problem. I
totally didn't make a mistake, and in retconning.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
It, yeah, Gnome was always able to talk mentally with Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
Anyway, Oh, editing a radio, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
Thank you. Editing a radia is definitely more gray haired
than recording a radia.

Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
So they're sort of forming a strategy. He's going to
sleep in a different end every night. They have to
take the boy with him because it's.

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
The only way to keep him safe and out of trouble.

Speaker 3 (01:13:33):
Right, I mean it's more of fear.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
He left Heslin behind thinking she'd be safe, and then
she was killed. So the goal he can't leave the
boy anywhere he's been unprotected.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
Yeah, no, he will do that mistake once in his
life and that is it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:46):
Then there's the Matt Grimace, the way all of her
leered at women. If he ever found out which of
the Red Arms was teaching the boy to act that
way around women, It's you, Matt.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
It's you. You are the problem.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
It's this is where I say this this chapter is
aggressively Matt. It's both using a bunch of the He's
old consistent, like this is something that Jordan said over
and over and over again, and Sanderson's bringing it up,
but he's also sort of and he's doing the whole
checking women out, and like, I just feel like this
is aggressively. Aggressively Uh, Sanderson saying I finally got Matt

(01:14:17):
a little bit. Whether he has him or not, he's
got a better version of him than he had in
the first book.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Aggressively Matt is definitely the way to describe this. This
is so mad. We're like reprising everything Matt's ever done,
pulling out all of his little phrases and mannerisms.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
We've got dice in the head, We've got luck, We've
got wow. Why is my bluck up luck?

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
Ever?

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
You know, what is Tavereen doing for me? All of
his lord? Yeah? Oh yeah, I'm not a bloody lord
like this.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
Is just like, you know, a little bit of lace.

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
Oh my god? Yeah god, it's matt catchphrase city. If anything,
That's my problem with his chapter is it's like, did
you have to do all Matt all at once?

Speaker 2 (01:14:57):
Apparently?

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
No, not a parent He's not doing parent, you said. Apparently.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
Oh oh we done with this recording yet.

Speaker 3 (01:15:10):
I'm I'm I'm way off topic. I'm so sorry. I
would bet a little tired, you bad buns. I might
be a little tired.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
Yeah, all right, Okay, So they're planning all that, and
then a different Isidie comes up to Matt's tent and
calls for him, And this is the less fun Isidie
that we enjoy less. It is Jolene basically coming to
give the same information and request as Teslain, but with
way more attitude and a lot less gratitude.

Speaker 3 (01:15:35):
And he has a good line where he's like, okay,
you can have the horses. I already promised them Teslin anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
Yeah, Mike Drop, just chef kiss Mike Drop. You didn't
even have to come ask at all because Tesla and
already did.

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
And then he's like, uh, I need to go talk
to the queen, and Julian's like, are you going to
swear to her too? And He's like, fuck, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:57):
How well is she gonna know it's me? Which, in fairness,
his colorful language and bad spelling is why Nori brings
it to Elaine a formal letter with you know, spell
check and letterhead. Nor just puts it in spam. But
if it's got like really creative spelling and doodles, well
now we need a human eye on it, or a
queen's eye in this case.

Speaker 3 (01:16:17):
Right right, Yeah, he got past the spam filters by
being really weird exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
I mean it's like when you text your friends and
you want them to know that it's you, and you
use in jokes, right. This is Matt's equivalent of an
in joke because him and Aline don't have much in
the way of in jokes, but swearing is one of
the things that they can bond on.

Speaker 3 (01:16:34):
Oh and you think I'm domb and can't spell. Okay,
I'll send you a letter that's spelled really poorly, and like, yeah,
it's just it's I get why he does it. I
really hate the letter. I really hate the letter in
kran that's poorly spelled.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
The letter itself is frustrating, but the sibling dynamic between
Matt and Elaine that it carries is great. Yeah, right right,
And her letter back to him, or her verbal response
back to him, is funny. It's just it's close, it's close,
it's close.

Speaker 3 (01:17:02):
The letter is just too childish.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
Just a skosh, too childish. But yeah, there you have it,
Matt's Knight on the town with death and mayhem.

Speaker 3 (01:17:12):
The I would call it the beginning, Sanderson saying, hey,
we're going to kill the goalm off. Now we're starting
that plot line.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
Which, like, at this point, as a first time reader
through his books, I was like, I know that Sanderson
does an amazing action sequence, and the Golomb has been
impossibly scary, so I'm really excited that Sanderson is saying,
let's take down the Golomb. I'm like, all right, dude,
I trust you to make this very fun and I
will not be disappointed spoilers. Now, I love that fight.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
The spinning multiple spinning Ashindari is such a great visual
to hurt him.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
Yeah, and then when he just like plants a boot
in his chest and spits after him, and it's just
so good. I'm so excited for that.

Speaker 3 (01:17:54):
Like I said, my only problem with that scene is
the aren't shadow spawn dying when they go through gateways?
The answer is not goals apparently.

Speaker 2 (01:18:01):
For reasons which we can pontificate on literally forever.

Speaker 3 (01:18:06):
But I do think that that one of the reasons
the Golam got to him so fast is it got
gateweight there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):
No, that totally makes sense. That totally makes sense. My
my explanation was really reaching because yeah, I just forgot
that they can pass through gateways.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
Ah well, anyway, well that was a fun one. That
was That was good. I always enjoy a little bit
of Matt.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
Yeah, it started out slow, but by the end we
really had picked up some steam and it was fun.

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):
Well, having having the golm I think was definitely fun.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Yeah, yeah, that's more fun when he's in danger.

Speaker 3 (01:18:38):
Definitely, definitely when he's being attacked. But yeah, thanks for
joining us again. That was that was a lot of
fun and we're back to some parent chapters next week,
so strap in.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
Yeah, and otherwise I don't know. Listen to podcasts that
I make, and I make a lot of them. There's
a lot of them. There's show notes, did links. Listen
to them? Also, people, you should come to my support
group on Thursdays. Why are you not coming to my
support grup on thursdays? Do it?

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):
I work?

Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
Poor?

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):
Excuse what that's the only excuse?

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
No, it's it's a problem. If only I could clone
myself m I know.

Speaker 3 (01:19:18):
That feeling, then I could go to go to work
and come to your sessions.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
Yeah, yeah, then I could do sessions far more often.
But anyhow, everyone out there, you should drink some water.
I know I give that advice a lot. But it's
as good today as it was yesterday.

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
And then I think we should do patreons next week.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
We should do patreons next week.

Speaker 3 (01:19:37):
We've had a few. I've seen a few come through
this past month or two.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
Awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):
We always we always get a couple after we announced Patreon,
not always, but with the most frequent time is when
we do a big long list of patrons and then
like two or three weeks later, when people actually listen
to the episode or when it gets published. You know,
we always get a surge right after that, so it's
almost like thanking our patreons. Remember Mind's people. Oh yeah,
I want to be a Patreon.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
It is so important to plug your stuff constantly on
the internet, on podcasts, wherever you're doing your thing. It
is so important to plug where people can find you
and that they should support you when you publish your stuff.
It is so hard to do that. It feels so
narcissistic and self aggrandizing and selfish and just all these
bad things. But as a consumer of said content, you know,

(01:20:23):
it's really important that people remind you. It takes seventeen
reminders before you sign up for a thing or whatever.
It's yeah, so thank you to everyone for joining our Patreon,
and yeah we'll do patreons this time probably, and then yeah,
we can struggle through your name, which is definitely a
perk for some people.

Speaker 3 (01:20:43):
I'm here to butcher it. What can I say, I'm
a butcher of names.

Speaker 2 (01:20:48):
Yep, that's what we do.

Speaker 3 (01:20:50):
So if you want to hear your name mispronounced in
a probably unique way, feel free to put it in
there for me. A Radia can attest, OURDA can attest.

Speaker 2 (01:21:03):
Yeah, in fairness, that was not the most unique mispronouncing
my name I've ever heard, But yeah, I'm pretty sure
we've come up with some wild ones on here. Anyway.
I think if you listen through to the after show,
you can hear us talk about stuff to do with
the show, the Amazon show, and it's lack of existence.
But if you don't want to hear about that, then
now's your chance to leave.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
Bye bye.

Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
We gathered here today to discuss the perversion of rights
from Sonia to Amazon to iWant.

Speaker 3 (01:22:12):
Fill me in. I have some idea of what happened.
I've read some stuff, but what's your understanding of what's
going on here?

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
The rights that Amazon and Sony have to the Wheel
of Time show have gone back to iWant otherwise known
as Red Egal Entertainment. Who is who was holding it
first ever since Jordan sold them stuff like back in
the odds. That is the extent of what I know,
And they that I read was yes, and they released

(01:22:42):
Winter Dragon and everything else is just pure speculation, but
those I believe are the facts.

Speaker 3 (01:22:47):
The only other thing I want to talk about was
the Wheel of Time trading card game that they appear
or the card the Sorry, not the card game.

Speaker 2 (01:22:55):
It's an online rpg.

Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
Yeah, the online rpg, isn't it. Cards of Time?

Speaker 2 (01:23:00):
It's not Cards of Time. No, no, no Cards of Time
as Koalasa dies, lovely little trading card thing.

Speaker 3 (01:23:05):
Sorry, cards of Eternity. There we go, I believe is
what it's called.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Yeah, and that they I remember them mentioning that, like
when the show first got announced or something like, that's
an old thing they've been kicking around.

Speaker 3 (01:23:20):
Maybe I'm googling the wrong thing, hold on something. They
announced something pretty recently.

Speaker 2 (01:23:25):
But yeah, they've had this obsession with AI generated art
stuff like for the past as long as AI generated
art has been a popular trending thing. So for the
past three four years.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
News broke the Wheal Time franchise was being adopted into
an open world role playing game from IWAT Studios. I
just I can't take them seriously. They've they've made so
many announcements about big things that have never ever ever
come to pass. The only thing they did that ever
ended up accomplishing anything was literally selling the rights to
Sony and Amazon. And so the only time they've ever

(01:23:59):
produced any anything they produced the nineteen nineties first person
shooter game that was like you're an isid eye and
you pick up angry all as like spells.

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):
Yeah, oh yeah, I've read reviews of that game. Some
people have said it's pretty fun.

Speaker 3 (01:24:12):
It's it's a decent game, but only because it's just
Quake with a skin on it, right like.

Speaker 2 (01:24:17):
So it was a good game before it was reskinned.

Speaker 3 (01:24:20):
So it has nothing to do with Wheel of Time
really in any way, shape or form. Like, it's other
than they name a few things. You're casting spells instead
of shooting things. Like they skinned it a little bit,
but it is it's not a Wheel of Time game,
so there's no lore. You're a nameless first of all,
you're an accepted you're not even an isid eye, right like,

(01:24:41):
And so that therefore you can't channel, so you can
only use on greall, which is just like wait on
grell you can use those one channeling. It doesn't make
any sense anyway, So they've done that. They put out
the comic book that had a couple of issues via.

Speaker 2 (01:24:55):
The worldl the graphic novel. Yes, oh that's right, Eagle,
iHeart WoT.

Speaker 3 (01:25:02):
They put that out and it was really successful until
they refused to pay the artist and he gave up,
and then they had a really bad artist to finish
out the book, and we have a series of really
really bad comics after the really really good ones, and
then they canceled it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):
Huh. I have never really bothered to pursue why there
aren't more of the graphic novels. I never thought about
that once with my conscious brain, but I did know
that there's like, yeah, two and then there's mmm.

Speaker 3 (01:25:29):
The other thing that I want has done is, you know,
by they maintained all merchandising rights to the Wheel of Time,
so Amazon, the company that sells physical things, couldn't sell
any merch to the Wheel of Time TV show, which
may have had a lot to do why it was canceled.
Because if you can't make money off of something through merchandise,
that's a huge junk of potential income. Band I Julie

(01:25:51):
produced a few things right on the side because they
had a pre existing agreement. But Amazon wasn't producing any
of the T shirts, ran sweater, like the rings, the swords,
all that stuff could have been sold, you know, just
all the costuming, right, Why wasn't Why aren't they making
replicas and selling it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:08):
I want and I want made Winter Dragon, right.

Speaker 3 (01:26:11):
And I want made Winter Dragon?

Speaker 2 (01:26:12):
Yes, when they were read Eagle Entertainment, Yes, I.

Speaker 3 (01:26:15):
Want and read Egal all are the same company.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
Yeah, okay, yeah wow Yeah. I mean with musicians, some
of the most amount of profit that musicians make is
from physical sales of like T shirts and CDs and posters.
Like touring is about getting people's eyeballs on the merch right.
So I don't know how well that translates to the TV,

(01:26:36):
but it seems like there should be some equivalent to Yeah,
if you have a product in an entertainment piece, you
should give people the ability to buy objects associated with
said art.

Speaker 3 (01:26:48):
So, you know, as a company announcing this, you know, oh,
we're going to make this incredible boulders Gate three type
style game that's going to be you know, it's just
like I don't believe you.

Speaker 2 (01:26:58):
It's like, I mean, I fucking wish, but yeah, I
know you're not You're not like I.

Speaker 3 (01:27:01):
Just I you know, it's it's the Anchorman scene. I
don't believe you, Like I just don't. It's it's whatever
they say is not believable. And when when serious news
organizations take them seriously, and they're like, here's the announcement,
and we think it's actually going to happen this time.
It's like, yeah, well they've had the wolf pulled over
your eyes too. Now, if they sold the rights to

(01:27:25):
another company to make a product, then I might believe it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:28):
Which is totally possible. They now can do that because
Sony and Amazon have given the rights back. I want
could sell the rights. No, not holding my breath that
they will.

Speaker 3 (01:27:39):
But and and it will always be a you know,
it's very obvious they have a it will revert back
to us, right. That's that was the whole point of
Winter Dragon. That's why it existed, because they have these
contracts where it should be reverting back to Harriet, it
should be reverting back to Team Jordan, right, And it's
it's these other people, these business schools who got Jordan's

(01:28:00):
to deal with them back in the nineties, promising him
all these things that it turns out they couldn't do,
and now they're sitting on it basically as patent trolls.

Speaker 2 (01:28:07):
I mean, Robert Jordan made one mistake. He was a
perfect man, never made any mistakes. He made one mistake.
He was signing with these fuckers. Oh, that's such a
it's such a bummer. It's such a bummer. It's such
a good IP. And these are such ridiculous, petty troll
reasons for it to not be getting actualized. Like, these

(01:28:28):
are not good reasons. It's bad reasons.

Speaker 3 (01:28:33):
And it's so funny because it's like I could be
making a lot more money if they would release some
of the controls.

Speaker 2 (01:28:38):
I wonder what stick is up their ass?

Speaker 3 (01:28:40):
Exactly a business stick.

Speaker 2 (01:28:42):
I've seen businesses make better choices than these people. Like
many other ips have managed to come to Fruition without
a winter Dragon level of shit stain along the way.

Speaker 3 (01:28:53):
Yeah, but they got in, they got in the nineties
in a way that doesn't well, it doesn't matter. Don't
talk about the book. I think I'm done talking about that.
That that's me. I'm just like, oh yeah, real world politics, bullshit.
It sounds awful and uh, just you know, I guess
my closing statement on that is just like any announcement
with Wheel of Time, and I want like just take

(01:29:14):
it with a big grain assault and assume it's not
going to happen until they show actual evidence of it happening.

Speaker 2 (01:29:19):
Yeah, I'm nodding. Let's get to the book. Thank you
for listening to the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast. Please
rate and review us on your podcast app and consider
supporting us on Patreon for ad free episodes. Watt Spoilers
is a production of Fox and Raven Media. For more
podcasts from Fox and Draven Media, visit our website at

(01:29:42):
foxendravenmedia dot com.