JarydTVTTest
| Season 1, Episode 6 | Released November 23, 2022 | |||||
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Episode 4 Transcript
[00:00:00]
Doll
Hello, and welcome to another edition of TarValon Talks. I'm Doll and I'm joined by Thad and Dianna. And today we're gonna talk about Michael Livingston's The Origins of the Wheel of Time.
Welcome to the show.
[00:00:24]
Thad
Glad to be here.
[00:00:25]
Dianna
We finally have it.
[00:00:26]
Doll
We, we have it. Finally,
[00:00:28]
Dianna
it's here. So excited to talk about it.
[00:00:31]
Doll
Yes, read through it like, well I listened to the audio book mostly but,
[00:00:37]
Thad
and then you're gonna read through it again, right?
[00:00:39]
Doll
Yeah. I'm gonna take a little more time to read a little slower so I can take a little more of it in cuz it was so much, and I have a tendency to get lost and thought when I listen to the audio books, so I may not have absorbed everything.
[00:00:52]
Thad
But you absorbed something and that's what we're here to talk about. Yes,
[00:00:54]
Doll
I've definitely absorbed some things. There's a lot of things in here that also already knew, but I learned a little more detail about.
[00:01:01]
Thad
I was gonna say, I, I think of the three of us, you probably have the most experience with the author side of all of this.
[00:01:09]
Doll
Like, you mean just from my years of working with JordanCon ?
[00:01:13]
Thad
Pretty much, yeah.
[00:01:14]
Doll
And being in the fandom. Yeah. Yeah. Having spent a lot of time talking to team Jordan and Harriet over the years, just from JordanCon and other events that we've been at. And Maria is, um, Maria and Amy are both members of the Brown Ajah. Although they don't post a lot, we honorarily added them to our Ajah so they always come to our toast at JordanCon when they're there.
And, uh, I've gotten a lot of, a lot of information just from those relationships, cuz every now and then we'll hear another story about Jim. Like one of my favorite ones, Maria said when she first started working for him. And her first job was to organize his notes, the notes that were used to write this book, and she said they were just piles of paper, and they weren't even all just like papers.
Some of 'em were written on napkins, some of them were photocopies of books from the library. Some of them were flyers that he gotten from museums and things like that. It was just stacks of random stuff and she went through and alphabetized and put them in folders and she found like royalty checks.
[00:02:19]
Thad
Wow.
[00:02:21]
Doll
It just gotten in there and she's like, you need to cash these. He's like, oh yeah, I guess I should. I said, no, I wish I could have, you know, money sitting around and I didn't care about. But, uh, anyway. Yeah, some of the, the history here, like learning about his childhood, I don't think I knew any of that really.
I didn't know he was, he had so many siblings. Well, I guess I. Because Wilson called himself the fifth of four or something like that.
[00:02:48]
Thad
The fourth of third.
[00:02:49]
Doll
Fourth of third. Yeah.
[00:02:51]
Thad
But that was, that was cousins. That wasn't like siblings. Well, I'm sorry. He's the
[00:02:55]
Doll
cousin. He's the cousin. And the The brothers were, he was the fourth brother of three.
[00:03:00]
Thad
Yeah, that's what it was.
[00:03:01]
Doll
Yes. But I didn't realize like just how big their family was. I know I heard the story about how Harriet him met.
[00:03:08]
Thad
I don't know anything. Jordan as a person, to be honest, like I, you know, bad fan, don't keep up with the, uh, the author.
[00:03:18]
Doll
I don't think that's a bad fan.
[00:03:20]
Thad
Ah, you know, you got your super fans who they know everything about, everything about the author and stuff like that.
Um, I guess in this case, Michael Livingston technically counts that now considering he has written a book that we're here to talk about.
[00:03:33]
Dianna
He is the super fan of super fans for sure. Let's talk about his intro then. So like you Doll, I had the audio book cause I'm getting the physical copy for Christmas and have promised the person who was giving it to me that I will wait until Christmas to actually physically read it.
But because we were recording this podcast, I was like, I'm gonna get it. My hands on it another way. So I listened to the audio book and hearing Michael Livingston's voice read that letter, made me tear up every time. He said, magic isn't real. Magic isn't real. Magic isn't real. Right? And you can like hear the emotion in his voice.
Oh, it's so good. If you've only read the physical copy of the book and not picked up the audio book, I cannot recommend it enough. It is incredible.
[00:04:14]
Thad
That's me. I, I do wanna get the audio book.
[00:04:16]
Dianna
Listen to it, thad. It's incredible.
[00:04:18]
Doll
And before that, the letter from. And just hearing her voice cuz you know she's retired from Cons now.
[00:04:25]
Thad
Oh, does she record that portion? Mm-hmm. .
[00:04:27]
Doll
She did. It was so good to hear her voice. Mm-hmm. . And now I'm gonna cry . I miss Harriet.
[00:04:33]
Thad
It's very sentimental.
[00:04:34]
Dianna
Yeah, it is. I expected the Harriet letter to make me cry and it didn't. Um, and I don't know if that's because I was in public while listening to it, and I generally don't cry in public, but the Michael Livingston letter made me sob and then Robert Jordan's biography made me sob.
So, uh, they're both just so moving and especially when he was talking about hearing about Robert Jordan's death and then the repercussions from it. Um, I was 17. 17 years old when Robert Jordan died. Um, and I, like it took me right back to that morning at the kitchen table with my parents showing me the obituary in the newspaper.
Um, and took me right back to those emotions of, but I just discovered this series. I, I think I'd only been reading it for like three years at that point. Like I just discovered this series. I just fell in love with it. What's gonna happen now? And like, I'm not, while we're recording just talking about it, but like, it took me.
It back to that place.
[00:05:36]
Doll
Oh gosh. Yeah. That was, that was a hard time. Like I'd been following the, the blog that he wrote and then Wilson did, I got the impression from that last few entries that it wasn't going well, and then my husband Robert called me. From work. Cause I was still in bed. He's like, I'm sorry to tell you that Jordan passed away.
And I'm just like, but yeah, I remember that day and I remember the way everybody came together as a fandom and then the very first JordanCon, I think some of that was in the book as well. He talked about the recordings, even if he didn't mention them being played or the one that was being played. He mentioned the story of Wilson going out and buying the tapes and recording the dictation and all that. And that's just so hard to hear.
[00:06:24]
Thad
It is etched into my memory, especially hearing that recording after hearing him previously talk at other stuff. Mm-hmm. and then hearing like
[00:06:33]
Doll
it was hard.
[00:06:34]
Thad
It was brutal.
[00:06:35]
Doll
Okay.
[00:06:38]
Thad
(laughter)
[00:06:39]
Dianna
We are all crying guys.
[00:06:40]
Thad
You can, you can show you, you, you can, you can tell how just tied we are to this, uh
[00:06:45]
Doll
Yeah.
[00:06:46]
Thad
Book series and, uh, Michael Livingston definitely does not pull any punches very early on with the stuff within the book.
[00:06:53]
Doll
Yeah. And then hearing some of the background from his childhood and through Vietnam. I don't think I had ever heard the story about how he killed the woman that ambushed him in Vietnam and how much that tied to the whole thing with Rand keeping track of all the women that died from his hand.
[00:07:11]
Thad
Yeah. For me, that was a very like, whoa moment that that whole Vietnam portion just tore me up reading about all that.
[00:07:18]
Doll
Like I had heard some of the stories, the machine gunner story. I'd heard him tell that before. Some of the other stories I hadn't, or maybe it didn't hit the same way as it did this time, was knowing and connecting it back to the books and basically writing out his PTSD in these books through Rand.
[00:07:37]
Dianna
Mm-hmm. . These books are a lot of therapy for sure, but in a good way.
[00:07:41]
Doll
Yeah, in a good way though. It's, it is very good depiction and. I never made that connection before.
[00:07:47]
Thad
Yeah. Cuz in chapter three, I think they even bring it up when they're talking about the binaries of the wheel and stuff like that. How specifically when they're making the point of what does Reign have to be a man and stuff like that.
And they just start talking about, you can relate it back to his Vietnam stories about all of this, and specifically that it's fixing broken masculinity.
[00:08:08]
Dianna
Yeah, it was really interesting. So again, Michael Kramer, I believe that's his last name, correct?
[00:08:13]
Doll
Mm-hmm.
[00:08:13]
Dianna
Uh. read the biography portions and then Kate Redding read the glossary.
When Michael Kramer was quoting Robert Jordan, especially when he was talking about, I'm not a hero. I'm not a hero. He was using the same voice that he uses for Mat and I don't know. That influenced my perception of it. But those quotes, the, I'm not a hero. I didn't, I just did what I needed to do. I was just in the right place at the right time.
Felt so Mat like to me, which was so interesting that like you can, like Robert Jordan, I believe in the past had said that all women have a facet of Harriet. But it was so clear that all of the men, especially the main boys, all have some facet of Robert Jordan and them. Um, . It was really, really clear in that portion of the audiobook especially.
[00:09:00]
Doll
Yeah. I think Mat literally said that line at some point.
[00:09:04]
Dianna
Mm-hmm. , I'm not a bloody hero.
[00:09:05]
Doll
I'm not a bloody hero. , I just did what I had to do.
[00:09:08]
Dianna
That was basically his self title.
[00:09:11]
Doll
Yeah. (laughter)
But yeah, I don't think I realized he played football.
[00:09:15]
Dianna
Yeah, it was interesting to hear how sporty he was.
[00:09:18]
Thad
Yeah, that was kind of surprising too. I wasn't expecting that. I like that in the biography portion, that when he was doing it for sports, I guess he was on a sports scholarship, but you know, he had been thinking about, oh, I wanna write, I wanna write, and he was doing so poorly in school. That's what made him just, go join the Army.
[00:09:36]
Dianna
Made sense too, cuz his dad had also been in the military and his grandpa was in the military.
[00:09:40]
Thad
Right. And I think that was probably a factor in that decision.
[00:09:44]
Dianna
Yeah, absolutely. He came from a family where they had a history of service so it made sense as well. I think it was in the previous episode, in the Slog episode where you guys talked about the, specifically the shooting down of the. I.C. not ICBM, that's an interconti..
[00:10:01]
Thad
RPG.
[00:10:01]
Dianna
Yeah, sorry, .
[00:10:03]
Doll
Wow. That would've been impre... Really impressive.
[00:10:06]
Dianna
That would, that would be even more impressive. I do not know anything about the military or war or any weapons, so I apologize. People who do, but where he shot the grenade basically out from the helicopter and it was super cool to have that story than like told in more detail and like,
[00:10:21]
Doll
yeah.
[00:10:22]
Dianna
Kind of confirmed,
[00:10:24]
Doll
Yeah.
[00:10:24]
Dianna
In the book, I listened to the Slog episode and then that portion basically back to back, and that was very fun for me in particular.
[00:10:33]
Doll
When I heard that story, I was like, oh, oh, I'm sorry for this spoiler I didn't know he was gonna bring that one up.
[00:10:40]
Thad
Obviously once I started reading about Vietnam, I knew it was just time before it showed up.
[00:10:44]
Doll
Mm-hmm.
[00:10:45]
Dianna
Mm-hmm.
[00:10:45]
Doll
It makes sense. It was one of his biggest stories or tall tales or stories. So I didn't make it up. I swear I heard him tell it .
[00:10:54]
Dianna
You clearly did not make it up.
[00:10:56]
Doll
Nope. But, uh, when you get to the, the how, he actually wrote the book, I known from Brandon's lectures that he's done at JordanCon, that Jordan was considered a discovery writer.
But it like just seeing the discovery process and the way things shaped and changed and like, The story that they, he was gonna tell at first, like the first time he went through the notes is so much different and it's, it's crazy how much it changed.
[00:11:28]
Dianna
It is crazy. I have been trying to write a fantasy book for a long time and also love editing books other than like any fiction whatsoever really. Um, and so I'm currently in the process of editing a fantasy book and. Hearing about the process was very, very fascinating for me from those two facets. And I took a lot of his process and how it changed and evolved over time. And I have actually been using some of those notes essentially to the friend whose book I'm editing, just saying like, things can grow, things can change, things can evolve.
Just because you've written them in this draft does not mean it has to be that way. And really like kind of encouraging like a. A fluid evolution. I also, when I was younger and trying to write, really wanted to imitate Jordan's process, not even not knowing what his process was, knowing that like I wanted to write a fantasy book like this one because I loved it so much, and now knowing what his process is, I'm like, I don't even know that I have the mental fortitude to go through all of that.
[00:12:35]
Thad
It is insane, insane. I've only gotten through the first portion of the Jordan at work, but just the three examples that they give on his biggest inspirations, just the white goddess alone, which I had never heard of before this book I, I didn't even know that existed. The other two I had heard of.
But, um, with the way that he kind of reinvents and squishes everything together, like we al we always knew that it was, everything was always in an amalgamation of, you know, different cultures and stuff kind of stripped down a little bit, but not to this extent, at least for this guy right here.
[00:13:09]
Doll
Yeah, like a lot of the source material, like I'm not as familiar with like I know, or three and legend to a degree. I read Once and Furture King, I have not read more Arthur or any of the others. I'm familiar somewhat with the, some of the, the Shinto gods and stuff like that, but not to the degree that he was. And it's just amazing how much detail and like, yeah, I knew that the names were like mish mashes of Arthurian Legend and other cultures, but not to the degree that he went to.
I didn't get half of the references. I thought .
[00:13:48]
Dianna
Mm-hmm. ,
[00:13:48]
Thad
right?
[00:13:49]
Doll
Like I thought, oh, I've got most of them, but no, cause I get even further down, like taking Galad for example. Him being Galahad, but also like sort of twisting the Galahad thing. He's not Lancelots song or anything, but seeing like how he took the Galahad story and twisted it and pulled it in and changed it and used it as a allegory almost like, no, he doesn't like allegory, even if it's more applicable, but to show you how faith is a good thing to have, but allowing faith to twist you into something darker. And not just Galad, obviously was the incorruptible one, but through the White Cloaks showing us what true faith looks like versus what you had in like Jachim.. Jachim...
[00:14:37]
Dianna
Jaichim Carridin?.
[00:14:38]
Doll
Carridin. Yeah, Jaichim Carridin.The corruption that faith can take and I'm like, that was like a lot deeper than I ever thought it was.
[00:14:46]
Dianna
Yeah, it was fascinating. I had like you Thad, and like you Doll, I'd never heard of The White Goddess. Now I really want to read it.
[00:14:53]
Thad
I kind of do.
[00:14:54]
Dianna
Even though it's like they made it very clear that it is essentially,
[00:14:57]
Thad
it is like a fever dream of a story.
[00:15:00]
Dianna
It's also essentially pseudoscience for mythology. It's good to know going into that because it is a very like tantalizing myth that there would be one monomyth, but that the monomyth would be rooted in something vaguely Western is, you know, a very like Western way of looking at things that definitely might, might not be true.
Um, but I really wanna read The White Goddess now. I also, I've never really cared about the Arthurian legends very much, despite being a fantasy fan and being an English major in college. I sort of like read them because I had to.
[00:15:29]
Thad
Well, you've never been a 15 year old boy.
[00:15:32]
Dianna
That is true . Um, but I do kind of now wanna read Le Mort d'Arthur. I've read a feminist version of the Arthurian Legends whose name. I cannot remember off the top of my head.
[00:15:43]
Doll
There's so many of them.
[00:15:45]
Thad
Yeah, there's tons of them. And you know, one of the other, um, books was basically this crazy guy in the 14 hundreds. Basically just took all of the legends and tried to weave them together into like one story. And we've even had a modern movie made off of that, which is the Excalibur movie. So that's the closest common translation of it that we could possibly see.
[00:16:07]
Doll
I think another one that really surprised me on thatwas, the way that Nynaeve was going to be, both the Morgase character and I'm trying to, um, I guess she was both Morgase and The
[00:16:22]
Dianna
Lady of the Lake.
[00:16:24]
Doll
Yeah. . Couldn't think of the other, the other name off the top of my head. Yeah, so like, She was gonna turn dark and.
[00:16:33]
Dianna
And trap Morgase in a mountain or not Morgase, Moiraine.
[00:16:35]
Doll
Yeah. I'm glad that that didn't happen.
[00:16:38]
Dianna
Yeah, that would be, that would be a wildly different Nynaeve. Also, the Lan at one point was go Galad's father and like a secret lover of Morgase and like that would've been wild.
[00:16:50]
Doll
So crazy.
[00:16:51]
Dianna
So crazy.
[00:16:52]
Thad
That would've been something else, for sure.
[00:16:53]
Doll
Yeah. Speaking of Lan, I feel like a complete idiot and I never connected Lan and Lancelot. .
[00:17:01]
Thad
Same here. That's, that's the thing that killed me is when I looked that up in the glossary, it was just like, I, I picked up Artur Hawkwing almost immediately.
[00:17:09]
Dianna
Mm-hmm.
[00:17:09]
Thad
But Lan.. celot, no, not even close. They even talk about, specifically in the book how, uh, Jordan said that most people didn't even pick up that Artur Hawkwing is King Arthur until like three books in.
[00:17:21]
Dianna
Which is crazy cuz that that is one of the names that is the most clear I think.
[00:17:26]
Thad
Yeah, it's the most obviously.
[00:17:27]
Doll
Cause it Paendrag like
[00:17:29]
Dianna
Yeah, Paendrag.
[00:17:30]
Thad
Yeah.
[00:17:30]
Dianna
Yeah.
[00:17:31]
Doll
It's the Pandragon, like, that's Arthur. Like, yeah, I got all of the, the Morgawse, the Egwaine, Merlin, like all of those references I got, but it didn't get Lancelot.
[00:17:44]
Thad
I only knew Nynaeve just because they gave it to us earlier this year.
[00:17:48]
Doll
Oh yeah. That Nynaeve's name I didn't quite catch, but all the other ones, But Lance at and Lan. It's probably the, almost outside of Paendrag, it's like the most literal translation and it went right over my head.
[00:18:05]
Dianna
The one that I did not catch for anybody was all of the Merlins that are in WWheel of Time. So there's Amyrlin. Like, hello. a Merlin. Never got that. Thom, Merrilin never, never got that. His last name was, was Merlin.
[00:18:21]
Doll
Mm-hmm. .
[00:18:22]
Dianna
Uh, I think Moiraine, is I think that they said that she has like a, some Merlin,
[00:18:29]
Doll
uh, There was something in her name.
[00:18:34]
Thad
Morgana le Fay is what she's uh,
[00:18:36]
Doll
Yeah, she's Morgana,
[00:18:37]
Dianna
but she is a Merlin as well, because they talk about how her and Thom, the reason that like meta, the meta reason that they get together at the end of the book, which I think I,
[00:18:49]
Thad
well, it does say that he ultimately abandoned the Merlin parallel.
[00:18:53]
Dianna
Yeah. but she, she is, she is a Merlin in some ways because it is a union. Her and Thom getting married is a union of two Merlins, and so it brings the Merlin back together. I think it might have been when he was considering Moiraine to be the Amyrlin because she was a Merlin.
[00:19:09]
Doll
I think you're right.
[00:19:10]
Thad
Yes. Yeah, you're right. You're right on that.
[00:19:12]
Dianna
There was like, there's at least one other Merlin reference that, and I've understood literally zero of them. . I also didn't catch that Thom was Tom Doherty, and I feel very silly for saying this, but I've never caught that Tom Doherty and TOR like, I didn't realize that was how TOR was created. And that's where the name TOR came from.
[00:19:34]
Thad
I feel like I already knew that one because I feel like Tom Doherty mentioned that at, at JordanCon long ago when we were in a panel talking about real life, uh, connections to the Wheel of Time. And that's where we first learned about, there was one that was revealed in that panel that made everybody in the room go, wait, what?
And now I can't even remember what it is. I, I, I feel like one of them was that Jordan just took. A Chef Boyardee can and did something with it, and that one came from Allen. So I don't know. I don't know if he was just messing with people. ,
[00:20:11]
Doll
That's entirely possible that's not in the books.
[00:20:13]
Dianna
Mm-hmm. .
[00:20:14]
Doll
I don't remember seeing a Chef Boyardee in there. There was one that, and I'm trying to think of who I was talking to recently, and it may have been somebody in my like, not TarValon life, that said something about always wondering if Far Madding was related to Far From the Madding Crowd, and it is confirmed in this book, although I think I told that person that it most likely was because that's just how Jordan work and where I got his names from. But if you haven't ever read that book, that is a, that is a trip .
[00:20:42]
Thad
I guess while we're talking about glossary entries, do we just wanna go ahead and talk about it?
[00:20:45]
Dianna
Yeah.
[00:20:46]
Doll
Yeah.
[00:20:46]
Dianna
Let's dive in. So when we interviewed Michael Livingston, he said he didn't want to ask what entry we were most excited about because he didn't wanna disappoint us.
And then, and that made me very worried because the entry that I was most excited about was the entry for Amaresu, the Hero for the Horn. Um, I am in addition to a Wheel of Time nerd, also an anime and Japanese nerd, um, and was right around the same time that I was reading Wheel of Time, got introduced to the idea of Japanese mythology Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess.
And so when Amareasu shows up in the. That was when I first, when it first clicked for me, like, oh, oh, these books are like our world. This is Amerterasu, the all of the Heroes for the Horn have allegorys in our world. That is so cool. And like took my appreciation of Wheel of Time to like a whole other level.
And so I was really worried that Amaresu wasn't going to be in the glossary. And then she was. And it's like one of the first entries when you listen to it just alphabetically. And I was like, oh, there she is. And he mentions Amaterasu and I was so pleased and that. That is my favorite entry in the glossary for that reason.
[00:21:59]
Thad
I guess you're also a big Okami fan, huh?
[00:22:01]
Dianna
I am, yes. anything that's like, even vaguely Japanese in this in Wheel of Time, I'm like, aha, there you are.
[00:22:09]
Doll
Mm-hmm.
[00:22:09]
Dianna
I see you.
[00:22:10]
Doll
Yeah, there's a lot of it.
[00:22:11]
Dianna
The Hadori, all of that.
[00:22:12]
Thad
So, so, so basically the Northeastern cultures in Randland are, are, are your bag?
[00:22:18]
Dianna
They are. They are my bag. They are my bag. Although I really, really like, um, the Domani but that's a whole other conversation.
[00:22:28]
Doll
Damani?
[00:22:29]
Dianna
The Arad Doman, and...
[00:22:31]
Doll
Oh.
[00:22:31]
Dianna
their, uh, I know they, they sound so similar to like the do damani
[00:22:36]
Doll
Damane. yeah,
[00:22:36]
Dianna
yeah.
[00:22:36]
Doll
I'm like, are you talking about the slaves?
[00:22:39]
Dianna
No, no, no. Not, not into that part. Although I do have a very weird fascination with Seanchan, but not in a, like, I like their culture way, just in a, I'm fascinated by their culture way
[00:22:49]
Doll
It us a fascinating culture.
[00:22:53]
Dianna
Yep.
[00:22:53]
Doll
In, um, in a morbid way.
[00:22:55]
Dianna
Very morbid way. No, the, the culture in Arad Doman, um, I find very fascinating. But anyway, that's a whole other side conversation.
[00:23:02]
Doll
Yeah. Uh, like speaking of the heroes of the horn, it was fascinated to realize that one of 'em was John Henry that I didn't catch that.
[00:23:11]
Dianna
Mm-hmm.
[00:23:11]
Doll
when I read it.
[00:23:13]
Thad
I've, I've heard that, but I, I never knew it was, if it was actually confirmed or. It was kind of like a speculation thing.
[00:23:19]
Doll
Yeah. Well, that it's in there. That was confirmed, or at least it's in the li the entries mentions it, so I'm assuming it's in the notes somewhere.
[00:23:30]
Dianna
I'm just gonna take Origins of the Wheel of Time and everything in the glossary as cannon now, so.
[00:23:35]
Doll
I mean, I think it is and like it's all in the notes.
[00:23:38]
Thad
Well, It is.
[00:23:39]
Dianna
Yep. So it's all cannon.
[00:23:41]
Thad
It is the most official thing we're gonna get on it.
[00:23:43]
Dianna
Yeah. So if it's in the glossary, it is confirmed.
[00:23:45]
Doll
Yeah, unless you go to actually go to the University of South Carolina and read the notes themselves. It's the University of Charleston.
[00:23:54]
Thad
Yes.
[00:23:55]
Dianna
I do want to do that someday.
[00:23:56]
Doll
I wanna do it too sometime.
[00:23:58]
Dianna
I told Fenya at one point when we're going to, JordanCon, she and I are gonna do a road trip out. Probably not this time, but maybe sometime in the future.
[00:24:04]
Doll
We should do that and do like an on location recording .
[00:24:08]
Dianna
That would be amazing.
[00:24:10]
Thad
also, I, I do hate that a lot of the notes are sealed until 2037, so we have some time to wait. Some of the notes.
[00:24:18]
Doll
Yeah. But a good portion of em would be there and it would just be really cool to see.
[00:24:22]
Thad
Yeah.
[00:24:23]
Dianna
Mm-hmm. , it would be.
[00:24:24]
Thad
I think for me, I had two entries that I was kind of looking forward to see. I knew one of them was gonna appear, but I didn't know if the other one was. But the first one was the Ogier.
I, I just, I love the Ogier, so that was one of the first ones I went to. And I, I liked the line that they were basically the dwarfs. of Randland at first is how they were described in the notes, so a very mountainous people and stuff, and it just kind of grew out from there.
[00:24:50]
Dianna
It's so interesting that they came from the iching that. That's like wild.
[00:24:55]
Thad
Mm-hmm.
[00:24:56]
Doll
like I need to find a copy of the iching now and read it cause I don't remember any of it.
[00:25:00]
Dianna
Mm-hmm .
[00:25:01]
Thad
Yeah. The wildest part is how it says in here that they practiced ritual cannibalism in the fashion of like the Maori. And I was like, what? ? That was interesting. I'm glad that one got kind of left out.
[00:25:12]
Dianna
Yeah. Glad we don't have cannibalistic on gear.
[00:25:15]
Thad
I mean, how, how do we know them? Seanchan Ogier aren't like that.
[00:25:18]
Dianna
Valid. A valid question. Again, just continue to be fascinated by the Seanchan culture. ,
[00:25:25]
Doll
This is sort of a tangent, but like the ritual cannibalism is not like the same as the myths that we get in popular culture, but it is a.
[00:25:35]
Thad
That's why it's kind of a ritual.
[00:25:37]
Doll
Yeah. I mean it's literal, um, but it's more of the ashes are baked into cake and you eat it as a part of, um, have a little part of the person you love inside of you. It's not like they're ripping in the flesh and eating it, so.
[00:25:52]
Dianna
Oh, okay. Got it. That's much more.
[00:25:54]
Thad
See that Dianna, we're learning something today.
[00:25:56]
Dianna
We are learning something today.
Thank you Doll.
[00:25:57]
Thad
Cause I didn't know that.
[00:25:58]
Doll
I learned that from Caitlin Daughtery, she's a mortician on YouTube and she did a whole whole thing on it and she ate, she actually ate one. I think that was interesting to learn cuz like, it sounds gruesome, but it's actually really beautiful when you learn more about it.
[00:26:14]
Dianna
That is actually really beautiful.
[00:26:16]
Doll
Yeah.
[00:26:16]
Thad
Now the other entry for me was one, I was like, I don't know if this character's gonna get an entry, but it's probably one of my favorite non main cast characters and that's Bayle Domon. I have, since the moment he appeared, I was like, This is my guy. This is who I aspire to be in life. And it's literally Doman. Dough Man..
[00:26:35]
Doll
Yeah, Dough Man.
[00:26:36]
Thad
And I was like, oh my gosh, .
[00:26:40]
Doll
Cause he's chubby, or not chubby, but he looked big.
[00:26:43]
Thad
He's chubby and his name is for two, is for two bale water from a boat with like a bucket. I was just like, wow. All right. That's
[00:26:52]
Doll
very literal.
[00:26:53]
Thad
Very literal. It's. You know what? Bayle Doman, he's a simple guy. I like it.
[00:26:58]
Dianna
Simple guy. Simple name . I love it. I love Bayle Domon.
[00:27:03]
Thad
Every time he shows up I'm always like, it's gonna be a good time.
[00:27:06]
Doll
I was surprised by Hinderstap like being a black cauldron. That's not a connection I would've ever guessed. That was really fascinating to me cuz like I loved that movie as a child, even though I recognize it has very litte in common with the actual book. It's the name of the town is derived from the Gundestrup cauldron, which is said to bring people back life or restored people. That's interesting.
[00:27:34]
Dianna
That is super interesting. That actually reminds me of the, there is a section kind of jumping out of the glossary for a second.
There is a section that talks about Taimandred and. The fusion of those two characters or the, the, how Mazrim Taim and Demandred were one character and then they were not. Um, and that a possible explanation for all of the like, bubbles of evil and the like, ripples was him just continuously using, um, Balefire over in Shara.
And that made me come be closer to being at peace with Demandred, not being Mazrim Taim and just being, doing, god only knows what over in Shara. Um, I was like, okay, cuz because we never really get an explanation in the books for the bubbles of evil or for the weird things that are going on with reality other than just like, oh, it's the dark ones touch on the world.
[00:28:30]
Doll
I thought the whole Balefire thing was mentioned at some point the threads of the age lace were starting to come unraveled.
[00:28:37]
Dianna
They do, but they talk about it so much later than they start happening. It's pretty late in the series and so I like that explanation or possible explanation for what was going on ahead of time.
I found that to be put a neat little bow to wrap on everything.
[00:28:51]
Thad
It's definitely nice to have that.
[00:28:54]
Dianna
Yeah. Speaking of the end of the book, should we talk about Nakomi?
[00:28:57]
Thad
We're here. We may as well.
[00:28:58]
Doll
We may as well. We knew we weren't gonna get much cuz there wasn't a lot said about it, but
[00:29:04]
Thad
I think the most surprising thing for me was that it was Sanderson who named her.
I think that was the biggest thing for me, was that it wasn't a named character from Robert Jordan. It was Oh, Sanderson came up with a name and then the whole scene with Aviendha, was added in by him. It was kind of one of those little creative liberties he took, I guess, to give, just to touch more context to the character at the end.
I think the biggest thing for me was it's an avatar of the creator, which I kinda always like figured it could have been something like that, but you kind of want to dig for that meaning because there's so much hidden in everywhere that you think. We all overthink it because there was, um, Shadar Haran.
[00:29:44]
Doll
What, you thought it was Shadar Haran?
[00:29:46]
Thad
No, no, no, no, no. That we had Shaar Harran, which was the avatar for the dark one.
[00:29:50]
Doll
Oh, okay.
[00:29:50]
Thad
So,
[00:29:50]
Doll
yeah,
[00:29:51]
Thad
I don't, you know, I'm sure people out there were just like, I knew it with Nakomi, but it's like, I never thought to think, oh, well, you know, the dark one's got his avatar.
Obviously the creator has an avatar as well.
[00:30:00]
Doll
That was sort of the conclusion we came to when we talked about it, except we decided to reject that and we made up our own, which I'm gonna stick to.
[00:30:08]
Dianna
I like our fan theory better, honestly.
[00:30:11]
Doll
It's Harriet.
[00:30:12]
Dianna
It's Harriet.
[00:30:13]
Doll
It's Harriet.
[00:30:14]
Dianna
I also thought that at one point fans, asked Sanderson, like, oh, is she an avatar of the creator? And he was like, no, I know they did too, but, and so, and like, yes. Okay. I guess he's like, she is an avatar of the creator, but not, and like that the entry for Nakomi is very clearly written by Sanderson, or there's at least like a clear Sanderson quote because the tone in the, that entry is totally different than the tone in basically any other entry.
And like, he's like, oh, but she has an avatar of the creator, but not, but she is. And I was like, okay, so I guess she kind of isn't, but it, it just felt very like, nitpicky and quiblbley in a way that doesn't really fit with the rest of any other character and the way that any other character is like discussed or, or named or anything.
I hate to say that I'm actu.. was actually pretty disappointed by her entry. Of course, as fans, we had built it all up in our heads and we had made it this big thing and like we had our fan theories about it, but in particular because it was confirmed that it was basically one of the like, Original fan theories that had been shot down, I think I found pretty disappointing.
[00:31:21]
Thad
I also think that obviously wasn't, wasn't Jordan's initial intention for it because Sanderson specifically says, I decided that this woman was the creator's version of Shadar Haran, so.
[00:31:32]
Dianna
Mm-hmm.
[00:31:33]
Doll
Mm-hmm.
[00:31:33]
Thad
That's kind of a, Sanderson sees it as not an avatar, but a counterpart to Shadar Haran, which may or may not be an avatar, uh, the dark one, but just, just a mere vessel in which to convey message, which, you know, I consider that to be an avatar of, you know, a deity. That's kind of how that works.
[00:31:55]
Dianna
That is indeed how that works usually.
[00:31:58]
Doll
Yeah. , that is exactly how that works. Like literally what that means.
[00:32:03]
Dianna
Yes, that is literally what that means. (laughter)
[00:32:06]
Thad
But I guess Sanderson didn't see it in that light.
So all we know is that the original kind of. Core of this character is, you know, the person that appears to Rand in the epilogue and then everything else is Sanderson going, here's a little bit more so you're not confused, which only confused everybody more.
[00:32:28]
Doll
Exactly.
[00:32:29]
Dianna
Yeah. There are, there are some choices that Sanderson made, especially in the final two books that I have quals with, and this is, this is just going on the list.
So, yeah, I found it very frustrating. I, I do think it would've been nice to just have Nakomi without a name show up to Rand at the end of a memory of light in the same way that the creator talked to Rand at the end of the eye of the world. I think that that would've been a beautiful bookend. Um, but, you know, whatever, that's not the book that we got.
And Sanderson did finish the books, and for that, we will be eternally grateful, quibbles or no quibbles. The entry that I really liked also that I was very surprised by was the name of the trolloc bands. It had literally never occurred to me that they're all named for supernatural evil creatures. And so that when he kept bringing up the trolloc bands like earlier on and there's like just like little lines, I was like, why do he keep working about like, who cares?
And then like got to the trolloc band entry and I was like, uh oh, this is cool. This is very cool.
[00:33:30]
Doll
I think like individually I have to be like, oh yes, obviously that's a golem and that's a goblin but it wasn't until saw them or heard them, uh, back to back back. I'm like, they're literally all fantasy who are mythological creatures of the dark.
Like, oh wow. I did not catch that before. Oops.
[00:33:51]
Thad
Yeah. Bhan'sheen was banshee, Dha'vol was devil, Dhai'mon, Demon.
[00:33:59]
Doll
Mm-hmm.
[00:34:00]
Thad
It's like, wow, he went very phonetic.
[00:34:02]
Dianna
Yep. ,
[00:34:04]
Doll
Golem, uh, Cobal, Um...
[00:34:08]
Thad
Kno'mon.
[00:34:09]
Doll
I'm still so used to the little garden gnomes I forget that gnomes are actually evil creatures in most mythology. Like, oh, they're not just little cute things you put in your garden. They aren't over the garden wall gnomes. (laughter)
[00:34:23]
Dianna
A lot of the evil names are like that More death, Mordeth.
[00:34:27]
Doll
Yeah.
[00:34:27]
Dianna
More death.
[00:34:28]
Doll
More death.
[00:34:28]
Dianna
That one, that one I knew because I, in the first book, I'm constantly like, Mat, why are you taking a dagger from a man called More death? More death? Come on Mat. Mat, you used your one brain cell please.
Um, but then, uh, also Machin Shin machine of sin. Thought that was super cool. So many like that.
[00:34:49]
Thad
That one was pretty good too.
[00:34:50]
Dianna
Yeah. So, so many like that, that it's just like, oh, oh, this is awesome.
[00:34:54]
Doll
Mm-hmm.
[00:34:55]
Dianna
Do you wanna talk about the end of the audio book?
[00:34:57]
Doll
Yeah.
[00:34:58]
Thad
Yeah, talk about, you're gonna talk about the Rosamund Pike thing, right?
[00:35:01]
Dianna
Yeah.
[00:35:01]
Thad
Okay. I'll let you guys drive. I know nothing about that.
[00:35:03]
Dianna
Okay, cool, cool. At the end of the audio book, and if there's no other reason, For you guys to get the audio book then this, it's totally worth it. There is an interview with Rosamund Pike where she discusses the recording process for her re-recording, the Eye of the World and the Great Hunt.
And it is fascinating to like hear her process and like as an actress kind of go through talking about it and talking about the different intonations and how she reads and the different notes that she makes to he. But absolutely the coolest part is when she starts talking about her voices that she uses for the main characters.
And she starts talking about them in the voices that she uses for the main characters. And so she talks about how like she like has like Mat's voice and he is very playful and blah, blah, blah. And then like Rand is so like stoic or not stoic is like thought more thoughtful. And then Perrin is so stoic and has a deep voice.
It's so cool. It's just like back to back to back and like the space of like five minutes. I had to pause the audio book and just like. Fan girl to my husband who was like, I don't care. (Laughter).
[00:36:04]
Doll
Yeah, I have to go back and listen to it again. Cause I got lost in that part and it was just, it took over and I was just stuck in or listening to her be these characters.
I wanna go back and listen to it again, but like you said, it is well worth it. And if you need to, and it's well worth your audible credit, like right now, you can get two credits for your free trial if you have one ever done it. That's worth that. Or you can, what is it? The one you use?
[00:36:29]
Dianna
Or you can use Libro fm, libro.fm. It's also available on there.
[00:36:33]
Doll
And it's either $30 or you can sign up for $15 per month and get one credit and you can get it for $15. So like isn't well worth the $15 either way.
[00:36:45]
Dianna
Yeah.
[00:36:45]
Thad
We are in no way sponsored by any of these services.
[00:36:48]
Dianna
No, none of none of them are sponsors. Just we are big fans.
[00:36:51]
Doll
Unless they want to we're just readers.
[00:36:54]
Dianna
Unless they want to. (Laughter).
[00:36:57]
Doll
We're open to sponsorships.
[00:36:58]
Dianna
Um, she also talked about Thom and she like kind of, I couldn't tell if she was doing it on purpose or an accident, but she like slipped into like a semi Irish accent, which is the accent that she uses for Thom when she reads the books. Yeah. Um, and then she tried to switch to Bayle Domon, who is a Welsh accent, she couldn't quite hit it and so she had to like go she has this like mnemonic that she uses in order to get into Bayle Domon's voice and she had to like say it and then she could go into his voice. I've been also listening to the Rosmund Pike audio books and. Very cool to just like hear her process. I love hearing about people's process. I am a process person. Tell me your process for doing anything any day of the week. I will listen forever.
[00:37:36]
Doll
I am thinking about, I have, I already have the Eye of the World with Kate Redding and Michael Kramer, but I'm thinking about using my other credit to get Rosamund Pike's, version.
[00:37:49]
Dianna
I really like her version.
[00:37:51]
Thad
Buy, buy all of the Wheel of Time.
[00:37:53]
Doll
Yeah. Well, I don't have enough money to keep buying credits but.
[00:37:57]
Thad
Right. It's a lot of money for audiobook.
[00:38:01]
Doll
It is.
[00:38:01]
Dianna
It is. The audio books are really expensive. Um, really, really, like, they're like 50 bucks. They're kind of, it's rough.
[00:38:09]
Doll
Or you get audible credits or,
[00:38:12]
Dianna
True
[00:38:12]
Doll
Libra or whatever.
[00:38:13]
Thad
It's the way to do it.
[00:38:14]
Doll
But like, yeah, when you're done, it's still a hundred dollars.
[00:38:18]
Dianna
Her version of the Great or the Great Hunt that's booked two? The Great Hunt.
[00:38:22]
Doll
Mm-hmm.
[00:38:23]
Dianna
Is well worth it just for her version of the Seanchan alone, because she does the southern accent and it makes me say, think like, are we going to get the Southern accent in the show? I know we've talked about that before.
[00:38:38]
Doll
We've talked about that. We want southern accents.
[00:38:40]
Dianna
Yeah, we want 'em. We want 'em badly.
[00:38:42]
Doll
Real, real southern accents.
[00:38:44]
Dianna
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[00:38:45]
Thad
Give them to us.
[00:38:47]
Dianna
Give them to us.
[00:38:49]
Doll
We, we can be Seanchan if you need it. (Laughter).
[00:38:53]
Dianna
I can't, the only accent I can do is a valley girl accent. Thanks California.
[00:38:58]
Doll
By we, I mean me and Thad and Veri, and.... Okay, that's our Southerners, isn't it? ? I think that's the three of us.
[00:39:06]
Dianna
Yeah.
[00:39:07]
Thad
Yeah, pretty much.
[00:39:09]
Doll
Yeah. (laughter) Alright, thank you very much for listening to our talk about Origins of the Wheel of Time. If you have any questions or topics you'd like to hear us talk about, feel free to send us an email at Producer.TVT@gmail.com or you can join us on TarValon.Net. In our general forms, we have a special thread called Ask TarValon Talks pinned at the top of the page.
We also have a brand new Discord channel in our Discord server. Thank you for joining us, and we'll talk to you soon.
