TarValon Talks S1E0: Introductions
| Season 1, Episode 0 | Released September 4, 2022 | ||||||||
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Transcript
| [00:00:00] | [Theme music plays] |
| [00:00:00] | Doll: Welcome to Tar Valon Talks, a new podcast brought to you by TarValon.Net. We started the show to talk about all things Wheel of Time.
This short episode is to introduce you to the show, who we are, and some of our hosts for this season. Thank you for joining us and I hope you enjoy the show. |
| [00:00:26] | [pause] |
| [00:00:27] | Doll: Hello. Welcome to Tar Valon Talks. My name is Susan. I'm known as Doll on TarValon.Net. I started reading The Wheel of Time... Well I started reading it in high school, and then it took me a few years just to get through the world and I gave up. A few years later, I had surgery and I was recovering in bed and I got tired of trying to find something to read, so I told my husband that I need something longer to read.
So he plopped the first three books of the Wheel of Time in my lap, and said “You need to finish these now.” So I read the first three books and then I read the next three books. And I think at that point I think it was Winter’s Heart had just come out. After that I read each new book as it came out, and I was looking for people to talk to about the books. So that's when I found TarValon.Net. Now, I’d like to introduce my co-hosts, Thad and Dianna. |
| [00:01:17] | Thad: You can call me Thad. I've been a Wheel of Time fan for, I think, 20 something years at this point.
I picked it up in the mid to late nineties when I was just getting into middle school. I just kind of randomly picked it up off a shelf and was like, “This cover looks really neat.” And I think later that year my dad gave me the first book for my birthday. And I think like you, it took me a little while to get through it because it was a very dense book compared to other stuff that I had been reading at the time. So once I got through that, I just picked up the Great Hunt and just kind of started tearing through it and I think about at that time, only Path of Daggers was out, so I got up to about Lord of Chaos around there before I had to take a break, because there's a lot going on in the Wheel of Time. And, you know, when you rush through it, when you're just like a teenager, it's kind of hard to process a lot of the stuff going on. |
| [00:02:18] | Doll: Alright. Dianna, do you want to introduce yourself? |
| [00:02:23] | Dianna: Yeah. Hi, I'm Dianna. I have also started reading the Wheel of Time when I was in high school.
My best friend and I were working as lifeguards together, our first job. She was a huge Wheel of Time fan and gave me the first book to get us through that summer together in a horrible job. And I poured through the first five books that summer and then kept reading over the course of that school year. And I believe up to when Winter's Heart was out it was also around the time when I had picked it up. And then I remember just waiting for every single new book to come out. So I've been a fan for almost 20 years at this point. |
| [00:03:12] | Thad: So it looks like we're all pretty storied in our Wheel of Time history. |
| [00:03:19] | Doll: Yeah. So have you guys been involved in anything else with the Wheel of Time?
For myself, I know I've worked for JordanCon since the first year and I briefly joined Dragonmount, but I don't think I ever really posted anything. |
| [00:03:34] | Thad: Yeah, I joined Dragonmount like ten years back, but I don't think I ever really posted.
Way, way, way, way back in the day, I was really, really active on the now defunct wotmania website. Like I used to, I spent all my free time on that website and after that went down, I don't think I really did anything in the Wheel of Time community up until JordanCon started happening because I'm super local to it. So I just kind of heard through local news that, hey, there's a Wheel of Time convention like 30 minutes away. So I went out to the old Embassy Suites in Alpharetta where they had the first JordanCon and I've been just about every year since. |
| [00:04:14] | Dianna: Yeah, I only really engaged with the fandom through the TarValon.Net Library. I would read the chapter summaries on the Library any time that I was doing a series reread and didn't want to read a particular section because I found it boring or irritating, but I, for whatever reason, kept myself very separate from the Wheel of Time fandom community for a long time until this most recent JordanCon and I went to JordanCon with one of my best friends and was like, “Why have I not been engaging with these people who are MY people?” And then joined TarValon.Net and have not looked back ever since. |
| [00:04:54] | Doll: Yeah, we get you at JordanCon, don’t we?. |
| [Laughter] | |
| [00:05:01] | Dianna: That's how you guys got me. |
| [00:05:02] | Doll: Yeah, that. That's an interesting story. I think you should tell it. |
| [00:05:08] | Thad: So back in 2016, I was just milling about JordanCon in the evening, about to head home cause I think all the panels were about done. They were just finishing up the dinner break when they have, you know, a couple of hours of break between panels and saw a bunch of people milling about outside of a room. And I didn't see anything on the panel break down for what was going on in that room, so I was just like, “I'll check it out, you know, and then I'll go home.”
So I go in with like, I think there was like 60 other people, it was a full room, standing room only basically. But I got a chair in the back corner of the room. And then someone at the front just went, “Thank you for joining the TarValon.Net toast.” And I'm like, “What?” And then they did a couple of live raisings and then they started going around the room and everybody was just like this, you know, “Hi, I'm this person on the site.” And since I was in the back corner, I was like basically the last person to go with the way they were going left to right front to back. So when they got to me, I was like, “I just kind of walked in,” and the entire room just kind of busted out in the laughter. And one guy put his hand on my shoulder, leaned forward and whispered into my ear, “You're stuck with us forever.” And it's been about what, six years now? |
| [00:06:26] | Doll: Yup, stuck with us. So it was good talking to you guys. I think the rest of the season, we will be talking about the show and the books and anything Wheel of Time in general and I think it's going to be a blast. |
| [00:06:40] | Thad: It's going to be a good time. |
| [00:06:41] | Dianna: It'll be fun. |
| [Theme music plays] | |
| [00:06:54] | Doll: For those of you who are new or don't already know TarValon.Net is a website founded by fans of the Wheel of Time series in 2001 in order to not just pretend to be Aes Sedai, but actually be Aes Sedai.
We find ways to recognize our members for their service, either through time to the site, the fandom, or through acts of service to the greater community as a whole. We hold social events several times a year for our members around the world and participate in conventions like JordanCon, where you'll find a lot of our members are on staff. We also have events online through our forums or our Discord. We also give away a memorial scholarship in honor of Robert Jordan every year. We also have our Servant of All program where we raise money for charity or we provide service to our communities, locally and around the world, and become true Aes Sedai. |
| [Theme music plays] | |
| [00:07:51] | Doll: If you have anything you'd like to hear us talk about, please reach out to the contact information found in the show notes. Thank you for listening, and join us next week when we talk about season one of The Wheel of Time on Amazon Prime. |
