Episode 1

full
Published on:

14th Oct 2022

Prologue

The story begins, as all the best stories do, before the beginning. Join us as we find parallels between the Calamities and the Woe, discuss elements of the last chapter during the first, and pronounce the Fields of Streges in at least three different ways!

Transcript
Speaker:

Podcast Guides takes a long view and a long price. Spoilers will be commonplace. Listen at your own risk.

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Good morning, Faithful Reader.

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Welcome, Fortunate Seeker.

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This is Podcast Guides Talking ErraticErrata.

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Podcast Guides Talking ErraticErrata is a whirlwind reread of A Practical Guide to Evil, where

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A historian,

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And a literature scholar,

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Tackle the big questions about one of the greatest novels of the age, such as

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Whatever happened to the Wizard of the West?

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Will we ever see more of this mysterious Ranger?

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And how do you pronounce the Fields of Streges [STREH-jiz]?

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I really try not to.

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In the beginning, there were only the Gods.

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Eons untold passed as they drifted aimlessly through the void, until they grew bored with this state of affairs.

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In their infinite wisdom, they brought into existence Creation.

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But with Creation came discord.

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The Gods disagreed on the nature of things.

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Some believed their children should be guided to greater things,

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while others believed that they must rule over the creatures they had made.

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So, we are told, were born Good and Evil.

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Ages passed in fruitless argument between them, until finally a wager was agreed on.

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It would be the mortals that settled the matter, for strife between the Gods would only result in the destruction of all.

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We know this wager as Fate, and thus Creation came to know war.

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Through the passing of the years, grooves appeared in the workings of Fate.

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Patterns repeated until they came into existence easier than not.

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And those grooves came to be called Roles.

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The Gods gifted these Roles with Names, and with those came power.

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We are all born free, but for every man and woman comes a time where a Choice

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must be made.

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It is, we are told, the only choice that ever really matters.

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First page of the Book of All Things.

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Well, that is certainly a fun way to start this whole thing.

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Really dive right in with some deep cosmological lore from the

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holy scripture here.

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The Book of all Things.

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It sounds like a foundational religious text.

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I'm sure that it's a unified church with no issues within it.

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We'll find out later, I'm sure.

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It's probably all background noise anyway.

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We really don't need to pay attention to the details.

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Yeah, starting off in the story, the first line outside of the epigraph is,

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"The sun was setting on a field of corpses."

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That's a grim way to begin a rollicking tale of fancy frolic through a fantasy wonderland.

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It is.

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It really doesn't pull its punches when you start with corpses for sure,

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which I suppose makes sense since, what, three sentences ago(?)

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The only real description of Creation we get is that it knows war.

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Though that really is a contradiction because this chapter is an end to war.

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Black's whole project is the abolition of the circumstances that required conflict.

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Spoiler alert.

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I suppose that's a good point.

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Black is trying to do that, but I mean, as we're all aware, and as Black is aware and

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Scribe is aware, as we see towards the end of this chapter,

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they know that this isn't the end of a war.

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This is the end of, well, it's not the end of war or even this conflict.

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It's the end of a specific phase of the conflict, this specific section of the war.

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They're expecting more down the line.

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I suppose the Book of All Things is really referring to only the Game of the Gods and

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the fact that the Dread Empire and Callow fight each other isn't important in itself anymore.

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That conflict has really been taken up by the mantles of the Names,

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the geopolitical matters from which the Names originally gained their importance,

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they ground their groove, really have become auxiliary, ancillary to the names themselves.

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I almost think it's the other way around when there are Names that are so based on kingdoms,

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on large groups of people.

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I mean, you have Names that are, let's see, in this first section here, we have a Name,

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Good King, we have a Shining Prince.

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Sure, the kingdoms are there to inform the Name, but without the kingdoms,

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you wouldn't have Good Kings.

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So without the Dread Empire, you wouldn't have the Dread Empress.

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I don't want to get too simplistic, too lowbrow for the first episode of a podcast,

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but really what this recalls to me is Judith Butler,

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who proposes that it's not really gender, which is informed by biological sex,

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but rather biological sex is derived from gender.

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The spectrum of biological expression is made binary by a binary gender paradigm.

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Names appear to be expressions of these good and evil kingdoms,

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and in a directly apparent way, they are.

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But those kingdoms themselves, the Dread Empire, Callow,

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they derive their identity now from the Name, from the manifestation of the God's Game.

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And if you argue with me, that makes you a transphobe.

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Well, I wouldn't want to be that, so I suppose, I suppose I see your point.

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I guess we'll have to find out by reading more of the story eventually,

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but at this point, who can honestly say?

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Well, I don't think it'll be too long.

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This chapter didn't take me very long to read.

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I think the whole piece is probably going to be, there are what, 30 chapters in a book?

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Probably. We'll wrap this up by Christmas.

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I mean, the rate I read, yeah.

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No problem.

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So as I reread this chapter today, I was struck by how much more at home I felt

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with the capital N Naming conventions that I did in my first read through.

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It really was disconcerting to see characters just called Black, Ranger, Scribe.

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To me on my first reading, it really felt essentialist.

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It seemed like essentializing tropes, which of course it is.

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That's the delight of this world.

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And then the subversion of the essentialization and the subversions of subversions.

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On first read through, it sounded a lot like a two-year-old talking about their stuffed animals.

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This is Bear. We love Bear.

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I think I see what you mean.

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I'm trying to remember back to my first read through.

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And I believe that my gut reaction was to treat names more as titles than Roles,

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even despite the explicit stating that they are Roles.

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You know, the Black Knight, the Scribe, the Ranger.

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And so having them without the articles in here, like you said,

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treating them as the person's name is definitely a little weird.

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On this read through, looking at it, it's, of course, this is Black.

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That's who it is. I know this character. I love him.

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It's a name.

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No, I don't.

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Lowercase n. Do you not love Black?

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I can't decide.

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That's a correct answer.

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I go back and forth on it.

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You know, he's like a father and a monster.

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All rolled into one.

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So, you know, a little bit of some, a little bit of the other.

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Ideally, those two roles are divided.

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Ideally.

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And speaking as a father, it's actually pretty easy to divide those, but...

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Speaking as someone with a humanities degree, it's kind of difficult to divide.

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Math is weird.

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I feel that.

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Yeah, that initial read through, it almost felt like the stereotype of

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people who come into the English-speaking world from a language without articles.

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That [with a vague non-native accent] Black rolled his eyes, though he caught Captain discreetly suppressing smile.

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That lack of a foundational part of the grammar I'm used to,

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though clearly not vital in language or this world, for some reason.

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I grinned and bore it, but I was suspicious.

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Maybe this wouldn't be the greatest book I've ever read.

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I had fears.

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I think that's blasphemy in our very first episode.

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But I suppose we can overlook it for now.

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This is a Calamities chapter, after all.

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It is interesting because I feel as though later on,

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there are occasions where articles are used.

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Well, I guess specifically the, you wouldn't say,

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a Black Knight necessarily referring to Amadeus here.

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It could just be here, especially.

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These are the Calamities.

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They've been together a while.

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They're friends.

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Their capital N names are so much a part of how they've known each other for so long

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that they function as lowercase N names.

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It really is too bad, by the way, that Creation doesn't shiver when we say

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somebody's Role's title like it does in the book, you know?

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Or if somebody says, what's your N/name, you know which one they're referring to.

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Does it not for you?

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Uh-oh.

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Probably nothing to worry about.

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But please stay on the other side of the podcasting booth.

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Oh, all right.

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Well, I suppose we should mention, since we did say we were going to discuss this,

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is our first quirked lips here when Scribe shows up?

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First quirk.

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It's monumentous.

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It's important to note. Those of us who have enjoyed Practical Guide for a while now

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are aware of a few things like that that will show up very regularly and we love them.

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Quirked lips, clenched fingers.

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A few writing quirks, if you will.

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I think I will,

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Thank you.

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See, we get our first reference to Callow's neighbor who has some fun things going on right now,

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sort of a vague reference to Procer's Great War going on, very vague.

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Of course, an early read through definitely sees that being one of those world building

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details that you sort of file away as, oh, I hope that's delved into more later,

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whereas the read through now really just draws to mind a few specific characters

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and the glory of their family, I suppose.

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What's important is that my beloved Hasenbach sees her story begun as the story begins.

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Even where she's not present, her presence is felt.

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Even as a preteen as she is right now.

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Probably the most powerful preteen on Calernia.

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How old was Trismegistus when he did his thing?

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Was he an adult? Was he a child king?

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That is a good question.

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Because he could be a preteen if he were, though I'd think a teen would be more.

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I seem to recall a bit more in his interlude later, we get years of searching,

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so I imagine he wasn't too young by the time he ascended.

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I think 17 to mid-20s.

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Probably, that feels right.

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I don't think he was old.

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Right, is...probably not.

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I was going to say is Zeze born yet because he might count even as an infant.

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If that counts as being a preteen, it's before teen.

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Catherine only knew the post-war world order.

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Right.

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She was in an empire-sponsored orphanage.

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So, good old Zeze must be roughly slated for birth.

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I think we can stick with Cordelia being the most powerful preteen at this point.

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I'll give it to you.

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Thank you.

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You're welcome.

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Preteen is a category that's not merely before teen, right?

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You're referring to 11teen, 12teen.

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Yes, yes, yes.

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It's right, somewhere in there.

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Also, you did say most powerful preteen in Calernia,

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and I did forget briefly that Zeze did live on a demi-plane until he was nine,

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so he's definitely not on Calernia.

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I'm sure that won't have any wide-reaching implications.

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Name one possible implication there.

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What could you be talking about?

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He might develop a strange accent.

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That would be frustrating.

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It's nothing worse than having to read an accent.

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But with fathers like his, he probably does get a good development of his social skills.

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Yeah, he probably gets an okay education, well-rounded at least.

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I do appreciate how a lot of the Calamities' characters are built up in so short a span.

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Black being the long-term planner, the architect of the whole affair,

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and the feared military leader, despite being middling so far in terms of raw power,

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we got to see Range-- well, we got to not see Ranger, which is very her.

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Yes.

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Scribe appearing out of nowhere with a plot relevant piece of paper that we don't get to see

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because it's a secret, but we learn of implication from it, very her.

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And of course, it sets up the whole events with the Field of Streges [STREEGZ].

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It is interesting that we get a physical description of Scribe this early,

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since for most of her existence on page, Cat just can't.

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Even though it's not an involved physical description, it's just plain-faced.

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It's still a description of her face.

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I would argue that plain-faced, however, could be a description of her power,

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not dissimilar to !!Worm Alert!!

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Worm's Nice Guy.

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She is a face you would pass over, and in fact, if you worked to do more than that,

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you would not be able to but pass over her.

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That's a fair point.

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We don't have a description of her hands, though, and those are important.

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Permanently ink-stained as they are.

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May we all be so lucky.

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We do get a nice like father like son bit of the

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odd juxtaposition between the personality of this incredibly powerful mage

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and the power of this incredible powerful mage Warlock being referred to

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as producing all this hellfire and also just smiling and chatting with his friends.

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Not quite the same things that Zeze would do, but you get that same vibe.

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One of the most powerful people alive, and also just kind of a cutie.

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This whole thing, really, after reading the Guide, has a lot of echoes of the future.

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This entire post-battle coming together and getting ready to have a, quote,

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"after-battle get-together."

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If Wekesa can name it for us, with bottles, presumably of the alcohols,

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matches heavily the Woe's pre-battle get-togethers.

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Their campfires.

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Their pig roasts.

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Their pig roasts.

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The Woe roasts pigs, the Warlock roasts Callowans.

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It's pretty similar.

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It is.

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It's a nice parallel there, especially with the Calamities celebrating

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the end of something big and the Woe are preparing for the beginning.

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There's a nice bit of symmetry there.

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I have to wonder if it was intended at this point,

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but then I remember EE knows all and can do no wrong.

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No arguments there.

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It is interesting to me that Warlock looks for Ranger and is surprised that she ran off.

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I feel as though Ranger was a very established personality for a very long time.

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I do think, though, that Warlock is less surprised that she's gone at some point

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and more surprised at how quickly she left.

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He's a very--as mighty and raw, as destructive as he can be.

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He's a very sentimental person we see later,

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and so I think it's very strange to him that somebody so close to Black

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would just immediately leave the second

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Her blade's no longer needed.

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She's gone.

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Even knowing who she is and knowing who Black is

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and knowing about their relationship,

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I do think that it still catches him off guard that somebody would be like that.

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That somebody would be so cold, I suppose.

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True, both Amadeus and the Warlock managed to seduce and, at least for a time,

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capture a monster derived of nothing more but their hungers and passions,

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and it worked out for the Warlock.

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Very well for the Warlock.

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I suppose it worked for Black, too.

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I lament his tastes, but that never came back to bite him.

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Lament his tastes?

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Yeah, I suppose the relationships were not the source of their big issues, necessarily.

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They were just, yeah, the Warlock had a nice happy marriage that lasted a long time,

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and Black had whatever he and Ranger called whatever they had for a long time.

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Neither Black nor the Ranger faced any doom but that which they visited upon themselves.

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They both put a hand on that knife and drove it into themselves.

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One with far more intention than the other, but Ranger died as Black did

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at the hand of a tool she sharpened and aimed.

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I have to say, I know that Zeze is often referred to as being pretty tall,

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and I'm looking for Warlock description, a tall silhouette, yeah.

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So Warlock is pretty tall as well.

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It is odd to me that he's tall enough to sling a friendly arm over Captain's shoulder.

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Absolutely.

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After, in a reread, that seems very strange to me because in my mind,

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Captain is a mammoth of a woman, not somebody who you just casually put your arm around.

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Frankly, I feel the only reasonable explanation is he elected to hover at that point.

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Especially since if he's murmuring something, there's an implication of,

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that is some, the size difference there is interesting.

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I don't know, maybe when he's referred to as being tall,

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he's grotesquely tall.

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He's magicked himself into being nine feet tall or some such.

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How tall is Captain at his shoulder when she's being quadrupedal?

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That is a good question.

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I'm not sure I know that.

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Or we get a Captain point of view at some point.

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So maybe at that point we can find out how big she is truly,

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or maybe in the Calamities versus Hanno's five-man band.

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Chapter, we get a good description of her size compared to the White Knight.

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That goes well for them.

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It does.

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It goes well for the Calamities for sure.

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I mean, how could it not?

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I can't imagine them being beaten by anyone.

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They just won the war.

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It's all over.

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For ten years, or six.

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No, I think the back of Good is broken now at the Fields of Streges {streh-ZHAY].

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It is a very Cat and Hakram moment, the ten years.

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I disagree, six.

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Like, knowing exactly what they're referring to and just, it's a lot of fun.

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I really enjoy that.

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You can really read the Woe into what's going on here, like you said.

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And just like Cat and Hakram, we know that Scribe's going to be right.

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Yeah.

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Does Scribe turn out to be right?

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That's one of the final chapters.

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Was that Challengers or Hunt?

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Challengers.

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Hunt was Ranger.

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Control-F-Y-E-A-R-S.

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Three years, the Black Knight said, shaking his head in disgust.

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Even Scribe thought we get six before the first of you popped out.

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Eudokia?

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More like EuDOPEia, am I right?

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Really pulling that one out early, huh?

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It had to happen.

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It did.

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I also really appreciate how, following that,

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you really get the, hey, this is going to be very narrative-focused, meta-narrative-focused.

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That's what this is all about.

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Just by the sheer certainty that we fought a battle, therefore, there will be heroes.

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We did a slaughter, therefore, there will be heroes.

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There's no, ah, we've broken the back of their.

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You know, they broke the Wizard of the West.

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They popped the King's head off like a bottle cap, I believe.

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They mobbed the Shining Prince, all of these things.

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And that's not, well, we've done it.

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It's, okay, so now the story's going to have some, some challengers rise up to use the chapter title.

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Not even challengers in this, though.

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I recognize your allusion and it's beautiful.

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You are a genius beyond compare.

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I quiver to come before you.

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But the word choice is hugely implicational, if I may use a piece of scholarly jargon.

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Heroes are not a threat that most realistic, most versimilitudinous literature would use.

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At least not what the villains would use.

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Even after the epigraph, where we see, ah, yes, there's this big cosmic battle between the Gods.

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Yeah, sure.

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We have lots of scriptures and spiritual claims and cosmologies in real life.

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But when it comes down to it, the bad guys don't view themselves as the bad guys.

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They view themselves as the wealthy.

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And to say that heroes are coming is immensely cliche in a deeply informative way.

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That's telling us what we're getting into.

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It's not just that surely protest, surely revolution will emerge.

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But it's heroic revolution, hearkening back to blessed of the Gods.

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I think that's good.

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And it's interesting both for setting the stage like that, setting up what we're, what we're actually dealing with.

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But it also is, you know, like you mentioned, no bad people don't think they're bad.

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Evil people don't think they're evil.

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And I think that's still true for the Calamities here.

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Like, sure, they know they're on the side of the Gods Below.

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They know they're Evil, yadda, yadda, yadda.

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But there, I think for the Cats and the Blacks of the world, there are labels, hero, villain,

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that don't mean the same thing that they do in our world or that they do in this world to,

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you know, people like early Hanno or any time Grey Pilgrim, where hero means good.

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It means moral means saving people.

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Hero for Black or for Cat is just, you know, the people that are fighting for that side of the wager.

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And there's not really a whole lot of other meaning to that other than how open the villains are

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about the tactics that they use.

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The heroes have to be a bit more circumspect when they do things like

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basically anything that the Grey Pilgrim does.

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I don't think the Grilgrim needs to be circumspect.

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He just gets away with it.

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Yeah, but there's there's a like a wink nudge to he's sort of just out of line of sight of the

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normal people of the peasants when he does things or he kills them.

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But he was just following orders.

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Gosh, he really is the worst.

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I think you're ascribing too great an end to pretty much any villain and frankly most heroes.

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It's not even, I am Evil because I am battling for the Gods Below in this wager.

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There's very little allegiance even among the heroes outside of lip service to the Gods' Great Game.

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Everyone is much more of a materialist.

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Black is worried about starvation and perpetual war wearing brittle an empire that can never

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really stand on its own two feet or its own thousand feet-- monstrous pseudopods or whatever

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they're going by that week.

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Tiger paws.

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Thank you.

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Admittedly, there exists people like the Saint of Swords who want to stamp out Evil.

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But a typical hero is I think a lot more like Thief later on.

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She isn't fighting to vanquish Evil.

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She's fighting to free her people.

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William wants to free his people.

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He's horrible and the worst and I hate him.

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But he isn't here to see the wicked ones cast into damnation where they belong.

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Unless you define the wicked ones as the oppressor rather than Evil.

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Sure.

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William is a weird case though because like Tariq, he's got some influence outside of Creation

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on what he's doing.

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So he's kind of in a weird middle ground there for what a hero thinks they are.

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Though unlike Tariq, I think he doesn't see himself as a tool in the hands of the Gods

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but rather or tool in the hands of the Choir but rather someone availing himself of the tool

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that the Choir grants him.

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That's my feeling too but perhaps on a read through with more setting knowledge and more

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meta-narrative knowledge that like we have now, William's character will read it a little

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differently to us.

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We'll have to see.

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Would you like to do a read through like that sometime?

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I think that's a good idea.

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All right.

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Want to start next week?

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I'm busy next week.

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Can we start maybe 12 hours ago or so?

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Absolutely.

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Nice.

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Well I think that's all the time we have for today folks.

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Join us next week on Podcast Guys Talking ErraticErrata as we discuss

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pit fights, knives, and monsters.

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We'll see you then.

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Podcast Guys Talking EraticaErrata is a fan-made podcast discussing ErraticErrata's A Practical

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Guide to Evil.

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Check out the full serial at practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com.

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Intro music for this episode was The Cradle of Your Soul by lemonmusicstudio.

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Music for the epigraph was Morning Garden Acoustic Chill by Olexy.

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Outro music which even now is elevating my voice to the realms of the divine

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is Price of Freedom by [Daddy_s_Music].

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The music is provided by the generous license of pixabay.com

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slash music.

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Go and support all the artists who make this work possible by providing their stories and

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sounds free of charge.

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If you'd like to support this podcast, follow us on Twitter at TheLongPrice.

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Do you have questions, comments, or contributions?

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Are you overwhelmed by the urge to correct our errors?

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Email us at thelongprice@gmail.com.

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Next week, Chapter 1.

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Knife.

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About the Podcast

Podcast Guys Talking ErraticErrata
A Practical Guide to a Practical Guide to Evil
Do you love a Practical Guide to Evil? Have you felt the urge to do a reread ever since Pale Lights started up and you remembered the sweet sweet ambrosia and nectar that is EE's every word? Is overwrought analysis and faux-erudite discussion right up your alley? Then tune in for a weekly podcast series, Podcast Guys Talking Erratic Errata! PGTEE is a whirlwind reread of a Practical Guide to Evil where a historian and a literature scholar tackle the big questions about one of the greatest novels of the age!

Follow us at twitter.com/thelongprice or write in at thelongprice@gmail.com