Bloodline Part 3 - Will Wight - Progression Fantasy Book - Anime in Book Form

We're still on Cradle, Side Questers. But this is our last episode covering this book. We are on the ninth book in Will Wight's Cradle series, Bloodline. And it gets a little spicy.  Frankly, it's embarrassing. But only for Jonathan.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In Bloodline (Cradle Book 9) by Will Wight, Lindon returns to Sacred Valley to evacuate his family and villagers before the Wandering Titan Dreadgod destroys the area. Although he possesses great power, an ancient curse limits his abilities, complicating his efforts as he encounters resistant villagers and strained family relationships.


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Reading is the ultimate side quest. Side Quest is a casual book club podcast full of literary adventures. Join Slava and Jonathan as they discuss the books they are reading, life, history, belief systems, and much more. Explore world-building, characters, and story development—and share some laughs along the way.

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Host

Jonathan

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What is The Side Quest Book Club Podcast?

If you’re a reader looking for something deeper or an indie author working on your book, The Side Quest Book Club is for you. We skip the usual book reviews and ratings. Each episode turns fun side quests into real lessons, so you’ll leave not just entertained, but with a better understanding of why storytelling matters.

They treated him terribly, but they didn't, like, go ahead and kill him, which, I almost feel like the Heaven's Glory school. Whereas Linden, from book one, has a vision, has a goal, has a thing, and this is a complaint that I bring up to Slava, to, like, sidequest full circle, that if I don't know what the character wants, I don't care. There's no way he was ever bound to that tower to begin with.

He chose to be there and trick all of them, and then he shows up at the end, and I was like, there you are, where were you when you could have been useful? They're predicting it. Their predictions are just crazy good. One could say he did not see that coming.

No. Slava, are you all right? Please stop. Cool.

Good question, Jonathan. Thanks, guys. Coming to you from an endless library, where every book is read and every spoiler discussed.

Join us as we dig into the lives of fictional people who cannot defend themselves. This is the SideQuest Book Club. Welcome back, SideQuesters, to the SideQuest Book Club podcast.

Today, we are diving into part three and doing an overview with our guests, Spencer, Casey, and JT of Will White's book from Cradle, book nine, and I'm so glad to have the squad back to discuss a little bit more of the world of Cradle, the Abaddon, how Malice is actually victim, and all the other nuances of the story. In this book, King Daruman and the Vroshyr attack the Abaddon, forcing them to surrender thousands of iterations and retreat to a few core worlds. Meanwhile, on Cradle, Linden and his allies travel to Sacred Valley to save its inhabitants from the approaching Wandering Titan.

While Akura Fury ascends to the heavens, the team struggles against the Valley's stubborn clans and a suppression field that destabilizes Yeren's spirit. The Monarchs eventually heal Yeren, allowing the team to fight the Titan. They successfully drive the Dread God away, but Dross overextends himself during the battle and is reduced to formless Madra.

We rented the off-name brand version of the Movie Guy trailer voice, and he decided to join us today. More accurately, my brother Jeremy decided to. Same, same.

I put a request in with management, and he showed up, so. No, that was a great summary. Yeah.

Thank you, Teemu Movie Guy. Teemu, nice. That's great.

So, just a quick recap for the audience. Casey is reading this for the first time. Slob is reading this for the first time.

Spencer's gone through the series twice. I think I've read the series like six, seven times. JT, I think you're about the same, right? Like a bunch of times? Yeah.

So we've got a couple veterans, a mid-grader, and a couple unsold. So, we're good. We got a full squad.

Unsold? I'm at least unsold. Yeah, we covered that. Well, joke's on you.

The only unsold in this story end up becoming one of the main characters. Yeah, that's true. So, where's your badge, buddy? I don't need it.

I'm unsold. Okay, all right. Fair enough.

In the old script, I think it's... Jonathan has a lot of chutzpah for a Jade. That's all I'm going to say. Hey, I'm comfortable being from... Douche Valley? The most detestable of the group from Sacred Valley, Heaven's Glory School, where we think we're better than everyone else, and everyone's always trying to betray us, especially our family members, who we treated poorly.

And then we're shocked that they would come back and not just tell us about their power, right? Right. Yeah, that part to me... Like, okay, yeah, the elders are obviously going to stab him in the back, and Heaven's Glory School is obviously going to stab him in the back. It's just a question of when the sudden yet inevitable betrayal occurs.

And they're such children, too. They're like, level two, white fucks. Level three.

And you're like, I really, really want to see you die. Gotta be beneath them, though, Jonathan. They would kill them all.

It's embarrassing. It's different, Slava. Embarrassing.

They bring petty to a whole different level. Yeah, that's well said, yeah. But, like, can you blame them? They spent their whole lives in this suppression field, and so they literally think that they're the best of the best, because they've never experienced anything better.

They scanned Yeren. They scanned Aethon. Yeah, but they only appeared as jades to them, right? Or they could only comprehend them as jades.

Their power level did drop, so they weren't like their lord bodies or whatever. Yeah. But some of them, they're like, gold? I think that was only... Wasn't that only the Mercy ones, when they scanned her again after she unleashed, that they recognized it was gold? It happened for Yeren, Linden, Aethon, and Mercy.

They get scanned deeply, or deeper than they get scanned the first time. Sensual. Later in that whole evacuation fiasco.

Well, so let's think about this for a quick second, and I'm trying to remember all the different parts from the book. So you had Heaven's Glory School, Greenleaf Sect. Which one was the... There was two others.

There was the Earth Sect. That was the one that... The Wei Clan. Yeah.

No, the Wei Clan, the Kazan Clan, and the Li Clan. So the three clans and the four sects. I forget exactly what the sects did, or who went to the sects, but the Kazan Clan, I believe, that was Zeal, correct? Yes, yep.

That was the Earth Clan. He went to the clan. He just convinced them with words and his actions.

He was just chill about it, and they said, all right, you can have these back. I don't need to be bound anymore. And then the Li Clan, Mercy reveals her power, and they're like, whoa.

And then they say, okay. Why didn't you just tell us to do this? We would have given you the whole clan. Right.

Yeah. I forget the other sects, but I think it was Linden being the one that went to the Wei Clan that actually ended up being the problem because of his origin. Him being, oh, this is that snot-nosed kid that was never going to amount to anything.

So even though they understood that he was powerful, he was never going to, they were not going to listen to him because it affects their pride. Well, that, but they also saw how powerful he was, but then just assumed that he was out for revenge because of... They couldn't comprehend anyone who would do anything else in their position. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. One thing, we could talk about this now, or we can come back to it, is one thing that I mentioned to Slava earlier this week that he and I have not covered at the moment is going back to your parents and his parents just still judging him and assuming that he is only borrowing someone else's power. Yeah.

So like that kind of as an inciting incident and then extends to the clan. We talked a little bit about it on the last episode. I resonated with that, related to it pretty well because my dad's first family, that's the only family that I have.

Everybody else on mom's side of the family and dad's side of the family that's part of that union is passed away. They were all really old because my dad married my mom when he was like in his fifties or something. But anyway, that other side of the family, I feel like Linden with them, the way he does in this book.

They just see me as a snot-nosed little annoying little kid and I have surpassed them in a lot of different areas of life. It doesn't matter. And it doesn't make me feel good about myself.

It doesn't make me feel better, but I just have. But no matter where I was in my growth as a human being, as a man, they always treated me like that 16 year old. But these bastards don't reach out.

They have never been part of my life in any meaningful way. And when we come together and we haven't come together since my brother's passing, which was 10 years ago now, it was the same thing. Now, the only saving grace and difference between Linden and I is they're a lot more polite.

They're cultured. They're polite. So they would never outright say the things that Linden's clan has said to him or his family.

But the underlying tone is still there, the way they view me. And because it's polite, it's a lot more subtle. That's all I'm saying.

I'm not saying that they're nicer. So it's passive aggressive? They have a veneer of civility. I'll say this in their defense.

In their mind, they think that they're doing the right thing. They're nudging me to be a better person or something like that. But that's almost a distinction without a difference, in some sense.

But that's the only thing I'll drop in there. They're convinced. Where these people, I think, are a little bit more malicious.

I think there's a two-faced aspect to Linden's clan. The people in Sacred Valley. You could say it's might makes right, even.

But not quite, even. Because he's more powerful than any of them. And they recognize it.

And then they still deny it. Yeah. I mean, the Heaven's Glory School did the exact same thing to the Sage.

Because they just wanted everything he had. Which you can assume, almost, is the same thing with the Way. Which just equivocates the two, in my mind.

The Way were basically just as bad as the Heaven's Glory School. But because he was born in their clan, they treated him a little better. I think they treated him worse than the Way Clan.

They treated him terribly. But they didn't go ahead and kill him. Which I almost feel like the Heaven's Glory School, if he showed up... Oh, you're unsold? Yeet, off the mountain.

Yeah. And that is exactly how it would work. The Sacred Valley section of the book is supposed to be as close as possible to the source material of the Chinese fiction.

So this is how most of the people in the Chinese fiction act. If you're useless, you don't survive. You get kicked out.

And you either figure out how to live on your own. Or you die. And that's it.

And they don't really care all that much. The only people that would care about you are your parents. Your direct family.

But that only extends so far. But not in this case. Not in this case.

Yeah. Sorry. But they still care about him, right? They wouldn't help him.

But they would keep him alive. That's the difference. His mother and father.

What a deep level of care here. Yeah. I just remember when he... I'm not saying it's a good family.

But at least they kept him alive. Wow. That's a difference from probably what would happen in a Chinese novel.

You remember in book one where he... Oh, yes. I was about to bring that up. Yeah.

Yes. The aura fruit. And the family is like, well, we could give it to Weishi Kelsa.

She's got potential. And he's like, I went to go get it. Well, you couldn't have done it yourself anyway.

It's just like... They're like, yeah, you got lucky this time. Cool. But she's the one with potential, so.

Yeah. Which I think Jeremy mentioned in that podcast that is a very, very much Chinese novel thing to do is put all your eggs in the one basket you know is going to win. Also true.

I don't know if that's always been the case, but it's definitely the case since the one child policy. Hey, fair. Even today, they do the same thing.

If they have more than one child, because the one child policy is no longer in effect, but they still tend to only have one child. And if they have more than one, they still put everything on one child. Usually the first born male.

Correct. Yeah, that makes sense. Did they... They repealed that policy, right? Yeah.

Aren't they still in birth decline? Yeah, because they spent so long with it that now they don't know how to live differently. It's socially controlled. Now it seems like an extravagance to have more than one child because they've had to live with just one for so long.

Do you know how long that was? I don't. I think it was probably... It was several decades that they had it. Yeah.

At least as long as one generation. In one generation, that's enough time for laws and social stigmas to form around something. They really have done some terrible things to keep the one child policy.

You can look up some horrific stories. There was, for instance, a young woman living in a rural area that was pregnant with her second child and the authorities came to forcefully abort it. She ran, hid, and eventually they found her anyways and they gave her some drugs that caused her to have a miscarriage with a child who was seven, eight months along.

Yeah. And she had it. She had to birth it after that because it was too big.

It wouldn't just die and be reabsorbed. And then when she finished, they were like, all right, it's your problem now, clean it up. And left.

That was it. All right. Welcome to China.

That's the way that China works. It's like super authoritarian, no care about human life or respect for all that. Not in the way that we would think about it.

It's very utilitarian, deterministic, utilitarian. Yeah. In their minds, it's like she's already done the wrong thing because she's broken the law.

We said that you can't do this and she did anyways in direct defiance of the law. Ergo, you kind of deserve the treatment you're getting. That's how it works.

Yeah. That's crazy. And that's the general culture, the sentiment that this book is based on.

That's especially Sacred Valley. Yeah. And I think Sacred Valley is special for another reason.

In a lot of these books, a lot of the high fantasy Chinese books, fantasy fictions have this idea of multiple worlds and especially realms that are tiered up. You have a bottom tier. That's usually where the main character starts.

And then when he gets powerful enough, he moves to the next tier. And after he moves to the next tier, he just continues climbing. And I think Sacred Valley is that in this world.

And rather than being, and I think I've mentioned this before, it's rather than being separate worlds, it's got the exclusion zone where everybody's stuck at jade. It's the way of keeping the character in a place where the top power is limited in some fashion. Of course, Will White didn't stay there for very long.

He left within the first book. Or was it the first two books? It was the first book. It was the first book.

He gets out of Sacred Valley in the first book and then goes to the Desolate Wilds after that, which would be whatever's kind of just outside. I mean, he advances to Copper, I think, at the end of the first book. Yeah.

So that would be the fact that they're all stuck at jade is intentional. And this is a common theme in a lot of these books where it's possible to redescend to a lower realm afterwards. But usually you're like the top powerful guy there.

You can't pull out your full power because there's something. Usually it's like the rules of the universe. The law of heaven is keeping you from doing it.

Whatever that means or how that manifests. But you're still the strongest thing inside the many worlds. And that's the same thing that we're seeing here.

And it's treated pretty much the same way, except that he's not given the respect he deserves. Has anyone else dealt with something like Slava mentioned where you go back to your family or hometown or aunt's uncle's personal family, whatever, and you weren't received in like, hey, this person's grown. It's just, well, you're always going to be a kid.

And it's going to be the same 12 jokes. And I'm going to make fun of you for this thing that you did when you were a child and et cetera, et cetera. Oh, so I know one guy who is technically a family member.

He's one of my aunts. What is technically a family member entail? He's kind of like an in-law thing. But he's like blood too.

He's not in-law. He's blood. And I don't know what he is to me.

Because like I said, my dad divorced his first wife for infidelity, married my mom, who was a year or two older or a year or two younger than his daughter. And then there were, how do I say this? There was just that family. So my mom gets married to my dad.

Is now away from his family. He still talks to his kids because now they're grown, obviously, in their 20s or 30s. And so the other side of that family, I have very little intel on.

So who this guy is to me and how he is either a son or a nephew of one of my aunts, it doesn't matter. He's still, by blood, he's family member. For the longest bloody time, every time he saw me, he would remind me of one time when I was like 14 and hanging out with his wife.

Hanging out, meaning she was babysitting me. His wife was a close family friend to my mom and my dad. And they were all part.

This is all the way she clan, whatever the hell it is, right? So this really was like a clan. So there were some family members, a lot of family members. And then the other friends of family, close friends, neighbors, all that good crap.

So I knew this woman before he married her. She was part of a family friend. And she'd babysat me once in a while.

And she took me to the pool when I was 14. And I was trying to do some jumps. And I was like, you know, like a 14, like, hey, family friend.

I won't say her name. Hey, family friend, look at me. Look what I can do.

And I was just doing like silly stuff. And I was in, I was like 28 and he would bring it up. And I was like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, okay, like if it was brought up in context.

How dare you be a child when you were a child? If it was in context and he was just busting my balls, I'm all for it. I'm the biggest ball buster I think there is. I love when people just josh each other.

I think that's great. Like we should all be able to laugh at ourselves, tell jokes. And I get whiny about silly stuff.

But in serious conversation, no context for this memory to be brought up. You would just bring it up. Hey, remember when Slala did this? And you're like, but it was also malicious.

It was mean spirited. It wasn't just like, oh, I remember Slava. Like, holy crap, I haven't seen you in 15 years.

The funniest thing you ever did was, you know, try to do somersaults for my wife before I even, you know, was married to her. I was just still dating her at that time or whatever the hell he wanted to say. But mean spirited nonsense all the freaking time.

I wouldn't say like I had like a family thing where, you know, I go back and I still feel like I'm, you know, a 14 year old kid. But I have, I feel like I have a friend who kind of does that. Not from, not a childhood friend, more of a recent friend.

But where it's like you, when you're hanging out with them for whatever reason, you know, they always feel like they have to put you down or, you know, mention this one time when you did this thing and made a fool of yourself or whatever. And it's like, OK, that was funny the first time you brought it up. But, you know, now, like eight times later and you still have to mention that one thing.

It's like, OK, this is not funny anymore. And it's just just, yeah, annoying. And yeah, it makes you.

Yeah, it's belittling. And you're like, well, I'm not going to hang out with you if you keep bringing that up. I moved back from New York when I was in college, Spencer.

And the group of friends that I had still, they wanted to do the same dumb jokes, the same bullshit. And I was like, I would actually rather be alone than deal with this. I just lived out in the real world.

I lived in a big city. I had these things going. I traveled overseas and like stepping back into that, you know, very small mindset where it's you guys are one step away from like marrying your cousin with what you're acting like.

That's a bit that's a bit harsh. It's just that's the sentiment where it's like, oh, did you see that I took a bag of candy from CVS? Oh, that lady never saw it. You know what? Cool.

Is that the highlight of your week? Actually, it's the highlight of my year. Sorry, JT. Go for it.

No, that's that's it's ridiculous. Like, grow up. Yep.

It doesn't mean you can't have some old times. But like if and like Spencer said, the first time's fine. First one's free.

Second one, you're like, OK. OK, fine. But when you do it every time, every we hang out, grow up.

Talk about something interesting. Just tell me what you heard in the news. It's literally more interesting than how you're acting.

Exactly. I, I wonder if people change a little bit when they're with people they've known in the past, because I have recognized this in myself when I go home and I'm with my parents in my the home that I grew up in, I regress to being younger than I am. Oh, no, that's real.

Yeah, yeah. When I'm at home, I can make my own decisions. I go home.

Suddenly I'm living under the same roof as, you know, where I grew up and my parents are still there. And I go, why? How do I make decisions again? Like, what do you mean? Like, I start getting confused and complacent. And I feel like with friends, it's very much the same.

When I visit my friends from college, I end up acting dumber than I know that I am because I was dumb when I was friends with them. And back in college. Well, too, it's like, yeah, when you when you go back to whether it's like a hometown or old family or old friends, a group that you haven't seen in forever, they're only going to know you as the person that you were, you know, say, five years ago.

And so they're going to treat you like that. And it's not that they are doing it intentionally, but that's like, but they're doing it. Remember, because that's what exactly that's what they remember.

And so it's like when you go back, well, I'm not that person anymore. But it's hard to to try to show them who you are. Right.

I was about that was my only pushback. And it's not that I'm disagreeing with you, Spencer, but that proves that they haven't grown there. So they're stuck.

Not necessarily. They're mature. If they see you in the same way as you were when you were 15, if something in their brain doesn't like click, the brain cells don't fire off.

Oh, this is Spencer, 10 years older. Hey, let me get to know you. And sure, the first one's free.

Maybe the third one's free. But if all they see is Spencer 10 years ago and they can't like horses with blinders, they can't get out of that mindset. That's their maturity.

You were saying you were saying necessarily, were you going to say? OK, go ahead. Yeah, I was. We're getting to the real psychological territory here, because what you guys have been describing reminds me of there's like a psychological concept.

I forget what psychiatrist came up with it of like masking. You put on a mask to go outside and interact with and you put on a different mask depending who you're going with. And it's still you.

It's just you through a different lens. And so it's possible that maybe they have grown, but they're used to putting on that mask that they're used to with you, because that's how it's always been. And so even if they have grown, they're going to act like they always have act like Jeremy acts differently when he comes, you know, and stays with the parents for a while or how I act when I go hang out with my best buddy that I've known for my entire life or how I act when I put the, you know, the headset on and get ready to talk to people at work, you know, going like, hi, how I put on the like the public relations mask.

It's all still you visibly you, but you've toned yourself in a different way or adjusted your own personality to match the situation that you have gone into. Yeah. One, one philosophy that the Japanese used to hold, I don't know if they still do anymore is this idea of three masks.

You have your public facing mask, you have your like family, like internal mat, like close people mask. And then you have the mask that no one knows. Very, very close to what I was saying.

Probably they based their philosophy theory off of that idea. Yeah. Doubt it.

I don't think that they based their idea off of that psychological idea. I think that psychological idea that you're talking about is reverse. Oh, oh, all right.

I misheard it. Yeah, that's on that one's on me, Jonathan. Well, you know what they say about assume, uh, I didn't assume it.

I just misunderstood, but we'll go with it. We'll run with it. It's fine.

I think there's also an aspect of because people know you as a certain way, you know, from years ago, I suppose it depends on the situation, but it could also be where they, that's all they know you as. So they're still trying to relate to you is that it might not be in a bad way. It might just be because they don't know what else to do.

Yeah, that's what I was like. Well, all I know about him is this one thing. So I'm just going to bring that up and try to maybe make conversation about it.

But like I said, but I feel like it kind of depends on the situation where if they have, you know, you know, as Slava mentioned, maybe they just haven't matured yet or. Right. Or it could be an effect of like, I just don't know what else to say.

And so I'm just going to bring this up. It might not. And it's not in a negative way.

It's just they really don't know what else to do. I think when it's malicious, it's clear. If you're a rational thinking person.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can tell when somebody is just immature themselves or they're putting on a mask or it's just comfort.

This is what they know. It's a habit. It's them just trying to get back into whatever you guys had before or if they're maliciously attacking you.

Because I've known people that, you know, when I went back to them, you know, after not talking to them for a few years, and this has happened with Jonathan. He never treated me this way. We've been friends for almost 20 years, but there was about three years, five years, maybe we didn't talk.

Then I reached out. Yeah, five years that we don't talk. And there's other people that I know from previous lives, so to speak, and previous jobs.

And when we talk, and it's been a year or two or 10, it's never that. They might bring up some old stuff. We might get into the same old habits like you, JT, mentioned.

But with some people, and I'm throwing my family underneath the bus, it is clear that they're being immature or malicious. Malicious may be too strong a word. They're being mean spirited.

It's not just, oh, it's just this guy is the way he is. No, they're going out of their way to belittle you and put you down. So you're all right.

Which isn't to say that, yeah, this is all, it's always one way or the other. I think it very much depends on the particular situation. So you have to feel it out.

I was going to flip it too, is like, do we do that to others? I'm sure. At this group. I'm sure in some way, yeah, we all have done it at least once.

Well, not that we have done it. Like in your present day, are we more conscious of it because we've brought it up? We're like, oh, hey, I'm seeing so-and-so again. And this is like a subconscious action.

Are we just slipping into the comfort, slipping into the old style, or do we slip into the old style and then go, hey, I wonder how, this is again, subconscious. I wonder who they've become. I wonder what they've been through and try and draw that out of them.

Because we're all evolving. Even if you live the same year for 60 years, you still had experiences take place. This is not like a well-formed question, but does that kind of make sense? The reverse? It's harder.

It's always going to be harder to do it that way because that relies on you being able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. And we can all do that. Most people can do that.

But it's hard to constantly think that way. I know in my mind, when I'm talking with my friends, I'm always thinking in the back of my head, they're not they don't know what's gone on in my life since the last time we talked. And therefore they're thinking of the old me.

But then I understand implicitly that there's the same way the other way around. But I don't think that way usually, because to us, the rest of the world is basically just things that we're interacting with. You don't think of other people have internal monologues that they're going through and experiences that they've had while you're not there.

You don't see it. You don't experience it. So you don't think about it.

So you have to really think hard to put yourself in that. Yeah, I agree completely. And because of my experience, I try harder than most or I'm more actively thinking about this where I don't want to do that to others.

The flip side of that coin or same however you want to word it is I have friends that are still friends and I've had friends that are now maybe more so acquaintances than friends now because we've kind of grown apart. They'd be there because of geography or other reasons. Good, better and different.

Mostly good or indifferent. I can't think of anything bad right now, but they're stuck in the same place. Just like Jonathan was mentioning now, not to the same degree of silliness and immaturity, but they're kind of just the same person.

And some part of that is okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But part of it is the same bad habits, the same silly stuff that keeps them in a rut.

And I'm not talking about getting drunk and shoplifting CVS. I'm talking about just not moving ahead at all in growth as a person, growth in your career, growth in insert whatever word you want. So again, this stuff is a lot more gray and complicated than just, well, everybody who does this is an asshole and that's it.

But they are. Well, and to bring this back to the book, when we're talking about Linden, this is one of the, I wouldn't say criticism, but something I noticed during the book is that Linden is this character that is completely unaffected by all of these kinds of philosophical or psychological things where he's always been this kind of giving person, despite living in a place where no, but that is not ever rewarded. He's always been like this hero.

And then he comes back. He doesn't fall back into his normal ways. He goes, Hey, I'm powerful now.

Respect me. And they're like, no, he goes, well, I'm just going to crush this door and leave because like it's affecting me emotionally. It's not like I want to dominate you, but I want to be respected.

He doesn't fall back into his natural. He doesn't just start following his parents. He says, look, I'm powerful.

You're going to follow me. And eventually you're going to come around. And he just pushes the door, which they probably would have respected more because of how they act.

But this to tie these two things together, what we just spoke about of people like not changing necessarily or whatever, the whole, the whole, the whole clan. Is I believe that that shows a lack of vision. Like in your life, because there's this lack of growth that we talked about just moments ago.

Whereas Linden from book one has a vision, has a goal, has a thing. And this is a complaint that I bring up to Slava to like side quest full circle that if I don't know what the character wants, I don't care. To bring it back into the book.

I mentioned this in the previous episode. I'll mention it to you two guys and three guys is I liked the way this evacuation scene was drawn out because I went to Reddit to kind of see what people were talking about to drive some ideas. And there was a lot of complaints on Reddit that, oh my gosh, just wipe these guys out already or grab them by force.

And just good Lord, why this book sucks because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm paraphrasing, but pretty much that to me, I found the fact that Linden specifically, but also Mercy and Yeren, they were patient with these people. And Linden was patient and he didn't revert to going, oh, sorry, this one, please come with me, mother and father.

He at one point exercises authority and will when he felt the time was right. He came to a point, I was like, all right, guys, enough nonsense. We're all going.

So I thought the way this was more than one scene, but this section of the book was drawn out. I thought it was enough to give the reader some tension, some annoyance and being the reader feel a little bit inside the world and to show how annoying these people are or and to tie it back to our conversation, how annoying people in our lives can be. And so good guy, Linden.

Yeah, good guy, straight until he's like, all right, guys, I've got a lot of patience for people. And I was really hoping that earlier on in his time being there, he would have just like like a bullet, just like put up, put the black flame through someone's foot, like just just so you're saying, right? Like maybe beat them against the ground. I could do a dodging to prove a point.

Okay, categories. Okay. No, I I see what you're saying, Slava.

But I I also felt like Linden needed to really showcase his power to the way clan where it's like, you know, hey, I'm not this, you know, unsold, you know, super passive little, you know, you know, boy anymore. I'm I'm a man. I've like gained all this power and I need you to not even respect him.

I need you to believe me because you are in danger and you need to get out of here. And it was like he just kept not doing anything. It's like, dude, just do it.

Like so. So like, I don't know. I feel like I come from that angle where it's like, okay, I feel like you've given them more than enough time or chances to believe you.

And it's like, okay, now, you know, like he's like, just grab him and get out of there or whatever. The entire time he was in the way clan, I kept thinking to myself, where the heck is Elder Whisper? Because he's probably the one guy that would actually listen and tell all the other guys, okay, yeah, we need to leave. We need to leave.

And he's gone. And I go, where the heck is he? I know he's for certain not still stuck up in that tower. Oh, yeah.

Because there's one thing about foxes in like Chinese and Japanese mythology is that there's tricksters. There's no way he was ever bound to that tower to begin with. He chose to be there and trick all of them.

I'm pretty sure that he was just wandering around the village almost all the time. He just left an illusion of himself at the top of the tower to fool everyone. And then he shows up at the end.

I was like, there you are. Where were you when you could have been useful? That's a good point. Good point.

I like it. Yeah, that's the whole shtick. He was too useful, so he couldn't be found.

Yeah, he could have been the one guy with a voice of reason, but he wasn't there. So what other character moments stood out to you? We've dissected Linden and his full circle going back to see his family and not getting the respect and how we've experienced those things in our lives as well. Who sticks out to you guys? Mercy having to be her mother.

Zeal still wanting to die for some reason, but also minorly save this other sect. Yeren getting questioned by Linden's mom of like, so how well do you know Linden? Aethon being like, okay, then we will do it your way and I will make a point. To me, what stood out was Yeren.

And not for the reason you brought up, but these people killed her master and she was like, you know what? I'm not going to exact revenge. These are just pathetic low lives, losers, weaklings, and I'm here and I'm kind of paraphrasing the wrong word. I'm kind of, well, paraphrasing maybe the right word.

She says, I'm here for Linden, at least in her mind. She's here to stop the Dread God and a petty revenge subplot is, I'll let it go for now. That to me was a bit surprising, but it was a pleasant surprise and I'm kind of glad she did it.

I mean, yeah, but at the same time, I feel like there were definitely moments where Yeren really wanted to wipe them off. Absolutely. Like she was about headed up to here with some of their antics and I think there were points where she was going to do something, but because Linden was there, she decided not to.

And obviously her power was, or the suppression field really affected her more than the others because of her bloodline or her bloodshadow thing. So it's like she couldn't and she probably would have really hurt herself and maybe even gotten killed if she tried to attack or do something crazy. But at the same time, I feel like, so even though I hear what you're saying Slava, but at the same time, I feel like there were moments where she's like, yeah, I heard those moments.

Yeah. Or like she really had to be, yeah, she really had to be held back. Yeah.

There were moments when she, short of wiping them out, she did kick some people's asses in there. She was like, all right, I'm done. She held somebody's head in the mud with her foot or something.

She did kick some ass. So Yarin's still my girl and I'm proud of her. I do think they killed a bunch of Heaven's Glory people during that initial competition.

Yeah, because there was no way around it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right.

And at the end there as well, when they started going, all right, the entire heavens, the sacred valley is coming down around us. It's time to start killing everyone else for no reason than because we're spiteful. It's a good enough reason for most wars.

It also shows what you were talking before, a lack of vision outside of themselves because they can only perceive sacred valley as being their world. So they're like, okay, if the world is ending, we might as well kill all of our enemies. Yeah.

So I do want to bring up, I don't know if we brought this up in an earlier episode, so there was at least two scenes where Mercy is sort of reenacting her mother and learning from that experience. In the very beginning of the book, they have Daiji's trial, and that's a big scene where she has to be very forceful. And then later there's her with the Li clan and she goes super Saiyan and says, hey, you're going to respect me.

I'm more powerful than you. Uh, you're going to do what I say. And it works again.

And she goes, man, maybe my mother has a point here. Ah, yes. The eternal struggle of every child.

Oh God, I'm turning into my parent. Yeah. Gets worse when you have to then start parenting your parents.

We will. That's not relatable to the book. It's just something that happens in life.

Yeah. Be careful. My parents watch this.

Yeah. The most relatable part of this book probably is the first chapter when Linden has to get somewhere and he's stuck in traffic. And the AI chat bot Rainbow Cloudwill is like, I'm sorry, but I can't do that for you right now.

When Linden is stuck in traffic. I forgot about that. Thank you for bringing it back up.

He's stuck in traffic. What are those clouds that they ride? All the clouds are lined up. The sky cloud ships.

Yeah. Sorry, we can't go around. There's a double yellow line.

Then get the monarch on the phone. I need to talk to the monarch. She's got the authority to get me out of here.

I'm sorry. I can't do that right now. There's got to be someone like, no, there's not.

So let's go back to your point. Which point? Which one? JT. Yeah.

Okay. Well, so I was using that. I don't know if we had talked about that already, but I was sort of using it as a bouncing off point to something that I have noticed in Will White's whole book here.

This may be a controversial point. I don't think that his characters reflect what I would consider a logical progression from the setting that they develop in necessarily. For instance, Linden feels like he's being he's too nice.

Good guy. Linda have been somebody who grew up in Sacred Valley. Everybody here is an a-hole.

And yet he's goody two shoes. And it feels like the end doesn't proceed from the cause. So the contrast is unbelievable.

Same with Mercy, who is oddly merciful. I know it's her namesake, but would somebody who was raised by malice have this kind of personality? They're definitely outliers, right? I don't know if Will meant that to be the case. Well, it is the case.

I don't know what the... It is the case. I can't tell what Will's impetus was for it, probably just to show a contrast. But to your point, JT, they're definitely outliers, especially Mercy.

Linden, I can understand because he was beaten down and so he's meek and mild and nice Linden. But Mercy, 110% I agree with you. But I think that contrast is to make her an outlier.

Why there's two? We'll have to ask Will. Yeah, when we convince him to join this podcast for Book 12. I wonder if though it's one of those things kind of like, you know, nature versus nurture, where... I was thinking about that.

You can have two siblings or let's say six siblings in the same family and five of them can be all of the same or very similar personalities. And then you just have that one for nobody knows why they just turn out almost a complete opposite of the rest of their siblings. And they were all raised the same way.

They all went to the same school, you know, whatever. Parents raised them the same way. And for some reason or another, they still turn out to be the opposite.

It's like, how do you explain that? I don't really know other than, you know, that's just for some... Maybe they were just born that way. So no matter what type of situation they grew up in, that's just how they're going to be. Like, that's just how their personality is.

But this might be building on your point, Spencer. But it could also be where they've had a couple of those incidences where they've felt hurt or they've dealt with it or whatever. And they're like, I don't want anyone else to have to deal with this.

I know that that's a choice that I've made in my life where... If you listen to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me tell this story of when I was in third grade, someone made me cry because I didn't know how to answer a math problem. It's school, bro. We're supposed to be here learning.

And so behind me, they yelled, what are you, stupid? It's 17 or whatever the number was, right? And I was like, slow. I was like, okay, you know, add these things together. And I just started crying in class.

And then forward, I associated like, well, when you don't know something, it can cause you deep rejection. And so I was like, always over communicating with people moving forward because I didn't want anybody else to feel that way. But then a good thing becomes a bad thing because people are like, well, you just talk too much or you give too much information or whatever.

And it's like, okay, well, I, you know, this is only a revelation I've had in like the last five to seven years. So since I was like 30, maybe a little bit before that, but not by much. And I understand why I give extra information to people now, because I don't want anybody else to feel like they're stupid.

Like you step into a new culture. It's like, oh, well, you're supposed to take your hat off and you do this and do this. And if someone doesn't know that, they have the opportunity to be vulnerable in the way that I was vulnerable.

And I don't want that to happen. So it's like, hey, before we go in, here's the checklist of stuff. And it's not because I'm being OCD.

It's because I want to make sure you don't feel like a shithead who then embodies that vulnerability for 30 fucking years and have to deal with it like Lyndon did, where he was beaten down and then like has to go through life. It's like that's awful. And you don't want someone to have to go through that.

And so like the way that I see Lyndon and Mercy specifically, it's like they've seen what that causes and they're like, I don't want to be that and I don't want to cause that on others. That's how I interpret their characters. Are you enjoying today's side quest? Make sure that you're subscribed so you never miss an episode.

We're available on YouTube and all major platforms so that you can listen to us anywhere. Now back to the show. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I had a moment similar to that when I was, I think I was in third grade and I was trying to get my third grade trauma. I was trying to get my teacher's attention about something to me, you know, as an eight year old, it was super important. Again, I don't remember what it was, but she yelled at me and was like, no, you do not interrupt me while I'm talking to another teacher.

And it just kind of like stood out to me in this moment of, oh, geez, I guess I can never interrupt an adult ever again when they're talking to someone. And so it kind of formed, I think, a lot of years going forward for me where I just was super passive and quiet because I was like, oh, if I interrupt an adult while they're talking to another adult, I'm just going to get yelled at. I don't want to feel that pain again.

And so I kind of, you know, sort of maybe lived like that for a while for a lot of my childhood growing up. So but so there are experiences where like that, where maybe I don't want someone else to feel that way. So if someone wants to talk to me, I'm going to give them my full attention because I don't want them to feel like I'm ignoring them or yelling at them or, you know, whatever.

So I got a third grade story, too. It sticks out to me. And it involves a shitty teacher.

JT and Casey, please prepare your third grade story because we're coming to you next. I already have a third grade story. I don't remember that.

Go get some trauma then, Casey. Go find trauma. I don't have a time machine.

Find trauma now and apply it to third grade. So I remember third grade recess. We're all running down this hill to the field where recess was held.

And I remember running past my teacher and I don't remember stepping on her foot, but apparently I stepped on her foot as I was running down the thing. She went that shit crazy. And she made me go all the way back to the school and walk back, you know, in a uniform, polite manner.

And because I am not Linden, probably the same teacher. Massachusetts. Did you go to school in Massachusetts? No, I guess not.

How many teachers do you guys share? This one. This one hack that keeps moving to schools and harassing kids. She's actually a vampress and she just like doesn't die and just causes trauma to children amongst all the different schools through the ages.

Because I'm Yarin, not Linden. And I walked around with, you know, middle fingers pretty much my whole life until in my 20s. I'm like, wait, maybe I can't be Yarin, doubled up, you know, ramped up to 11.

Maybe I need to come down and act like an adult and start to mature myself. So that's part of my growth cycle in my 20s. But because I was a little Yarin, I mean, I didn't like yell at her, you know, try to kick her ass or anything like that.

But I was like, all right, I went back up and I went back down. Here you go. I hope you, you know, die in a fire someday.

That's what I was thinking. But what that taught me was what that taught me was not to trust adults and to give them a wide berth. And if they ever got in my face again, again, that Yarin coming out of me, I'll tell you off next time you yell at me for no reason, teacher.

I mean, never happened, never did it. Just go pop their tires. But that was my response.

Well, what that taught me in that moment was, hey, if somebody steps on your foot, proverbially or on purpose, outside of evidence of malice, give them the benefit of the doubt. Give them a chance. Now, they stepped on your foot because they were being aggressive with you or trying to attack you.

That's when you punch them in the throat, proverbially speaking, or defend yourself or tell them off or whatever, or put them in their place politely, whatever the hell you need to do. But that taught me early on, like, hey, always give a person the benefit of the doubt. And sometimes that has backfired because I misread what was clearly malicious.

But, you know, for what it is, for what it's worth. Good guy, Slava. Good guy, Slava.

But anyway, Casey, your third grade story? Not really a third grade story. It's more of a middle school story. I had, yeah, I was a quiet kid when I was growing up.

I'd be constantly reading in the study classes and stuff like that. You know, the classic nerd trope. And I had, obviously, a bully in middle school, you know, as you do when you're a nerd.

No! You were homeschooled in middle school, so who was this? Not you. So it was JT, the bully? Not you. No, no.

Middle school. He's right that I was homeschooled, but we did a co-op thing. So I would go in one time a week and we would get the materials and do classes in person and all that stuff and then go back to the rest.

And I would always dread that one time a week because the bully was there. And one time I was in line for lunch at there and my friend, also in the same school, he was joking back and forth and he mentioned the bully's name. He's like, yeah, the bully was pretty, pretty hefty, shall we say.

He mentioned, yeah, the bully- Rotund even? Yes. The bully, he was wearing like an orange shirt. It was a bit too stretched on him.

He looked like a bit like a pumpkin. And I just started laughing because I can picture it in my mind. It was like, yeah, pumpkin blankety blank.

And he was right behind me and I didn't know. And he just reached out his hand. And you know that pressure point right there? He did this, grabbed my neck and took me to the ground.

In school? In school. And no teachers were around, of course. Of course.

Of course. Yeah. And he's like, don't you ever talk to me like that again.

I was like, I was talking to you. I'm sorry. Yeah, I was talking about you behind my back.

I wasn't talking to him. I was talking about him, regardless. I basically learned from that point to just shut my mouth when, you know, badmouthing others.

I don't like badmouthing others unless, you know, they really deserve it. And it's, you know, private conversation. They're not around.

Nowhere public. Unless they- So you don't badmouth others in public is what you're telling me. Listen.

Consequences to calling someone something else, basically. That's why JT texts me sometimes and he's like, Casey's talking shit again. Family dinner.

You know that we don't have family dinner. So, I mean, we're all sharing third grade stories. I don't remember this as third grade, but it was elementary school.

And I remember, you know, we're doing some sort of art project. We're on the floor as kids. And the teacher's like, all right, we got to clean up.

And so singing the cleanup song and people start tossing their pencils and pens and markers, whatever, into the pencil box. And my mom was very organized. And I recognize, hey, they are tossing this stuff into the pencil box with no regard to how it's going to close.

Then I'm trying to convince people, hey, stop. We got to, like, organize this. And nobody was listening to me.

So I did what I thought was right at the time and just took the pencil box and dumped it out, thinking, OK, we're going to do this again. We're going to start over. And the teacher, of course, saw this and I was punished.

And that's where I learned. And I think this is funny how similar experiences get taken in different ways, because I was resentful of that, just like Slava. But what I took from it was, oh, other people don't understand that what I have, like why I do things and like the purpose behind other people's actions.

I understood at that point she didn't know that I was trying to help. She assumed I was just trying to make a mess and be a little rabble rouser. So at that point, I became more controlled in how I acted because I wanted to make sure that everybody understands I am doing this for a reason.

I'm not just causing problems to cause problems. So I think it made me draw a little bit into myself. Maybe that's part of personality, because I think it actually does come down to personality, because the same person might have had the same experience and gone, oh, people are stupid, and I'm just going to cause more problems to try to figure out where the line is or something else.

The thing I love about something like this book club is the fact that we can take the story and the author has written it a specific way, and we each come to the characters differently or the circumstances or whatever, but then that gets translated into the dialogue and conversations of like, oh, well, when Lynda did this, it kind of reminds me of blank, and then Slava's like, oh, that's interesting, because blah, blah, blah, and it's like a very different perspective. But this book club, and this is kind of like at least part of my vision for it when I talk to Slava, is like, first off, as men, we don't have these conversations. We're just like, there's no time, there's no place, you can't make yourself vulnerable to people because you're going to get stabbed, and also the world doesn't have space for that.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is like other people have also gone through shit, and I have never once, there's a fear of this, but I've never once experienced vulnerability being, when you're sharing like, hey, a moment or a story or whatever, being taken and then re-stabbed towards you. I've had other experiences where like life circumstances, you're like in a vulnerable position, people taking advantage of that.

That sucks. Those people should burn. And you can forgive them, but don't trust them.

But the opportunity where it's like I've learned vulnerability begets vulnerability, and that's one of the things that I love about, like, we read a book, we're talking about the characters, but then we're using that as a conduit to go like, well, yeah, I've kind of been through something similar, or like, that made me think of this thing, both in terms of like a vision and inspiration for like, hey, jumping into the ring with Kaladin, and he's like, honor's dead, but I'll see what I can do. Man, that type of strength in the midst of like being beat down is like, I want to be a man like that. Or on Linden's side where it's like, man, it really sucks when you go home to family and they're like, you're still chubby, Jonathan.

And you're like, cool. Thanks for that. Do you feel better? No, neither do I. Now we have to spend another two days together.

I love this. I love this. So happy to be here.

Glad we could do this. Glad we could do this. Can we do it again next year? Great.

For sure. Sign me up. So get back on the book for a second.

This is the most that I think we've ever gotten about the Abaddon, or focused on the Abaddon in one book. Because of all of the King Daruman situations that were going on. We've gotten hints through each of the other books about the psyche that he was creating.

And now we finally get to see it used. It's basically a recreation of the one Asriel, I believe, had. And just how destructive it is.

Who else thinks, this might be controversial, that Daruman is justified in his anger? He's justified in lashing out against the Abaddon? He has a backstory that does seem justified. I get it. I understand it.

But I think that's what makes a good villain, right? It's the tragic villain trope where this was an inevitable fall due to the actions caused on him. Not the actions that he himself took. Because it was inevitable.

First, the executors lost trust because of the first one betrayed. And so then they're treated like dog, attack dogs almost. And then they start losing and he ends up the last one.

And then he does that sacrifice thing. And instead of rewarding him by maybe retiring him somewhere like you can't be trusted to your job anymore. We've got to put you somewhere else.

But we have the next generation to deal with issues. No, they were like, okay, now you're dangerous. We can't trust you anymore.

We're locking you up forever. And he was rewarded for all of his sacrifices. Here's your reward.

I'm going to kill your platoon in front of you. Here's your reward. I'm going to lock you up for eternity.

So this point you bring up always reminds me of Minority Report. Are you guilty before you do it? Or are you guilty when you've done it? Is it inevitable? Assume guilt. Right.

Because we have the Oracle. We've seen the future. Because the Abaddon have some sort of foretelling knowledge of what is to take place.

However, because of the way it spreads out into multiple execution points is just how I'm going to call it. Opportunities for the future. The future is both written and unwritten.

It's Schrodinger's future, if you will. Well, because they're not really predicting the future. And this is the same way.

They're shaping it. They're not jingling it. Well, it's they're predicting it.

And their predictions are just crazy good. It's just, oh, I can. I have all this data that somehow funnels into my mind palace, whatever, who takes all this models that it's kind of like dross and says, here's what's probably going to happen.

But dross even doesn't always get it right. He often says that, OK, well, I don't know if I can model this because I don't understand it because you don't understand it yet. So that's it cuts in a little bit to the accuracy of the prediction.

Right. Their predictions remind me almost here showing my nerd cred. There's a one of the individuals in the Warhammer 40K universe named Conrad Kerz.

He sees the future, but he almost always sees like the end point of a future when he looks at a person. So he'll see like, oh, hey, this guy's going to turn out to be a monster. I'll kill him now.

Or stuff like that. And he just he just goes ahead and kills pretty much anyone who's going to commit a heinous crime in the future, which is a lot of people. And at one point there is a child.

He sees two futures. One of them, he stabs Conrad in the back in that moment and wounds him, potentially meaning he can't save lives further down. Or the other one is he asks to be trained by Conrad and becomes the second command and helps him save his planet.

But he chooses the first option to kill. OK, OK, great. He chooses to kill him.

And then it's revealed when he looks at the body, there is no knife. The second option was the true choice. But he because he was afraid of any possible evil kills, he chooses to kill.

Oh, that's interesting. I wanted to get into Warhammer 40K. So Casey, maybe after this episode, you can send us like a at minimum me like a small reading list and I'll disperse it throughout.

Not not that we would finish the Warhammer series. That's never because that's unreasonable. But I have wanted to get into the world for a while.

I actually would love to play the tabletop, but it's too damn expensive and I don't have anyone to play with. So. Is what it is.

Saying, yeah, but that that whole future site thing reminds me of the the Abaddon looking at the guy and going, OK, there's a high possibility that he's already corrected. Let's put him in the jail cell. On that note, are there other themes that have stuck out to you guys that kind of like riffing off of earlier, like speak to you or like draw something out of you for positive or negative? Right from this book.

One for me that I talked about with Slaven in the first episode was this idea of like there are some things that are just beneath you that you don't want to have to do that because of the nature of the world you have to do. Like Linden and Dodgy. Like that, that to me is like this is embarrassing.

Like this is no one's having fun here. Doesn't mean he doesn't deserve it, but like this is embarrassing for everyone involved. And then the second one is like for me, the coming home and people not treating you differently.

Those are two of the major. I don't know if I guess I don't know where the line would be between plot and theme. Feel free to create a delineation for me, anybody.

I would say one of the themes that I've noticed that seems interesting to me is the fact that those at the top are trapped. It's not super obvious, but even Malice discusses when Yeren asks the council of monarchs to move against the Dread God, they're like, okay, yeah, no, we're not doing that. What do you mean? I asked, you asked for something reasonable.

Defeating a Dread God is not reasonable. The thing is each of the monarchs, if they all put their powers together and did as she asked, they would probably be able to take down the Dread God. But they're trapped by politics.

They're trapped by the kingdoms that they hold. They're trapped by the Abaddon because they can't advance any further or else the Abaddon will basically say, okay, you need to leave. You have to come with us now.

Yeah, they need more recruits. They're stuck at monarch, which means no one past monarch can help defeat the Dread Gods. So it has to be monarchs, but monarchs are trapped by their own responsibilities.

Yeah, that's interesting. I was thinking about that in a completely different context. Thinking about Congress, our beloved overlords.

And I think that the reason, and it happens differently, and it's seen differently, and plays itself out differently in every generation. But I think the geatrics that run the country now, the geatric patients that run the country now, they are stuck the same way, only it's a little less, there's less empathy. On my behalf for them, because they've created this world, the culture that we have, the political culture and otherwise, and they're beholden to certain things, whether it's tradition, money, people who have them by the balls.

And even when they want to, in the midst of being, whether they're assholes or not, in the midst of being who they are, whether they want to do the right thing so-called or not, they kind of can't because they're beholden to somebody or something else. Interest groups, whoever they owe the favors for, getting them elected, that sort of thing. Master of puppets.

It's interesting too that you see when Fury, near the beginning of the book, he ascends to monarch level, and he is forced to leave Cradle, or the iteration. And you kind of, he kind of avoids having to answer why. And they're like, well, we just have to.

And it's like, well, I'm going to take my family and whoever else with me. So there's something there too, right, where Fury has advanced and now he has, he is forced to leave because the other monarchs. Because reasons.

Because reasons. I don't know, yeah, that he doesn't find. And we're like, okay, Fury could be very useful in helping defeat this dread god, but nope, he's got to ascend to the next plane of existence, or whatever you want to call it, out of the way, maybe.

So this is an interesting line of thought and a question. Do we think that just how Sacred Valley responded to the sage, that if everyone attacked a dread god, they could kill the dread god? Like, even the little slices, right? Like, they're not going to do a whole lot, but if all the powerful people from, we'll leave coppers out of this one, irons to monarchs. The iron monarch.

Nope. All right, cool. Good question, Jonathan.

Thanks, guys. Kind of a cool name, but it doesn't quite fit with the style of the world. No, that sounds more medieval fantasy.

Move on. Thanks for letting me have your podcast, Casey. I will see you on the next one.

Well, so, okay, I just looked up something on the side here because I feel like it was somewhat connected to the idea of the monarchs and being stuck in the system. There are these two competing theories that are trying to explain history and why history proceeds as it does. One of them is called the great man theory, the theory of heroes, and the other is called the people's theory.

And the idea of the great man theory is history is decided by essentially heroes or great men who have a vision and they create that vision into the worlds. So for good or for evil. So think about was, let's say, Nazi Germany created by a couple of people like Hitler and said that they wanted to birth that kind of world into existence.

And so their force of personality convinced people to follow them and they created that society or the people's theory, which is the competing one, says that things like that are inevitable based on the societal impacts of whatever is going on in that society. So was Hitler's Germany essentially guaranteed because of the world war they had just come through, the economic situation that the allies foisted onto them afterwards, was a second world war than inevitable? And that just who somebody would come to power in the way that Hitler did, and it would look pretty much the same. Uh, there's interesting ideas there.

I don't, I personally don't think it's exactly one way or the other. I think there's a mix, but it is, I feel like I see the monarchs in the same way. Like the monarchs, I think, are the great man theory.

Yeah, heroes built society and time and history, especially in a world where your best heroes are ultra powerful and can destroy continents if they wanted to. I think it lends a lot of power to that theory. So the great man theory, this is very cool that you brought that up.

Put a pin in it, Jonathan, for crime and punishment. The idea of it is, one aspect of it is that great men should be able to do things without impunity. With impunity? With impunity.

Yes. I know English. With impunity.

Because it is their job to advance the world, structure the world, build this world. And if that means that some not so great men need to die in advancement of it, that is okay. Feudal Russia in the 1800s was far behind France and England and the rest of the countries in Europe.

They've had their revolutions that were, yes, bloody, but they kind of grew into themselves in some way. And I know that's really simplifying it. But they grew into themselves as societies and countries.

Russia, always behind, finds itself in the 1860s, around there, sometime even a little bit before, you know, stuck in this world where there's the, it's a feudal system, it's a serf system. There's serfs and then there's the king and the middle class, upper class would be the intelligentsia, the bourgeoisie. And the bourgeoisie got it in their head, we don't need a king.

And they're reading all the stuff that's coming out of Europe. And they're like, well, great men have made big changes by, you know, overthrowing the king. We should do that.

But how do we do that? We get the serfs to do it for us. And so that's the world that Crime and Punishment is written for. Again, another pin, Jonathan, for you in the audience.

And I'll break that down in our introduction when we cover Crime and Punishment. But that also fits in this book. Might is right.

And they have to do something. So these people have to do something against the dreaded god, but it's not us. It's not us.

We have to get others to do it. So there's this melding of the great man theory that, where it originated, maybe that's too strong of a word, where it first popped up, at least for us, for our generation. We're looking back, that was like the first time in history where it made a bigger blimp or a bigger splash than it did in previous times.

Maybe I'm just historically ignorant. But as I read it, and here, I see a similar thing. Obviously, different worlds.

One is the real world, and one is the Abaddon. But there's certainly principles that kind of repeat themselves. I would say one of the things with Cradle, especially almost all Chinese novels, is that the great man theory applies, but every single individual on the planet is trying to be that great man simultaneously.

And that's what all the conflict comes down to, because you've got a whole swath of people who all are like, ah, yes, my heaven striking crane technique will surely lead me to becoming the ruler of this country. No lies detected. Yeah.

And it all comes down to who is the greatest man of these great men in the world of these Chinese novels. And you sort of see that here, where almost anyone is pretty much born with, you know, Madra channels. So anyone almost can come— Except for London.

I said almost. I said almost. I put the exception in there.

Yeah, but sometimes I gotta spoon feed my listeners. That's what he thinks of you, listeners. Okay, so you assume— Let's continue on.

Although I said it was more— So there's the possibility in each of these users— It's not like one of those magic systems like Harry Potter or something where, oh, you have to be born with magic. No, everyone has Madra. Anyone can become a great man.

It just takes the chance to do so. You have the, like, the right things line up at the right time. And if you buy Casey's package for $3.99— I am not air shipping.

You too can be a great man one day. Well, I think in some ways the Chinese understand the, I'd say, the principle behind the great man theory or, like, becoming the great man, which is the force of will and the self-confidence to enforce your will upon the world. Because I think that that has a lot to do in the real world.

When you're talking about Congress, one of the problems is— I guess two problems. One, you don't want somebody who's passive in that role of a leader. A lot of times people think about that.

Oh, you want to give the leadership to the guy who doesn't want to be leader. But I think a lot of people are— But you need to still have the qualities of a leader for that to work. And I think the problem we've come into is if you have somebody who is looking for external validation to decide what is right, then you end up with somebody who's just not— They aren't thinking of their own thing.

They're taking whatever from what people tell them. They don't have a vision for society. They're just endless custodians of the now.

The other half of that is that we have such a massive system in place within, like, the government and the laws and such. It's so overburdened, so large that it's hard to actually affect any real change. There's just essentially a momentum within government.

Within any organization. You don't even have to be government. You can be some massive corporation.

Trying to change anything at that corporation is basically impossible because of the momentum of what it's already doing, keeping you from doing it. This gets into two different things. Three different things.

Deontology versus— Utilitarianism? Yeah. And then also, have you ever read The Dictator's Handbook? No. No.

I'm not planning to become one. Of course Jonathan read it. You're talking about Machiavelli, then, right? The prince? No, I'm not talking about prince.

I'm talking about— It's called The Dictator's Handbook. It's a really good read. It talks about how to stay dictator with in-groups and out-groups, and then dictators get overthrown because in-groups decide that they're no longer being specially treated or whatever, and the cycle continues.

It's really fascinating because it kind of gets into that too of like, okay, how does whoever's in power stay in power? It doesn't have to be a dictator for just explaining it. It can be Congress. It can be the Senate.

It can be whoever, right? But this idea that the person at the top is at the top because they have enough allies who are on the in-group who also have power to help keep them in power. But you get ousted when that group no longer feels like you can fit the bill, which brings in the story of The Manchurian Candidate, if you've ever seen that movie, where the principal idea of the story is that the president is a puppet. Just all this stuff, right? It makes you question society and go like, okay, at a large scale, where do you fall? And then on a small scale, what do you do in the meantime? What do you do with your life because of that? It gets into your belief system and how you view society and how you respond accordingly, which is literally the actions you take day to day, right? So it really actually does matter, but it also, you decide what to do with that.

Here's a controversial hot take, probably. Go ahead, go ahead. Once they were out that first time, I have no idea why he decided, you know what? I'm going to go back there and fight the Dread God.

This surely won't go wrong. Listen, I can understand. He doesn't want Sacred Valley destroyed.

Why? A, the Wei Clan just, you know, tried to kill him. So screw them. And B, he's just throwing himself into a suicide mission at this point.

It's a really cool suicide mission. Don't get me wrong. A lot of suicide missions are pretty cool looking at the time.

I don't think that that's what you want to say. A lot of suicide missions are really cool. No.

It's not a Sylvester Stallone movie. Looks really cool, I say at the time. It's appealing.

It's the idea of fighting impossible odds. Dying in a place of glory, I get. Terrorism, I don't get.

This is passive terrorism. This is letting them all die. I'm with you, Casey.

We're just letting the bomb drop. I've got to turn them out. Yeah.

Heaven's Glory tried to kill them. Wei Clan tried to kill them. The rest of the clans are pretty much on their way out at this point.

And, like, they're already running interference with the monarchs. What's the point now? He's just going to, you know, sleep on the land, probably. He's going to eat until he's tired and then sleep.

It's the slumbering titan. He doesn't apparently do much aside from eat something, go to bed. But then we wouldn't get to see what a cool ending sequence that was written where Dross coordinates all these attacks from everyone into this perfectly timed system.

Or this perfectly timed attack. But that was a very cool sequence where I don't think we've, in my opinion, I think that's one of the cooler ending sequences of a book in the series so far, where you have this, like I said, awesome coordinated attack by Dross. And it's so perfectly well timed out that they actually do make the wandering titan, you know, turn around and look for a different food source.

Dross does go out in the world. Sure, he turned them away. Now he's going to go find some other innocent place to go eat.

So congratulations. But it's not our innocent place. And that's what matters.

That's a good point, though. He's being selfish by turning the titan away. Yep.

He's like, oh, yeah, screw everyone else. Come on, good guy, lay your life down. Exactly.

He's crapped on it, crapped on me for my entire life. I'm going to save these worthless pieces of crap so the titan can eat the world of people that I've never met in my life. Way to go.

Back into the black flame empire goes. You know what he should have done is Jailong should have been like, hey, this might be a lot to ask, but can you send the wandering titan over to the desolate? The desolate wild for me. That'd be great.

I just feel like they need to get sorted out a little bit. Thanks. Yeah, there's a lot of like a bunch of snakes there, right? Yeah, those guys.

Yeah. Not talking about the four of Fauna. I just realized we really haven't moved a whole lot location wise.

We've been in the black flame empire for most of the books and from the black flame empire, we had that one travel to the arena, but they didn't even travel over a lot of places. They just use that transportation like circle or whatever it was from what I remember. Did they? They flew with their cloud ships because they got intervened.

All right. They presented to Zen. They flew with the cloud ship.

I think the Bob Linden didn't do the travel because he got yoinked by a malice or whatever. It's like, yes, I'm taking this one. I thought it was Northrider 30.

Northrider was there too, wasn't it? No, no. No, no yoinking him. No, he yoinked him from the.

Well, he was at the tournament, right? While he's at the tournament. How many times can we say yoinked? Sephirnatov. Sephirnatov the river.

That's better. Knows how to dragon like that. But we then went back to Sacred Valley.

But out of all these, I think the most traveling that we ever saw done was it was it the third book? Was that the one where he fought Jai Long at the end? Second book. Sorry, fought Jai Long? Yes. The books are sliced weird.

He fights Jai Long in the fourth book. Yeah. Okay, that's where he loses his arm.

That's why it's sliced weird. Yeah. That's where he loses his arm.

Because of all the traveling that Ethan did to finagle the guy into forcing him to open up the tomb. Yeah, he like traveled all around the place trying to get all these things that could possibly kill Ethan. Yeah, that's the intro of book four.

Yeah. Where we get the backstory of what took place. That was the most amount of traveling that has been done.

Most of the time they're just stationary training or, you know, in one region. There used to be a literature genre of travel logs. Did you know this? I think, yeah, I've heard of that before.

So Casey wants a travel log for you indie authors who tune in. You got one guy who wants to read it. It's just the Oregon Trail.

And then Ma passed away from dysentery and it was just me and little sister with our two horses and a cow. The entire genre of Chinese novels is based on a book called Journey to the West. It's true.

What would you call that other than a travel log? A fantasy travel log. To be fair, they don't make it out of like India. They go to China and India and that's it.

The Black Flame Empire. Right. I think in some respects, the Black Flame Empire, they don't have to go anywhere else because they're really in the most important place in the universe already.

Yeah. I mean, you've got that other continent full of dragons. You got that other continent that's full of like animals and such.

And then you've got the place where all the important people are. Wow. The United States of the Black Flame Empire.

Exactly. Think about it. Look at all the best American novels.

If they go anywhere, they go to Europe. Barely. All right.

All the important stuff happens here. Okay. I have a fun question that I want us all to participate in.

So what if you took all of the philosophy and actions of Cradle, but you changed the plot and the setting? So I would change it to be a story about merchants who kept trying to get better sales than one another. And so, you know, might makes right. But you're undercutting each other to try to have better sales.

I just wanted to write a story about the Jews, really, is what I'm telling you. You made Slava's double chin come out. More than once.

His double chin became a quadruple chin. We're reaching multiplying levels here. The times for power scaling on his chin.

Linden's like, that's a bad sale, Gwiam. Yes. Oh, gosh.

Well, leave it to Jonathan. What? What? Does he do this often? He's like, you know, are the Jews behind it? You know who's behind opening the vaults on Cradle? Jews. Yep.

They somehow made their way into Cradle. The Jews control most of the void keys. They own the bank of void keys.

Right. You can use it for a price. There's interest charged.

We didn't choose to do this. Malice made us do it. That's a historical joke.

But we're still held responsible. Oh, wow. Yes, it is a historical joke.

I mean, they're in charge of most of the SoulCoin usury. Seems apropos. That's right.

Given the trajectory of this episode. How much of this we're cutting out? Like, we're not cutting anything out because, you know. You know, they're kicked out of 80% of all the sects in Cradle.

Oh, my goodness. Wow. So how would you guys change the story if you were to pick a new setting and new characters? That's how I would do it.

Thanks for shitting on my idea, bastards. It was just too funny. That's what we're here for.

Spencer, that's why you invited us. You literally gave us a piece of paper that said shit on my idea. After the failed artist wandering titan attacks the Cradle world, they all have to flee south after about 10 years of oppression.

And then they had to fight with their new neighbors. Too much? For those who don't know, Slav is spelling out World War II. Yeah.

Too soon. Too soon. Slippering Titan, the Austrian painter.

One could say to June. I'm just picturing. I could never realize what the Slippery Titan looked like.

So I always think it is. Did you say the Slippery Titan? No, the Slumbering. The Slumbering Titan.

He says Slumbering Titan. The Slippery Titan. I may have mumbled.

No, the Slumbering Titan. I'm just picturing the Slumbering Titan now with a little pencil. How high is the Slumbering Titan? I'll tell you who he is.

5'2", 5'3". Yeah. His heart goes out.

I guess Reg and Shen would be Mr. Yosef then, right? Yeah, could be. Could be. Probably.

Well, I'm not sure about that. You know, the Heaven's Glory School does have camps for people they kidnap, so. That's true.

That's true. They do lock them up. That checks out for... And they did try to put them in the oven at the end there.

They did try to set them on fire. It writes itself. So you're saying I'm not wrong.

Gosh. Yeah. Oh my goodness.

You're not wrong. Oh dear. Well, it's been a great show.

Three years. It's been a great three years. This is good, yeah.

This is... It's... We're gonna get canceled now. Thank you all. You had a good run.

Anytime. Anytime. We had a good stroll through the camp.

Hey, you wanted controversy and you got it. I... Right. I will have to eat my own dog food at this point.

Because I did ask... You brought it up. You're the one who introduced the concept. Congratulations.

You completely derailed the train. Train? You stuck a penny on the tracks. Oh, hey.

I'm doing this and I don't even mean it at this point. If only we had a people group who are meticulous, who had the trains running. Cultivation will set you free.

If only. Wow. Okay.

Okay. Well, how do you recover from that? What's your favorite... So, how do you come back from this? What's your favorite Cradle book and why is it Bloodline? Well, so far... What's your favorite Cradle book and why is it Bloodline? Oh my gosh, Bloodline. The Aryan Bloodline.

Will, what are you doing to us? Shut up about Agartha. Book just wrote it. Wrote itself.

My favorite part is when the Heaven's Glory school came to that one house and said, are you keeping Wei clan outlaws under the floorboard? Jonathan's going to go make a list of all the bad jokes. One could say he did not see that coming. No, please stop.

Oh my gosh. Oh man. They even tried to gas Lyndon.

All right, now we need to come up. We need to come up with the actual controversial hook. This is never making it into the podcast.

We get pulled so fast. Oh man. Oh my God.

This is... I keep coming up with things now. I just gotta stop saying them. Casey, what did you say earlier? You learned to... Or was that JT? You learned to not say everything.

That was JT. All right, maybe you should learn a lesson from that. Oh, wow.

Well, thank you for joining us. How do we come back? How do we even go forward? How do we reel this back from that? Thank you for joining us on... Okay, let me try this again. Thank you for joining us today on the SideQuest Book Club podcast.

Please don't report us. Yeah. It was all... Bringing it back full circle.

Bringing it back full circle. That's the start. Tune in next time for whatever is going on then, I guess.

Where we go to sensitivity training. Crime and punishment, I think. Yes.

Oh boy. Yeah. Yeah.

In the next episode, Slava and Jonathan get talked to by HR. The PR department decides that we're keeping them around. Joke's on you, JT.

They are HR. Well, they are humans and they are resourcing. Uh, where Slava and Jonathan take on HR, and how Brenda makes sure that they both get fired, regardless of what they've done.

Next up, Slava and Jonathan versus the Cancel Mob. Yes. Behold the power of clout.

No press is bad press. I buy it. You don't have a choice.

That's some people's philosophy anyway. But, uh, thank you for joining us on Bloodline. Always great to have Spencer, Casey, and JT bringing their thoughts, opinions, expertise, and nonsense.

I look forward to having you guys back. And I believe, Slava, we have on the calendar to bring in the, um, the Casey, JT, OG, their dad. Right? That's sometime in the near future.

Yeah. We do. Pet Sematary is one of his favorite King books.

We share an affinity for King, him and I. And we have that sometime on the calendar in the spring. I'm looking forward to it, because I always like meeting King fans. Even those who are, for lack of a better term, more devoted.

Or especially more devoted, as I think your dad is. What sparked the conversation, for a little backgrounder for everybody, is he listened to our King, uh, our King, our coverage of It. Stephen King's It.

He listened to those episodes, and he really enjoyed it. And I think he even resonated with some of the stuff that the book portrayed, and how we covered it. And we, that was it.

That was the start of that invitation, which was like two years ago at this point. But he's still in the books. It's just our schedule is planned out sometimes a year or two in advance.

So we keep moving it up to get him on sooner. But so far, we haven't been able to. But I think it's actually in pen, not in pencil now, on the calendar for spring.

It is. It is. Summer, actually.

So we'll get all that handled. You guys will get to interact on a podcast with the OG of our bloodline. Yes.

Nice. Bringing it back. Well, thanks for joining us.

And be sure to make fun of us in the comments. That's what the internet's for. Like, share, subscribe, all that good stuff.

See you next time. Adios. I have a favor to ask you.

If you like what we're doing, the simplest way to support the show is to hit subscribe. In return, we'll keep leveling up, and we'll listen to your feedback, and read authors that you suggest. And of course, we'll take side quests along the way.

Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time.