Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - The Transall Saga

Episode Date: January 27, 2024

What if the kid from Hatchet went to the post apocalypse future instead of Canada? That's what we're here to discuss in Gary Paulsen's "The Transall Saga". We talk slavery, YA romance, and the world's fastest language learner. One of Asha's favorite childhood books!patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

Bro. Are you fucking real, man? Come on. Hello everyone and welcome back to Sword, Sorcery and Socials, and we'll podcast about the politics and themes hiding in our genre of fiction as always. I'm Ashton and I'm joined by my co-host, Keth0. How's it going, Keth0? Howdy.

We're finally back. Somebody finally has a computer again? Can finally record audio again? Yeah, for those who aren't in the know, my apartment burned down. So. With everything, unfortunately, literally everything, except for a Ursula Le Guin t-shirt that I

was wearing. And some cloud slippers that I was also wearing. So yeah, that was that. So yeah, that was that. Yeah, very, very little. Poor Catho Heers had to essentially wait until he could have belongings again. So we do apologize for the long break between episodes, but unfortunately, you know, active God and whatnot. We'll call it that. Yeah, let's call it that.

You know, that's what insurers might call it. I know, just kidding. They probably, this is probably a very specific cause, but whatever. Yeah, so we're finally recording again. We're finally getting to our long-promised childhood books that no one else has read besides us. And we are starting with the Transol Saga by Gary Paulson, better known as the Hatchet Guy, writing a not Hatchet book, which is still a Hatchet book for like the first four chapters. At the very least, like, when you think of Gary Paulson as a survival fiction writer,

where he writes fiction where, the most part children are surviving in the woods by themselves. Yes. That that is at least the first couple of chapters of this book, but on for a minute, what is thought to be an alien planet? Well, it's thought to be an alien planet, I would say for at least the first half of the book. Yeah. It's thought to be an alien planet, I would say for at least the first half of the book. Yeah. It's until his like, his like, sort of warrior citizen ceremony when they gift him some like

objects that are like clearly human like made or whatever. And he's like, oh shit, I'm on earth, but in the future. It's it, you know, it makes me think it makes me think a little bit. Oh, go ahead. It makes me think a little bit of the time machine Yeah Where it's like suddenly a bajillion years in humanities future and like human humankind is mutated into these like alternative beings Yeah

So believe it out this book is technically post apocalyptic. Yeah. It's what it ends up being the epilogue. We'll get there. But it is. It's so most of this book takes place in a post apocalyptic future where there was a plague, some sort of heinous plague that was killing all sorts of people, unstoppable plague. And then as governments around the world collapsed, terrorist groups got their hand on nuclear missiles and just started firing them off willy-nilly. And this resulted in a massive amount of genetic mutation

among humans and plants and animals. I forget how many years in the future he's supposed to be. I don't think it really says. Yeah, it does. It never gets specific, but. But so our main character, Mark, later to be known as Kakan is a 13 year old who goes solo hiking through a missile range in like Arizona or something. He then, due to the Deus Ex device of almost being bitten by a snake, falls into this giant blue beam of light which transports him, he thinks to another planet, you'll learn later into the future, into some woods. And then you have like three chapters of

hatchet where he like befriends a weird monkey creature, the voids being murdered by a buffalo, a future, a future genetically modified buffalo. And like insects that destroying his clothing. Yeah, he like builds a fucking treehouse to live in. He goes, he is a friends, a weird monkey. Yeah, the monkey creature, he makes friends with the monkey creature, which is great. creature. He makes friends with the monkey creature, which is great. Breaks his ribs, trying to swing through the trees like monkey. Yeah, like he tries to be Tarzan and breaks his ribs. Then he just wraps them up and he's fine. Despite this, he is preternaturally good at survival.

Now, the book plays this off by saying that he reads all sorts of survival magazines because he's like an obsessive young teen. And so he's read all these survival magazines that have prepared him, at least for this in some capacity. It's a bit, I don't know, he's a little too good at it, I think. I am going to go out on a limb and say that Gary Paulson really thinks that survival skills are very useful and maybe not just very useful but morally good to have.

I would say yes. I mean you could read Hatchet, you could read this, you could read Dog Song or any of the other Paulson books. And I think you would come away with the impression that it is morally good to teach your children, particularly your sons, how to survive in the wilderness with like a knife and axe and their wits. I feel like if I went back and read the hatchet, I'd be like, is this dude like a return to the wilds type? Like.

I don't, from what I can remember from Hatchett, I don't think he's a return to the wild type. I think he's part of a movement that was genuinely pretty popular in like the 80s, which I don't remember the name for, but there was a specific movement that had, well, so people part, there were people that were part of it that were fine and healthy and normal.

And there are a lot of people who were part of this movement who were like weird reactionaries, who believe that like, sort of with the sort of a masculine or disconnect from traditional masculinity of American men and that there was a whole wave of people, you saw us particularly in like the Boy Scouts on the more quote unquote, normal or mainstream side of like going out into the woods,

doing survival camping trips, all sorts of different clubs and groups. Guy got into this sort of thing. There's a number of books, movies, and other cultural artifacts from this era where they thought it was like this sort of passage of manhood for like a dad and his son, or a young man and some sort of male figure like

tutor or you know parental figure to essentially go out into the woods and live and survive. It was like seen as like a like a connection to sort of some sort of ancient manliness I think. Now a lot of it was inherently kind of reactionary, but I don't think all that Inherently was but I'm gonna be honest with you I have no desire to find out what Gary Paulson's actual politics are because I'm scared they will be terrible I have no Inclination to believe they would be any good. So I'm just not going to investigate it any further correct So

Our back to nature man and his 13 year old avatar, Mark. Mark makes friends. He learns how to hunt. He's like, all right, I'm going to survive. I'm going to eventually find the blue light and go back home. He eventually runs into a tribe of other humans. Now, they're short. I want to, they're like they're short. I want to say they're like three or four feet tall.

They're like they are very short humanoid. They've got webbed feet for some reason. That's like their weird, weird genetic modification. He talks about he like saves his friend, Lita from a wolf. Yeah, Wolf thingy. They call it like a howling beast or something. They call it the howling thing. So he like goes and like chills with them.

He like kind of learns their language. He calls them the arrow people. He kind of learns their language. And then like as soon as he kind of gets comfortable, they're like, hey, we're going on a raid. They go to some neighboring village and kill everyone. Mark is understandably disturbed by this. Mark is understandably disturbed by like these people just being like, Oh, we're going to go murder that village next door. For what? That's because it's just a thing we do sometimes. I got to be

asked, that's the first thing where I'm like, Yeah, people are like that, yes. Like, it wasn't really for anything, they just kinda wanted to do it for like honor. And you're like, okay, people are like that. And he's like, that's just fucked up. I'm going back to the woods. I'm out of here. Which then precipitates a thing he does

at least a couple of times. He's like, I'm fucking leaving. Then something bad happens. And he's like, I guess I got to go back. That is pretty much every major turning point in this story. Yes. And even and even when he does go home, it's like an accident. Yes. So he sees smoke and he's like, Oh, shit, I

can't go back to the woods. The village is on fire. Leta was nice to me anyway. I should go see what's up. And he finds them in the middle of being caught up in a slave raid by people who are more his size, not as tall as him, but closer, the people called the Tussuk. And they are there literally just to take slaves. They murder a bunch of people, then they take the ball of slaves, including Mark, who has

now been named Kakon by Leta. So Kakon and Leta and a bunch of other ones get like, literally put in chains and dragged across the prairie and back through the mountains of the Tasuk village. It's like a progression of constant enemies to friends. This book, it's like you start with the people in the village being kind of like standoffish and then they do some heinous shit like go murder people next door and you're like, oh god and then Mark comes back and then he gets captured by these slavers and then a bunch of stuff happens and then he becomes a member of the tribe of the sla back and then he gets captured by these slavers and then a bunch of stuff happens and it becomes a member of the tribe of the slavers and then

we're gonna get to that because I've got some and the only the only person in the entire thing that doesn't get like a red like an implied redemption is was it the merc on or whatever you're the merc on yeah and and the actual final antagonist of the whole story. Yeah, it's it's like everybody else is all the bad things they do. Even his future even his girlfriend, his future wife, actually, his his future wife is was his literal buyer was his well, the daughter of his buyer. Yeah. Like, was his

owner. So when he gets back to the village of the Tsook, it's a small village. He and Leeton, the other ones are all sold, essentially sold off as slaves to people in the village. He gets bought by like the headmaster, Dagon. Not that Dagon. Every time I saw it, I was like, day gone. Not that day gone. Another one. I don't think this man has been playing Dungeons and Dragons. No, or reading.

HP Lovecraft. Lovecraft. Yeah. So he gets bought as a slave by the village chief day gone and spends his days in a very YA relationship with the chief's daughter, Migan. It's Megan with an extra A. Make it with an extra A. It's Migan. Even though she is literally his owner from the start, at least I could, maybe I assume you could too, even from the start, the way they interact, you're like, oh, they're going

to fall in love eventually. It's very why. You can tell immediately. The way he describes her, he like, oh, they're the same age. Oh, she's got this imperial attitude towards him. They're going to end up falling for each other, despite the fact that she literally owns him. Yeah. And it's not even that many chapters later.

She pulls this thing where he gets told once he joins the tribe, it's like you can own land and do this and do that. And also for a wife. And then she's like, you're too young for that. And you're like, she's like, you're too young to have a wife. And he's like, am I and she's like, you fucking are. Give it another year. Years. Yeah.

Another few years. He's he's grand total time. He's on the planet for like year years. Yeah, another few years. He's grand total time. He's on the planet for like four years. I think by this point. So well, one step at a time. So we have to do his other I escaped but didn't. So he tries to his to his credit. He tries to escape being a slave almost instantly, like a couple hours after making it to the Tsook village, they put him in the shed in a pigsty. And within like three hours, he's broken out at his dipping. He's like, I'm fucking out of here. So credit to him. He's like, I'm a slave. I've been a goddamn slave. Fuck's off. Get shot with an arrow. And instead of killing him for being a runaway slave, they heal him.

You find out later, it's only because of he, we haven't pointed out that his eyes are different than everyone else's. He's taller than everyone. He doesn't have the web feet like everyone else. Like everyone realizes he's a freak compared to them. Because of this, he gets treated special. Every other runaway slave would have been killed. All like of like Lee Ta's people, if they tried to escape, murked, dead. He does it because he's special. Also, me gone already has a crush on him.

So they put him back. Eventually, he tries to escape again at one point when like all the soldiers are gone on a different different raid and while he's gone He sees a raid of more primitive people going to kill everyone in the tussuk village and he again goes I could fuck off into the woods Away from the people who took me as a slave, who literally put me in chains and sold me. I could leave them to their fate

and disappear into the woods forever. And instead, he goes back. Of course. He goes back. His logic at the time is that Lee ties in the village still and he likes her and he doesn't want her to get killed. That is the logic he puts forward anyway. I think it's because he already has the hots for me gone. So he turns around and goes back. He warns them, they put him on a horse, he goes

and does some heroics fighting off a bunch of invaders, gets discovered by Dagon, villages saved, yada, yada. He then gets accepted as a member of the tribe because of his heroics, essentially. And this is where I come to my first crazy interest, crazy, weird, ethical question. So he was a slave. He did some heroics, saved the village.

He gets accepted as a warrior and an equal and a member of the village. The one ethical choice he makes is they're like, you can have slaves now too. And he's like, absolutely not. I will not take any slaves. Doesn't do anything about the fact that there's a bunch of other slaves in the village, including his friend who is now owned by me God. His one like good friend, Lee ties now owned by me God, his one like good friend,

Leetah is now owned by me God. He doesn't go when they go, oh, you could have slaves. He could have said, well, give me Leetah and then just free her. You know, could have done that. Didn't because the way their culture works, you know, he could have been like my one favor I want as an equal is Leetah as a slave. And then he could have just been like, yeah, you're not a slave anymore. Li Ta even kind of points out, she's like, why the hell did you come back? These people killed my entire village. And he's like, I don't know, I just kind of like them.

I just kind of like, you know, right? They have like things they ride into battle. They've got like, yeah, hairy beast creatures. Now, if I want to get real political on this point for a second here, I think this is a perfect example of elite capture. The capture and turn of potential revolutionaries. What happens? Mark is a rebellious slave. He tries to escape twice, succeeds the second time. Then out of the goodness of his heart, saves the lives of the people who enslaved him. And then what happens with that? They go, oh, you're one of the good ones. You get to be one of us now.

And what does he do with that position? Does he do anything useful for all the other slaves that exist in this village? No. We never hear about them again, except for Li Ta. They are just relegated to field work. No longer be mentioned. Yeah, they don't get mentioned. We don't know what happened to any of them. Again, yeah, none of the people besides Li Ta

ever get mentioned again, because he's not a slave anymore. And so we don't care about the slaves anymore. He doesn't care about the slaves anymore. And so what is this? This is a potential revolutionary. They got captured and co-opted by the power structure. He becomes one of them. He gets his own house. He like becomes a warrior.

He's like best friends. His like mentor. His mentor is the guy who wanted to put a fucking sword through his gut on the slave march back from Lita's village, Sorbo. Sorbo. But they're cool now because Kakan did some feats of martial prowess. But this is what I want to talk about, the politics of this this because this happens in real life. If somebody within a revolutionary movement or has revolutionary potential makes enough waves

and in the right way, it is very easy as you can be historically seen for that person then to simply be absorbed into the power structure to neutralize their revolutionary potential. This happens a lot, actually. You can see it with individuals, you can see it with organizations. I mean, it seems like it would be the easiest way to quell rebellious thought, ultimately. I mean, that's why, that's the whole thing behind somebody like Margaret Thatcher

being like turn everyone into a homeowner Yeah, it's It's the same it's even though in this book. It's not capitalism per se. It's a different hierarchy But it's a thing people talk about capitalism being so good at which is co-opting revolutionary Messages and then commodifying them You know the classic being like the cheay shirts, you know, like this guy was like, I have potential to be disruptive to the system. And the system is like, but what if we gave you a bunch of privileges?

I'm not going to shake up the system anymore. And Mark's like, I don't know. It's just seemed pretty nice. I've got a lot of pretty chill stuff here. My life's pretty good. The only moral stance he holds is when Migaun's like, you're gonna have slaves now. He's like, nah, she's like, well, how are you gonna farm your land? He's like, ah, I hadn't thought that far. But if I can't do it myself, it's not getting done.

But I would also argue that that attitude is less, even though it is the morally correct one, it's also less a direct opposition to slavery and more a carryover of his like I'm a wilderness survivor mentality, like I can do everything myself to survive. If I can't do it myself, it's just not getting done or doesn't need to be done. So I think it's less a moral victory for Kekan and more a carryover of Gary Paulson's rugged individual. Yeah, at the very very most it's not like an objection to the institutional idea of slavery. It is just he himself as an individual going, and I don't need it. He's like, nah, he's like, I don't need any of that. I'll do it myself.

And you're like, his best friend is still owned by the girl he's crushing on. So whatever. And that's kind of seen as like a step up, like a move up. No, it is a move up because her last owner was meaner than me, God. Yeah. And me, God is the daughter of the village chief. So leta is now a slave in like the most prestigious house

and the richest house in the village. Ooh, la la. Moving on up, moving on up. Move it on up. So then he like just chills for a while as just like a to suck warrior. And they do his like ceremony to allow him to like join the warriors. They like send message out. And then we meet the final like villain, really, of the story,

the mercant, which I, okay, maybe this is childhood bias coming out. I thought the character of the Mercad was actually interesting. I mean, yeah, I mean, he's interesting. There's a lot of implications made with his character that I want to talk about eventually, but. Yes, but I think of the characters in this story,

he's one of the ones that has the most like depth, I guess. And I think it's one of the more interesting parts of the plot. So the mercant shows up. He wears like a mask all the time. He's supposed to be this like misty. He's like the overlord of all to suck land. All the to suck villages. He is the one that united them like he himself.

You eventually find out that he also came out of the wilderness into this same village and then went on to go be a warlord. And then you also find out over the course of the story here that the Mercan also looks a whole lot like Mark, like Kecan. He's the only other person that looks like Mark. It's it's barely kept a secret in the book that that I mean, he's obviously just another past. Past human. Yeah, past Earth human. It's not even like he kind of tries to pull like a kind of sneaky thing with it, but he's not sneaky at all. He's not sneaky.

Well, I think it's more like he's trying to pull the sneaky on Mark, not on the reader necessarily. Yeah. Because as the reader, you can figure it out pretty easily. I think it's more like you can see that every other character in the story is trying to keep the secret from Mark from Kakon and you're like, no, you can tell it. This what's going on. So the Mercant super weird and shady from the start. He's like, oh, I hear you have a quest to find your way back home. I definitely know someone who could help.

You should come on this trip with me for all by yourself. Nobody else. Yes, you can trust me, the shady man in the mask. Which, of course, he does because Mark's an idiot I think Among other things mark is kind of a dumb except For his one great skill of learning languages in like a month and a half Yeah, keep in mind. Okay. These are all people who exist in a far-flung future and have no language

that is even close to a modern language family. And he learns a little bit from the original, the first village. But then picks up to suck in how many months? A few months, yeah. Well, he spends a few months like recovering from the injury from being shot with an arrow. And a few months as a slave and then six months or whatever is like a soldier by like by the time you have his like his warrior ceremony or whatever, he is fluent, 100% fluent into Sukh. And you're like, this is a language probably only tangentially

slightly connected to any past earth language. And he's just like, I is a language probably only tangentially slightly connected to any past earth language. And he's just like, I got this shit. He's like some 15 year old kid who's like, no, I can just speak this now. Perfect. Which emerged, I think you said earlier, immersion does have something to do with it. The fact that it's the only language people around him are speaking. So he's going to have to learn it. But like still, my man is a little too talented To then immediately then also be dumb enough to look at the mercant and be like I trust you You seem like legit guy

So of course they get ambushed to try and kill him and then instead of like going home. He's like no no no Someone tried to kill the mercant the mercant is still to be trusted because I'm an idiot At least this time he agrees to go with what he goes with Serbo, right? Yes, Arbo's with him They eventually find out that the mercant actually put a price on his head as a wanted criminal they go through Some shenanigans you find oh they find the one place on earth where plants are still green instead of red. And it's in this isolated volcanic crater that the certain group of people live in.

It's like a weird throwback. It's like the one place plants are still green. Everywhere else, they're red. I don't know how that works biologically, but whatever. It's radioactive, stupid whatever. It's radioactive Stupid future. It's it's magic future essentially. Yeah, he eventually meets some criminals and they're immediately like hey You're a wanted criminal. We're wanted criminals. Do you want to stage a fucking? break-in of the Royal Palace they they are the coolest These like wanted criminals are hanging out in the woods

within like a day's ride of the Merckons Palace. Yeah. The one dude like like like Roan or whatever, he owns like a boat. And his whole thing is that he got turned. He got exiled because he got a little too close to the Merckons daughter. Yes. And then when they tried to elope, the daughter just flipped on him. So she wouldn't get in trouble. And so he got like branded and fucking ran.

And then you've got the guy there with his tongue cut out, who used to be the Mercan's like lead advisor until he gave advice that Mercan didn't like and his tongue like fucking ripped out. These guys are actually cut a bad ass. They meet and then their first thought was, let's invade the palace. Yeah, they meet Kakan and they're like, you're the most wanted man in every in all the land. And you were just going to walk

up to the front door. Mark's like, Yes, because I haven't done anything wrong. I have the justice of truth on my side. And they're like,'re a moron. But at least we can use you to get in. But we can't. I mean it is Mark's idea to present him as a hostage as like as a captive and to break in. These guys are like we just want to break in and steal all of the treasure. They're like we know well I want to know where the gold's at. They're like, we know what I want to know where the gold's at. And so they they present Mark, they break in, they go, Mark knows how to make

explosives from one of his survival books. Just not even the survival books. He like remembers something that was explained to him in science class. My dude from first principles, advanced gunpowder. It's like, I can I can mix X and Y and get Z. And it's like, that's very specific. How did you know that? So with Mark's homemade, I don't want to know which magazine's Mark was reading, to be fair.

Being that he was a child in the 1980s, I'm worried about which specific survival magazines Mark was reading. But so they use this only bombs, they break in the past. He has a face off of the Mercon and you learn the Mercon secret. He is also from Mark's time more or less. They never say specifically, but it's because when the Mercon tries to explain it, Mark just interrupts him. Which I thought was an interesting. The Mercon tries to villain monologue and Mark is like, yeah, I don't care.

How do I go home? Sorry, I was just, I was digging around for the specific combo that he used to make bombs, essentially. Yeah, there's like the sulfur, potassium nitrate and charcoal. Yeah. Does that actually work? What about that in science class? I don't know.

The 80s were a different time. Also, does that actually work? I have no idea. At me on Twitter with the specific recipe for explosives. I'm sure that's probably fine. Um, so tell me about the Mercon, Gethro. The Mercon was an earth criminal. He was an escaped convict.

Yes. That escaped by getting into the beam of light. He broke off of his like fucking work gang. Yeah. And booked it into the desert. And then accidentally found the same beam of light. And then got Voiped. I just find it really funny.

There's almost like this essentialist thing about, he picked him because he's a criminal like he made him a criminal on purpose. Yes. Because then what does the mercant do when he makes it to the future? He becomes a warlord. He like extorts and and cheats and lies and steals to get to the top. And specifically, he teaches his soldiers like how to make like metal armor, which who in the fucking 1980s or now could explain to a random ass blacksmith how to make body armor. Yeah, he and he explicitly says he's from the 1980s. Yes. But Mark is too. So it's not like it's not like he got blasted in from even further back in

time. It's like he came back from the 80s. This man who was in jail during the Reagan administration for an unnamed crime gets the future. You know, if it was during the Reagan administration, probably just simple drug possession. Probably drug possession. I would guess though that, I don't know, Paulson would probably say it was something worse from the way he makes the character behave. He's called a murderer or something. Probably more like murder. So he's probably a murderer.

He's in jail. He breaks out from his chain gang, goes to the future, proves himself as a warrior because he's vicious and violent, I assume. Somehow manages to teach some people how to make like basic versions of like night armor or medieval metal armor, which the Tussuk hadn't figured out yet. How this random criminal from the 80s

knows how to do that, I have no idea. Cause Mark knows how to do it too. He teaches the blacksmith in me, Gons village, how to make body armor and a helmet and shit somehow. When he go in there, like, Hey, if you guys considered taking metal, hitting, banging it really thin and then in the shape of your body. And they were like, never thought of that before. Anyway, so the Mercant uses his knowledge of like weapons and politicking, I guess.

As though that's something that's only relevant to the 1980s and not the 200s, the two, the 20,000s BC. Yeah, I feel well, I think that the sook are supposed to be in like the yeah, the like because they don't have metal. It's like our culture. They don't have metal armor. We're talking like I call it closer to like a white man's interpretation of the Native American Indians. Kind of. Yeah, they kind of give you that vibe where they're like, they've like just figured out organized agriculture. Yeah. So it's it's and it's like light agriculture.

It's like agriculture, light horticulture stuff. Yeah. It's not like huge fields. We're talking like they just figured out how to build permanent buildings out of logs. It's a it's a very anachronistic thing. But what I think it's kind of allowed to be because it's in the future technically. So what things held over and which things didn't from what they know can be a little bit wishy washy, I guess. Yeah, I always I am a very specific criticism of any post apocalyptic story that does this,

but that's beside the point that we can talk about that in a second. Yeah. The other the other thing we're talking about. So like, sorry, I jumped in. You want to say more about it? What is with this essentializing politics of the mercant? Like because he was in jail in the 80s, when he gets to the future and has a chance to, he's immediately like, oh, I'm going to be a deceitful, backstabbing warlord because

that's just the kind of person I am. I feel like Paulson couldn't, I mean, he could have just made him a normal dude. That's the thing I'm most confused about. It's like he specifically had to make him a criminal because apparently only criminals think this way. And I feel like it's also, he knew that the Mercon had to be a character that like didn't want to go back.

And the conflict is that the Mercon wants Mark dead because Mark represents a threat, the threat of knowledge, you know, that he could teach other people of the Tisook like how to make body armor or whatever. So he has to make the Mercan a character who is like power hungry and also like doesn't wanna go back to the past. So he's like, what kind of person wouldn't wanna go back

where they came from? A criminal. A miscapie. A misca like, what kind of person wouldn't want to go back where they came from? And escapee. And escapee. Which here's the thing though, I'm going to be honest with you. There's a lot of people who would not want to go back. There's a lot. Like this is going to be the most one of the most odd things I've ever said. It's like, do you want to go to the present? Or do you want to go like, hang out with your hot wife and teach people how to do metallurgy? That sounds kind of appealing

minus the inherent slavery. Yeah, I mean, I would die instantly. So I can't really say anything, but. I'm also six too. So I would be the tallest person anyone in that world had ever seen. Oh, no, I'd probably be like, I mean, they're all there. I think they're all I think the tallest ones of even among the Tassuk are supposed to be like, you know, like five, four, you know,

I just barely be taller. Like I would be a guy like Mark's height. Mark could probably be is probably he's probably tall for a 13 year old but that's about as tall as I got so I mean to be clear I was also this tall when I was so tall. So again, setting aside the ethical question here, I feel like, hey, do you just want to go live with your hot wife in the future? Yeah, man. Or do you want to go back to 1980s capitalism? Maybe this is why it appealed to me as a child too much. Even then, I was like, yeah, no, I'd stay in the future. That seems great, actually. Like, that's the ultimate thing too is that like, I know we technically haven't gotten there, but

by the end of the story, the only time like, like the mercon essentially tells Mark that you can't go back home on purpose, because the light is random and and generally untraceable. So Mark just kind of, I think, well, he's really in a way that makes a ton of sense, but in a way that is pretty mature. He just goes, Well, I guess I'll stay. Well, I guess I'll go back to my my hot soon to be wife. Yeah, so he goes back and like screw it. I like you. He stabs the mercant first. Oh yeah. Doesn't kill him. Which you should which you should have but he stabs him and leaves him essentially to die slowly of a of a gut wound. And then

he and his criminal friends who just robbed the treasury fuck off. Mark goes home, proposes to me gone, and then is like settles in for his life as warrior farmer in the Tsook village. He settles in goes off to stop. Is that like a raid or something? No, so they after a while, they learned that the Merckon's son has sent some soldiers after him, obviously, because he stabbed the Merckon.

And if he had just killed them, then there would have been nobody left to say who did it and it would have been safer, but whatever, you know, even though witnesses. So the Merckons son sends some soldiers and Mark is like, look, I don't want the village to be attacked and anyone die for me. So I'll lead them on a wild goose chase out into the woods back into the dark forest from where I first came because I know the land there.

I'll be able to avoid them, kill them, whatever and then I'll come back once they're dead. So you guys can stay safe. And while he's out, you know, homo-owning these soldiers in the woods by getting them to fall into quicksand, getting them attacked by monkeys and like buffalo creatures and whatever, he like goes to jump off a rock and like hack these dudes to death with a sword and he gets like and blue-lighted back to the past, which when you think about it is kind of fucked.

Super. This guy just settled in for everything. He was like, man, I got it myself. A hot wife. I'm just going to stick around. I got a wife and land it. You know what? I've made my he's now been in the future for like two or three years. I think it's four. Yeah. Four. Yeah. He's spent four years. years. I think it's four. Yeah, four. Yeah. He spent four years. So he's he's like 17 or 18 by the end. He's like been in the future for four years. He is like ready to be just like a to suck for the rest of his life. And then whap. He's back in the 1980s.

And I can't I can't be honest. I can't think of anything worse. That sounds awful. It was truly a punishment, but what makes me chuckle even more is that the epilogue goes real hard into what the disease that killed all of like 70% of mankind was, and it makes me cackle. Paulson goes miniature Michael Crichton for an epilogue, where he's like, let's talk about disease. And the disease he picked to be related to, the killer disease was related to Ebola. Because it was the 80s, or the 90s, I think it was the 90s, I think when he wrote this 80s or 90s. When did he write this book? 1998. So yeah, he picked Ebola. He picked Ebola because obviously that's what you do.

And I mean, I'm glad this wasn't written in the 80s. If you wrote it in the 80s, probably would have wrote like AIDS or something. Jesus Christ. Yeah. I mean, yeah, instead he picked Ebola, which whatever, I guess. But then to the epilogue is Mark gets back. Then I think he's the age he is when he gets back. So I think he gets back and he's like 18. Yeah, he comes back and he's I'm assuming that he like crawls out of the woods and then finds his family again.

They're like, although he's in the fucking desert in Arizona. So he pops up in the desert in Arizona and then has to like wander back out and go find his family four years later. And how you explain where you were, no one will ever believe you. Number one, number two. And he turns into a mad scientist.

Number two, he now fluently speaks a language that doesn't exist, cause he's back in the past now. He's been speaking to Suk for four years exclusively. Guess what? You know what he should have done instead of becoming a scientist? He should have become- Invent Conlang?

He should have become a fantasy writer. But like, oh, you'd have been on Tolkien levels of doing the grammar correctly, because the language he actually spoke. Yeah, it wouldn't have even been like Tolkien. It would be beyond Tolkien levels of Conlang being accurate. Because it literally is a lived language. It's not even like a, because like even Quenya and has like this a falsity where it's almost like, it's like recreating Latin

because there's nobody that actually speaks it, you know? Where like this one, he's like, oh no, all the rules are the way they are because this is a language that developed organically without a writing system. So this man comes back to the 1980s as an 18-year-old who fluently speaks a language that now doesn't exist with no logical explanation as to where he was for the past four years. And then is like there was a disease outbreak that made the world this way. I'm going to become a scientist to prevent this from happening.

I want to know how he was able to get a college degree with a four year gap. Where were you on this gap here? It's really hard to explain. Don't worry about it. I guess I guess you just got GRE and then the GED. Yeah, he got his GED. Yeah, GRE is for master's degrees. So he got his GED.

He probably wrote an essay about practical survival skills or something. Like in reality, he had made it back, and then he would have been one of those wilderness survival teachers. Because he's like, look, I can do this better than all of you. I can build my own armor from scratch. But so he gets back, he's like, I'm going to become a doctor

so I can cure Ebola to save the world from becoming trans all. And then it ends on this hilarious little, I don't know if it's supposed to be a cliffhanger or if it's just supposed to be like a fun throwback. His colleagues, his younger colleagues, because this is now 20 years later, he's now 38. And he's like in the lab trying to solve Ebola. And his colleagues are like, Look, he works too hard. We all need to like take a break from work.

We know he's an outdoorsman. We want to go on a hike through this missile range. And it's like, they're like going back to where he was before. I don't know if it's supposed to imply that they're going to hit the light again. I don't think so. No, probably not. But it but it would. But like you're going to give him PTSD, NOM flashbacks. You know what's really kind of fucked, though.

And this is something I there is an inherent paradox with all of this being that he sees the future and then he comes back in time and tries to stop the plague that will create the future. Yes. So, his actions are going to prevent his future, well, the wife that he had from ever existing in the first place. From ever existing. And he even says as he's mixing it, like, this is for you, Begon. I'm going to stop you from ever existing in the first place. Ever existing. And he even says as he's mixing it, like this is for you, Beagon.

I'm going to stop you from ever existing. I'm going to prevent you from existing. I feel like the more rational thing to do would have been to come. I'm gonna honor my feelings for you by making sure you never exist. Sorry, go ahead. What would have probably been

the more logical thing to do coming back would have been to create wilderness survival training for lots of people in order for them to survive the upcoming apocalypse, not try and avert the upcoming apocalypse. Well, is that more rational? Because even though it goes against his like honoring this future wife he had, from a greater humanitarian perspective, he is trying to prevent. That's true. 70 percent death of the human population of the human race.

I just don't know. I for his perspective, I think it's weird. From an overall humanity perspective, I think it's objectively the correct answer. I mean, it is it is the the correct answer. I just feel like he as a survivalist would have been more likely to lean into his own skill set than to suddenly become a scientist. And they make hints in the epilogue where the kids are like, I don't know, I think he's weirdly jacked for for an old guy.

Like, he's not even old. He's like 38. And back back, it's really funny to me like in like one of the first chapters after he'd been living on his own for like three months. He like checks himself out in the reflection in the water at one point. Well, at first he's like super scrawny because he'd barely been eating. But they mentioned throughout the time. I'm kind of off. The longer he's there, he gets like outdoorsy and buff because of all the physical labor he has to do.

Well, number one, it's a lot of physical labor. Number two, he's changing from a 14 year old to an 18 year old. So like, yeah, you're going to fill out, bud. That's how it works. Of course, you're not going to be scrawny. You're not a fucking 13 anymore. But so this is that's the end of the Transol saga. This man goes to the future.

This boy goes to the future, does some hatchet shit, makes friends with like a, makes friends with some real primitive people, gets enslaved, joins the slavers as a member of their society, kills their warlord, gets a wife, and then gets teleported back to the past. And then tries to prevent the future from ever happening. And I, look, as a kid, I love this book because you know, but even as a kid, I got to the end and I'm like the fact that he went back to the past is a sad ending for me.

Well, it is sad. It's like you shouldn't have made it back. No, he should have got to stay in the future with me. God, all that said, my, you know, anyone who's listening to this podcast for any amount of time should have suspected that I would have preferred to live in the pre-modern future with bows and arrows and swords. Everyone should know that about me by now. But if you look at it objectively, that society is bad.

Yeah. They have pretty much objectively. Chattel slavery. Yeah. Well, actually, no, their slavery, I think is actually the one thing I think Paulson did do right. Their slavery is closer to like Roman style slavery than like American chattel slavery, I think. Okay.

Because like you could be freed. Like he gets freed and welcomed in as a member of society, which Roman slaves could do. Like if you were a freedman in ancient Rome, like now there were certain things you were prevented from doing, but like you could become a Roman citizen. You could like your kid, you could get married.

Your kids could go on to like hold high office. Like there's definitely famous people in Roman history who were like the children or grandchildren of freed slaves because slavery was less like a racial condition and more of like a status of being, does that make sense? It wasn't imposed because of race because the concept of race didn't exist yet. It was imposed because we need labor and we caught you.

Yes, it was essentially a might makes right scenario. Yes, and so, again, not saying that one kind of slavery is better than the other ones, but this type of slavery is presented in the Transyls August much more of an ancient world kind of slavery, where it's not about like really, obviously the Tosuk do it to the Aero people, but even then I I think it's less about and there is one lady who is specifically a racist against the arrow people. That's a Leta's owner who then gets murked for being racist.

She does die because she's too racist against like Kakan that she won't take his advice. So she gets killed. But like, like Dagon or the soldiers aren't, I don't think they're inherently racist. Like if one of the Arrow people had done the same thing Kakon did, they probably also would have been given some sort of, at least been freed.

They might not have been made warrior, but at least would have been freed, you know, for their efforts. And so it's, it's less about, I don't know. And it, and it isn't slaves being used for a market economy. No, it's they're literally just for housework and agrarian labor. Yeah, it's, it's for sustenance labor, which again, still bad. Yeah. But it's a much more ancient world, like Roman or Athenian. This is much more a Greek or Roman or Persian style, like slavery than it is.

You know, age, stage capitalism type slavery. These people aren't a commodity in the same way. Yes. There we go. That's that's a good way to put it. They're not commodified slaves. They are simply labor. Now I do. We talked about it some, but I do want to circle back on the weird ethical or ethics of Mark being like, well, I was a slave and my only idea was to escape. So I'm getting the fuck out here. Well, I'm an equal soldier. Now, I guess I can be part of my only idea was to escape. So I'm getting the fuck out here. Well, I'm an equal soldier.

No, I guess I can be part of their society since they accept me now. That's fine. And then to do nothing to help any of the other slaves, not even his friend. The best thing that happens to his friend is that her shitty owner died. So she then gets owned by me God, which then I think wonder. Wait, oh, sorry. You happen to see me gone, get married, then Leeton becomes his property. Oops. Anyway, sorry, you were going to say.

But I think. Oh, boy, I think I forgot. It's OK. I got I got ADHD, everybody. I mean, it's a podcast of ADHD. Yeah. But like. I just his ethics are weird. From an objective perspective. But if I may say, I will say for his character.

I don't think that's that's not out of character for Mark. Well, it didn't shock me that that happened because he's like, I live here now and these people are treating me the best. So I will just be part of their society. It just, you know, I feel like I would obviously feel very different. Yeah, I would be like, well, even selfishly, why would you not want to free your one friend? At least your one friend. Your one friend. That's all you're able to do because you obviously as one person in that scenario wouldn't be

able to release them all. I think they also try to play it off with like, even though Lee Todd does not like being a slave, she does a sort of like, because Mark's like, even though Lee Todd does not like being a slave, she does a sort of like, because Mark's like, don't you wanna go home? And she's like, she's like everyone that was back home is dead, everyone else that was part of my village is here.

And I'm just here now. And so I think it tries to do a little equivocating because Lee Todd's people were also like murderers for fun. Why? That's I think what I was going to say earlier was I wonder if Gary put the whole we're going to raid a secondary village thing in there specifically so you feel a little less bad for them when they get enslaved. Just so you don't feel quite so like, oh, these are peaceful, these are peaceful,

uneducated people who then become slaves. He's like, no, no, no, we have to have some senseless violence. It's like a kick the dog thing. We need to show you that they're not great either. So you don't totally question their slavery later on. Which again, I have to point out that like him being a slave, being a slave is such a big deal until the moment he gets accepted as an equal. And then,

aside from saying that he doesn't want to own anyone, we never talk about slaves ever again. It never comes back up. Never comes back up. It's really funny, because I have just some stuff pulled up about it, because I listen to it on audiobooks, so I don't have any physical. A lot of the stuff online for the Transyl saga has little warnings about mentions of enslavement as a trigger warning. Oh, and I'm like, and I'm like fair.

The man is literally in chains and the Tosuke straight up execute people on the march back any time one of the arrow people like gets hobbled or gets weak. They literally just fucking kill him and leave him at the side of the road. It's really fucked. It's like some trail of tears shit. Like the only the only time that's different is when it's lead and mark saves her and he's only able to save her because he beats a shot at a Sarbo and because he looks

different. He looks like the Mercan. If he didn't look like the Mercan, he'd have been killed too. Yeah. I I think the the only, this is something I very briefly touched on super early. When we were talking about like the what level of technology we're looking at here. And this is always a thing that kind of, it doesn't irk me so much as confuse me with post apocalyptic stuff is a Kind this kind of belief that everything will go through the exact same phases

As before it's very much the like linear progression of society Shit in like the same spans of time too It'll take the same spans of time too. It'll take the same amount of time. Which is, to me, seems absolutely ridiculous. I mean, we did do something similar in a book we talk about nicely all the time, Counted for Leibowits. Yeah, that's true.

Kanakul does it too. In Kanakul, that's like the point of the book Well, yeah, but I'm just Repeating itself. They still do the cyclical going through the same progression They just have like we're more direct weird outliers like the monastery that has old tech in it or whatever Yeah, and I and I think in the case of something like like they talk about certain kinds of technology still existing as it kind of in in canicle that get used pretty frequently.

And it's not like people aren't. And I mean, I guess I yeah, yeah, never mind. Never mind. It doesn't or it only irks me in certain contexts, I guess. It only irks me when when Fallout does it. When Fallout three is like everything's bombed to heck while the West Coast has trains. That's because look, no one knows what happens on the East Coast. OK, no one knows. So I don't know.

I think I'm just a little confused about the like we're now tribal tech level. We're surprised by the existence of because especially with with the plate metal thing, if you have metal, you're going to use it, which they have because they have plows and swords. Like they have a blacksmith. So you're going to you're going to you. You'd figure it out without people from the past coming up to do it.

I'm pretty sure that like metal armor was developed simultaneously with metal weapons. It was. Because they needed armor that was harder than the weapons to withstand getting hit by them. So like they reinvented the metal weapons without reinventing the metal armor. And then the Mercant is like, we can't have people know this because then they might be strong enough to kill me and overthrow my despotic rule. because then they might be strong enough to kill me and overthrow my despotic rule. It is just really interesting to me because I feel like any societies that didn't have metal armor

either received the technology for creating it at the same time as making metal weapons. So in the case of certain like like, say, super early, like, Native American civilizations, a lot of them didn't necessarily use a lot of metal. No, no. For anything. And. The thing is what you're supposed to get more in Transol from, like, the Arrow people. Yeah.

Like, a lot of the weapons that they would use would be chiseled out of different kinds of stone. Mm hmm. And or you are in a situation also similar to the Native Americans where by the time Europe showed up and was like, here's the technology for metal armor. They couldn't, metal armor was useless at that point because you were up against firearms and firearms go right through metal armor. The European technology quote unquote technology that indigenous Americans adopted like or a lot of them adopted almost immediately and wholesale was horseback riding. Yeah. And that's where a lot of blacksmithing became important because earliest blacksmithing stuff was like horseshoes.

Yeah. But so like the technology usually is they couldn't have a lot of metal plows and things like that because they didn't have large domesticated animals other than llamas. Also, there also was no need for plowing because you didn't agriculture was different. Yeah, it wasn't. Yeah. They didn't develop off like a Roman plantation system, you know. So it I don't know, I'm just a crazy world builder. And this is all the thoughts I had. In any case, I think I have the same ads. I have the same feeling at the end of Transol saga that I had at the end of

Princess Mononoke, which is you should just go live with the girl in the woods who's wearing animal hides. And that seems like a better option than anything else you have going on. You wanna live with me gone and just like wear animal hides and like hang out in your village? That seems pretty dope, I don't know. Again, minus the slavery.

Seems pretty sick. Instead you have to go back and live through the god 80s and the 90s? Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Personal bias. I feel like the grass is always greener. Except it's red in Transol. Oh yeah, the grass is redder on the other side.

Look, I don't know. Look, I'm allowed to have wishes. I want my pre-modern wife to hit bonk me on the head with a club. Carry me off. Beefy beefy Neanderthal wife from Neanderthal saved me. In the DC, Neanderthal wife from save me.

Thousand BC. Neanderthal wife, save me. Save me, Neanderthal wife. Anyway, that's enough about me. Did you I know we don't always ask this question, but I'll ask you this. Did you enjoy this book? I think I enjoyed it more as a.

In kind of the same way that I enjoyed reading the Chronicles of Narnia where it's like as an adult now Because I could tell this book was definitely written more for younger audiences and general This book was written for me this When it came out when I was this book, this book came out. I, I, I, I, I, this book came out when I was eight years old.

So I probably read it when I was like, I don't know, 11 or 12. Cause I didn't read it right then. So that's perfect timing. Yeah. I read this book when I was like 10 or 12 and it was perfect. So I, I find myself wanting something more than what I know Gary Paulson has written just between this and but that's again that's just the fact that I'm older now than the intended audience for this this book and I know

that's gonna be exactly the same thing when we go to read Gregor the Overlander oh yeah is a I'm gonna come out of it being like goddamn like And I know that's going to be exactly the same thing when we go to read Gregor the Overlander. Oh, yeah, which is I'm going to come out of it being like, God damn, like this, I know this is well written, but it's for kids. This is our little break before we do anything heavy again. Yeah, that's I mean, that's true. And I'm cool with that. Because it's February is coming up, we might have to read the second book in the Broken Earth Trilogy. Oh, boy.

Maybe I'm sure that will be depressing. We'll skip it this year because I don't feel like being sad. The but the ultimately, I just think that while enjoyable as a kid, I would have found it less predictable and therefore Yeah, had more fun with it like it's an estimate don't you meet me God? You're like, okay, they're gonna fall for each other you hear about the mercantile like okay. Yeah, he's also from the past. He's weird He's gonna be good. You're like this is a bad guy. He's gonna betray him. He's got that It's like to be as soon as you meet him. You're like, this is a bad guy. He's going to betray him. He's got the.

It is like a laundry list of check boxes. Oh, yeah. This is going to happen. This is going to happen. It's going to happen. It's very paint by numbers. It's fine. The like the little it's well written.

It's engaging. I mean, Paulson's a good writer. Like he's a very clear voice. Yeah. His voice is clear. His writing is I want to say generally concise. You know, there's not there's no all these there's no wasted words in this book. There's not like you never read a very long. No, you never get to a section and you're like, Oh God, this section is dragging on because we listen to the audiobook. Some of the chapters are like five minutes long.

Um, yeah. The, the, the audio book, I mean, it's only five hours long. It's like five, five and a half hours long for the audio book. It's nothing. I listen to it and basically one work day. Like, yeah. Um, this, I think it's a testament to how concise of a writer he is that so much does happen in such a short book. All that we talked about. Yeah, happens in a relatively

short time. Yeah, it's like 200 pages. I'm saying is Kekon kind of a cool name. Sounds to me. Mark no offense No offense marks in the audience. If your name is Mark, change your name to Kekon. There's five people on earth who will understand what you did. And we will appreciate you. I I again, I find it absolutely hilarious that when I went into this, I was like, OK, this is the hatchet guy. I bet you this is going to have survival stuff in it.

And I was 100% on the money. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He just really wanted to. I maybe he was reading Michael Crichton at the time and was like, I want to dip into science fiction. I kind of think the way it came to me anyway is I think he wanted to do like a sword and sandal thing,

but he couldn't think of a way to do it going backwards. So he had to go forwards. So he went forwards to circle back around to it. Like if unless he's going to go with a completely new premise and be like, no, we're just going to talk about Kakan in the past. You know, may he read a little science fiction. He let it read a little Michael Crichton. He thought What if I just I took a guy took the kid from hatchet and I sent him into the into the

Pre-industrial future. I think that that's that's that's I think he probably came to it Was he wanted to do that primitive stuff? But the only way like the way he got about it was by going forward You know, you know what I thought of when I in a weird way, because I haven't fully read the book, but in a weird way, what I was thinking of a little bit while I was reading this was Clan of the Cave Bear. Because maybe and it was published in 1980. So I feel like he definitely was reading stuff like that as well.

Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. Because he was like, I can't go back in time and write a story about things in the past because Clan of the Cave Bear is already doing it. Probably like just... He's just going, we can just do it again in the future. So, I mean, because Clan of the Cobra even has that whole like here's the Cro Magnans and here's the Neanderthals. So they're interacting sort of thing going on.

So it has the same like there's multiple different some save me the species of humanity of humanity in at the same time. Yeah, the way he does like the the arrow people in the tussuk. Yeah. Yeah. So would just make me wonder if. I'm going to be honest, that's just a recipe for absolute disaster. Yes.

If humanity had existed at the same time, like if modern humans existed at the same time as another, like I forget what they call that. There's a term for another sapient race existing at the same time. Yeah, like we did in the ancient past. Yeah. Yeah, it's like that to me is like, oh, God, that is just bad news. Well, in the past, what happened to everyone? What happened to the past was we fucked and killed them out of existence. Pretty much.

If in the if it happened again, it would the same thing would occur. Yeah, between the Neanderthals and the Denovians or Denisovians, we basically interbred and killed them until they were gone, which is also 100 percent what humanity would do again. If suddenly right now on this earth We suddenly got a like Like humans, but slightly different. It would be just like every sci-fi game where you where we have humanoid aliens There'd be a whole bunch of people that want to fuck them and be a whole bunch of people that want to kill them

Moving between Yeah, a camp. Sorry. They got either got to be an alien fucker. They got to be an alien genocider. Those are your only options. Listen, that's we're now playing Mass Effect. Now, I was about to say this is just Mass Effect, which stay tuned for the bonus episode in the future when we talk about Mass Effect, where I have to finish go playing them and then we can talk about it.

Oh, you really should. It's awesome to talk about the liberalisms in that game. It's I know there's a lot of I'm sorry. I'm currently busy playing through. Uh, Cyberpunk 2077. That's also full of liberalism. So we should probably I should play through that. Now I have a gaming PC.

I should do it. Yeah, the new version 2.1 is actually like the game as like a game is very fun. It's it's it's I remember the buggy mess of release it now 2.1 version very good actually very fun game to play. I'm beating to people I'm in the cyberpunk future where you can like hack directly into people's brains and I'm still using my future technology to kill people with a fancy baseball bat. So. Wouldn't expect anything less.

Look, I is who I is, baby. Well, thank you everyone for your patience and sticking with us through our hiatus. Ideally, no one's house will burn down again soon. We won't lose any computers. The Fingers Cross. Ideally won't lose anything anytime soon. We should be back on schedule with Gregor the Overlander. What comes after that? Who knows. We just recently released if you're interested, you can support us on Patreon, which, you know, we have a number of back episodes about non-book stuff, including video games

and music and movies. We just recently released a bonus episode on intellectual property and AI in art, particularly music and writing and art, which is a great conversation. in art, particularly music and writing and art, which is a great conversation. We are about to record another album analysis music episode. Those are the ones are ongoing series

where we pick like a theme, we each bring an album and then we talk about them. We're about to record an episode for that where we're gonna talk about, the theme is generally albums that are hitting you emotionally very strong right now. For lack of a more concise phrase, in which case we will be talking about, let's see, 2023's Sufian Stevens album Javelin and 2014's Against Me album Transgendered is For Your Blues.

Why these are hitting for us? Don't worry about it. I don't know. Maybe it's obvious. But if you want to hear us talk about those, please join the Patreon. That'll be up soon. You know, do the podcasting where you review us on the apps if that's the thing that you care about. Five stars or I'll find you. about. Five stars or I'll find you. Give me five stars or I'll come bonk you on the head with a cave with a baseball bat. Be the Neanderthal wife you want to see in the world. Anyway, thank you all for listening to our patrons.

We love you each very personally and we will talk to you again soon. Goodbye. Bye. Bro. Are you fucking real, man? Come on.