Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - This Is How You Lose The Time War

Episode Date: June 29, 2024

We are back for the end of Pride Month with one of Aurora's favorite books, the lesbian scifi love story This Is How You Lose The Time War. Robotic bodies, complex time travel, and handwritten love letters dominate this wonderful book.patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

Bro Hello everyone and welcome back to Sword, Sorcery and Socialism, a podcast about the politics and themes hiding in our genre fiction. As always, I'm Aurora and I'm joined by my co-host, Ketho. How's it going, Ketho? Howdy. We are back. Finally, the grand restart just in time. For Pride Month.

The end of Pride Month, but Pride Month nonetheless. So welcome back. Just just barely in time for Pride Month. The end of Pride Month, but Pride Month nonetheless. So welcome back. Just just barely in time for Pride Month. You know, it's never too late to be proud. OK. And as the famous adages, you know, better late than never. We are back and we are talking about a book that legitimately changed my brain has made me a different different and better writer.

And I don't know different and better lesbian probably called This Is How You Lose the Time War by two authors, Amal El-Mottar and Max Gladstone. This book is really, really good. If I may understate my opinion, this book has lodged itself in my top five favorite books that I have ever read. And like I said, it has literally changed my brain chemistry. So if you like happy episodes where I just talk

about everything I love about a book, congratulations. This is a good episode. If you want to hear me complain about things I don't like, wait a couple of months probably. We'll get back to something I didn't like. We'll have something else. We'll have something else. But for now it's pride month and I want to be happy.

Or talking about a book I love. I essentially bullied Catho into reading this because I liked it so much and I wanted someone to talk about it with. So Catho, how did you feel about it? I felt that it was very good. It's not quite as much up my alley as I think it is up yours, but ultimately, it was an enjoyable well, listen, I guess. I listened to the audiobook, everybody.

Again, converting others to my ways. Which I will admit is usually very difficult for me, just as somebody with severe ADHD. It's hard to like sit down and listen to somebody. And I don't, obviously everyone knows, you know, I have to do audiobook, but with this one, I do honestly recommend it because the frame narrative for this book is two women writing letters to each other. Like that's the, obviously you're getting descriptions of what's happening, but then every chapter ends with one of the characters, either red or blue,

writing a letter to the other. And so by having these two narrators, you have each of them like reading their letters in their own voice. And I think it really, really helps to have that distinction and to have their, like their different voices. It also really, really helps that one of them also voiced Pan Am in Cyberpunk 2077. So having Pan Am read love letters to me in my headphones sounds is pretty neat for me personally. Yeah, one of the best girls from Cyberpunk.

Yeah, that was a surprise when you when you told me that the narration was good. And then I was like, OK, I'll check it out. And I checked it out. And then I immediately messaged you and was like, this is freaking Pan Am Palmer. Yeah, I definitely left that a secret on purpose because I thought you would enjoy that. At first I was like that voice. That voice is so familiar. Where am I? Why am I forgetting that voice?

And I had to look it up. But I believe she was she was blue. Correct. I think so. I can't. It's hard for me to remember which one's which. I think she was the voice of blue. Yeah, she was. So it is again, the frame is this is a sci fi lesbian love story. Kind of how I just kind of describe it.

It is technically sci fi, but the sci fi part of it is kind of hard to explain because it is sci fi in setting, but it and it's integral to how the story works. It's like it is a necessary piece for this story to work. But also it's you know what I mean? It's not like the focus of the story either, kind of. I mean, the focus is much more on the two of them. It's much more a romance story than anything else. Like they're not trying to do a whole lot with... The rest is kind of set dressing that's there for the purposes of the plot being able to function.

Like you couldn't do something like this without there being that time travel element, without there being that multiverse, multiverse, multithread, multithread. Yeah. Sort of thing going on because they're trying to do this thing about how love transcends all, you know, time and boundaries and all this other stuff. And they're doing that literally, in this case, by making there be actual time and threads and boundaries for love to cross. So the sci-fi setting is more the almost the obstacle that the love has to overcome. It's like the obstacle and the vehicle in a way.

It's yeah, I think you're right. It's more like the vehicle they're using to get somewhere as opposed to the somewhere they're trying to get, you know, like where they're trying to get is their relate is the relationship, how they're getting there is time travel and jumping threads and going to the past and future and using weird cybernetic implanted arm weapons to murder countless people. know, in a weird way, just the juxtaposition of like, Oh, here, you got this romantic letter and then like, death. She'd been like, it literally opens with her like, you know, with one of them, like, ensuring a battle completely destroys two interstellar armies. And like the battlefield is littered with corpses. And then it ends with being like, love you bestie

kisses. It's like the beginning is just her standing in a giant battlefield. And they do a lot of interesting stuff to the foreshadowing and the the sort of threads that are woven throughout it makes sense. It's a time travel story that there would be time travel shenanigans. Yeah, there's some, there's some Dr. Who as shenanigans going on. And some timey wimey, some, some time, some wibbly wobbly timey wimey bullshit, um, because literally at the end of the first, um, chapter, you get the shadow who they don't specifically say is the seeker. But I don't think I don't think they call it the seeker

until like chapter two or three, I think. Yeah. And like reconstructing the letter and then taking it. Which if I can praise again, yeah, for talk about this, like the technical writing. Obviously, I later am going to, you know, go off on like how gay this book is and how impactful to me, sort of the lesbian romance of it is. But we'll start with like more of the technical side of it. And the writing and the foreshadowing and the interweaving of stuff

that is going to come that will only make sense in retrospect is really good and I think necessary for a book that is about time. Like how it makes more sense for a time travel story to for you at the end to go, oh my God, there was all this time stuff in there that I didn't even notice. And I was legitimately nervous about the seeker for like the first time I read through the book. Like I was like, holy shit, which of the as the book wants you to be, I was like, who is tracking them and who's going to like betray them? Yeah.

And then they do the 180 where you've been with the seeker the whole time. Every every other chapter. Yeah. Every other chapter you've been with the seeker. So because the seeker is just read from the future. But the future is also saying it's read from the future is weird because it's also read now and also read then but not yet. Because we experience the time like linearly as red and blue do. But like if you look at it from like an overhead perspective, that

the time doesn't happen linearly and red is doing all those things simultaneously. Time in this book is an interesting concept, obviously, because we follow red and blue story in a chronological fashion because we have to. But from an outside perspective, the story is happening, dare I say, everywhere all at once. Yeah. It's really impossible in a lot of ways to tell what's, you know, again,

we're experiencing it somewhat linearly, but the explicit order of events is not super clear. And then the other thing is, you know, you're not going to be able to tell what's, you know, again, we're experiencing it somewhat linearly, but the explicit order of events is not super clear. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think in a way it is just sort of like a loop, right? Cause like we follow sort of red and blue as they go, interfering with each other and leaving each other letters. And then red is like, Oh, right. I need to save blue's life. So to do so, I'm going to loop back around

and sort of start from the beginning again. But, you know, in retrospect, seeing all this thing, but that also even then, even within that linear progression, you're also going back and forth through time, because in like the conscious progression of blue story or of red story, she tells you about when she was a little girl who went off by herself and saw a wolf. And then in a conscious progression of Blue's story, you find the time where she went back in time with her like agent killing planet creature.

And you find out that the agent she was sent to kill was 14 year old Red. But also at the same time, Red was adult. Red was also there watching adult blue not kill old red. But also at the same time, red was adult red was also there, watching adult blue not kill childhood red. And when you explain it like that, it seems really confusing. I promise in context, it makes perfect sense. Yeah, it's like three layers deep. I mean, it really is because it's like layer one is you experiencing red telling you about the time she was a child.

And then you hear it from Blue's perspective of her showing up to kill childhood red, but not doing it. But then Blue finds a letter from adult red saying, hey, thanks for not killing me. Love you, babe. And you and it's like, so was she was there the whole time. But she also she adult she was there the whole time. But she also, she adult red was there the whole time, but she also wasn't there until blue had also been there.

I love that. It's great. Again, it sounds confusing in the abstract. As you read it, though, it all makes sense. But as much as I can praise, like the sort of the complexity of like the time travel narrative and the interweaving. It also kind of doesn't matter. Like a little bit for the I feel like. Again, it is kind of like the set dressing

because it's not the ultimate point of the story. Those are just cool things that the writers are like, this is cool. You know, be sick if we if we if we made Atlantis sink a little bit slower this time or if we hung out with Genghis Khan or if we were in like High Empire London or I really enjoy there's multiple storylines where both of them for different reasons show up to pre-colonial Americas to help the indigenous people not be colonized.

That is super weird. I just can't like. I don't know. Like it's not what you'd expect, because like that seems to be almost contrary to the mission of the agency and the garden in a weird way. But but like in one of them, like, you know, like red is there like learning to like weave like like nets so that like, I don't know, the Inca or something can sail across the Pacific Ocean to hang out with the Chinese and maybe prevent colonization. And then a different one, Blue spends like years, years and years and years in like, like the Ohio River Valley, hanging out with a indigenous civilization, like an indigenous

tribe like doing something to like change the future. And you're like, both of them are like, you know, it would be sick if we fucked up European colonization for different reasons. Again, just a fun touch. Is it necessary? I don't know. It just it's cool. And both of them fucking hate Atlantis. Really, they really, really do. Both of them hate Atlantis. It's very specific, directed hatred. What if there's something behind that? I wonder the whole time, though, to the motives of well, of their particular. Well, let's let's talk about their particular groups now.

So our two main characters are red and blue. Those aren't their names. Those are what they call each other. Because at one point, you find out that like like blue knows Red's real name, I guess. She's not really supposed to, but she's not supposed to know it, but she does. So but anyway, they refer to themselves as red and blue. One there are essentially in this future, there are two competing futures. One of them, Red's, is a future which sounds sort of like a not completely negative

version of the Matrix future, where people essentially live in pods, but their brain is free to wander the galaxy and time kind of, but mostly the galaxy from the relative safety of your pod. That is where like the vast majority of the population live or in these pods. People can, if they so wish, as they call it, decant and leave the pod in a physical body to experience the world physically. There's a thing they are free to do should they so wish.

And then those people that decant and then are like restless and continually trying to go places and see new things, basically all get recruited to work for what they call the agency, which is a group of people. I can only assume like a, like a governing council, I think. Yeah. They also talk about, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know who they talk about time, the chaos Oracle Red. The Red team has Red team. The agency has like a chaos Oracle essentially because Blue talks about it and Red talks about it, too, like sort of running

the whole show, they still have like sort of an overhead entity that gives them directionality. And then what the agency does is they have agents like Red who are people, but also cyborgs, because they have like all these implants that like they can just not ever get hungry or not ever feel any emotions they don't want to feel. You can turn them on and off at will. They don't need to eat or do anything.

They can. They don't have to. They've got like cybernetic implants so they can they can like transform at will into looking and being different people and have weapons and all this other fun stuff. But they then go as they call it up and down threads. So in the different threads of all potential worlds and futures, either slightly or massively changing events to create futures that are more favorable to the agency.

That sounds about right, doesn't it? Yeah, that's that's a good explanation. I think ultimately I'm assuming that it's about setting up the past and futures and things to make sure that their existence stays the same, if anything. Yeah, that's kind of what they're like. Pod existence is capable of happening. Yeah, it kind of feels like they're trying to they existed in a timeline.

And then whenever they got the ability to travel throughout timelines, they were like, well, we need to make sure that our timeline continues to exist and has more potentials for existing in other ones. I think. Yeah. And so that I think their ideal goal, if they could have ultimate victory, I think it would be that all timelines essentially converge into one into theirs. I think. It's never explicitly stated. This is pure conjecture.

But the agency and its agents definitely give you a sort of more of like what I would call it, like a more of a classic sci fi feel, you know, they're like cyborgs. They like they're kind of robotic. All of their minds are all linked constantly, like when they're sort of back, quote unquote, home. Like Red talks about growing up, you can feel the presences of all the other agents in your mind at all times.

So they all communicate telepathically instantaneously. It's not like a hive, but they're all constantly connected in like a network at all times. So as is important for Red, you learn in the story, she's never really alone until she's like becomes an agent and is like skipping across timelines. They are opposed in this by garden. Yeah, the the garden is really hard to like,

because it seems to be both interested in natural preservation, but at the same time is kind of authoritarian. The it reminds me if you took. For any of you that are old enough to play the like the OG Starcraft, it reminds me of like the Overmind from Starcraft one. If the Overmind was was was really into druids. In a way that like it had now the agency has a bunch of agents, but they go and like talk to or receive orders from a commandant like a a being.

I want to call it a person because it doesn't that the commandant almost never has a physical body. But like they can receive orders from a person, an entity. Garden is like the overall arching intelligence, and it manipulates everything itself down to like the smallest level. Like every garden agent is like grown specifically for specific work, whereas like, whereas like agency agents are more like, hey, you're really talented.

We're going to give you jobs to do that sort of. Garden, it's more like directed and it's more it's like a hive mind almost. Yeah. It's it's more also with a limited degree of freedom for its smaller like agents. Yeah, it's like a hive mind because like you find out that when you go to like the sort of the home timeline world, when you when Red pierces the wall into garden, garden is like this massive again, like multi being like entity that like encompasses entire planets. Like there are stars that are just eyes for garden.

It has like taken over like an entire solar system, at least where like that solar system is garden. But everything is sort of gives you this like nature based vibes like they can garden agents can do a lot of the same stuff that agency agents that's going to get weird after a while. They can do like they can do all the same stuff, you know, shape shift and change jump timelines, all this other stuff. But it's from this like naturalistic background where like if you go when you

go into garden, you're like everything is vines and leaves and plants and birds and. Butterflies, whereas like the agency is all like blades and machines and like it's it. They did a good job of making these sort of similar, but opposing forces. One is very tech centric in like the classic sci-fi way. The other one's very like we have this tech, but it's all in a natural way. That like you were saying, the agents are made the for the agency. The agents are are effectively people who make themselves into agents, ultimately, with the garden they're grown.

Yeah, yeah, I guess that's the difference. Because the agents agency agents red team, let's say red team, red team are picked from like people that have shown a dispensation for restlessness. Like they are ones that have distinguished themselves by decanting themselves and can and essentially being outliers from the general population. And garden is like, no, I have these agents because I planted them

deep in the past and nurtured them and grew them to be who they are. There's a lot less free will involved in that one. What's what I find really interesting is that ultimately I don't feel as though, aside from the fact that both of them are trying to do something similar, where I feel as though they're both trying to lead the universe's towards a specific goal or as they would say, as they would say, braid the future in their way. Yeah. Ideologically, I don't feel as though the two are that

like they like I feel like on paper, they shouldn't be that ideologically opposed to one another. Yeah, I wonder if that's intentional or if it's a function of the fact that we do see things from the perspective of red and blue who just are not aware, really, what the final ultimate goals of their employers. I don't know. They all call them employers. Yeah, it's I mean, it's kind of a job for red, but I don't necessarily see this as like a flaw because ultimately

it doesn't really matter if your ideology is opposed to one another. What matters is if the things that you're doing to achieve your goals are in conflict with one another, and they are. It's like ultimately, if you're trying to braid the future, the past and things in a way that aligns with what you want, and someone else is trying to do the same thing for what they want, they're going to be opposed regardless of, ideologically similar or dissimilar they are. You know, you can't do both at the same time.

So there's going to be a lot of. Yeah, fighting between the two. Yeah, and like we don't get nearly as much description. So like Red gives us kind of a with what she explains about her future. Like what people, regular people like do and are like, you know, they're in their pods and living their lives with their minds or whatever. We have no idea what regular people in Garden's future are like. If they're even there?

If they even exist? Or is Garden just one large entity that has to grow people because it's necessary. You know, like, yeah, we never really explains that bit. But again, I partly wonder if within the narrative, it's because red and blue don't have varying levels of answer to that question themselves. Red knows what other people are like because all their minds are connected. Blue. You don't get the sense that blue has ever really spent time with any other agents of garden ever. No, no.

Like you were saying, they're kind of grown throughout time. So they don't necessarily interact with one another. They're they're almost designed for their own time stream specifically. Yeah. Or like for one big one. And then if they're good, garden will continue to use them in other ones, which we are told that blue is blue is very good. Blue is also, as we will discover, an outlier among garden agents for reasons that become clear throughout the story.

Thanks, Red. But I even though garden agents do hop time streams, they do it in a much more slower and methodical fashion. Like garden has a tendency to put them farther back in time to work slowly and methodically to change the future where red team is a very much like getting here at the crucial moment and make a change. Blue team is much more go far enough back at the crucial moment and make a change. Blue team is much more go far enough back that that crucial moment never happens. You know, like that. Yeah, I mean, it you can see the comparison in the first two chapters

where the the first thing that red is doing is literally inciting a war and making sure that both are making Bolsheviks are both armies lose. Yeah. And then blue is like trying to do something with a doctor in a hospital. She's trying to make sure that a doctor will get to a hospital so she can like. They're trying to take her out. They're trying to kill her, I think. So she doesn't have an idea that will lead to something else in the future. Yeah, it's like they're trying to infect somebody with a biological weapon, essentially.

Yeah. And and it's like so much more like like garden has this big brain plan and is like, I know exactly where the streams will lead. And then the agencies like, oh, these bitches, these bitches got to go. And it's and they're just like throwing shit at the wall. Yeah. And so, yeah, like they want the second chapter like blue needs to show up to like make sure that someone gets sick so she can spread it to somebody else. So this thing can happen.

Red counters that by calling it a bomb threat to the hospital. Yeah, it's. Oh, and give it and giving the lady like a flat tire on your car. That's what she that's what she does. Again, it's like a decisive action like next chapter. Red is going to do, you know, try to make sure that like the monk hears the right sound, you know, so that they will have a spiritual revelation

in that moment to then go found a monastery. Blue counters that by having gone further back in time and changed the setup of the bones that would make the sound so that when Red puts them where they're supposed to be, they make the wrong sound. Again, it's a further back and further like more laid out plan where Red's plans are much more like I will going to fix it now. I feel like it's the difference between someone with a time machine going, I'm going to go back in time and kill Hitler and someone being like, I'm going to go back in time

and rearrange history so that that Rosa Luxemburg's revolution succeeds. Yeah, it's like they're both preventing the rise of fascism, but doing it very differently. Like red would show up. Red would just show up and kill baby Hitler. 100 percent blue blue. Would like sneakily make sure that the brown shirts can't kill Rosa Luxembourg.

And like, like, would set up a scenario that would like change where Rosa Luxembourg was that day. You know, like so that the future is different. I think that that's kind of what we're like, you know, like so that the future is different. I think that that's kind of what we're like, you know, what we're dealing with. And that plays out. And I'm trying to think I have an idea, but I'd actually have to think through the plans. Does that change as the story goes on? Do their plans become more similar to each other?

Oh, as the story goes on, I'm trying to think that would require another another listen. I don't. In my opinion, I don't think so. Because I mean, one of the sort of in the midpoint, the big turning point when they finally like admit their feeling, really admit their feelings for each other. Blue is in the middle of like a like a multi year stint hanging out as like somebody's wife and like the Ohio River Valley. But like, yeah, it's a very different,

you know, like Reddell Redd does her thing in in Atlantis by showing up as the volcano erupts and like trying to redirect the lava to give people more time to escape. Where like blue fucks with Atlantis, not in this one, but sort of described by like making sure that like the person that would have the idea wasn't born in the first place. And it's a very different, I think that's sort no like, no one's really winning more or less. Like there's times when agency has the upper hand and then when blue pulls off her thing

in that multi-long stint, it like is apparently some sort of like body blow to the agency in the way she changed the future. What I love is they never explained why. No, they don't have to. Whatever she was doing in that village where she was writing like three letters to red, they never explain why. No, they don't have to. Whatever she was doing in that village where she was writing like three letters to read. We don't know what she was doing.

We don't know how it changed the future. All we know is that the agency reacts to it like they've just taken a fucking broadside cannon shot. It's kind of clever, actually, to never explain why. It keeps the motivations nebulous. It keeps it keeps whether or not the agency or garden are good. Very ambiguous. Yeah. And I think it prevents you from taking sides, which is very important.

You're not supposed to take sides because as we're discussing at the end, the side you're supposed to take is neither side. Like, the side you're supposed to take is neither side. And so it has to like neither one of them is any more moral. Both of them are just murdering countless people across countless timelines. And what I find is interesting is that we also don't really, not until they start to admit their feelings for each other. Do either red or blue ever really express any

moral feelings about what they are doing as agents? Because the first time we ever really see them express any, dare I say, like regret or disgust or whatever, is after they've admitted their feelings for each other, but they're not like they're just like doing their thing. When Red is like fighting, going extra ham across timelines, like she kills a bunch, she burns a bunch of astronauts alive in a cockpit and then like has to go to a different timeline that she's not

know it wasn't supposed to be to just so she can like puke and cry. Yeah. And that is the first time we get any like moral reaction from either of them. And I think that the only reason that happens is because they've begun to like feel for each other. And that sort of opens up that well of like, I don't know, emotion that there are others besides me and my actions have consequences, I think.

Which I'm trying to remember if it was before or after, because maybe it's maybe it's the volcano that's like fucking up Atlantis, but there's like elements of them going, huh, like not showing the same level of empathy that they do later. At that point where they're at one point, one of them is watching like a a hut with a priest and a priestess to some God that they don't know about. Yeah, that's Atlantis. Yeah. Yeah. Is getting it. She just looks at it and is like, oh, they're going to burn.

And is like, you know, it's like it's the nature of time, I guess. And then moves on. And then later. Also, they've probably watched the they've probably watched that a version of that priest and priestess die in like 20 to 30 different timelines. Yeah, you just you just totally desensitize to it. And only through their reconnection to each other

to they redevelop a sense of empathy later? Wow, it's almost like this is really similar to what we've talked about before with other sci fi books, which is what makes humans human. And the big answer that a lot of authors seem to come to is this big word known as empathy. Yeah, it's a really complicated topic. I think we had this conversation a little bit with our friend, and how there are some people who don't experience empathy.

Bri of the Pontifex podcast, Pontifex podcast. If you're interested, she and Fry are good friends of ours, and they go through and talk about all the popes and how good slash terrible they were. Mostly terrible. Anyway, plug for our friends over. But we were talking to the dude, a breeze like life experience or whatever. We were having a conversation with her, as you were saying, about the fact that

plugging empathy as the thing that makes humans human is kind of troubling because there are a lot of people who through either through like developmental disorders or personality disorders, things like that, do not experience empathy the way the rest of us define it. But there's still people. So these authors that are like, no, empathy makes you human. Like, what does that mean, you know, for somebody with like a personality disorder? Yeah, it becomes really complicated really fast.

Yeah. Maybe we can have that discussion with Herd sometime to get someone who has got a better opinion on it, or more experience dealing with that sort of thing than we do. But I think it is interesting that you don't really see red or blue start. Well, I think blue is a little more empathetic to start with. And I think that's by.

By design, by design, like you're with with with garden, there's a little bit more. At least there's empathy for like nature. Yes, she loves animals, birds, particularly. Now I'm thinking about that, though, but it's really interesting that Garden seems to be more empathetic because we also see Garden interact directly with Blue after her like coup d'etat. And then Garden comes to her and be like, look, I think the agency

is really trying to fucking kill you. I think it might be time for you to retire. But like the fact that like Blue describes feeling like, you know, like love and compassion time for you to retire. But the fact that Blue describes feeling like love and compassion or something similar to it, affection, for Garden while they talk. And they definitely have compassion for nature in Garden. And I think that's weird because her agents are also the most isolated, but they're the ones that

seem to show that the most, where the Red Team are all connected all the time and they're empathetic to each other like when she goes out to like try and be by herself, she has like countless, you know, minds and people reach out to her to be like, are you OK? Are you why are you alone? Are you doing all right? But like in terms of the way they act on mission, Red Team is a lot less sort of like concerned with that sort of thing. And you get no empathy at all from the commandant

or or superiors. Nothing. It's all cold calculation. That reminds me of Ghost in the Shell and them because it's just like the the members of the Ghost in the Shell Squad having progressively less and less empathy, the more robotic they had gotten. But they still expressed empathy towards each other. They just it's just their empathy towards other human beings.

And things like that was lessened the more cybernetic they became. Yeah, because like because now you definitely has empathy for. Her team. Yeah, yeah, without a doubt. But she doesn't for like anybody else. No. Not to just be blowing people up. You know, she's like, whatever.

Read someone's spine open. Yeah, someone's spine open and she's like, whatever. Red someone's spine open. Yeah, someone's spine open and she's like, whatever. But like if someone hurts that, though, then she would be exceedingly upset. And that seems to be like the red team thing where they're like, they care about the well-being of each other in a fashion, but not anyone and not any of the souls of the people in the timelines that they're affecting, like the place they get together, if they if red agents ever want to like talk to each other, they meet at the assassination of Julius Caesar.

And they like they like have conversations while they murder Caesar, which I thought was an interesting point. That's just the like, where do if I want to talk to other agents, where do we go? Oh, we just go kill Caesar. Again, there's no empathy there for anything they're doing. That's just they meet to hang out. And she at one point says, like, you know, lose herself in the abandon of just stabbing Caesar, like actual actual joy in the stabbing.

I'll talk about that later, I think. I'm trying to keep trying to separate this podcast into sort of two halves and sort of the technical writing and plot half of the podcast and the this too is Yuri section of the podcast, which I'll keep to the second half, I think. I mean, I think we're kind of I think we're almost getting there. Yeah. But for for another for a final thing, I guess, the last thing I want to talk about about the writing, what I term from like

it's technical brilliance is. That obviously these two are assigned colors, right. And, you know, there's cute things like they keep coming up with different names to call each other, which are varying things of their colors and whatnot. But I think the further like you throughout the story, you see glimpses of each other's colors in the other one's chapters. So you'll be in a chapter about what blue is doing,

but you will like get indications of red. And when you're in red chapters, you get indications of blue. And so the colors and ergo, the the essence of their counterpart are like woven into their chapters as you go. But like at the beginning, you're not looking for it. You're not looking to see little hints of blue and red chapters because you don't know that's where it's going. But in retrospect, and then on like second, third read throughs,

you're like, oh, my God, they like having the seeker from the beginning are weaving in the fact that each one of them has been influencing the other the whole time. Yes. And very much so. It was very brilliant to me. I suppose we should while we're doing plot, we should at least mention that obviously the turn is that the agents we noted the fact that the seeker ends up being read.

And so they were never actually caught. They never actually get caught sending letters to each other, which is pretty great, I think. It's a good change, a good change of pace. But they are both of their their respective groups notice that their paths have been crossing a lot. However, they both interpret this as threat. So red thinks it means that blue is trying to the red team thinks

it means that blue is trying to like turn her. Blue team is like, yeah, red's red team's trying to kill the shit out of you, girl. So then red, of course, is faced with the quandary of like, do I kill blue and keep our secret or do I admit that we have a thing and kill my and have myself be tortured and killed? And so she tries to be like hey Blue take the hint and sneak away Please don't die for me and Blue is like hey eat shit. I love you, and I'd rather die then not be with you anymore and Then you cry a lot if you're me.

And then the next chapter happens and you're like, oh, red has a plan, actually, or develops one. Because the plot contrivance for blue dying is a very, very specific poison coordinated, like genetically designed to just kill her. Very painfully, too, apparently. Yeah, they think they go into like not a lot of detail, but they go into a little bit to make sure that you understand that it was painful. It was very painful that Blue did it on purpose

and knew it was coming to anyway. Then, you know, there's the turn and Red is like, wait a second, I can time travel if I and we killed blue because this thing was designed to kill blue. If I go back in time and collect everything I know about blue and everything that I can about blue, I can become part blue. I can then sneak into garden and get to where blue was grown. And then I can give some of myself to her. So then blue will become part red and thereby have the antidote

to the poison, which is or the resistance to the poison, which I inherently have in my blood. Same blue will no longer be entirely blue. She'll be partly red and then it won't die to the poison that I will end up giving her in the future. And she does this flawless plan, flawless plan. She almost dies. She eventually gets caught by her own people afterwards.

And they're like, what the hell were you doing? And she's like, not telling. And then the book ends with a blue disguised as a guard leaving a note in her cell being like, hey, you want to escape and go be partners together in all the timelines where we have to continuously run for our lives forever to escape our respective agencies. And Red's like, hell yeah, bruh, let's go. But this is, I breezed through it, but that is a really interesting concept to me

because I've also noticed it in a couple other like, I can think of at least two other properties offhand where the plot hinges on a person via their actions and their connections with others changing their nature and no longer being bound by something because they have made decisions which change their nature. So in this book, it's red taking enough blue into herself that she can get penetrate garden. Let's not dive too deep yet into that phrasing or what that means. And then therefore gives enough of herself to Blue

that they that Blue is no longer bound to that fate of dying by poison. And you also find out that's why Blue has had this hunger her whole life that made her restless and that made her the kind of agent that would leave a note for Red in the first place is because Red gave some of her passion to her. OK, it is an essential changing of your nature that then changes your future and sort of escapes you from this fate to which you are bound.

I can think of two other properties offhand in which this is a key plot point. Obviously, these are major spoilers for both these stories that I'm going to mention. I mean, I guess it kind of spoils them now that I said it spoils them. Whatever you're on our podcast, you can't really be worried about spoilers. Number one is the is Aragon series. I don't know the inheritance cycle. That's what it's called, right? The inheritance cycle.

The your your sort of enemy slash brother slash friend. Murtaugh is bound to Galbatorix. I think that's the bad guy's name. Yeah. By because in every that is a world ripped straight from Earthsea in which you're true. If you know someone's true name, you can bind them with magic. Murtagh is bound to Galbatorix by his true name.

And Galbatorix, of course, forces him to be an evil piece of shit. However, in the final confrontation with Galbatorix by his true name and Galbatorix of course forces him to be an evil piece of shit. However, in the final confrontation with Galbatorix, Murtagh is able to break free of Galbatorix's control because you discover that through his friendship with Aragon, his feelings for their companions and having essentially done good deeds at some point, Murtaugh has changed who he is and therefore changed his true name because your true name is a reflection of who you are. So Murtaugh is able to resist that control by no longer being who he was when Galbatorrex bound him. Yep. Secondly, this is a much more recent example.

Baldur's Gate 3, one of the characters you can play is known as the Dark Urge. You are a ball spawn. You are a child of murder, child of the God ball. If you're familiar with Baldur's Gate at all, you know what ball spawn are. If you play as a ball spawn, you spend most of the game resisting urges sent to you by your murder dad to murder everyone around you. To just kill everybody. Your friends, your lovers, your just various people you come across, small children, squirrels, whatever.

The Dark Urge forces you to kill people, or wants you to. You can resist it with effort, but the culmination of that of that particular part of the plot point, if you're the dark urge, is you have a duel with another ball spawn. Orin, you know, fucked with you earlier before the story starts. Whatever you have a duel, you win. And then Ball says, hey, great. You are now the remaining ball spawn. You're going to be my chosen now

and you're going to drown the world in blood for me. And you can say, I don't think I want to do that. That sounds bad. Actually, I've kind of like my friends and companions. I don't want to kill them. And Baal says, fuck you. You're one of my spawn. And you say, no, thank you.

And then he fucking kills you because your blood belongs to him. Then magical bone man withers appears and resurrects you. And what does wither say to you? That because of he can resurrect you that because of your decisions and your actions and the your friendships and the things you have done throughout the campaign, you have created a new part of yourself that is no longer the part that Baal owned. And so you are able to be resurrected because the entirety of you no longer was devoted to Baal. It was not his to

take away. And that is exactly the same thing as both time war and the inheritance cycle to me. That is the idea that no matter what you were or how you were bound, you can choose through your own thoughts and actions and influence of your relationships to not be the same person you were and then that can ultimately change your future. And I find that personally to be pretty incredibly inspiring, actually. To me, that is a testament to the ultimate power of free will. What we'll do a Baldur's Gate episode at some point. But the whole point is that the ball spawn doesn't really have free will

until you make it happen. Right. Murtagh didn't have free will until he made it happen. Obviously, Blue has free will. But her future is because of the way time works there. Her future is set to be killed. That is where she what will happen to her until Red decides that that's not what she wants to happen.

And they like share aspects of their lives with each other. And I find it interesting that this is sort of a repeated theme. And as someone who's like faith is inherently based on the idea that we all have free will and that it is the choices, the decisions you make and the actions you decide to take that ultimately determine what sort of person you are. I find a lot of comfort in these sort of stories that say, no, you may have been a bad person in the past or your future may have been set on this course, but you can make decisions to change that and your future can be different because of it. And I've been rambling for a while, so I apologize, but, uh, Ketho, any thoughts on all of those things that I just said? I mean, no, I just, I honestly just think that that's a really cool aspect of any

story that does it and that I think that it's just the value of free will. I don't know. It's really, really cool. I find it interesting that in almost all the ways that it's just the value of free will. I don't know. It's really, really cool. I find it interesting that in almost all the ways that it's been presented or that all the examples that you listed, there's kind of almost a like sowing the seeds of their own destruction sort of scenario, especially with both Murtaugh and the dirge, which I think is really interesting because I feel like you wouldn't have had that change of heart had Orin not fucked you up.

Oh, no, you definitely would not have because she did scoop out like half your brain, which is literally the only reason you're allowed to have any free will is because she scooped out part of your great matter. And it's like, and if Galbatrix hadn't fucked with Murtaugh, would Murtaugh have changed enough to escape his control? No. And if, you know, if the Red Team hadn't said, hey, we'll kill her, this would never have been necessary and that it never would have happened in the first place. If the agency had had not decided that blue needed to be killed, it would not have necessitated the killing, which meant that red had to go back and then make blue not entirely blue.

Like that wouldn't have happened except for the fact that the agency decided blue needed to die. If that had never happened, then red and blue never would have fallen in love in the first place. Correct. Because they wouldn't have had an aspect of each other in each other from the start. That's clever, especially especially for a time travel

story. Makes a lot of sense. That it seems like it was there from the start, but it's only there from the start because the decisions that were made later. Yeah. Feel like I'm paradox. I feel like I'm trying to explain the plot of fucking that, like really cheap indie time travel story where like you have to draw out a fucking flow chart to figure out which version of each person.

Primer. It is the movie Primer, which is has a time travel plot between these two guys, which is so complex and so interwoven that you like most people have to go online and like look up a fucking flow chart to figure out which version of which person is appearing on screen at any given time. And I kind of get a feeling like that a little bit from your red and blue, because you're like, well, this wouldn't have happened if you hadn't made this decision, which happens later, which brought you back

to this point in the first place. And time travel is cool if they do it really well. There's like five Doctor Who episodes that do it well. See, that's one fandom I can't really comment on. Never watched. Never watched the Who. Listen, I have a nostalgic connection to Doctor Who, but there's like six good episodes of New Who. I shouldn't talk shit about Doctor Who though. I've got a lot of friends on the internet who love Doctor Who, so shout out to all of

you. I'm not dunking on you. I like a lot of really weird stuff. Anytime I think of good time travel shenanigan nonsense, I think of Blink blank the episode with the weeping angels for the first time. And it's it's really cool. And that's where the whole wibbly wobbly time. You want me line comes from. Oh, really? That episode. Yeah.

Where David Tennant says time is like a big ball of wibbly wobbly time. You want me stuff? And by the way, we stand David Tennant on this on this show. We do. We do stand David Tennant. One of the six good British people. Sorry. Oh, again, sorry to my British mutuals. OK. Any other final sort of plot or technical things to talk about before I do another rant about women?

No, I think that you're in the free and clear at this point. So, I don't know. This is fair warning to anyone, any of our listeners at this point. If you don't want to hear me gush about lesbian romance, this is the end of the episode for you, I suppose. Thanks for listening. We'll be back soon. I think the next couple of episodes will be ones I recorded with Trevor from the History of Persia podcast about the book called Creation by Gaurav Dhal,

where we talk about Zoroastrianism and Persia and Buddhism and some other fun things that were recorded like two years ago when I was mostly the same person, but kind of not. Don't worry about it too hard. Those will be up next, and then we'll be back with some new stuff in August. So if you want to be done now that we're done with the technical aspects and the time travel

and all that stuff, thanks for listening. Everyone else, it's time to get gay. Ready to be gay. Want to be a little gay, Kethel? I mean, I'm here for it. I'm kind of locked in at this point. To what? Listening to me?

Yeah, that's we all the show together. This is the deal you signed. It's in the contract. It is. It's we all the show together. This is the deal you signed. It's in the contract. It is. It's literally in the contract. I made well, the contract I made you sign, but don't worry about it. You know, wouldn't have had to sign this contract if you had if you had futuristically retroactively decided that you didn't want to do this.

So, you know, whatever. As I mentioned at the beginning, this book means a lot to me from a perspective of like sapphic romance. The two main characters present femininely, they use her and she referred to as as women. OK. You wonder you could probably get real technical about it to be like, are people whatever,

depending on the fact that they can shape shift into men and do whatever the fuck they want. But it seems like the natural form they revert to is feminine, the way they're described. This is, as you would call it in most circles, like an enemies to lovers sort of slow burn, because it starts with a taunt from blue to red. And then via taunting each other, they start to just share their opinions and feelings with each other and eventually fall for each other. And on a personal note, I read this at a time when I was, you know, still coming to terms

with experiencing romance and attraction differently than I have in the past. As some of you may know, you know, there are differences depending on your sexual orientation, your gender, about the way you're either taught or expected or allowed to feel and experience like love or romance or dare I say yearning. And I read this book at a time where I was definitely still figuring that out. And the way they write to each other, the way they describe their feelings for each other, like opened my eyes to a world that I had never really either considered or felt that I was allowed to consider before. There was the, again, I'm sorry, some of you, but this is going to get somewhat gender theory-y.

As for a lot of people from like a male perspective, your romance isn't really allowed or expected to feel as, I don't know, emotional and sappy, if that's the right word. And now you can disagree with me, Cato, on this part, because this is the thing, you know, where you, that you do know about. This isn't like the only women part, right? But from my perspective, attraction and romance from the male direction is not usually expected to be or allowed to be, particularly if you're presenting a straight as sort of emotional and. Oh, I don't want to say is what poetic poetic. Right. You like if you wrote like this or express

expressed attraction like this as a straight man, it would seem out of place for a lot of people, I would argue. And so for me, being able to read this story where two characters are able to express themselves this way and do feel. Feel like that is something that's available to me. I was life changing, it changed, it straight up changed my brain chemistry, changed the way I think about expressing attraction to other people., changed the way I think about expressing attraction to

other people. It changed the way I write when writing about attraction or descripting scenes that are deeply emotive. And I just can't say enough good things about it because they don't. We also, the story avoids doing too much of the more what I will sort of say more physical or base level attraction stuff, because we don't really know what they look like. Yeah, yeah, they don't they don't they don't give you any descriptors of their appearance at all. Except for when they've changed into specific forms, right?

Like when who turns into the wolf, you know what the wolf looks like when it very specific moments when they're like sort of in character, more or less, you hear their descriptions. But besides that, all you know is that they have long hair or some hair because they talk about running their hands through each other's hair, which, sorry, horny. It is. Yelp. Sorry, man, sorry, horny. It is. Y'all sorry, men, you all know, you don't know what that's like

until you've grown your hair out. I'm sorry. Men, if you've grown your hair out, you can experience this joy, too. If somebody running their hand fingers through your hair, you should try it. But that's like all the physical descriptors were given for them, is that they present femininely in a fashion and they have hair long enough to run fingers through and that Blue has a scar on her shoulder from killing the planet beast that was going to kill Red.

Like, that's it. So all of their attraction to each other is personality based. They fall in love to each other is personality based. They fall in love with each other, not from how each other looks, even though they have seen each other's forms eventually. Not at the start, but eventually they, different futures have seen what each other looks like, but they've never physically met. They've never touched.

And the way they fall in love is entirely through the things they say to one another and through appreciation of each other's work, I guess. Like they are both deeply appreciative of each other's work as agents, which is what sort of kicks us off in the first place, is that they they love fighting against each other. And then it is entirely through the mind, the ideas, the personalities that they fall in love. And so that is how they describe their attraction to each other

is through these more esoteric, poetic fashion. There's no like, can't wait to put my hands on you. Right. Like, that's not how that's not how their attraction, their love manifests. It's that they want to speak to each other, spend time together. They want to like. Be able to exist in each other's presence. And I'm sure for a lot of you out there, this was the thing that you already understood or a thing that you knew or a thing that you've read in other stories.

And maybe the fact that this book is somewhat transcendental for me is simply is because it's the first time I saw this presented in a way that hit home for me. And that's entirely possible. Maybe it's not that revolutionary. But it is it was for me personally. And there's not enough that I can say about the way they're attracted to each other, coming across to me as particular as like very specifically and particularly.

Like sapphic or lesbian, if you will. The way that they are attracted to each other and express that attraction to me is very women attracted to women type of queer. Yeah, I mean, I haven't experienced anything like this as a bisexual man. I mean, to be fair, my own ability to say anything like this is severely hampered. The writing in this is, I think the right word is just sapphic. I don't want to act like there's really a stereotype, but ultimately I don't think that dudes get it. I don't want to say that, you know, gay men can't experience esoteric

and you know what I mean, like poetic attraction to each other. That's not what I'm trying to say. But I think it expresses itself differently than this. And I think there's also just a socialization difference there, where women feel more comfortable and more safe doing this sort of thing than most men, especially nowadays, because if you think about it, like 500, 600 years ago, men were writing love poems. Oh, yeah. To and there are some that are written really well.

It's just like an art that has been lost and has been only recouped by lesbians at this point. I mean, like Lord Byron was writing shit like this. Yeah, it's it's it. It's something that has fallen out of favor due to socialization of that sort of thing, like people look at flowery language now and think, that makes you gay. Yeah, like if you were if you're my age,

if you said anything like this in like the 90s or 2000s, you would just get called gay or significantly worse slurs. Yeah. So there's there's a social element that kind of prevents a lot of men from being comfortable doing this sort of thing. Which, again, is partly why it was so impactful for me, which was. Again, allowing myself to understand that this sort of demonstration and this sort of outpouring of attraction is available to me. I'm allowed to like feel this way and to have somebody else feel this way to me. Because again, coming from, you know, my perspective, that was not a thing

that I was socialized to accept previously in my life. And so again, it could be this book's not that revolutionary and it just fills that spot for me. But I can't recommend it enough to people who either just enjoy that sort of thing or are interested in seeing it expressed. It, you know, I've read this book like a couple of times a year just because the language hits me so much and I like to read it. That makes me feel good. The spirit of Sappho coming through

could be fair. Women have been writing about this like this about other women forever. Yeah, for a very fucking long time. You if you read what you read, the poetry of Sappho, that's not that different. No. Hey, you know, we still have men nowadays upholding the torch. You know, you have a. Hozier. Yeah. Hozier is like the only man I can think of off the bat who writes like this.

More power to. I mean, no, no. I was going to say Sufjan's too gay. Yes, that Sufjan doesn't fall under here because, no, no, I was gonna say Sufjan's too gay. Sufjan doesn't fall under here because yeah, he's our little gay boy. Yeah, he's too gay for Jesus is the problem. Yeah, he's... Seven Swans has got some real sexual lyrics sometimes, but they're also about Jesus. And you're like, if you want, if you want some, if you want some homoeroticism about Jesus,

go listen to Sufjan Stevens. But, you know, I don't because this isn't everyone's deal. I don't want to bang on about it for too long. But just that the the the the love and attraction between two women expressed in this book, I can't overstate what it means to me as a person, what it meant to me and to my development as a person, as a woman. And I can't say enough good things about it. My last request, if I may, is I read my favorite passage, if you don't mind. May I go for it?

So the last thing about the book, I will read the check. It's a very specific paragraph that I just have saved as a picture so I can come back to and read it a lot. And I come back to this often. And this is from, I want to say chapter 13, possibly. It is the chapter in which Red finally admits or like says the words, I love you to Blue. And it's a section from that letter that really, really gets me thinking about the story of the story of the story of the story of the story of the And then the next one is a section from the book, which Red finally admits or like says the words, I love you to Blue.

And it's a section from that letter. That really, really gets me. And. So I just like to read it, you know, into the record, as it were, to finish our discussion about this is how you lose the time more. I want to chase you, find you. I want to be eluded and teased and adored. I want to be defeated and victorious. I want you to cut me, sharpen me. I want to drink tea beside you in 10 years or a thousand.

Flowers grow far away on a planet they'll call Cephalus. These flowers bloom once a century when the living star and its black hole binary enter conjunction. I want to fix you a bouquet of them gathered across 800,000 years so you can draw our whole engagement in a single breath all the ages that we've shaped together. I can't write like that. Me either. I'm trying. I'm trying, but me either. I'm trying. I'm trying. But me either.

Like, hot damn. And I think I think the line the line after that is I love you, Blue. Pretty confident that's the next line. But before I get any more choked up, don't want to cry on the podcast. Generally, we save that for behind the paywall. Thank you all for listening. Thank you all for sticking with us as we have come back in time for Pride Month. As I said, next month will be the two episodes

that I recorded with Trevor on creation by Gore Vidal. That will be sort of a history and religion, religious-y focused thing from, I think we recorded that in twenty twenty two, to be honest with you. But those will be out and then we will be back with new with other new episodes in August. Things we have planned coming up. A book called Feed, which is like a zombie apocalypse book, which we will be recording with Bree and Fry from Pontifacts.

A book that will make you tear your hair out because it was written about zombie pandemic before covid and comparing what the author thought the apocalypse would look like compared to what we actually did during covid will make you want to tear your hair out because we tell you, I've already started the book and oh boy, oh buddy, we've got some other stuff online. We will have a finally have a new bonus episode up very shortly, too. We are going to be doing a bonus

episode on the Mass Effect series. And the ultimate triumph and failure of liberalism. Truly. The triumph and failure of ultimate liberalism as we talk about Mass Effect and the council and what the writers think about how the galaxy works. And for all you fans out there, I will also just continue to be gay about my blue space wife, Liara, because I can't not do that.

Thank you almost so much for listening. We will be back again soon. And any final thoughts, Kethel? Go read it. Yeah, if you listen to this without reading this book, shame on you. Go read it now. It's not very long. If you if you listen to this without reading this book, shame on you. Go read it now. It's not very long. It's actually pretty short.

And if you have if you're one of the disgusting people like me, that Spotify premium, it's the audiobook is free on Spotify premium. So I know Spotify is bad company. Don't at me. I do audiobooks. What do you want from me? Listen, I don't pay for it. I have it, but I'm not the one paying for it. There's also that too. So thank you so much. You're all wonderful. And we'll talk to you again soon. Goodbye. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro.

Bro. Bro. Come on.