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Carl Sunshine, standing on a sand bar, two dog legs, inviting you to fly with him, from here to pre-baby Heaven. THIS, is Fireside Chat.

(Editor's Note: At the beginning of this episode Erika says that we are in the "falling action" part of the story. Reader, we very much are not. This was a speaking typo: a speak-o. Erika will be sending every listener a cashiers check for $3.50 in compensation for the speak-o. We hope this puts the matter "to bed.")

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Comments

kuo

I'm definitely using speak-o from now on

Cristina

Wahoooo!!!! Fireside chat!!!

Fishes

I second Aabrias immense excitement over the Insight with any chosen skill thing

JB

Aabria: Brennan’s driving instructor being an indecipherable 100-year old man named Carl Sunshine is in fact the most believable thing of all time

Inverse Switch

Three way intersections are very whimsical if they are Y-shaped. Very much The Road Not Taken; a decision metaphor

Kate K

How thoughtful @Erika to send us compensation for our wrecked state of being, please reinvest mine into lovely pod.

pilby

You keep saying "in any case", and frankly, Brennan Lee Mulligan, I disagree that any other cases can be considered. How am I supposed to move on from the fact that you're passing on life lessons from a flying Popeye the Sailor?

Grace Gibbs

I did a bit more research on dog-leg turns and apparently it's less of a southern thing and more of an aviation term for a maneuver where they alter thier flight trajectory by taking a sharp turn out of thier path in order to avoid obstacles (mainly weather from what I can tell)

John Brothers

Me listening to this while I walk my dogs, passing 4 discreet 3-way intersections: it's just a T tho...

tonytoestep

Based on this conversation I hope I don’t reincarnate into a bug, I hope I reincarnate from my stoner self to also a stoner self that speaks Japanese and can help Erica 😂

John Brothers

Also tangentially related; in a car with a manual transmission, if the top left selectable gear is reverse, not 1st, that's a dogleg shifter.

Emily C

A flat black is DIABOLICAL

SeminoleDVM

Haven’t listened to ‘Clint Eastwood’ in ages.

Haley S

I really thought Carl Sunshine was gonna be Lou’s character when I first read the caption 🤣

Bor

Cyril having that shape, makes perfect sense, as a poet myself, I do think not many wizards would be as creative. Vandal and Enzo have way more potential in the physical world. Cyril would be maybe more powerful if he was constituted in a way less stuffy town 🦆

GuidingMoonLite

3 way intersections are super normal in rural towns. The real whimsical intersections are 5-way stops

Michelle Spurgeon

The wizards should come to northwest Ohio and learn the magic of roundabouts and diverging diamonds to confound the man in black

ScoutHooligan

Wasn't expecting Wealwell to guest on this ep. The "....Huh?!?" got me lolol

Catloaf

I am so scared for Task. I just want him to be okay

Brandon Carbaugh

Ame as a magical item katamari is so funny. And YES to everything Brennan is saying about occasionally representing a player's own subconscious. That's so much of what videogame writing and narrative design is, and it's very fun to see that talked about in the context of tabletop. The idea that you, the GM, aren't just the world and the npc's, but can also be that Greek chorus of internal voices for a player, like Disco Elysium, reflecting their own choices back at them. Or that, like, in the musical interplay between player and character, the player may be the composer and soloist, but the GM is the one drawing the lines on the musical staff.

QuantumLeeP

Brennan, I find 3-way intersections bereft of whimsy, however I do think 6-way intersections deserve respect. I always think of 1 particular intersection of that type in Chicago, used to be the heart of a huge shopping district.

Matthew Maddock

As a Brit; 3 way intersections and roundabouts are pretty normal. Whereas a roundabout made of roundabouts (google Hemel Hempstead or Magic Roundabout) - that is hilarious.

Chase Anderson

Holy shit, Iistened to the ep twice and totally didn't pickup that Silver was dead!! I imagined it as he was upset and didn't want to see or acknowledge Enzo cuz he was being weird😳

Chris

I live in upstate NY and I can confirm it's a weird place. I would not be shocked if a man named sunshine taught driving and then flew home to somewhere in the Northern Appalachian Mountains.

L J

I look forward to my $3.50

Calix

If y'all are looking for 1st-language speakers, actual humans, and no AI, I absolutely recommend Busuu!! A decent selection of languages and its whole shtick is talking to and getting feedback from 1st-language speakers!

Ellis

There just cannot possibly be only 2 episodes left....I might actually cry

Shey

“There’s more story left. Good luck.” —Aabria Iyengar

Jack Anderson

Gorillaz mentioned 🗣️🗣️

Erik Hanson

Thank you for leading off with Bok-Bok-B'Glock! I seriously was expecting the actual episode of "No Loose Ends" to involve a chicken producing a firearm and blowing someone away.

Joshua Turpin

Fun fact: Trivia is from the Latin for three (tres) roads (via), so it fits for Brennan.

Erik Hanson

"Tactical Snitching?" Tactical snitches get practical stitches!

Heliks

For real though, if anyone finds a sufficiently dopamine-inducing language learning app... Hit me up. Signed, 300+ streak in Japanese who also deleted duolingo that day ;.;

Bex

"fully nu-uh" will be entering my daily lexicon thank you very much

Oli Hamerla

Brennan I'm from Boston I've seen intersections with truly unknowable amounts of ways.

SmileyGuy

Dead men tell no tales… nor do they blab your cloaked name.

Eribu

(I still downloaded it but I hope the 1GB .wav isn't incurring any extra server costs)

Viki Walters

One day I'll learn not to listen to the fireside while eating or drinking. Today isn't that day. The pre-baby Heaven almost cost me some oatmeal.

Ellie

The real question about past bug-lives is: can bugs form long-term memories? If not, how can your soul access past bug-life memories if they didn’t exist during the bug life to begin with?

Ellie

And the whimsy of elderly drivers who don’t understand them and come to a dead stop when the sign SAYS YEILD.

Collin Mason

"pre-baby soul soup." thats a thing that was said. 😂😂

Izer

Obsessed with the visual of Enzo hastily sketching Silver with the stuffed letter before booking it to Suvi's tower

Ellie

I switched over to Busuu. It isn’t quite the dopamine box that duo is, but it’s the closest I’ve found. But I have lost a triple-digit streak because it doesn’t give you as much grace as duo did when you miss a day without a shield.

PT MacKim

According to some Buddhist lore, managing to get a human rebirth is as rare as throwing a ring into the ocean from a boat at the exact moment a sea turtle just happens to lift its head above the waves. Most of the time folks end up in one of the other 5 realms of rebirth (add in infinite other worlds in infinite timespace and it’s even more unlikely to have been Napoleon). So you can ask all those wide-eyed LA party people how it was that in each of those extremely rare human rebirths they managed to miss their opportunity to attain liberation from the cycle of birth and death.

Jasmine A. Golphin

Anyone else having a hard time getting this episode to play on PocketCasts?

Emily C

Respectfully my dude, aren't the last words of the ep explicitly stating that The Wizard Silver is dead on the ground? Lol

Aesthetic Pest

“What was your face before your parents were born?”

Queen Motoko

Three rivers converge in many places. Many see the rivers as roads

Aesthetic Pest

And also: once, when high, after listening to an Alan Watts talk, I felt like I connected to all the atoms of every other living thing that have come to currently compose my body… so, yeah. 98% bugs, and when I’m sitting on my porch in the Florida heat listening to cicadas and breathing in the humidity… there’s a hefty percentage remaining of lizard.

Tommy Deibel

Erika, I'll take PayPal for the Speak-o. Thanks ❤️

Jayfeather

yeah, when we got the description of the letter handoff i though Silver had either been body snatchers Replaced, or he’d been feebleminded

Cody Zimmer

Yeah, we HAVE to have him talk about this and the next episode when he's back next week.

shining oak

Brass Monkey That funky Monkey Brass Monkey junkie That funky Monkey

mguin

Mango Languages is a good alternative for Duo. Free thru a lot of libraries. The absolutely wild tangent swings today feed my "hey this is neat" brain. Slime molds are amazing lil things.

flyingwriter

Ahh this podcast gets me so excited for what is about to come. Based on the brief description of Aabria in childspose… I’ll make sure to have tissues. I think we are in for heartbreak.

nathan

my dad believes that reincarnation happens in stages and that you kinda evolve to more and more complex life and experience to learn new and more difficult lessons. His dog would sing/howl when he played guitat and apparently that was a sign his chances of reincarnating into a human were bigger as he was especially smart? for the record, I don't think this is true, but it does solve the 98% bug statistic!

C. A. Whyse

Aabria being so quick to defend the Citadel is one of my favorite bits. "I got 99 problems" really got me. I'll be expecting my $3.50 in the mail, thank you! /j

nathan

I am unsure if you can also be demoted if you don't learn those lessons as a human being like you became a fascist? go try being an ant one more time and maybe you will get it next time

Bob Chapman

A dogleg isn't an intersection. A dogleg is a bend in a road/path/golf course, sharp but less than 90°. Look at a dog's (rear) leg: it bends. A 3-way intersection is a T-intersection or a fork in the road. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Patrick

Carl Sunshine was a pioneer of the internet. Is there a chance Brennan was taught to drive by one of the authors of the first TCP spec?

Andrew M

FYI on Pocket Casts, the download size for this file is 1.1GB. Is there a reason for why it's so big? Thanks

The Wizard Solace

They are in LA saying they have never been at a T intersection

Kyle Reyes

Thank you, I will include that check in my monthly budget

Cody Zimmer

There is more story left... good luck! What a way to end the Fireside!

Cody Zimmer

Maybe not an ant to correct that one, as one of the most fascist adjacent species in the animal kingdom.

Daniel Wong

Wait people dont factor in bugs into the reincarnation cycle? I thought that was pretty standard for the karmic cycle in Hinduism/Buddhism?

nathan

which is why you need to learn the lesson by working in the fungal farms of the ant queen!

The Wizard Sparrow

Trapping the Man in Black in a roundabout was the highlight of this fireside chat. I laughed so loud🔥🦊😂

xatlern

I'm not a tattoo girlie, but I can imagine a tattoo of the phrase "in my cunning era" with a fox across it SO clearly 😍

Zagreus Rush

How's the girl doll shoe business going?

Bor

As a European listening to this, calling a 3way intersection whimsical, is like calling a shop window whimsical

SapphoDyl

Unironically, "There's more story left. Good luck!" is a surprisingly encouraging sentiment that I really needed to hear. (Even if it was meant to be an ominous warning of heavier things to come)

xatlern

I have so many thoughts about the reincarnation and population dynamics and conservation of soul energy situation I could talk about it for hours and would listen to Brennan talk about it forever.

SapphoDyl

The Hemel Hempstead roundabout is wild! And, apparently, a mere 12 days ago held a grand (re?) opening ceremony for their updated design & name, rebranding as the Dutch Roundabout. I guess it now includes more robust, Dutch-style sidewalks & bike lanes - and the local city council produced a CGI video to help teach people how to use it 😆

Chase Anderson

Totally possible, I listen while I drive. Probably missed it

Alyssa

The comedic timing of these folks kills me, especially Aabria’s this week: “I don’t fuck with Duo no more” 🦉💥🔫 “Damn, she’s got 99 problems…but a bitch is in fact no longer one! THANKS MOM!” “Cyril…great at making a flat white, did not know how to handle a flat Black, what do we do. What do we do. What do we do.” “Oh! And for those asking: NO 🥰 this episode wasn’t where Erika’s photo of me in a weird child’s pose was from. There’s more story left. Good luck!”

Alyssa

I think he’s referring to the past life people that are like “I was Cleopatra in my past life” not people practicing any religion with reincarnation

Alyssa

Okay, but what if you’re going from one fork of a Y-shaped intersection to the other? That surely wouldn’t be a fork in the road? Perhaps it would be known as another turning point where time grabs you by the wrist and directs you where to go?

Gage Herendeen

eternal sunshine of the gooseless sky

Stiltpuppy

I would have thought there were more 3 way intersections in upstate New York. Im from close to there and 3 way intersections are everywhere. i think he's right that 3 way intersections are whimsical to him specifically because his driving teacher was a wizard, and not for any innate reason

Alyssa

If by whimsical you mean “terrifying beyond all reason” I agree! At least when they are located in suburban areas and governed by traffic lights and the driving know-how of your average jamoke.

Naseem Jamnia

PLee we talking about the Milwaukee/cicero/irving park 6 way? That’s EXACTLY what sprung to mind for me with this talk of 3-ways. (also cannot believe I found you in the wilds of Patreon LOL)

CommodoreBlue

I really think The Man in Black was chasing Stone the day that Grandma Wren trapped him, and I think he was trapped in the very road outside her cottage. That’s why it was Suvi who couldn’t step on the road, and when she did in episode 1, she released The Man in Black back into the world. The magic of the trap recognizes Suvi as Stone because their genetics are close enough. Just my theory, but I know I’m not the only one who thinks this; there’s been multiple subreddit posts about this exact thing.

Rachel Kleine

"Pre-baby soul soup" will be stuck in my head forever, thanks 😂

Adrianna Veloz

As someone from seattle im curious Brennan, thoughts on 5 way intersections?

Naseem Jamnia

Certain types of long-term memories in humans are encoded due to the hippocampus, which doesn’t exist in invertebrates. That being said, some invertebrates including (some) insects do have strong spatial memory (also part of hippocampal encoding for navigation) and therefore have structures that allow them to encode some form of memory. But I’d defer to an evolutionary neuroscientist or invertebrate neuroscientist here on what kinds of long-term memory are in insects. (I did behavioral in rodent models of psychiatric disabilities so fairly different!)

Just a Fox

When did Suvi see the wand of covenant in Ame's possession? I genuinely didn't catch that.

Leni Nicole

Fully adopting “fully nuh-uh” into my speech

witch of wild novels

the casual religious lore drops from Aabria always go hard Deconstruction is ROUGH

QuantumLeeP

lol, indeed it is. I take it you've caught up since last I talked to Gabe about WBN.

Just a Fox

Yeah there's plenty of cults where the leaders have claimed to be reincarnations of *several* historical figures.

Hannah Radenkova Illustration

Maybe the Man in Black is various forms of The Unknown, and is just pissed humans keep adding titles and putting him in boxes. *Man in Black attempting to shake human off leg* STOP DEFINING ME

Tyler Svedin

Any mormons here gonna be hyped about the “pre-baby soul soup” logic. Haha

Carrie Mook Bridgman

Where on earth did that come from? Was Brennan referring to starting to reunite the three-person party? I am confused. 🙃

Ellie

That’s so cool! This is what I suspected. Whatever bug memories look like, they’re probably very different from how we recall the past. So maybe we do have bug memories but we just don’t recognize them as memories because they’re not coded in the same way? Like, everyone with a better than average sense of direction lived 100,000,000 bee lives before their human one. In any case, it is very funny to apply biological logic to a completely metaphysical concept.

Andrea ruble

To be clear, three way intersections are inherently whimsical because they occur when all the planning of a grid street system gives way to the organic intertwining of two passageways. Roundabouts are not whimsical — they are simply European.

Joshua Cooper

Not me reading the synopsis pre-listen and thinking Carl Sunshine was the name of Lou's Special Guest

Bog Station: Remembrance

I’ve just sat in on some heavy Buddhism classes— and reincarnation is tiered. They do factor bugs in. But humans are really rare, and only someone with great merit can reincarnate as a human. Once a human Buddhist progresses in meditation practice, they can access all their incarnations, and then further on they can incarnate as light, so there’s that. I haven’t experienced many Buddhists actually proclaim to know about their own past life experiences…

Bog Station: Remembrance

Just studied the Mahayana Sutras on karmic cause and effect and you’re more or less correct

Alyssa

Brennan was listening to 1. “Clint Eastwood” by the Gorillaz while working on Suvi’s plotline 2. “Good Riddance” by Green Day while working on the Man in Black’s and Eursulon’s plotline 3. “Brass Monkey” by the Beastie Boys while working on Ame’s plotline Prove me wrong 😂

Lauren Hartz

So my brain read this as "three way intercourses are inherently whimsical" and was like "Ah we're getting some more Horner Corner in this Fireside" and then became very confused at the introduction of "grid street systems". 😂

Amy Davidson

Anyone else hearing Dr. Horrible's sing-along blog in their head. "Everything you ever wanted"

Manifesting Good Posture

It's an interesting inversion of roles that the subsequent levels of exhaustion... don't matter for Steel vis-a-vis the players. The first one is definitely the most important in this game. Like - oh no, level 2, Steel's slow now. She can still vaporize the party with her own power or the power of the Citadel. It's some great mechanical accuracy to say: because these characters Live In A Society, their skill checks are way more important for them than whether their speed is halved in the vast majority of cases. D&D: Gritty Realism Version.

The Spirit of Vicious Inspiration

i ain't happy, i'm feeling glad. got carl sunshine, in a bag. at the dog-leg turn, but not for long. my airplane is coming on, it's coming on, it's coming on

August D.

That and “solid state afterlife” are now fully adopted into my personal lexicon.

The Spirit of Vicious Inspiration

i had to look up falling action, and based on what i'm seeing i don't think erika had a speak-o... the WWW story has just given us multiple climaxes (which the falling action follows), as the generous are wont to do 😏

Malcolm Pelletier

To clarify Erika’s comment on the slime mold replicating the subway system: they placed a little food on each major population center. The mold was not psychically resonating with the existence of a railway system

Big D-Meanor

Wait a min. If the man in black don’t like people, but he’s messing with Mirara, is Mirara at least a half spirit? Half witch??

CSN

I do like the idea of them occurring at the "wildland urban interface", and what that says about our attempts to pave away nature. My immediate thought was that NYC is literally surrounded by T intersections everywhere the grid hits the peripheral roads. (Though also many dead-ends and the occasional bridge.) However there are also many Ts formed when we fractally break our grid down into smaller subdivisions that don't carry through the whole space. T intersections are a special case in the numerical discretization of spaces for all sorts of computer simulations and graphics as well, which happily I got to forget about after grad school.

CSN

My immediate thought was that NYC is literally surrounded by T intersections everywhere the grid hits the peripheral roads. (Though also many dead-ends and the occasional bridge.) However there are also many Ts formed when we fractally break our grid down into smaller subdivisions that don't carry through the whole space. T intersections are a special case in the numerical discretization of spaces for all sorts of computer simulations and graphics as well, which happily I got to forget about after grad school.

Daniel Stevens

Thank you. To clarify more. They modeled the system after the mold!

Carson

“Pre-baby soul soup where the piping hot souls come out” hey Brennan what

Alyssa

Woah!!! I’m glad you guys clarified because my brain was not comprehending the definition of mold that was being discussed AT ALL. I was picturing a mold like a mold to cast chocolate or plastic or metal and that is less cool

Bor

You ever talked to a friend group of goths and alts that hate "people" I think this does not break real world logic

Bor

If you include the first 5 seconds of Billie trying to fingerpick and fucking up, most certainly

Justin S.

Aabriya: "Brennan loves doing a thing when fireworks should be happening" Me: *Cue EXU Calamity flashbacks and me screaming in Rary's Telepathic Bond "the firework extravaganza's begun"*

The Wizard Spring

Finding out Brennan did the same thing I did with Duolingo is very satisfying!

Stiltpuppy

Brennan going into full "Do you have a warrant" mode about spoilers

The Wizard Seeker

This is (benign) misinformation. The slime mold model experiment was conducted way after the high speed rail lines were built. The slime mold’s path was remarkably similar to the high speed rail path, which is promising for potentially using organisms like slime molds to aid in planning infrastructure in the future since they produced similar results to whole teams of engineers mapping the system. There is no rail system currently designed by a slime mold.

The Wizard Seeker

It was “All I Ever Wanted” from The Prince of Egypt for me.

The Wizard Seeker

“Roundabouts are not whimsical — they are simply European.” This is one of my favorite things I’ve ever read. Thank you, stranger by the fireside.

The Wizard Seeker

Great ep, but PLEASE use a different sound file. Unless there’s like a very good reason we should not all be downloading monstrous .wav files.

Jonathan Travers

Not me growing up in a suburban neighborhood with mostly 3 way intersections (two major roads with a bunch of parallel streets running between them so all the side streets end in 3 way intersections). I guess my childhood was whimsical!

Renoku

Hey.... haven't listened yet, but is there a reason this episode is a whole G? I'm chuggin along on work wifi to download it currently

Taka Kauri

Driving through a roundabout thinking “so whimsical”

Floating awning

I wonder if they knew that there are ants that farm aphids like sheep and drink their “milk”, also aphids are born pregnant

Sam Ballard

Pixar made a whole movie about pre-baby Soul heaven!

Skeletal Cleric

I wish I could remember the link but the most modern maps of brain circuitry look eerily similar to human migratory maps. So the movement of information in the brain visually mimics the movement of people in the world. Slime mold is aware of the sacred geometry.

TisWhatSheSaid

Erika, if you find a dealer to speak Japanese with I’ll happily join the language group. Index cards only do so much.

Zanna

They can be whimsical... but locally there's one that's big and often full of traffic. That plus the fact that some people have no idea how to drive through a two-lane rotary (less whimsical name) can make for a very stressful intersection.

Alyssa

I’m thinking about getting Aabria’s “there’s more story left…good luck!” as a tattoo once I’m done with my sarcoma treatment! Feels both inspiring and menacing, in just the right ratio

Drew Faber

I think in the caption they were just trying to say “don’t take the term falling action to mean that things are just gonna be like, really chill for these final 2 episodes”

Drew Faber

waittttt you could be onto something

Lee Chirtel

Speaking of Odin, Dagfinn Skre has a recent book "The Northern Routes to Kingship", which focuses on versions of Odin's portfolio changing based on IRL events. The book argues that the Kingdom of Denmark likely started as a Pan-Germaninc army group sucessfully establishing themselves in large stretch of territory. The name likely means flat or low land bordered by forests (mark is like march). It goes on to suggest that the early kings likely borrowed old gods, including Odin, and recast them into beings with larger portfolios to match and support the larger scale of a kingdom vs lordships or tribal polities. He goes on to suggest that the early kings might have directly called themselves Odin, or used it as a sort of reign title. The earliest Danish Kingdom was based on Gudme, which is God Home, after all. So I wonder if the "King" in "King of Night" for the Man in Black is a bit more literal. Maybe he was originally a mortal, perhaps the first mortal King buried in a great mound somewhere, or killed as a sacrifice. That would explain the hostility, at least.

Alyssa

And now watching her interview on “It Takes a Universe” and talking about her mother’s cancer diagnosis (and remission, to be clear!!) I’M FUCKING CRYINGGGGG 😭 and calling up my oncologist tomorrow for cancer-treatment tattoo rules because it’s too damn serendipitous

Honey Hibiscus

If you factor in bugs you also gotta factor in plants and mold

MissNtrope Rachel

From what I gather, the fae are often whimsical yet terrifying, so right on theme 🧚🏽‍♂️😈

Julia Thompson

Had to skip therapy this week, but don’t worry, brennans still gonna haunt me with the same shit my therapist would tell me god damn it

Brian Gardner

I'm now incredibly curious about the level of whimsy of the intersection I grew up adjacent to: a five way stop. People constantly screwed up using it and that drove me up the wall. Now it's a roundabout with a huge whale statue in the middle.

Ryan Parish

"Let me be clear, Suuvi called that meeting..." So snitching? Lol 😆

Ale

I say that del quote every day of my life

Alyssa

My therapist also tells me about his driving instructor flying off to parts unknown and about the whimsy of intersections that are not crossroads during our sessions. Those are the parts you must mean, I assume

Lojaan

98% Bugs t-shirt pls?

Jessiye Davis

You a real one Carlo! Asking the important stuff, cause never ever would I think of an intersection as “whimsical”

AlterGerent

The way the Man In Black is described, and spirits in general, feels similar to Nahadoth and the others gods in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (which is a book series that changed how I view the world so I do enjoy that a lot)

rio

It’s interesting that Suvi thinks snapping the Wand will make the Witches more vulnerable… We don’t know really what the Wand of Covenant does besides induct witches into new stations of the Coven of Elders and bestow greater power on the Coven when they act in unanimous agreement. Perhaps we can presume that even without unanimity, the Wand similarly bestows some smaller amount of power on Witches acting in concert with a goal set in a vote, but otherwise it doesn’t seem that the Wand is really a source of “power” for the Coven, especially in a military sense. Moreover, in the stars’ memory of the origins of the Wand, Hekea seemed to describe a world torn by the destruction of Great Witches bringing their domains to bear against each other, each pursuing different causes. This makes me believe that the main thing the Wand does is really just stop the Witches of the Coven of Elders from trying to kill each other, so that they’re forced to vote on what to do rather than go to war with each other over disagreements. Perhaps with the wand destroyed and the coven sundered, the Citadel could manipulate the witches into infighting, but I feel that Hekea, Gramore, Mirara, and Indri would probably still consider the Citadel too big a threat to falter. I feel it’s likely that, without the promise of the power and the politicking that could happen within the Coven, Indri would switch tactics and take a more active role in the war against the Citadel (although Suvi didn’t witness the actual Conclave to see Indri’s political machinations). Still, it’s possible that Mirara would turn on Indri for her betrayal, that Indri would prioritize taking out her once-sisters-now-competitors, or that Ame might convince Hekea in the aftermath of the coven’s dissolution not to participate in the war. If our Sage of the Penumbra can leverage the Witches against each other like this, that would just leave Gramore, and it’s at this moment writing this that I think I might be reverse engineering Suvi’s plan… Get the one that tried to murder your sister and the one that’s fucking the guy who wants to genocide your home to kill each other. Get your sister to convince the cranky but secretly sweet grandma that there’s a better way. Get the one that murdered a member of your squad all alone, against the full might of wizardry.

Sarah Vee

Yes, NYC is full of them. There's around 100 three-way T intersections touching Central Park, for example. I never noticed them being whimsical, but that's just me, LOL.

rio

Wait… if the Pilgrim Under Stars is a spirit of humanity, why did Haliker Forest worship him?

Liv Tealeaf

Not necessarily. Bugs, mammals, birds, fish, reptiles are all part of good ol’ kingdom animalia.

RuviGaPo

THREE WAY INTERSECTIONS ARE WHIMSICAL THEY ARE SO MYTHOLOGICAL !!!!!!

Liv Tealeaf

Look when you live in a country with mass shootings, no universal healthcare, crumbling infrastructure and every possible sign of collapse “European” starts feeling pretty god damn whimsical okay.

fishbananas

RE the ink demons: when Enzo was released, there was an implication (I forget the specific wording) that his true self was larger because he's a spirit of black ink and margin annotations, which are abundant in the Citadel. Blue ink and poetry are understandably, though perhaps tragically, less common, so Cyril is of lesser potency. Meanwhile, vandalism/graffiti are probably more casually widespread in the Citadel, likely not exclusively confined within the realm of academia, so Vandal is a little larger.

RuviGaPo

This is my favourite behind the scenes ep.

TheWizardSloth

"Couldn't handle a Flat Black." Does Silver have a flat ass?

Warlock

We need answers

Clare Robertson-Quinn

Hearing people call roundabouts whimsical is so bizarre as someone from the UK where they’re just everywhere. Meanwhile in America you have little alliterative rules that allow you to go through stop lights, that’s way more fairytale

Kit Taylor

all hail the 9th and 9th whale! (i presume)

Elizabeth U

Pre Baby Soul Soup = GREAT band name.

Elizabeth U

Also: I need “Aphids are the sheep of bugs” sticker yesterday.

Lee Chirtel

I did think of the podcast when reading that, lol.

Jess Cooper

If you're looking for an app to replace duolingo, see if your local library partners with mango languages! Free with a library card!

Alyssa

I’ll be sure to tag you in the finished product 🥰

Hannah Radenkova Illustration

It’d be a good reason why he hates the citadel too. Those guys love defining things to the point of making new things up in order to define them. Mmmmm boxes.

Brian Gardner

That's the one! Though now Brennan has me considering if they added the whale to replace the whimsy lost by eliminating a five way stop. Was I unable to appreciate its weirdness before?

Muadwho

My headcanon rationalized Suvi's "Level-up" as her remembering that before she became a wizard, she could've been a witch...

Alex Willging

Brennan, your line about reincarnation and being 98% bugs is spot on. I think it's a New Age/privileged POV thing, kind of like how meditation gets turned into "mindful breathing" and not the complex history it has in Hindu and Buddhist religious circles.

Rebekah

Oooooh yes, this is a great parallel!

CW

The betrayal! Could you imagine!?

Zack

What is a three-way intersection? Like a fork in the road? Is a T-intersection a three way intersection? Like what the fuck are you talking about Brennan!?

Issy (the Wizard Scramble)

I now think that my life got better when I moved to my apartment because it sits almost perfectly on a 3 way intersection Thanks!

Witch of the widening horizons

In Colchester in the UK there’s a big daddy roundabout with four little bitty roundabouts all around it that you have to navigate in order to get around the big daddy roundabout- how’s that for whimsical 🙃

Rebekah

Aabria: “Brennan loves doing a thing when fireworks should be happening!” Everyone who’s ever watched Calamity: 🥲🥲🥲

Rebekah

This is a super deep cut, but has anyone else read Seanan McGuire’s Sparrow Hill Road series? As soon as we met the Man In Black, all I could picture was her crossroads villain (Bobby Cross), and the more we learn about MIB the more I keep thinking about Bobby Cross! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17666976

Rebekah

100%. What is the ORIENTATION of the three roads? This is important information! 🧐

John Agnew

Renshuu and Wanikani are good Japanese language learning apps. I live in Japan and have been learning Japanese.

Sean Boyce

Yeah a T is inherently a 3-way intersection, and these exist all over the five boroughs. Certainly less commonly than 4-way, but in almost every case, you eventually get to a body of water where, should you approach perpendicularly, your options are left right or water.

Savannah Johnson

I have never WHEEZED so much as the idea of trapping the man in black in a roundabout. I sounded like a dying Phillip

Sean Boyce

Roundabouts are among the least whimsical thing to an international audience. They are both utterly mundane and totally logical. And fwiw, civil engineering research holds firm on their behalf - they’re safer and more efficient. But I guess safety and efficiency do feel like whimsy to us in the states. Sigh.

Bennett Martin

Just putting this out there: if Aabria physically writes out "There's More Story Left, Good Luck" I will actually get it tattooed Like I recognize the jovial tone but also mmm it's profound and kinda ties in perfectly to my storybook forest tattoo

Steven Rohrer

RE: Ink Demons Convo. Things in The Citadel always have to be contained or bottled up. Especially people and spirits. Secrets exist because people fear the effects of truth, but people are suppressed because society fears the effects of their truths! So many layers, you are so amazing!

Varun Gopal

I don’t know if this has any basis in any ideology or philosophy, but I like to imagine that we are all the same consciousness, and every reincarnation is just you switching consciousness to another being that has, does, or will exist. It gives me comfort because that means I have experienced life as every dinosaur that has ever existed. It also makes me upset because I have experienced life as a bunch of terrible people

UnspunElysse

I imagined a Y intersection, which is in fact more whimsical than a T intersection.

UnspunElysse

As someone actively spinning a sheep fleece while listening to this, aphids ARE the sheep of bugs.

Catloaf

The Citadel is also, at Lucent at least, obsessed with knowing and learning. What could be more threatening to a spirit of the unknown than an institution and people whose entire goal is knowledge?

Alex Kennedy

There was a countryside junction near the place i grew up called "six road ends" - that's a whimsical number!

Jordan T. Maxwell

"There's still more story. Good luck!" is the perfect slogan for WBN (and a good life philosophy?)! Please for to be on a T-shirt someday! Also, the finitude of souls problem in reincarnation is really only a problem if we view the cycle of samsara occurring linearly through time. I've always preferred a model where a soul can be reincarnated at any point in time since souls and the divine source transcend corporeal notions of space and time. I'm also into the notion that there's just one soul experiencing the infinitude of subjectivity through every life across history, the universe, and every branching parallel. 😜

Quentin

To Aabria saying a man named Carl Sunshine can't be real, I raise you my cousin James Sunshine, who just released a movie called Killing Mary Sue which I will shamelessly plug for him 😂 check it out!

CSN

Just the one cousin, or is that a whole branch of family's surname?

Quentin

A branch, but the rest of them aren't related to me so I don't know the rest of the Sunshines personally, just my two cousins. Their mom is the one I'm biologically related to.

Ravin Amulet

I've said since the beginning that the man in black is death. That's one one of his facets. I fully believe this and unless Brennan says otherwise, I'll continue to believe it.

Matthew D.

I agree that he's talking about a Y intersection. It wouldn't make sense for him to be referring to T intersections because those are plentiful in both New York and California. They also require a choice much less often than Y intersections.

Matthew D.

I mean, that whale statue sounds pretty darn whimsical

Virtual Spaceman

Yeah I'll be sending you my address so you can mail me my compensation thank you kindly ☺️

Noam Cassard

I have rarely heard a more american discussion than the one about 3 way intersection French cities are so full of weird streets

Rowan K

As someone based in the UK I am baffled by this: are there no T junctions in America?? I drove in America, I feel like there were some?! Maybe only on the West Coast... A dogleg is where you go right then left or left then right so you're basically wiggling over a road to go straight: I assume given what Mr Sunshine was saying that these must exist?

Rowan K

Roundabouts are indeed whimsical though

catrinevansvlogs -

Listening to this while googling "do they have roundabouts in America"

HoneySickle

Dear Brennan, as a Chicagoan we've got like 5 way intersections where some of these streets share two different names for a couple blocks to keep out of towners confused. That surely means that oddly numbered intersections are more eldritch horror than whimsical.

The Wizard Splatter

What a cool connection! Killing Mary Sue has been one I'm looking forward to :)

sabertruth19

Is speak-o a Midst reference or becoming standard lingo in podcast biz? Just curious and I would like to donate my 3.50 back to Erika for the continuing search for the non-AI language learning dopamine crack program. I am on my 512 day streak, inspired by the Aabria coming for Brennan’s streak challenge and I too know without an adequately addictive app, I will forget about working on another language for probably a decade. Thanks friends!

Quentin

Awesome! When you check it out consider rating it on IMDB :) apparently some trolls have been spamming it with 1-star ratings which bums me out. It's really good!

aphid

I heard that in Maine or Connecticut or some shit they call roundabouts "rotaries" which is somehow even more whimsical. It's the only place in the world they call them that. Also I'm writing this from a suburb on my delivery route with a 5 way intersection. 3 of the streets have stop signs and the through street is continuous.

The Wizard Splatter

Brennan I, someone who does not believe in reincarnation, feel you're failing to consider the lump sum of humanity historically! There were an estimated 105 billion successful births pre-industrial era, so assuming there aren't a ton of Greedy Reincarnators, it's probably just spread across different eras and folks look a lil spirit break in the old spirit soup!

Matthew

Ame's in her Cunning Era. She's serving cunning all night long.

The Wizard Sillimanite

@Aabriya! (I don't know if you can tag ppl in Patreon, but please see this ma'am.) I'd like to second that I'd get it tattooed as well. I don't have any other tattoos for it to tie in with, but it seems like a good first one.

The Wizard Sillimanite

Interestingly for the path/road discussion, 3-way intersections are incredibly common in paths.

Alyssa

Yeah, in most of New England we call them rotaries

Bennett Martin

It would probably be @Aabria but I’m super hoping she sees it so it can be added bc it fits the storybook vibe and initial meaning of the tattoo perfectly

Tessie Owen

If reincarnation doesn’t have to strictly follow time where a soul is reincarnated the moment the previous life dies, but instead can come back decades, centuries, or millennia later, that goes a long ways to making the numbers work. Also, what would make the most sense statistically is not necessarily bugs if the reincarnation belief is human specific, but realistically there would be a lot more past-life died in infancy / early childhood situations.

Tessie Owen

Definitely. Y intersections are whimsical but T intersections are not

petraG

Not sure if others are experiencing this, but using PodcastAddict, ep52 Fireside is showing up as a 1.1GB file. Others of similar duration seem to be in the 50-100MB range. Thoughts?

Tessie Owen

I think when describing the citadel court with all the clocks where they went to rescue Gault, he said there were lots of whimsical 3-way intersections or something like that as part of setting the scene.

Jo Carter

Is there some difference between a 3-way intersection and a T-intersection that I'm missing? Like, when one road meets another but goes no farther, forming a T-shape? Because I see T-intersections all the freakin' time.

Inverse Switch

26:27 in the fireside. But it was legitimately out of the blue in the pod too :D

CSN

Already listened and deleted but I see the same on PA. Second largest ever was "outake theatre" for episode 47, at 222MB but for only a 9 minute track. I suspect somebody forgot to click the usual compression algorithm and we got the lossless version or something.

CSN

It finally occurred to me that maybe Brennan was thinking of evenly-spaced 3-ways? So 120° angle between each leg. That would be quite rare, impractical anywhere near a grid, and indeed rather whimsical. It was breaking my brain how anyone could find the ubiquitous T to be somehow fanciful.

Matthew

You are not comprehending the scale we are talking about here. The insect that are currently alive outnumber us by about a billion to one.

The Wizard Splatter

That's not what I was addressing. He was talking about it being unlikely that every person alive has been able to be reincarnated as a human, because the industrial revolution caused such a recent population boom. I was just talking about humans.

mageacademydropout

As someone from upstate NY, Brennan's right about those three-way intersections. You usually come across them in the parts of New York that pre-date the car and so you're following old Iroquois trails or Dutch trading routes (usually both) and you get that timeless feeling of stumbling across something that dozens of generations before you have also found need of

Jema Horjus

I don't know where this puts me in the whimsicality debate, but it feels worth mentioning that every intersection in my immediate neighborhood is three-way. (The quickest path to a four-way intersection takes me past a minimum of 3 three-ways and onto a main road)

Indigo Liz Logan

Ok I’ma give y’all some tea for thought. Here are some principles that I have come to believe because of my experience in diving deeply into what we can learn as we release held emotions and recognize our denials. There is not a one-to-one correlation between a “person” and a “body“. It’s helpful to separate the essence that is us from the manifestation we experience. I have a sense of the bridge or lineage All the way back. Clearly my consciousness, understanding or awareness has been great and small; has waxed and wained over the eons. Of course we were bugs. We were dinosaurs. We were plants. We were amoeba. We were the rocks. We were the space we were the stars in terms of our physical expression. But we are also something more. And sometimes we split into many fragments and sometimes they were able to come back together. The population on earth right now is a reflection of how much we have fragmented and denied ourselves And projected ourselves onto the other etc., etc.. It’s a matter of perspective. Sometimes I get a sense of myself is very big sometimes very very small. I have apprentice with gnats. I worked my up to the dragonfly. (The biggest lesson was that the scope of perception was so very different, and the resolution so fine, which meant we were living in two separate worlds.) I have a particular sense of what aspect of creation is the one I feel at home in and am responsible for. I have a sense of how this ancient history shaped me. And you, too, by the way. I Think it’s important not to worry about being wrong or right, winning or losing a logical argument. There is so much more to reality than what our intellect labels. What I love about this story is the exploration of the relationship between Spirit, the Will (yin), and Body. As we discover and develop our iwn practice, we can start to trust our own process and feel deeply, allow our emotions to vibrate and comprehend our own history.

eve

The dance that aabria and brennan did before the level up... if there were ever a scene i wished to see animated its this one

Connor Sponsler

Wait, is "Lucienne Court" actually "Loose End Court"?

Connor Sponsler

Suvi certainly has "No More Boyfriend" problems

Connor Sponsler

Let's look at humans who have been 12. Let's give the age of 12 a 60% survival rate historically, meaning there are about 60 Billion humans who were ever 12. Given the current population at about 8 Billion, that's 7-8 "remarkable" reincarnations per person on average IF there are only 8 Billion souls. Let's say reincarnation is random as in you have a 1/8 Billion chance to be each of the 60 Billion people. You have only a 0.05% chance of being no one. For 8 Billion souls, thats 4 million people who would expect not to have had previous incarnations in humans 12 or older.

The Wizard Sparrow

The Fox has shipped as of 7/25. Doing the happy dance 🔥🦊🤗

Emma41420

This is for sure one of the first times my human reincarnation has gotten past the Tutorial Zone 🤣 Some people are cycling through like Avatar the Last Airbender, couldn't be me.

Michael Anaya

Anybody else get the vibe that when the wizards fire up their "build a bear: apotheosis edition" the result will be roughly "what if the grizzly that screams with a human voice from annihilation was also a nuclear explosion"?

mleanl

Re: The Man in Black In addition to Erika’s point about him being a spirit of the road, I also love that he is the Stranger, the Pilgrim Under Stars and how that’s also deeply tied to people. Specifically for the Stranger, it makes me think of the hospitality that witches maintain as an integral part of community/people/societies and our connection with each other. That plus the traditional notion of good/warm hospitality being welcoming strangers into your home. At what point did humanity decide that doing so was dangerous? When did people decide to be distrustful of strangers and shut their doors instead of opening them? Was the progress of humanity something that in turn bred that distrust and is that why the Man in Black also fears and hates them? For turning their back on him and ostracizing him despite the fact that they made him the Stranger in the first place? Surely at one point he loved and cared for people because of the stories that exist that speak of him being a kind ferryman of the riverways. What changed and when? So interesting!

Ro Lara

I love this take!!

Steve Underhill

I know this is a whole week late, but I just wanna mention that, per Brennan, the notion of a “solid state afterlife” implies the alternative of a more traditional vacuum tube afterlife and I think that’s great.

Noda

Yeah, it's the end of the day, Duo is calling for my Irish lesson.....

Samantha Townsend

Listening to this last week was the first time I ever heard the term "dogleg turn" and then watching Stick on AppleTV over the weekend they used the term in the show so I finally looked it up to find out that the term comes from the shape of wide curves that resemble the hind leg of a dog. So a dogleg turn doesn't necessarily have to be a 3 way intersection, but it makes sense that a lot of the ones worked into our roads would be and with that kind of name, how can they not be a bit whimsical

Dream Wizard Kyle Arca

We're getting Tree Fiddy!? Who do they think we are? The Loch Ness Monsters?

Dream Wizard Kyle Arca

Of course Brennan is confused by pre-heaven. He doesn't believe in Car Heaven!

Charisma Teeth

There is so much intensity behind Steel and Suvi's relationship. Steel has been mentoring within the same person both a daughter and a super soldier, but what do generals do with soldiers? They sacrifice them on the battlefield. It just makes their relationship deeply f____d. And WHY does Steel seem so preoccupied with Suvi more than her own flesh and blood? The answer is staring us in the face.

Swaff

Help does someone remember the explanation given in a different recent fireside for why the S names are a thing?? Or what episode that was? Brennan said something about the significance of the sibilant sound but I cannot remember any further details and it’s becoming a brain worm

Matt Mayhem

I just remember it was the sibilance with the sound of flowing sand in the desert, I think he talked about it in the Lucint court episode

Marta Maliszewska

Hi Erika if you read these and want something addictive to use when studying Japanese highly recommend Wanikani BUT if you already have a lot of kanji then it’s a bit annoying since they make you start at the very beginning

Swaff

Thank you 🫶🫶

Luke Westfall

Just a note that this episode was uploaded to Patreon as a *.wav instead of an mp3, so it's 1gb. Might be hard on some of your mobile listeners!

Muadwho

The Ink Demons are Suvi's favorite play-cousins

SRodrig93

I wanna have a LONG conversation with Brennan, Aabria, and Erika about ALife. I have had So Many Spirals about artificial life.

Chloe Mansfield

Brennan has the assumption that reincarnation must follow linear time and can not exist cocurrently

Aneta

Sometimes my SO tries to talk to me about philosophy and my brain blue screens trying to process it. Brennan effortlessly describing philosophy of self with the PC/NPC analogy clicked for me instantly. How great would a book where difficult philosophy concepts are translated through D&D lens be?! The thoughts that assail me while listening...

Claudia

"Pre baby soul soup where the piping hot souls come out" truly made me wheeze

Cait Batchelor

Pre baby soup soup is my new band name

Cait Batchelor

I have too many quotes written from this ep 100/10 good job

Candlelighter

Wild, because my band name from yeeeeaaars back is Dead Baby Water, which feels like the spiritual opposite

Jonathan Spell

BRENNAN! 3 Way Roads are Fey Roads, the third path is the one between heaven and hell that leads to Elfhame as afterlife options. Robin Artisson is an author who talks more about this

Wizard Sorcha

Speaking to the old man with a pilot's license and how DANGEROUS that seems, my Great Aunt Louise had her driver's license revoked around age 75 because she was unable to see well at night, but continued to fly as a pilot until she was almost 90 according to our familial stories. She would have a driver pick her up at her home in rural MS and take her to a small, private airfield. From there she would fly to Memphis and have another driver pick her up and take her shopping. Once she was done she'd get dropped back off at the airport and fly home, where she'd be picked up again by the original driver who would take her home.

coolranchpanda

Hell yeah to anti AI talk. Some incorrect opinions on roundabouts. They are the devil's work and I won't be convinced otherwise

Eric Jackson

Did somebody say “juggling”?

Coolclaytony

There are several 3-way intersections in my hometown.

Emily C

On a relisten: 98% Bugs was obviously the rejected first name suggestion for 90s boy band 98 Degrees

SpringtidePrince

Y’all taking about 3-way intersections and doglegs is very much “tell me you spend no time in the rural midwest (or south?) without telling me you spend no time in the rural midwest, lmao

༒Gorm Auslander༒

I don't understand the chronology here. The demons come back, and describe that silver is [undesirable condition] (this was not obvious or "spooky" to me. I thought he was being cold-shoulder and didn't want to be seen accepting the letter, but still wanted to read it and so didn't stop him from putting it in his coat), but then after they explain all this, they hear the commotion silver is causing, and then he [undesirable condition] again?

Jamie ßuçklānđ

I have come across a book describing Tao philosophy through the lens of Winne the Pooh which was awesome 😎

Lizzy_belle

I swear, Brennan is the most fae-touched person I've ever heard of. That driver's Ed story is wild. If I'm honest, I think that's probably the inspiration for Plug

Millie Yule

The way they're talking about roundabouts and three-way intersections as someone from the UK is so funny

Josh

the suburbs are literally filled with three way intersections. especially the neighbourhoods. 🙋🏼

Josh

silver died with suvi’s letter in his coat pocket!