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The wizard the witch and the wild one is the best podcast ever I am in agony. Literally what the fuck. I'm screaming. I'm on the floor. I love this podcast.

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On a lighter note, Suvi canonically looked at Ame’s lips and thought about her promise to not leave her behind, so like that bit was pretty cool.

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See with the whole Suvi carried the curse to Ame and Grandmother Wren thing, the one bit I'm stuck chewing on is how much did the Citadel know about the Man in Black situation?

I don't *think* they knew the whole thing with his binding, or even fully him going after Suvi, but I mean it's all so neat.

Suvi gets there. It's been over a decade, so she steps on the road, releasing the King of Night. Grandmother Wren's protections are still up, even with her condition, but here comes Suvi into the cottage, making contact with first Ame then Grandmother Wren and spreading a memory curse that dulls their knowledge and power. Then, after attempting to counteract this curse, which is unsuccessful, Grandmother Wren dies after passing her station to Ame. In that moment the Man in Black is able to approach and attempt to breach the cottage, to do what we do not know. But if Ame, kept from all of the knowledge she had learned, hadn't found a way to get more time....

It hinges on why the Man in Black wants Suvi, and why exactly the Citadel wanted the Witch of the Worlds Heart station to die with Wren. I'm thinking worse case he was able to enter, and likely kill Ame and Suvi, doing who knows what else as a result.

To me it reads like the Man in Black getting what he wants, with the Citadel not realizing how far they overreached. But I suppose we'll see.

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It’s been on the back of my mind since Ame got her memories back that Steel was not on Grandma Wren’s Trusted Wizard List but frankly I still did not expect just how correct that was.

Like yeah I knew Steel is a bad person and certainly makes sense they wouldn’t see eye to eye. But Steel being the one to curse her, even after that list was made, is just such a validation of the choice not to count her as trustworthy.

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It’s an interesting choice to make Steel’s footsteps sound so similar to the Man in Black there at the end

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Steel would never do anything unjust. And if she did, then it was an accident. And if it wasn’t an accident, then it was the only way. And if it wasn’t the only way, then it wasn’t that serious. And if it was that serious, then they were our enemies and they deserved it. And if they weren’t our enemies and they didn’t deserve it, then what the fuck is she about to do to Suvi?

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I'm still awed by Brennan's reveal of the Citadel's master plan. The hubris of it beggars belief, but it is fully in line with the type of ideologies that the Citadel and the Kehmsarazan Empire embody, namely the post-Enlightenment scientism that was used to justify not only the industrial revolution, but colonialism and slavery, with the genuinely held belief that these would be the tools to bring about a golden age for those who Mattered as a justification. Utopia justifies the means.

The Citadel arc feels in hinsight so much more portentious. Ame intuitively saw the same truth Lucent Court did in her conversation with Mr Calum in Bring Them To Me - she automatically assumed that Mr Calum was of kinship with the spirit, in a way that sent the poor tamori into an existential crisis. But where what she saw lifted the tamori up in her worldview, elevating them to the ranks of Honoured Friends, the thought process of the Citadel went in the other direction, bringing the spirit low to the level of arcane practice - the sacred and sublime made malleable and mundane.

Put another way, and to paraphrase Clarke's Third Law, if to Ame, any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from Spirit, to the Citadel any sufficiently analysed Spirit is indistinguishable from magic.

The hubris of Lucent Court is such that they do not question the underlying assumption that the laws of magic and the realm of the spirit are theirs to shape - they don't even think of asking themselves the question. Would not any farmer want to be free of Weather's whims? Would not any parent want to shield their offspring from the cruelty of Disease? Is it not a sign of humanity's maturity as a species that they do not simply bow to the Spirit as a hapless child to the will of its parents, but take their destiny in their own hands?

The Citadel creating life, and seeing it merely as a tool. Suicide bomber Fireballs. Shield tamori sacrificing themselves as an act of Love. The function of a tamori is to serve, of course it is, why and how could it be anything else? So then to turn to shape the Spirit to birth beasts of burden for the engines of civilisation, Great Spirits under the yoke of the Citadel, the taming of Nature made manifest, is the logical conclusion of a worldview that sees its dominance over magic and the Spirit not just as a necessity, but as a birthright.

God I love this story so, so much ❤ Incidentally, this reveal strangely reminds me of the backstory in The Broken Earth trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin, for reasons that would take far too long to explain, and would take us deep into spoiler territory for some God Tier fantasy literature (read it)

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i love wizard hubris i LOVE wizard hubris. when we made a little glass spider it went rogue almost immediately but if we synthesize [something equivalent to] a great spirit it will for sure follow our every command with no issue. just one more shipment of quicksilver bro

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There was so much incredible stuff in the last episode but I am, as ever, totally fixated on Steel. Specifically the way that Brennan, together with Aabria, has managed to twist so many of Steel’s seemingly best features into something much more sinister, without any betrayal to the character. We knew how much Steel loves Suvi, and then on the Epiphany we got to see just how messed up that love is (echoes of Angwyn “What is love without expectations?” Abernant). She’s always been relatively respectful about spirits, but it’s now made clear just how much that has to do with power rather than any sort of reverence.

The kicker for me, though, is her attitude toward war. Steel, for all she is as the Sword of the Citadel, has never come across as particularly warlike. We’ve seen her as a strategist making difficult decisions in a difficult war, we’ve seen her as a terse commander, we’ve even seen her eradicate an entire bloodline (complete with a cold one-liner), but in all that she never struck me as a conqueror. She somehow manages to give off the vibe in her private moments with Suvi that leading the war effort is just her day job, and necessary to protect her home. But now we know why conquest isn’t the goal, and it’s not because Steel is the better person. Her goal is to remake the fabric of reality, and that requires time, and time can be best bought through largely defensive fighting.

With time we win.

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Did anyone else catch that Naram said he would join the Man in Black along with “wife and father”? Obviously we knew about Orima, but unless I missed it during Eursulon’s conversation with Orima, the fact that Naram’s father—the King of Storms—has joined the MiB was news in that moment.

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"The son of a great bear, a tree astride his shield"

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Enjoy these absolute scratchings of a sketch. I do think cuddling a massive elk who’s telling me everything’s gonna be okay WOULD heal me

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Thinking a lot about how the Man in Black specifically told Eursulon to bring a witch, knowing that that was probably the only way that his plans for the children might be interfered with. My guess is that it has to do with the magical ramifications of deception.

We know that magic in Umora—and particularly magic more directly tied to the spirit than wizardry—is often shaped by very raw, fundamental principles. Things that run are prey; a road is defined by the way it is travelled; the mechanics of the Witch’s Retributive Curse, and so on. We also know that deception is not taken lightly among those tied to this kind of magic; we saw at witch con how the Coven of Elders responded to Ame lying to them, and I have to wonder if maybe that was not just due to disliking being lied to, but also a more foundational element of being in coven.

Witches in their coven can work against one another as their stations and opinions diverge without any magical issue. However, it seems that lying is far more serious. Similarly, it’s no issue for spirits to work against one another. But given that they are all part of one greater whole just as the witches with their coven, perhaps direct lying between spirits could also have larger ramifications. While the Man in Black was careful never to speak falsely to Eursulon, he knew that he was saying something different than what Eursulon was hearing. Having a witch present makes it so that everything is completely above board, because it is the witch’s job to attend to such discrepancies.

And if that witch were to complicate things, well he did in fact have a backup plan.

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Steel, Sword of the Citadel, drawn by yours truly

(I’ve migrated from IG, then reddit, and now to the tumblr side of the fandom)

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Suvi and Steel are killing me. What if you loved your mother so much and it was never going to be enough to save her from the road she's been walking down since before you were born. What if she only fought so hard once she knew she could save you but it's too late for her to go back and shelter you from the world she will stop at nothing to build. You love her but you cannot follow in her sunk-cost fallacy footsteps. She loves you but she cannot close your eyes once they've been opened. The love is there and it will not save them from the pain they'll cause each other. But the love is always there.

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i feel like me and everyone needs to be thanking aabria for what she’s doing with suvi in arc 4. the moment she described watching silver weaponize the justification machine as being every moment her friends were silenced in front of her for a truth they couldn’t articulate and she wouldn’t believe??? fuck. she’s been in the trenches defending suvi forever while people excoriated the complex character she created and now as we enter into the beautifully narrated and portrayed growth period i just think it’s time for her flowers. we need to be giving aabria the beautiful presents she deserves. everybody quick right now