No, Actually, I AM Smart Enough for This - Katabasis, Part 1

It's official. Hell is a college campus.

Join Jess and Maggie on a descent to the underworld that keeps calling them out personally. Along the way, they visit the measure of unreliable narrators (or is it unreliable perception?), far too much Mellville, the benefit of writing friends over lovers, an incredible amount of philosophy, and our love of the Only One Bed trope. It's Katabasis by R. F. Kuang, and we're loving it. 

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Hosts: Jessica Mary, K. Leigh, Magdalyn Ann, and Julia.

Booked All Night is produced by Rob Cook and edited by Rob Cook & Jessica Mary. And Tiger did stop in at one point, the little ingrate. 

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Theme: Whistle Joyride by TopFlow

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Transcript

Jessica Mary 0:00

George Edward Moore. He's one of the ones that started like analytical philosophy. So, like, basically what we do on the podcast is analytical philosophy, where we were just like, this is the craft, and this is why the craft does what it does to us, and like other things that I I think his version of it also includes math and some light science, but you know, critical theory, basically. And there's more in there. I felt personally attacked by Derry Doc. Also, uh, creative writing students are mentioned. That that one that one felt truly personal. But the the rest of it with the there's so much philosophy in here. Like, if this book would be a really good side read with a philosophy class, Kant is mentioned. If we make it to the end of the book and I don't hear Hegel, Heidegger, or Levinas, I will be surprised. There are long, long sections of philosophy. And it's it's fun to read because it's part of her world building, so she's taking that philosophy and like this is how magic is used in this world. But at the same time, I felt personally attacked on almost every single page. Hello, academic Jess.

Magdalynn Ann 1:21

Are you a graduate student who knows how to handle daily despair?

Jessica Mary 1:26

Yeah, yeah, there's there's some quotes in here that I feel I should have tattooed on me or like word art in my mouth or someone. And I want you to know that my notes on these 12 chapters are probably the length of these 12 chapters.

Magdalynn Ann 1:45

It was pretty good uh pretty long. Yeah. It was what, 35% of the book?

Jessica Mary 1:50

I think I think we might have hit 40. That like did we? Yeah. Just this 12 chunk is is a heft of this book.

Magdalynn Ann 2:00

Uh according to Mike Kindle, chapter 13 is 41% of the way into the book.

Jessica Mary 2:07

Yep. Yeah. Uh and that's Chapter 12 itself was a pretty lengthy boy, too. Before I get into that, because some of these were lengthy and some of these reminded me of Melville, and I had to take a moment. Um why don't we properly start the show? Is correct. So, welcome to Booked All Night, the podcast where hot takes meet craft notes and no one gets enough sleep. I'm Jess.

Intro 2:31

I'm Katie. I'm Julia, I'm Maggie. Get ready for unhinged hot takes.

Jessica Mary 2:36

A whole lot of books, midnight giggles, and zero shame. Grab your blankets, booklets. It's time to get booked all night. On tonight's episode, we are reading Catabasus, which actually has like the longest uh title with it, right? Because it's not just Catabasis, it is Catabasis, a fantastical descent into hell, rivalry, and redemption in the pursuit of academic glory. Huh.

Magdalynn Ann 3:03

I did not know that was the full title.

Jessica Mary 3:05

That's really the whole title.

Magdalynn Ann 3:07

Huh.

Jessica Mary 3:08

Alright. That is a thesis title. Which I feel works really well. So I'm gonna just pull up a quick back copy of Catabasis to read this for everybody. Okay. Catabasis, noun, ancient Greek, the story of a hero's descent into the underworld. Alice Law has only ever had one goal, to become one of the brightest minds in the field of magic. She sacrificed everything to make that a reality, her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity, all to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world. That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in hell, and she's going in after him, because his recommendation could hold her very future in his incomporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop her pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion. With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across hell to save a man they don't even like. But hell is not like the storybooks say, magic isn't the answer, and there's something in Alice and Peter's past that could forge them into perfect allies or lead to their doom. So, as uh longtime listeners of the podcast will understand, I felt personally attacked by all of this with my educational background.

Magdalynn Ann 4:47

Every single time that there was a dig at graduate students, I'm like, oh, Jess, Jess is not gonna like this one. She's gonna be all pouty, she's gonna do the face. And I I have that's the face I imagined. Yeah.

Jessica Mary 5:01

Listen, I wrote I wrote rude like a million times in this book. Rude and true. And rude and true.

Magdalynn Ann 5:10

Do you know how many of my notes are just all capitals? G-U-R-L girl? Girl, just gonna be so mad. Before we started reading this book, I was like, oh, I know that we're probably gonna want to read this on the podcast, or at the very least, it's gonna get brought up because it's a big, big title, big author, big name. It's it's getting mentioned everywhere. Yeah. But I remember distinctly thinking, oh, I'm not smart enough for this book. I know where my strengths lie, and it's not academically speaking. And that's kind of true about a lot of RF Kwang's books. I feel like they are a step above where my current intelligence score sits.

Jessica Mary 5:58

Well, I don't believe that to be true, but given that this uh personally attacked my academic trauma, I will do my best to fill you in on some theories that weren't filled in in the text. Although I do have to say, she did a really good job of taking critical theory and philosophy and shrinking it down. Fuck. I was so mad. I just so I I felt seen. I felt seen and I didn't like it.

Magdalynn Ann 6:36

And called out and you didn't like it.

Jessica Mary 6:37

And called out, yeah, and I didn't like it. Especially like in the back copy, where it's like, we I have to make sure that this academic trauma is worth it, and I'm like one eye twitching and my blood pressure actively rising, and we just got that under control, and I just it it was just back and forth. And especially when we get to meet Professor Grimes, and we have this mentor who is an asshole. An asshole and insane and famously an asshole.

Magdalynn Ann 7:08

And I'm like, absolutely deserves to rot in hell, yeah. One of my notes was uh keep Grimes locked in hell, 2K25. You know, that's my campaign slogan now. Uh let the assholes rot.

Jessica Mary 7:20

My thing was, I've absolutely gotten a letter of recommendation from that professor, but they go through like it was worth it because he was mean to me because I could take it, which makes me special.

Magdalynn Ann 7:32

And I'm like, um, yeah, that that entire mentality is so prevalent in these chapters that I'm just sitting there, like, oh, you're in so deep you can't see shit for stars above you. Like, that is oof.

Jessica Mary 7:50

I felt that deeply, and that particular mentality actually sits even in undergraduate work. Like, if you have a mentor who is famously so picky and an asshole and scrutinizing, and you get through that, it's it's bragging rights. Especially if that professor is famous outside of the campus. Yeah. So let's dig in right at the beginning with the opening line. You know that I love opening lines. Of course. And this one gave off some real labyrinth lost vibes. Mm-hmm. Uh, for anybody at home, Labyrinth Lost by Zarita Kordo. Zarida Kord Zarita Cordosa. Zarida. Uh amazing read, go read it. But uh on her 16th birthday, she's about to get her her powers from her family, and she wishes her family away. It's like, oops, I made my family disappear. And that's kind of what happens, or at least what it sounds like here, because they know it goes into detail later. But the opening line is Cambridge, Michael Mass term, October. The wind bit, the sun hid, and on the first day of class, when she ought to have been lecturing undergraduates about the dangers of using the Cartesian severance spell to revise without pea breaks, Alice Law set out to rescue her advisor's soul from the eight courts of hell. It's a hard line. I love it. It it's great. Especially because like the the first the first half of it, right? Right up to about where it mentions the first spell. It could be a contemporary novel. You know, she should have been out out lecturing undergraduates and doing this very normal thing. It just there's also like this aside at the end of it, and there's a I know I made a note about it later, and I have better examples later in my notes. But that voice, like that just little, this is very formal, but this is what she was supposed to be doing. That that kind of little mumble to the side is prevalent throughout this, and I love it.

Magdalynn Ann 9:57

I remember I'm I noted specifically about uh the description where it when it came to Professor Grimes' death, how she it goes crisscross applesauce at one point. It goes from these like hard, like oh, he's his flesh turned to worms and his eyeballs popped out. Yeah, and then his you know bones turned white and crisscrossed applesauce, you know, whatever, whatever that for the the line was. I was like, oh, I love that. Perfect. This is great.

Jessica Mary 10:27

I want to find that in my notes because that was also that was one of many things that I highlighted. But yeah, the the description, just great.

Magdalynn Ann 10:38

There's so many like unique ones. There's one that's just stubbly goose throat, I think, to describe Peter's voice. I was like, I don't know what the f what the fuck that means, but I love it.

Jessica Mary 10:48

So give me more, please. Have you ever had like a goose down blanket or pillow? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's what she was talking about. But he's got like just little little goose fibers. Um Alice, of course, descends into hell, not only to rescue her advisor, who she sent there, oops, because she essentially made a typo in her summoning circle and he didn't check it, which I think is very weird.

Magdalynn Ann 11:15

I don't know. What we learn about his personality as these chapters go on, it kind of makes sense. I mean, like, he's absolutely the type of person who makes all of his graduate students do the menial labor and expects them to do well, and he would not bring them on as his, you know, students, his mentees, if he didn't trust their, you know.

Jessica Mary 11:36

Right. But in that same vein, he also strikes me as the kind of professor that would overly scrutinize their work, right? So like he would go over and be like, the the I in your Roman numeral is not, you know, the microcenter high enough for it to be. And that's that's the part that feels weird to me because in someone that's this verbally abusive and this like he throws stuff at them. There's a list of stuff that he has done to them. But to not go over that makes me feel like it was purposeful or an experiment of his own, which there's so many experiments that he does, so we'll get to that later.

Magdalynn Ann 12:19

I think part of it became complacency because of specifically those experiments that we learn about later, where he expects Alice to be able to do it perfectly. Because she's you know, she's got that memory.

Jessica Mary 12:33

Yes.

Magdalynn Ann 12:34

Uh, and she has proved it, you know, to him several times. And maybe that's kind of where that comes. Probably. My biggest thing that I really love the most about this um this the prose and everything, the narration uh that we've been getting through these chapters is the slow, I don't want as we cut not slow reveal, but like sort of us learning how unreliable of a narrator Alice is. Because we get that bit of of of detail early on where it says, oh, sometimes she sees things and she's not sure if they're real unless she really concentrates on it, and we get more about that later. But early on, that to me established, oh no, this this is someone who either A suffers from mental breakdowns and schizophrenia, um, and B cannot be trusted at her word.

Jessica Mary 13:28

I actually have like a whole discussion with myself on that somewhere in my notes. Because no, because on one hand, like, yes, she is this unreliable narrator, but Alice herself is not the narrator of this story. She is the narrative focus of the story.

Magdalynn Ann 13:48

That's mm-hmm.

Jessica Mary 13:50

And my other thing is true. My other thing, which I of course cannot find in my notes now that I have increased the font size and have no idea how to read anything. Yeah, here it is. So, because of the tattoo, which, you know, we're reading up to chapter 12, so if you're not there, spoilers. Uh, because of the tattoo that she has, which gives her the idetic memory, from that point on, she's not unreliable as a source of information, but she is one-sided. And then after a certain point with that, when she dreams, she remembers everything that she dreams. And so as she goes on and she remembers both reality and the dream world, she's like, I have no idea how to separate this. So I was really torn about labeling her as unreliable because she also doesn't really do anything shady, with the exception of accidentally murdering her professor and sending him to hell, but it sounds like he deserved it. So meh. She's she's competitive, but she's not to the point of like lying about it to get ahead. She wants to get ahead on her own thing. So I don't know that she is unreliable.

Magdalynn Ann 15:03

I s disagree. On the basis that one, before we learn about the tattoo and the idetic memory, and how she can literally never forget anything anymore because of the magic, right? I went in thinking, okay, she's got some kind of schizophrenia, hallucinations, some kind of illness, or she's got some kind of something that is because she very specifically states, I can't tell what's reality without hard concentration. And that's kind of where the accident with the magic circle comes. She was tired, she was, you know, struggling with focus. Uh, she was, you know, basically running on fumes at that point. And that's kind of how that mishap happened. But I also am reading into it like it caused me to think, okay, so I need to think critically about how she's reacting to other people. I need to not take this narration, these chapters at face value, uh, even though later on I learn, you know, we learn the truth. You know, we learn about her tattoo and all that that occurred. But going into, especially with a lot of her interactions with Peter throughout their journey in the first three layers, I think Home Girl's autistic. I just think that she's straight up on the spectrum. She doesn't understand a lot of like the jokes that Peter makes. She's like, Well, you wouldn't really get rabies from a flask. That's that's not how rabies works. Um, and she she has a lot of like issues with metaphor, metaphor, and with kind of understanding social interaction and a lot of Peter's motivation because Peter's I find it really funny because by the very first note I wrote for chapter one, it was God, I hate Peter so much and people like him. Because we're introduced to him as Alice sees him, you know, silver spoon in the mouth, handed everything, perfect circumstances, perfect specifically, every department has a giant boner for Peter Murdoch is the line. So, you know, you're set up this initial introduction to Peter as he is an asshole, and we hate him and his kind. Except as we get on and learn, you know, learn more about him through her interactions with him as they're walking through hell, you know, he's making jokes, he's being, you know, kind and easygoing. And yeah, he's he's like flaky and and absolutely privileged, um, and absolutely got some like internalized, like, you know, misogyny and shit. Like that's just kind of expected from what a lot of situations that they kind of come into. And I'm reading these interactions that they have, and I'm like, huh. She straight up does not understand why Peter, a person that she sees one, as competition and two as an asshole, would ever be kind to her, would ever offer her a helping hand, would ever, you know, she is like seeing hidden meanings where there are none, I think, or at least as far as we know, because I do agree, she it is a very one-sided narration, though I still think maybe not unreliable, but at the very least, not fully trustworthy. Yes. Reading everything with a grain of salt, and that grain of salt is a heap, and that is, you know, in sort of a magic circle who is removing the sand.

Jessica Mary 18:22

A heap. At what point does a heap of sand become not a heap of sand? You would know it like you know porn. I am that's what it said. You would know it like you know porn. I their relationship is also really weird because it's obviously set up as like frenemies to lovers. Yeah. And we have some some flashbacks, you know, they're they're having a good time, they work very complementary off of each other, both as characters and like in the lab, where they're talking about like, oh, I was doing this, I handed him chalk, he handed me this, and there wasn't a lot of verbal communication because they were just so in tandem in this thing. Yeah. And then one day while she's taking a nap in the lab, she's like half awake, she overhears Peter making derogatory jokes about her to somebody else. And that, you know, pisses her off because one, she's a woman in academia, and so any rumor like that will immediately take hold and it will follow her everywhere.

Magdalynn Ann 19:23

And it did. I mean, the immediate consequence of that joke was that she did not win the Cook Fellowship, which cost her, you know, funding.

Jessica Mary 19:32

And she believes she did not because of that.

Magdalynn Ann 19:37

Yes, that's true. We don't know the full story, but that's what she believes. That's what we're told, is that she thinks that joke has gotten out and was the reason she did not get that fellowship, and instead it went to Peter.

Jessica Mary 19:49

Yeah. And there's there's two things there. One, he's basically calling her like a sycophant to Peter, like, no, you know, she just eats the seeds that he leaves, is something that he says, and and like has her eating out of his hand, and then there is the, oh, she's just in there for the warmth. And the word warmth is the one that they really focus on because they're obviously be like, oh yeah, the warmth. But she's she's rightfully pissed about it. And he obviously doesn't think about it or remember it, or at the very least, doesn't know that she overheard this.

Magdalynn Ann 20:20

Mm-hmm.

Jessica Mary 20:22

And there's also a few flashbacks to where she's having a tea with Professor Grimes, which by the way, he's Professor Grimes, but he's teaching doctorate students. Wouldn't he be Dr. Grimes? Wouldn't he have his doctorate? Why is nobody else annoyed like I am? But she's having a lunch with him over tea and biscuits, and he points specifically to Peter and he's like, that's your competition. Yep. That's the kid that you will always have to be, you you have to be better than him. That is your baseline.

Magdalynn Ann 20:58

And yeah, he he he very much gives her the you have to be twice as good to be considered half as good.

Jessica Mary 21:04

Yes, essentially. Like you're you're poor, you're American, and you're a woman.

Magdalynn Ann 21:08

Yeah. Basically any minority in any kind of s male-dominated space feels um and like knows. It's I waffle a lot on a lot of the things that Grimes says to her, and or at least the very least how she has reacted. Internalized it. Right. Internalized it. Yeah. So like she has a lot of internalized misogyny. She actively fights against other women in the space. She went to a conference, there was only one other woman there. She hadn't made, you know, a comment about, oh, isn't Professor Grimes like you know? And she goes, Well, I wouldn't use, you know, my spare time talking behind people's back and basically burns a bridge where she could have been building a connection.

Jessica Mary 21:52

Yes. And she does reflect on that with regret.

Magdalynn Ann 21:55

She does reflect on that with regret, but she also mentioned how she Had such a vicious thrill, I think is the phrase that was used, that she managed to do that. That she did it in like respects to Grimes, in like emulating him, right?

Jessica Mary 22:13

And then she told him and she wanted him to be proud of her, and he was like, who the fuck cares?

Magdalynn Ann 22:20

Yeah. But like I see, there's a lot of messages that he's trying to teach her that I think are lessons that should be learned, you know. You have to work twice as hard to be half as good, kind of situation. You, you know, focus on the truth, do your be thorough, learn your research, whatever, whatever, whatever, right? Yep. But it's the method that he goes about. He it's the most asshole is toxic way possible. And it traps her in this unending cycle of one, it's an abusive relationship. It's uh she's so deep into it that she can't see a way out of it and doesn't want to see a way out of it until after the fact, right? We don't even know if she is trying to get out of it. She we don't even know what her future plans are because we've only read up you know 40% of the book.

Jessica Mary 23:11

Yeah, she wants to be in magic and she wants to be in the academia of it, but they haven't really given us a like she wants XYZ position.

Magdalynn Ann 23:20

Yeah, there was a moment where we had that flashback where Grimes got drunk and they were in Venice, I think, on a scholarly trip, right? And he's like, No, tell me what you want. Uh and she's like, Oh, I want to be a good, you know, I want to be you, I want to be able to do this. And he goes, No, tell me what you want, kind of like trying to focus in on that, and she doesn't have an answer for him. But a lot of the narration, she ends up idolizing situations he's in, you know, he his relationships with other scholars, him standing up and giving this lecture that she, you know, she wrote, and then being in awe of him, and she's chasing what he kind of represents to her in her mind. Like she's put him on a pedestal, and that's kind of what she seems to be chasing.

Jessica Mary 24:06

He has an authority in the field, and I think that's really ultimately what she does want. Not only because you know she's she's coming from a poor background, uh, she's at Cambridge as an American, and they make a lot of derogatory remarks about her being American. And also she's a woman in an academic field, and that's not really like the equation for authority figure. And so she does want to be Peter Grimes. So if you say Peter Grimes, then you everybody knows that. Peter Grimes. Jacob Grimes, Peter Murdoch, Peter Grimms. Peter Murdoch. Jacob Grimes. Yes. Peter Murdoch, Jacob Grimes. If you say Jacob Grimes, they're like, oh, he's the authority on magic. And if he taught you, then you must also have some equivalence to that. You know, you're not at his level, but you are the next best thing. Yeah. And and that's what she wants. She wants that recognition. She's doing all of this work. That's that's part of what leads both Peter and Alice down there, is that they're like, I have done all this work. It cannot be for nothing. I need him to sit on my thesis defense. I need him to write me a letter of recommendation, and then he can die. That's fine. But before that, I need these things. Or I think it's Peter that says it specifically. I need this, or I will not succeed in this field. Yeah. And I understand that. When you are coming out of college in any field, you want a collection of recommendation letters. You want to be able, especially if you are going up to graduate and you are an art student of any kind, you want to be able to say, This person sat on my thesis defense and thinks that I am worthy of a master's degree. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because that's what gets you around those circles. Yeah. But if you're in like the sciences, it's your connection and deck of uh recommendation letters. You know, they can do this lab work, they can do that, they can chop the heads off rats and not be phased by it. Like all of these things don't happen at the undergraduate level. Yeah. So, like, the further up you go and the further you want to be in these fields, the smaller and more niche that little setting gets. Personally, I can understand them going to hell for this. Yeah. But also I agree with you that it sounds like Grimes deserves to be in hell. Yeah. He after she tells Peter about his about her tattoo. Uh and this is one of his misogynistic things, because it's not hateful, but it definitely has a derogatory kind of sense to it. When he's like, Oh, did Professor Grimes, you know, I'm so sorry that you were ever in that position. Did Grimes ever ask you to do anything else that you thought wasn't right? And she has an argument with him. She's like, What do you mean that like he put me in that position? Like, I allowed him to do that to me, he had my consent. And there's two parts to it, right? There's what you said earlier, where she's so far in, she doesn't recognize that like her being an experiment is not okay. Yeah. And this other part of Peter, it sounds like he's like, I'm sorry that I wasn't there to protect you, to keep you from being this because you couldn't do it yourself.

Magdalynn Ann 27:48

I did not get that read. I don't know how much of Peter is sincere, especially since um what we're getting is one one-sided. It's her idea of him, so we don't have a lot of fact or truth. We we have her truth, her version of the truth. Yes. Um, and the most that we can kind of infer from some of the interactions is maybe he's just being sincere and she just don't doesn't understand how people work or how other people think. Like we get glimpses of this traumatic thing that happens between her and Grimes early on, right? I forget the exact the exact uh phrasing, but it was something like cold, cold shoulder or cold hands and like merciless laughter, some kind of like it's painting a really dark picture. And my first thought, my immediate reaction was, oh shit, did Grimes rape her? Yes. And that's kind of like the idea that I was going with throughout the rest of those chapters, up until we get the reveal that he did experimentation on her.

Jessica Mary 28:54

There's that, and there's also uh a few flashbacks with Grimes and Alice where she mentions that like he was giving her the cold shoulder and he wasn't talking to her, and he was being exceptionally mean and Yeah.

Magdalynn Ann 29:07

Like there was even there was even a line after we kind of get the the story about the tattoo of uh her doing this and him being really excited at first and testing her on her memory and uh you know being interested in her. And she says, like a week after we got back from Venice, he's he stopped talking to me. Yeah he stopped being interested or invested or caring about my reactions to this, you know, injecting magic into my skin. Um what was it? It was like, oh, oh, that's really sad. Like she was basically just dropped and forgotten, and Grimes did not care. He just was going on to the next thing. Yeah. Right? He was going on to build the rest of his research, the rest of whatever his his you know thing was.

Jessica Mary 29:53

While they were in Venice, it was like really frequent that he checked too. It was like it was first every day, I think. Yeah. And then every couple days, then every week, and then they got back, as you say, and they're like Yeah, and they stopped. Um what about the list of things that he's done? Oh, yeah.

Magdalynn Ann 30:10

Like so thrown things at their heads and like smashed glasses and yelling, yeah, saying, You're not you're worthless until you learn how to speak German. Peter goes home to memorize German and comes back and speaks German to him, and Grimes is just like, What the fuck? Yeah, what what has gotten into you? Whatever, go do your proofs.

Jessica Mary 30:30

There was uh he made Alice clean up all of her chalk dust and weigh it so he could estimate how much money they'd wasted. He threw the fully charged capacitor at Peter's head, Peter caught it, and he ended up convulsing on the floor, and his hair stuck up for an hour, and Grimes laughed at him. And then all of the verbal abuse, you're not cut out for this, you're a waste of funding. You don't seem like you even want to be here, you're worthless until you learn German. I have had professors like that when you're like, they're just like, you you don't you don't belong here. This isn't your thing. And on one hand, I think some people deserve to hear that. On the other hand, it hurts. Oh yeah. And also they're post-grad, they're they're doctoral candidates. Like, that's not how you speak to a person. Nope. Uh, and then yeah, here's here's the quote I was talking about earlier about how they internalized this, this like weird victim acceptance that really all grad students have. The point was that Professor Grimes hadn't tormented just anyone, he'd tormented them because they were strong enough to withstand it, because they kept the faith, because they were special and worth the effort, and because whatever they became when he was done with them would be so dazzling. That made me sad. Yeah. Because it is abuse. And I know so many fellow students that have put up with that not only because like they they want that recommendation letter, man, but also they just kind of get that bad luck of the drawl. And there there is some talk about an advisor. And if you have a bad advisor, that'll cost you years in your education. Period. Uh, and if you have a bad teacher, the the same thing. Like, my sister went back to college, right? And she had to take calculus like four times. Her first three teachers were not great about that. Another professor that she'd had, the only takeaway from the class was that this professor graduated from college in 1965, because that's the only thing that she like assessed and said repeatedly. Because everything else, she was like, Well, you would have learned that in intro to chemistry, and it's just just like, that's this class. You're supposed to be teaching us these things. And so, if at any level you have somebody that's like not worth their weight, it screws you up for the rest of what you want to do. But at the same time, if you have somebody like Grimes who beats your passion out of you, then you graduate and you don't write or read anything for a year because you're so incredibly burnt out.

Magdalynn Ann 33:41

I want to talk about um some of the pacing to me has felt a little all over the place. Like you had mentioned at some point you feel like you're reading Moby Dick. And I remember when I read it in high school, our teacher was like, skip this, this, this, this, this, and this, and this. Basically, skip every other chapter because you don't need to read uh a lecture on whaling, and you it's not important to the story. And I feel like there's a lot of scenes where we kind of get that techno-academia babble about theorems and laws and logic problems, and those are the driest parts, and those are the parts where I feel like my eyes begin to glaze over, and I'm like, oh yeah, this is mm-mm, I don't wanna.

Jessica Mary 34:30

I am so happy that you brought these up. One, because my notes are this reminds me of Melville, who literally copied from Encyclopedia's verbatim and published it because he got paid by the word. Yeah. So obviously R of Quang is not plagiarizing anything here except her own world Bible, right? And she's explaining to us in detail how magic works here. And part of my brain is tickled pink by it, right? That she's taking all of these philosophers that I struggled to know sober, uh and understand and and put them in this world, and it's really good. But I do agree, it's lengthy. Some of these go on for page.

Magdalynn Ann 35:22

Yeah, there's like one chapter where all of it is just them discussing a theorem and different like ways to go about this part one particular spell. And I'm like, I can we like move because first of all, this the specific scene that I'm thinking about is there was that one chapter, well, chapter, quote unquote, the aside about chalk, where there's like a little expert, it's it's a a closer like narration of whoever the actual narrator is, it's them. It gives very much like good omens vibes. Yes. Um, first of all, a lot of the prose is was kind of like that's what it feels very good omens-y in like that genre of fantasy, right? Where it's a little tongue-in-cheek and a little like a Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide kind of humor. But there was a side in between one of the chapters where it's talking about the quality of chalk and how magical chalk can write on just about any surface, right? And then it ends with what Alice and Peter did not realize was that there were no documented uses of chalk and hell. Uses of chalk and hell. And I'm like, oh shit, that's like a great tension point. That's awesome. That's something that we know as readers that they don't, but it took six years to get there. That, and I'm like, oh great. So this is gonna be like a tension point that we're sitting in anticipation of, you know, it's the dramatic irony where we know this, they don't. And I'm like, oh, I can't wait to see when they find out. Literally the next fucking scene. Yes, they immediately at a campsite, them talking about theorems and that long-ass conversation about, oh no, if you do this principle with this, this algorithm and this geometry, you could teleport over here and they they draw the circle, and I'm like, oh, they immediately found out. Yeah. It hasn't even been a full chapter, it has been like three pages. I've had done three Kindle page swipes, and we've gotten to them figuring out this issue, and I'm like, well, what the fuck was the point? Yes. What was the point of setting up that tension? That could have been so good for at least the majority of this act. Like the first act could have ended with them being like, oh fuck, our magic is fucked. We can't do anything. But no.

Jessica Mary 37:28

One immediately in response to goddamn one. I believe it is in Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, where she has a chapter or two about which pens writers should use. It is a craft book. She talks about fountain pens. That's what I felt like I was reading again when I was reading about chalk and the best kind of chalk to use. There are so many sections with this philosophicalness and arguments. There's one of the earliest ones is about the heap of sand. And like you know, if you removed each grain of sand, eventually it will stop being a heap of sand, but you couldn't define when it's going to be that. I'm like, okay, so it's very ship of Theseus, right? Which is just in case you don't know, or anybody listening doesn't know, the ship of Theseus, you know, is is built, and as it ages, it's slowly all the boards get replaced. At what point is the ship of Theseus no longer the ship of Theseus? Yeah. And it's the same argument here about sand, and as she points out, she's like, it's like watching porn, you'll know it when you see it, and it'll be distinct. I swear that I had philosophy courses like that in this big abstract, and I appreciated it at first to have this little bit and these artifacts of world building.

Magdalynn Ann 38:54

Yeah, and like especially the heap of sand bit, because that sets up how we come to understand the magic system, right? So we were kind of you fantasy, you're thrown in, you kind of have to piece all the things together, all the details about the world building. And this, I felt, one, really set us up for how she views magic, which therefore is how we view magic and how we kind of come to understand how it is one, this sort of philosophical, like, when is, you know, when is a heap of sand not a heap of sand anymore? And also it's showing us the concept of magic is just you imposing your own will on the world briefly to change it, to change the laws of physics or of nature very minutely so you can get what you want with the magic and then you know change it back. And that's kind of like is is brought up a couple times in these chapters, right?

Jessica Mary 39:49

The quote is you fooled the world for a breath, and then everything went back to the way it was before, which I thought was a beautiful, beautiful definition, not only of magic, but it could also be used for art, storytelling, theater, like it just any any of the escapisms. Yeah. Where I wobbled in whether I enjoyed these artifacts, that is what I am calling when we are having these asides about magical theory and everything else. And usually when I talk about it like that, there are like little epithets at the beginning of the chapter. And I kind of wish these were just that length. But Alice is a Cambridge girl. This would be how she explains magic to us. She is a doctoral candidate. It reminds me of Melville because these would be the things and these philosophies that she would be learning. It reminds me of sitting in a critical theory class where I am like not understanding a damn thing, but at the same time I'm absorbing all of it because that's what's happening, and so it's appropriate to the story and the world and the character. But man, was it boring.

Magdalynn Ann 41:03

Yeah, I definitely feel like there could have been some cuts when it came to those specific scenes and then discussing the theorems. Because, like I said, going in, I already believe I'm not smart enough to read this book, which has been proven untrue because it's a lot less academically dense than I anticipated.

Jessica Mary 41:21

Uh or minus these sections that we're talking about, which are specifically academically dense.

Magdalynn Ann 41:26

Yeah. And I like I go into those scenes and I'm I almost come out of the other end, eyes glazed, barely having, you know, processed the words and understanding sort of what the what they're trying to do with like the descriptions and explaining the lore and all that stuff, but still kind of coming out the other end feeling like my brain has just kind of turned to mush. Yes. See, I keep thinking back and in my like mentally comparing almost this book and the good place. Because it is essentially the same. They're in the they're in hell and they're trying to be, you know, they're processing, you know, their sins and their personal failings, and we're learning about philosophy as we go. Yes. And the good place made it much more accessible. Yes. Um, and I don't just mean Professor Cheedy's sleeper build um after, you know, but more so about the fact that it was more digestible, right? Especially for someone who is not familiar with these sort of philosophical, high logical, you know, high, you know, academic level thinking who doesn't think that way and, you know, is is unable to process something like that, where the good place made it much easier to sort of understand the concept of these philosophies. Catabasis is less accessible. I don't I don't know if that's the right phrase, but it's it feels less digestible. I can see what you're saying.

Jessica Mary 43:00

Like before you logged on, I was talking with producer Rob about it and how this book would be a really great read in a philosophy class, especially coming at it from like an English major background or even a creative writing student place. If you were in a uh critical theory class, this would be a really great read. But if you are burnt out or if you are not of the academic mind, this is heavy. And I I want to point out, we've been talking mostly craft about this book. Like we clearly I love it. We haven't talked about a lot of the plot, and there is a lot of it. There is a plot, yes. Yeah. And as a former English major, I greatly appreciate all of the works that get referenced. We reference Marlowe and Dante and T. S. Elliott and Pound. Like we we do all of these pieces that. Referenced hell, and then we just say they're all wrong. And there was there are there are two big things about it. One, they the narrator, however we want to refer, whether it's Alice or the narrator, capital N, obscure topic, says, you know, the Christians got everything right except what happens in hell. And there's also a defining sentence that when humans come to hell, hell is presented like how they see it. What is most familiar to them. And that happens pretty early on, like when they first get into hell. And I'm going to find the quote. First off, there was the little Snide accounts. These were the things that I really appreciated coming from academia. Right? It was Dante's account was so distracted with spiteful pot shots that the reportage got lost within. And T.S. Elliot had supplied some of the more recent and detailed landscape descriptions on record, but the Wasteland was so self-referential that it was blah blah blah blah blah. And I greatly appreciate that. And Dante's Inferno is one of my favorite pieces, but it is very much revenge fic because he got kicked out of the club. And with Elliot's Wasteland, I just wanted to point out that I have a special manuscript copy of it where uh as as where Pound's notes are in there. And for one of the pieces, Pound wrote, It's terrible, but I can't attack it until I get a typed script. So it's like your handwriting is shit, and so is your writing, but I can't read this right now. And I I loved all of these references because coming into a book that is about descending into hell, these are the references that I have. These are the references that much of the world has. And so to come in and it's like none of it was true, and hell is a campus. Hell specifically is like the reverse Cambridge campus, and the first level that they go through is pride, and it's in the library. Yeah. And so I was like, yes, hell is a library during finals. End statement. Perfect.

Magdalynn Ann 46:20

See, I I have this theory that because specifically, like there was that comment about hell is what people make of it, essentially, that this is that this hell, speci this specific brand of hell is very much Alice's hell, right? I don't know whether she actually like messed up this the teleportation to go to hell and like she died, or if there's something like going on uh that we don't know about, but to me, this feels like she's coming in, it's her mind, her personal life that is influencing what hell looks like, right? It's it's Cambridge to her because it is that is both you know what she is most familiar with and also the source of a lot of her character flaws and her personal like traumas and failures, and that's being reflected in this hell, right?

Jessica Mary 47:18

I agree with you, but would also like to add that she and Peter entered hell at the same time. And I think Cambridge is their joint hell. Like they have suffered through Grimes for I think it's like five years, right? They've been there for a very long time, it's a very long time to be abused in your academic career. I I agree with everything you're saying, but I think it applies to both of them.

Magdalynn Ann 47:44

I can see that. See, uh my my first inkling of this theory came when they were at the River Leth for the first time. And she says sure, she sees um Lady Mang Po, right? She goes, Peter, do you see her? And it's this, you know, essentially this um, you know, faith kind of like uh character, right? Yes from her own understanding of mythology and um and hell. And Peter goes, No, what are you talking about? I can't see anything. I'm just like, oh, either they are experiencing different hells, or this is one of her hallucinations that we don't, you know, where we can't really trust what's going on, because it was like a chapter before that situation where we first got the information that she hallucinates or she doesn't know what's real, at least.

Jessica Mary 48:40

All right, so as you've pointed out, they could be experiencing separate hells and probably maybe it's like a Venn diagram of hell, right? And so they have a few separate experiences on the side because of that. When they were doing research, they each checked out separate things and they interrupted each other's research. Alice obviously is very pissed off about it because she's like, I'm trying to get to hell. Where the hell is this book on how to get to hell? And Peter had already checked it out. So Peter's got that information, and she's got this information, and neither one of them are really kind of putting A and B together. Yeah. So I think that's actually a really great theory that it's not that she's hallucinating this, but that she has a separate hell because hell has been personalized.

Magdalynn Ann 49:29

Yeah. We have not yet seen any sort of situation where Peter witnesses something that she doesn't. A lot of what he sees, she sees at the same time. Maybe she just infers different information from that that moment. Yes. But like she there it happen, it keeps happening where like she hears the bone creatures first that that attack them on the at the riverbank. She, you know, sees figures. She she, you know, uh notices things before she points it out to him. And maybe part of that is then him absorbing that into his version of hell. But we have yet to see any situation where he's like, Do you see that? Do you hear that? I'm the only one seeing and hearing that. Why can't you see and hear that? So we haven't really gotten that much, but I am interested to see if that will come up in the next however many chapters we still have to read. The other 60% of this book.

Jessica Mary 50:24

Yeah. You know, I love speculating. I I would like to see how that winds up coming full circle in the end about their experiences. I also there are there's a few phrases that happen when they are in limbo or the fields of Asphodel. Uh one was that the dead wanted to feel included, which I thought was a really sad bit of world building, but I also like it because almost everything that we have about hell, uh, it's that ghosts have unfinished business, or that they're insane, or that they're not really aware that they're dead, and that's something else I I noted about the shades. The shades are aware that they're dead. And and they even one of them like makes fun of them and like, oh, how'd you know we were magicians? Like, you've got chalk all over your hands and chalk all over your kneecaps. What else is it, Coke? And I was like, great. So, like, they're aware because if you go through Dante's Inferno, they're just kind of in these loops. And, you know, some of them are a little more sentient and they tell you their story, and you're like, ah, well, you're a piece of shit, and you deserve to be in Dante's Revenge fan fiction. But here that got turned on a deer, which I love because I love stories about going to hell, and so I love things that turn that particular genre and that kind of story onto its side and bring me something new. The other thing that I highlighted and I have not been able to get out of my head was the phrase Professor Grimes first victims. First victims. Now we're 12 chapters through, and we've done Pride and Desire, and where did we stop? Uh, greed. Greed.

Magdalynn Ann 52:11

Right on the border of greed. Yeah. Because I was going the other way, I don't think we went like in great yet, but like we're Yeah, I think they were they were still on their way, and then they just got to the bridge, and then there was the uh that one divine meeting with the prisoner's dilemma, but with apples.

Jessica Mary 52:27

This weird ass trust fall that they're gonna fail. Uh-uh. Uh uh-uh-uh. But we don't know exactly what Professor Grimes did, and it's it's alluded that he did something horrible all over the place, right? Uh it's in a flashback with the girl at the conference where she's like, Oh, well, then you know about the the thing. And when she first gets to Cambridge and she meets the other candidates, and they're like, Oh, Grimes.

Magdalynn Ann 52:51

They're afraid that she's studying under him, yeah.

Jessica Mary 52:54

Yeah. But it has not been said. On top of that, we're going into the third circle, and we have a fair amount of the book left. So I'm going to say he's not in greed. And these are, as Peter keeps saying, like these petty sins. Mm-hmm.

Magdalynn Ann 53:09

So what the hell did this man do? Right? So I have a theory. Ooh. So, real quick, I want to ask, what time setting do you think we're in? Because this is kind of like an alternate history. Like, we come into this with a foreword from RF Kwang saying, some of these are real, some of these are fake, this is a fantasy first and foremost. So we're already kind of going in anticipating like an alternate history kind of like second world a little bit kind of situation, right?

Jessica Mary 53:45

I feel like it's either modern day or recent-ish history because the technology is mentioned when they're talking about like what you can do if you fail out of Cambridge. And like, oh well, oh no, there's yeah, magicians do really well in consulting, they said. Employers like critical thinking and problem-solving skills, which is what they tell to English majors. You know, they're like, Oh, you'll make a really great secretary. Well, I didn't go to school to be a secretary.

Magdalynn Ann 54:13

I I wanted to be like an editor, and yeah that's so a lot of the bits that are kind of hinting at the timeline, or like what what time period we're in. Uh, the only like concrete bits are, oh, this is post-war. Doesn't mention what war, doesn't mention, you know, um, if it's a a real war, like a like a like a true true war that we as humans outside of this fictional book experienced, or if it's, you know, the alternate history, right? Yeah. There was a line very specifically when we first learn about the tattoo. When she is getting tattooed and she's got this perfect memory and she is having these conflicting feelings about it. And she very specifically, what was I wrote it down. Um the the phrase goes, it was the age when everyone was getting excited about computing machines, and here Alice had become one. And I'm like, all right, first of all, referring to it as a computer, computing machine feels dated. Yeah, because the first the first like computer was like the late 40s, right? Early 50s. And I'm like, okay, post-war, that makes sense. It's post-World War II, which then got me thinking about Nazis, as I am wont to do, being, you know, who I am as a person. But in that part, like right after we get the computing, like that's that's the same scene where we learn he experimented on her as you know, a human trial. It was a human trial of his concept of permanent magic circles in living living creatures, right? Injecting magic into living creatures, right? And and we get this whole setup of oh, she was getting so used to snapping this, you know, the necks of of rabbits. Rats that, you know, she no of rats, yeah, she no longer, you know, she buried so many, so many corpses that she got c uh very familiar with all of the corpse drop-off boxes for like strays in Venice, and she no longer was phased by their trembling or whatever as they got magicked, right? And so my thought there, one, becomes um all right, this is very much reminiscent of the human medical experimentation done by Nazis in concentration camps on their victims, right? Where a lot of medical knowledge and progress in that time period came from these human experiments on Jewish and other Nazi prisoners, right?

Jessica Mary 56:53

I will say yes, but also no, only because when you are doing medical experiments, like the the rat, like all right, so my sister is in research, that is what she went to school for. One of her first internships was studying uh traumatic brain injuries on rats. And do you know how you study the brain injury? Well, you have to get the brain, and to get the brain, you have to chop off the head of the rat. Her very first day doing that was just chopping the head off of rats to make sure that she got desensitized to it. And so I feel like that is that part of it. I think I would draw more to Nazi medical science if Grimes had experimented on other humans as well.

Magdalynn Ann 57:40

Right. We don't know if he did, because we also learn after she tells Peter about the tattoo, he says, he made me get colons.

Jessica Mary 57:49

He stole a colon.

Magdalynn Ann 57:50

He stole three to four colons from strolled into the medical building, walked up to a cadaver, waved at the people in the lab, and took a colon and walked out, which is very much what you would expect at a graduate, you know, school. I feel like that is very much the kind of thing that you just kind of get accustomed to and don't question, especially when you're in, you know, a lab setting. Like she even mentions like there's like one of her lines is like, oh, you just kind of like learn to accept anything in a lab.

Jessica Mary 58:26

I will I will say, even outside of the lab, there are things like that that you just get used to when you're in any building. Like when I was doing the illustration classes, people would just come in all the time and use the paper cutter. Like it just became background to me. So I can only imagine in a medical school somebody walking in and be like, I need this. Nobody asks questions.

Magdalynn Ann 58:48

So that had kind of like drawn the line, connected the dots between Nazi medical experiments and whether or not Grimes performed more than just experiments on her. If like he had other victims, like we had mentioned earlier. Yeah, first victims, the ones who died because of his negligence. Um we don't know.

Jessica Mary 59:13

Because we don't know. I it I'm sorry, it bothers me that I don't know, but at the same time, like I'm only 12 chapters in, and I don't really need to know.

Magdalynn Ann 59:20

I'm sure we will find out. I feel like that's gonna be something like information that we'll find out when we do eventually come across Grimes in the afterworld. But, you know, and we learn about Peter and the Colons, and you know, it kind of got me thinking like, all right, how much of a Nazi is he? Because if this is like the mid-50s, early 50s, is Grimes a Nazi? That was one of my thoughts. My my second thought after Nazis was, of course, Edward, you know, Full Metal Alchemist and Nina and the dog, and yeah, I was like, ah, I see, that's where we're going.

Jessica Mary 59:54

But then, like and a lot of the magic system does feel like alchemy.

Magdalynn Ann 59:58

That it's that it's not like it's it's sort of rooted in that science-based magic, which I've I'm really enjoying the world building, right? I really enjoy this magic system. Minus these encyclopedic chapters. Minus the ex encyclopedic chapters, and minus the fact that I don't I glaze over those those sections. Uh, not intentionally, just my brain shuts off, and I'm like, oh, I don't understand half of these words and can't pronounce half of these names, which is really funny coming from me with an unpronounceable last name for most people. But I just it it it's not I'm not academically brained. I don't, that's not the way my brain works. And I just kind of like, oh, I blinked, and it's half a chapter later, and uh, I think I understood what they were trying to explain. I understand the spirit of the scene, but not the details, right?

Jessica Mary 1:00:46

If you're at home and you are academically brained, there are so many little things in here to be like, ah, haha. Uh, particularly when they go to Pride, which is the library, and they meet George Edward Moore, who is one of the like initiators of analytic philosophy. You know, basically what we do here at the podcast, where we take craft and we apply it to things and we rip things apart at their most base level. His is a little more like math and then science and things like that, but that's what we're doing. And it's hilarious. He's in the library. And also that he's in hell, because that's exactly where he belongs. All the other philosophers. I didn't say Dante was wrong about who he put in hell, right? I just he just Yeah.

Magdalynn Ann 1:01:39

First of all, I am fully solidified in the fact that Alice is a sociopath, right?

Jessica Mary 1:01:44

I think she's an anxious pile of bones, but I don't know about sociopaths.

Magdalynn Ann 1:01:48

Anxious, anxious, autistic for sure. But I'm very specifically, I very much uh remember the line about you got used to just about anything in a lab. Anyhow, they were only mice. And that to me screams sociopath because she's lacking this empathy and like this concept of empathy. She has desensitized herself so much to a point when it comes to these experiments on the animals where it's you know inhumane, yes, it's horrible and and it's it's you know traumatic, and it's something that she has logicked her way away from, where she's like, I don't feel anything for this, and that to me is very much feels textbook sociopath.

Jessica Mary 1:02:33

I have a quote in here about her thinking about the the rats because I think it mentions that like you know, she's remembering them screaming. Yeah. Alice thought of the mice in Venice, their miserable twitching bodies, the way they shrieked and scurried when she reached to pluck another one out of the cage. I don't think that makes her a sociopath. I think that makes her desensitized. Yeah, I because when she does remember this, there is a little bit of like hesitance to remember it. And she unfortunately has to remember it, not only because she went through it, but because she has the spell on her arm to remember it.

Magdalynn Ann 1:03:17

Yeah. I don't know. I just find it mostly kind of funny when Peter says, I stole a colon for him, and she is just so aghast. She is so like, why would you do that? How could you do that? Like, what possessed you to do that? Why didn't you just say no? And I'm like, girl, you let him experiment on you. And you murdered a bunch of rats. You you let him tattoo magic chalk into your veins. You murdered rats and cats and things.

Jessica Mary 1:03:52

I don't think there were cats. I think it was specifically. There were cats. No, there were cats. I missed that part.

Magdalynn Ann 1:03:57

There were other animals than just the rats, yeah. There were rats and mice and cats that I think some other kind of like stray critter. It was just, I guess, whatever stray they could get their hands on in Venice. Lots of strays in Europe.

Jessica Mary 1:04:08

So I definitely missed that part because I was so focused on hell being a campus during finals and everybody kind of having this very vague assignment to do. Uh so in pride in the library, the only way to get through it is to Define good. Define good. And and everyone's running around, and there are some really great quotes in there. There are like, you know, no crying in the in the library and stuff like that.

Magdalynn Ann 1:04:43

Go have a mental breakdown up there. Yeah.

Jessica Mary 1:04:46

Do it in the stacks. I rented out a room for it. Yeah. So she was familiar with sites like this, and normally when people had mental breakdowns in the college library, you spoke to them in a soft, calming voice, and confiscated all the sharp items on the table and sent them off for a biscuit and a nap. Uh then there is also we have talked about this, you may not have mental breakdowns in the stacks.

Magdalynn Ann 1:05:07

Mm-hmm.

Jessica Mary 1:05:07

Crying fits are to be conducted in private, that's library rules. And over there, creative writing students. Somehow they always come in groups. Yep. I felt so called out. But this is where we meet George Edward Moore, who is a dick, and it this is also a point where we finally do see uh like the sexism in academia, because it's one of the things that Grimes has been grueling Alice over and being like, you have to be wary that you know you don't come from here. It's a miracle you got in in the first place. Uh, you don't have a silver spoon in your mouth, and you're a woman. And you being a woman is probably the thing working against you the most.

Magdalynn Ann 1:05:51

And also, like, and and and he very specifically also says, and looking like that, which makes me think um she's either a A not conventionally pretty or B a little bit of column A and B in this situation, but is also a person of color.

Jessica Mary 1:06:06

Yes. Neither her nor Peter are particularly attractive, and I think in that sense it does kind of bring them into like the everyman category so that they are relatable, but I don't think we've actually gotten a description of Alice.

Magdalynn Ann 1:06:22

No, we have not. I we have had a few moments where she has like caught like at the very least, mentally like in the narration called out racism.

Jessica Mary 1:06:31

Yeah.

Magdalynn Ann 1:06:32

Like um there was that that situation where um they're at that tea on the first day and they're they're meeting the other cohorts, right? Meeting the undergrad students, and the one girl is is is making some kind of like derogatory story about a Chinese girl that she knew and went to school with, and it turns out you know, she is uh Taiwanese and also her father is rich and she she made like these comments, and and Alice goes, Oh, that was racist.

Jessica Mary 1:07:00

That was such a weird story, too, because the the story is literally about how polite she is.

Magdalynn Ann 1:07:08

And then it turns out that she was saying, like, oh, she was so boring, she only ever said yes, Brenda, no, Brenda, I'm doing fine, and that's it.

Jessica Mary 1:07:15

Like, oh no, she was polite. How dare she? Yeah. So she's in the library and they're trying to prove their point, and more only talks to Peter. Like this is the direct example. Yeah, completely ignores her. He's like, Absolutely not. Women don't have thoughts. How dare you?

Magdalynn Ann 1:07:29

Like, eyes pass right over her kind of situation.

Jessica Mary 1:07:31

Uh, and in the end, he is defeated by her and her logic because that's who she is. And Peter is and is not surprised. He's like, wow, like really good job after they leave. But it's like, how would either of you be surprised at this? You've literally studied nothing but this for the last five years. And then in the end, you know, they passed because they believed it and they verified it themselves. It's it's one of those like rites of passage of every person in academia to define what you think is good in your field without your mentor or like previous people telling you what it is. Like, especially in English, right? But now think about every English class you've ever had. You're reading like hundred to thousand-year-old literature, and your teacher is always like, bring something new to it. But you also have to have, you know, your your academic sources, and they have to be within the last five years to be relevant. And they have to be actual academic sources, which means the things that you're finding online in Reddit where people are like, hey, I think I saw this. You know, you can't quote that. They're not scholars, they're not worthy of being in this little MLA citation. And it drives me nuts. But, you know, this moment that you come and you stop trying to please others and you define yourself and your craft and your field in your own terms is very big and important. And so I was really happy to see this scene, and just for like some people at home, you know, like this is the moment where you say, This is my standard, this is what I hold myself to, or flat out, I disagree with this nonsense that you wrote 400 years ago when you were drunk off your tits. And academia has those moments. But I think they're how do I say this without feeling condescending? I think it's harder to do in the arts than it is any other field. Because if if you go into math, math is math. You you don't get defined what math is for you because math is defined. And the same thing with science. Science is defined. You have these definitions, you have these things that have been set forth. It might change in the future, but you are probably not the one that's going to be changing it by the time you get your bachelor's good for you. But in art, yeah, you know, there comes a point where you have-jective. Yeah, you uh even English, well, as much as it likes to be, like the study of literature, as much as it likes to try to be objective, is truly subjective. And I know I've gone on rants on that on past episodes where it's just like we bring ourselves to the text, and this is part of it. If you haven't defined for yourself what you think is good, then like it becomes harder for you to stay with it and choose it. Like, yeah, in in the context of being a reader, if you're like, wow, this book is bad, but you don't know what made it bad, you're more likely to choose a bad book. And the same thing with your writing. If you're like, wow, this was really bad, but you can't tell yourself why it was bad or why it was good or why it kept your attention, then you're just going to fall into the same trap over and over and over again. And the same thing with illustration, the same thing with theater, you know, like these are things that require very personal feedback. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Moving off of that.

Magdalynn Ann 1:11:15

Yes. I would like to talk about um the little reveal at the end of chapter 10, and then that being that carrying over into the next two chapters, and how that kind of informs where we left off.

Jessica Mary 1:11:33

Okay. Can I make one little joke first? Yeah. Uh so when they leave the Fields of Limbo and they climb over the wall to get to like the next section of hell. I was just thinking, like, oh, you've heard of one room at the inn, but now get ready for there's only one ledge.

Magdalynn Ann 1:11:54

One blanket. One blanket with all the wood.

Jessica Mary 1:11:57

One one blanket, one ledge, one morning wood. Anywho.

Magdalynn Ann 1:12:02

But so at the end of chapter 10, after, first of all, the human experimentation reveal, which I felt was a lot bigger than what we ended up with. We find out that while she's taking a watch, she finds Peter's notes. They're sticking out in his backpack, and she's like, Oh, I'm curious. I want to see how he came to the same conclusions that I did. And we kind of get oh, they're of the same mind. They took different steps, but they got got to the same destination, right? But then she finds the last page and has her name on it, and she's curious, and she's like, What is this? And she realizes that, oh, this is equivalent exchange. This is, you know, human transference, this is sacrifice of another for another, right? Yes. And uh the last no is if Alice, question mark, question mark, question mark. And so she infers, oh, Peter only came along to sacrifice me to get gains back over into the above world, right? Right. And she kind of goes into this idea of he has been lying to her this entire time. It's a front. His his personality, his jokes, his kindness, his affability has been a front, something that he has kept going for years. And she even says, like, I don't know how he manages to keep it for going for five years. And she very much believes now, and every single interaction with him from then on is colored by this inferred betrayal. You know, she's anticipating this betrayal, she's getting short with him. He does, she's not tolerant of her his jokes and riddles and things, and she gets, you know, very upset with him. And, you know, they're she's building this up, right? Kwang is building up this betrayal. And immediately I'm like, no, because we have already established she does not understand Peter as a character and as a person. And we already know that she struggles to decipher his actions and other people's actions. So immediately, first thought, no, there's no betrayal. It's not going to be a betrayal. It's he sacrificing himself and the if Alice, I think, is him postulating in his notes of what will happen if Alice does this spell and I sacrifice myself.

Jessica Mary 1:14:23

Yeah, that's kind of a conclusion that I was also coming to. So a lot of the um philosophy around that, the the written magical in-world, in-text, canonical philosophy, is that you cannot cast that organic exchange on yourself because yourself is required to provide the magic in order to do said exchange. And I think that's why Peter comes in flustered, it's why Peter immediately uh changes the circle, it's why Peter goes with her. Not only because I think Peter really needs his uh letter of recommendation, but also Alice wouldn't be able to come back without that, is what it seems. That the organic exchange, this equivalent exchange when the entire magic system is built off of checks and balances, so of course, equivalent exchange. If she went and got Grimes by herself, it's possible Grimes would have sacrificed her and come back.

Magdalynn Ann 1:15:29

Oh, absolutely. I think in a heartbeat he would have. He would not have hesitated.

Jessica Mary 1:15:33

So in this sense, she can get back if she sacrifices Peter. But at the same time, our you know, we're colored by Alice's Alice's view of Peter. But I don't I don't think he came to sacrifice her.

Magdalynn Ann 1:15:51

No, absolutely I don't think so either. At all. First of all, like even if we take a lot of her interactions with him at face value, he is very much a kind person, right? He's always helping her. He's offering her his hand to help her stand. He's giving her chalk him her chalk when he she runs out. He's there there is a sort of camaraderie and sense of like we're in this together, kind of, I'm gonna help you, you help me, kind of situation. But it doesn't feel like a setup, right?

Jessica Mary 1:16:23

Yeah, it feels like an alliance.

Magdalynn Ann 1:16:25

It feels like an alliance. And she fails to kind of understand that, I think, in part because of her biases and her, you know, the way that she has been set up to view them as competition and um a lot of her own internal biases, right?

Jessica Mary 1:16:41

Yeah.

Magdalynn Ann 1:16:41

And her inabilities to read social cues, I think.

Jessica Mary 1:16:44

Also her blatant paranoia.

Magdalynn Ann 1:16:46

Yeah, the blatant paranoia and anxiety, right? But we're also kind of forgetting that magic doesn't work in hell. They can't draw circles, so they can't do object exchange, they can't do this spell at all. And I think that's something that I don't know, she can it's something that she's not bringing to the forefront, right? Because technically she can't forget, and they know this now, right? It's a yes, it's a fact now that they have established they can't draw magic circles in hell, right? Yes. And she has just not kept that in the forefront of her mind when it comes to this reveal, right? She's very much hyper-focusing on this idea of he's gonna betray me, everything he does has been a lie, and I don't want to go to my inevitable death, right? So when they come across the prisoner's dilemma, they get met by this divine entity, the who the uh god who fell in love with the cow, or it's arachne, right? Wait, no, not arachne. No, it's not arachne. It's very much not arachne. I forget her name, but she is it's it's a divine being who fell in love with a cow herd and wanted to be with them forever, but the cow herd moved on and got reincarnated and forgot her, and she's bitter now, right?

Jessica Mary 1:17:51

A deity of stars who was literally like, now kiss.

Magdalynn Ann 1:17:55

Yes, and basically, yeah. So she she sets up the prisoners' dilemma for them saying, I will give you safe passage to the next level if you both pick, you know, to go go together. Yes. If you pick if you both pick to go alone, you will get thrown into the into the river, forget your memories and and get, you know, cast and die. You will die. She she's got bones in her silks, and those are sojourners and not shades. Yeah. Because shades don't have bodies, so those are very much dead people, right? Yes. And she also says, you know, if you pick one and he picks the other, the one who picked to go alone will remain behind and die. And I will give the person who decided to, or the person who decided to go on alone will get free passage anywhere as many times, right?

Jessica Mary 1:18:40

Instead of just a one-way pass to the Yeah, whoever whoever chooses together stays behind. Yeah.

Magdalynn Ann 1:18:45

Right. And Alice very much says, Oh, this is the prisoner's dilemma. We have done the prisoner's dilemma before. They know the quote-unquote solution, right? They know she knows the logic to it. But she anxieties herself into a deeper, deeper paranoia with this idea that she has a betrayal waiting for her on the other side, that regardless of what she chooses here, she is doomed. Because she's either gonna die by the god or die by Peter.

Jessica Mary 1:19:14

Yes.

Magdalynn Ann 1:19:15

And we don't know the exact outcome yet. Because the the the the the chapter ends with Peter holding the green apple, which is the go-together apple, and she he sees her, his face drops, and then he goes, Alice, what have you done? When he sees what uh what apple she's holding. And we don't get the color of the apple yet.

Jessica Mary 1:19:37

Um but we probably will in the next chapter, but yeah, there's also this discussion that Peter starts with that, where he's like, Well, we can just pretend to be in love, and she's like, What? Oh, haven't you ever been in love? No, have you? Well, no, but it can't be that hard.

Magdalynn Ann 1:19:54

Mm-hmm. And like this entire thing started because this is a jilted god, a j a jilted lover, someone who has been left behind, and this is a trust exercise. She's testing their faith to each other. And they start this with, let's lie about our faith.

Jessica Mary 1:20:08

They also start this with, I haven't seen your penis.

Magdalynn Ann 1:20:12

Yeah, yeah, that too. Yep. Yep. You can't be in love, Peter, because I haven't seen your penis. And also, you know what? I think she felt it on her thigh though, like three days ago when they were sharing one leg, one blanket, but I think if if anything has turned me to yours, she probably is on the spectrum.

Jessica Mary 1:20:30

It is her is the fact, yeah, is is the fact that she's trying to in this very moment have an argument about the philosophy of love. And and Peter calls her out. He's like, Well, we do not have time. Like, what what are you doing? I I think, yeah, I I think that scene, if any scene thus far, absolutely cements that she does not have a single clue about social situations.

Magdalynn Ann 1:21:02

Mm-hmm. Homegirl is an asexual, sex-repulsed, autistic who does not like the sound of slapping bodies or genitalia and does not understand sex at all, but whatever. How can we be in love? How could she have time for sex?

Jessica Mary 1:21:16

You know, how can we be in love? I've never seen your penis.

Magdalynn Ann 1:21:19

Like that's a fantastic, you know, quote.

Jessica Mary 1:21:23

Beautiful.

Magdalynn Ann 1:21:24

Both in and out of context.

Jessica Mary 1:21:25

Beautiful, beautiful.

Magdalynn Ann 1:21:28

I am so at the very beginning of this book, there is a quote where it says a sojourner's journey into hell is inevitably a tragic tale. They don't meet their end in hell, but they do when they return to the world of the living. And I was like, ah, that's foreshadowing. Your name, that's not subtle, that's foreshadowing right there, where a lot of like, you know, the tale of Odysseus, the the you know, all of these stories about venturing into hell and coming back being inherent tragedies. Like a lot of it is a tragedy of their own making. Yes. It's them confronting their flaws and failing to overcome them. It is, you know, them doing, you know, literally anything uh that is true to themselves and therefore failing at their quest, right? Odysseus turns around at the last second.

Jessica Mary 1:22:26

Yeah, you know, I I can see Alice Lall as the epitome of Greek hero in that she like uh she could be told exactly what happens, and it still happens. Like very very, you know, don't murder your father because you'll sleep with your mother. Got it. I'm gonna go on the road and murder a man and then sleep with a woman.

Magdalynn Ann 1:22:47

Yeah. And I think this is the beginning of her downfall. Her anxiety, her paranoia, her misconstruing of Peter's character is sending her down this path to inevitable ruin. I think she picked the red apple. That's what I I think she I think she picked to go alone. And I think I'm sure they if if this is going to be a happy ending, she will probably have some kind of way to outsmart not arachne, right?

Jessica Mary 1:23:21

Yeah. Um specifically the quote is not arachne.

Magdalynn Ann 1:23:25

Yeah. Uh the way she did to um George back in Pride. And I have this feeling that when she does inevitably confront Peter about the if Alice no, the the the object exchange theorem, that she will be unable to overcome her biases, her prejudices, her understanding of herself in academia as well as those around her, and that's gonna either cause her to be stuck in hell or perish on the way out. This very much feels like we have so much of this intertextuality with Greek myth, right?

Jessica Mary 1:24:13

Oh god, so much. So much and blatant.

Magdalynn Ann 1:24:17

You can't you can't turn around without bumping into a Greek Greek myth.

Jessica Mary 1:24:21

It's everywhere and it's literally labeled, and there are flags. Like there's it's not subtle. It's it's just neon signs. Here it is.

Magdalynn Ann 1:24:30

Yeah, and I think she I think it's I think it's gonna be a very tragic end. I have gone into this story thinking it will be a tragic end. I do think I don't know what that will look like, but whatever it is, I don't think she will succeed.

Jessica Mary 1:24:48

I'm trying to think if there are any descents into hell that do end well. None are coming to the forefront of my mind.

Magdalynn Ann 1:24:55

Not even heck is where the bad kids go.

Jessica Mary 1:24:58

No, they just keep dying.

Magdalynn Ann 1:24:59

So like uh I never finished the series, so I only got like two or three books in.

Jessica Mary 1:25:04

Yeah, they uh like the first one, you know, they die in the marshmallow accident and they all go to hell, and then one of them escapes and gets back up before being cremated with a bunch of popcorn. Mmm. Okay. Like you do. Uh, and then dies in the second book to go down and get the sibling. And so that kind of just keeps going like that, where like one gets back and one dies, and one gets back. Yeah. Um. But it's children's lit, so you know, it's it's really fun to see dead kids.

Magdalynn Ann 1:25:37

That is your entire thesis when it comes to writing, Jessica. How much murder is too much murder?

Jessica Mary 1:25:42

Seven. The answer is the limit does not exist. The limit does not exist. I kind of want it to have a tragic ending. I feel like we have read a lot of books that have had a lot of forced happy endings where everything kind of comes together, and I I want to be moved to tears by literature and not life.

Magdalynn Ann 1:26:03

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I did not have any expectations of a forced happy ending going into this book, specifically because of that that line of, you know, the the the Greek Greek stories are always tragic stories, you know. The anyone who goes into hell perishes one way or another.

Jessica Mary 1:26:22

Yeah. Alright, so I have Speculation Station as well as what I want to know. I think we both want to know where Grimes falls in this particular hell. On top of that, there was like a little space that was like there was no actual eternal damnation because there wasn't anything that could be so heinous as to deserve that. Like the math didn't add up. But at the same time, I want to know like what is the most heinous thing on this system that doesn't deserve eternal damnation. Uh I want to see the rest of hell. Like, I hope we see all eight realms of hell. I don't know how I feel about Peter and Alice because I do feel like it's gonna be, you know, frenemies to lovers.

Magdalynn Ann 1:27:16

Yeah, that was my thought too, was it was gonna be frenemies to lovers. And my my response, my quote, the my note specifically says, I wish they would just remain friends. Or at the very least, one of them was gay. My next note was, where is the gay? I miss the gay.

Jessica Mary 1:27:31

I think it's Alice. I think Alice is gay.

Magdalynn Ann 1:27:34

Umgirl's queer, not gay, I think.

Jessica Mary 1:27:38

But but yes, I I I know I've gone on rants about it on previous episodes where I just I I'm I'm tired of everybody winds up together in these happy little relationship shapes. Relationshapes, if you will. And I just I want to bring back friendship and I I want to bring back uh this kind of sense of independence. So like part of me wants Peter to betray her. And part of me does not because, you know, that's who we are as people. Yeah. But like I I always hope to be surprised. And that kind of seems like the only two options moving forward.

Magdalynn Ann 1:28:20

I I don't know how I feel about their getting together, if they're gonna get together, right? Like building up to that a little bit. I kind of hope they don't, but also a lot of our interactions of the them interacting together, I don't feel that chemistry, right? There are it's I love enemies to lovers. It is my favorite romantic trope, right, when it comes to stories. I freaking love it. I don't really see it here. It is a one-sided frenemies to lovers, I think. In part because Alice does not understand Peter as a as a person, right? He doesn't understand, she doesn't understand his choices or his decisions, right? She doesn't she's coming at it with one, so much bias. But also like also just not understanding him, right? Yeah. And he is giving, you know, Golden Retriever energy. She's not giving black cat energy, she's giving like Faral Raccoon energy, I think.

Jessica Mary 1:29:24

Possum. She's giving possum possum energy.

Magdalynn Ann 1:29:26

She's very much giving possum. Yeah. But yeah, tragic ending. I don't want them to be enemies. I would rather see them as friends. I God, I really kind of wish that she gets like female friends and that she kind of addresses some of this internalized misogyny and this misogyny. Because like that's kind of what I was thinking with if the setting is in like the mid-50s, because of computing machines and post-war and all that, yeah, and minimalism and abstractism that is kind of like going is becoming popular, right? That you know, it's kind of understandable that she's got these internal uh this internal misogynistic view, right?

Jessica Mary 1:30:13

Yeah, that would also turn up the like women in academia because that would be when women were starting to go to school because the war is over and we want to be educated now because we have a little taste of it.

Magdalynn Ann 1:30:26

Yeah. So I mean, that's maybe just something more on me where I want to see her one with like an actual female friend that she doesn't scoff at or condescend at or burn bridges with. And, you know, maybe a little bit of me as wishing for, you know, make her gay. Um which I know probably won't happen.

Jessica Mary 1:30:49

Make it gay.

Magdalynn Ann 1:30:50

But I do also want to see the rest of hell. And I do want to see Grimes rotting in it forever, not getting reincarnated, just getting stuck there in whatever hell of his own making he has created. Yeah. Because he's an asshole, and like I want him to get his comeuppance.

Jessica Mary 1:31:11

Yeah. Yeah, I don't want him to come back. He seems like a terrible human being. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I really want to know what he did, like the big what he did. I really hope, as I say, Peter and Alice do not wind up together. Because one, I'm tired of enemies to lovers for enemies to lovers. Two, I want them both to grow in a sense that is not reliant on the other.

Magdalynn Ann 1:31:42

Yeah. Like I would love to see their relationship with each other improve where they reach this mutual understanding of each other as people, but I also do not want them to reach this growth by being dependent on the other.

Jessica Mary 1:31:59

Yeah. My one last thing before we officially end. Uh, there are several spirals that Alice has throughout these 12 chapters, and they are perfectly written to me. Like, just the one thought jumping off the other thought, going to the other thought, like that genuinely feels like a spiral to me. It it didn't feel forced, it really felt with that obnoxious kind of natural thing where like once you get into that headspace of panic, panic and paranoia, and and just like you're going down, you're going down with the ship, the music is playing, you've hit the icebar, etc. We have to make the Titanic reference because Katie's not here.

Magdalynn Ann 1:32:46

She will be so proud of you.

Jessica Mary 1:32:47

She would be. Uh you know, the thoughts don't always make sense to jump off of each other. And here is Alice, who is obsessed with logic, who is majoring in logic, who wants to make logic her life and the logic of magic and the logic of the world and everything else. And so she's desperately trying to make everything make sense. And I think the best spiral is actually the one that we read most recently, where she's talking about like, you can't have P and negative P. They can't both be true. We can't be friends and not be friends. We can't be like this and not that. These items cannot be true at the same time. It doesn't make sense. And so she just keeps going further and further down this little rabbit hole. And it's not, it starts with the big concrete things. She's like, I know that you cannot have A and negative A. I know that Peter can betray Peter cannot betray me and not betray me. I I can't find Peter attractive and not find him attractive, which keeps going through where she's like, I love his little goosey stubble, but I hate him. Every time she talks about him, she's got like a very golem attitude about it where she's like, I love him, but I hate him.

Magdalynn Ann 1:34:05

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica Mary 1:34:07

And I think those are really well done. And as far as mental health in literature goes, I think that's such oh, that was such a good showing of how that thought process goes.

Magdalynn Ann 1:34:20

Yeah, there are so many points where she's she goes into these depressive spirals, these these um anxious spirals and thought processes that are so common, especially to people with mental illness. Like there were so many where I highlighted and I was like, oh girl, same. Yeah. And she was like, oh, it's just so much easier not to be conscious. And I'm like, oh man, that was my my you know, entire like defining principle in the deepest of my darkest depression holes.

Jessica Mary 1:34:50

And she had the um like l psychology calls it le même de voie, like the call of the void when they're walking next to the the lethy, and she's like, what if I just threw myself in?

Magdalynn Ann 1:35:03

Yeah.

Jessica Mary 1:35:03

Uh like, what if I just rammed my car into a tree? I mean, what if I just joined the inescapable void?

Magdalynn Ann 1:35:11

You know, like it is, yeah, like that is shown so well throughout the entire like chapters that we've read so far, right? I think Kwang does a great job of showing that and like both calling out, like, we know this is not logical, but this is like the thing that we do. This is what happens, this is like the thought process, this is what these are the leaps our brains make when we are in these situations with the current brain chemistry that we have.

Jessica Mary 1:35:42

Yes. It's a little like OCD as well, that you know, she she's walking there and the thought just comes in and she's like, No, I don't need to throw myself into a river in hell. That's um what a weird thought. And then she takes a few more steps and it comes back, right? Like all these, they they're just bam, bam, bam, yeah, bam.

Magdalynn Ann 1:36:01

Um she can't forget because of the spell.

Jessica Mary 1:36:03

So she remembers the spell, but thankfully she has that spell because then she is miraculously um immune to the to the river media.

Magdalynn Ann 1:36:12

Memory-forgetting stuff.

Jessica Mary 1:36:15

Yeah.

Magdalynn Ann 1:36:15

But yes. I'm eager to see what happens next. I do want to see the rest of hell. I want to see them come back as well, uh, however that ends up being. Uh, and I would like a little bit more clarification on the timeline of wh where in history we are. More specifically than the war is over.

Jessica Mary 1:36:33

I am also eager to read on because I have not seen your penis, Maggie.

Magdalynn Ann 1:36:40

I also have not seen my penis for what it's worth, so I guess that's why I don't love myself. God, my therapist is gonna have a field day with this.

Jessica Mary 1:36:53

I can't love myself. I haven't seen my pen. I haven't seen your penis. That's where we end the episode.

K. Leigh 1:37:00

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