0:00

Magnificent Firebirds. We are so

0:02

excited today because we

0:04

have a very special guest with us.

0:07

The historic a romance lover

0:09

of TikTok. Chels is here

0:11

with

0:11

us. Hello.

0:15

Jell it. Welcome. I

0:18

lurk on TikTok and I

0:21

follow Chels. I follow you. Charles,

0:23

we don't have to talk about you and third person.

0:26

But what I will say is that I spend a lot of

0:28

time talking to your face

0:30

without you knowing. So my

0:32

goodness. That's exciting. It's gonna it's

0:35

gonna be very natural for me. Just

0:39

And then forwarding your take thoughts to other

0:41

people and going, look how smart this person is.

0:44

I'm thrilled to have you

0:45

here. Welcome everyone to Fated

0:47

Meade. I'm Sarah McClain. I read romance

0:49

Duels, and I write them. I'm Jennifer

0:51

Procop, a romance reader and editor,

0:54

and we are joined today by our very

0:56

special guests we're gonna give them and a

0:58

chance to introduce themselves. So go port.

1:01

So my name is Chels. Some

1:04

people might know me from TikTok. My

1:06

username is chells underscore ebooks

1:09

I talk about romance novels, particularly

1:12

the old historical kind is

1:14

my flavor of choice. I also

1:16

have a substack called the loose

1:18

cravats, which is right

1:20

about romance Duels. And publishing

1:23

and comments and

1:26

all of that jazz. Chels, Anne,

1:28

some of those pieces have been published,

1:30

like, in slate. Is that correct? Like,

1:32

I saw one of those, so it

1:34

also feels really gratifying

1:37

to me to have you

1:39

be a voice for, like, bromance in

1:41

the media because I

1:43

always just want someone

1:44

who, like, gets who gets it. Yeah.

1:47

That that was exciting. Yeah. I think it

1:49

was originally on my sub stack, but

1:51

someone from slate reached out to me. And

1:53

that was kind of an interesting process because

1:56

she was

1:56

like, yeah, Can you explain this for non

1:58

romance readers? Then I was like, who

2:01

are they? No. No. Get

2:04

with it everyone. Get on my level.

2:08

So later in the episode,

2:10

we have a very special topic. We're

2:12

gonna be talking about Duels, but

2:16

Beth. I I've had a really fun

2:18

week doing my doing my homework.

2:21

Did you name your seconds? Yeah. I

2:24

It's here. It's here we are. Okay. There we go.

2:26

Okay. But one

2:28

of our favorite things to hear about when

2:30

we have a guest is just like how

2:32

they came to romance. Right? Like,

2:35

this is something we ask authors, but now I just

2:37

love asking everybody like, what made you a romance

2:39

reader?

2:40

Well, especially in your case Chels you have

2:42

such a rich, deep

2:44

knowledge of the

2:45

genre, so I'm really curious. Yeah.

2:48

It might be surprising might not.

2:50

So my mom, it's kind of the in

2:53

the mom. It's always the mom. Yeah.

2:55

My mom's the culprit. So

2:58

she was a huge fan fan of,

3:00

like, paranormal.

3:03

So she really liked Christine Sihen

3:05

and Cherilyn Kennon. And she

3:07

would, like, hide her books from me. Like, every once in

3:09

all, she'd get a historical and that was, like, my

3:11

thing.

3:11

Mhmm.

3:12

Yeah. So series definitely my mom who kind

3:14

of got me into them. I don't think I really

3:16

got, like, as intensely into

3:18

reading romance novels until probably, like,

3:20

three or four years ago

3:23

or so. I'm just, like, a very,

3:25

like, nosy person. So

3:27

I think, like, once I get an interest, it's,

3:29

like, kind of, consumes me,

3:32

which is kind of what happened

3:34

there. And where did you start?

3:37

See, what were some of your first favorites?

3:39

I think the floor of Stoundrels was probably

3:42

the first one where I was just

3:43

like, what the heck is

3:45

this? my god.

3:48

was like, books are allowed to do that.

3:51

That was so great. I think Yeah.

3:55

That was that was one. I think another

3:57

one I when I got really into Laura

3:59

Kinsale, I think that was kind of a

4:01

big turning point for me, not just for

4:04

her books, which are amazing, but for the cover

4:06

art. Because, like, book collecting

4:09

was kind of how I started out on TikTok.

4:11

I would share all the book covers, and I'd be like, look

4:13

at this book cover. I would

4:15

say other things too, but that's

4:18

the main thing. Because

4:20

I was really upset that I

4:23

didn't really know how to order books yeah,

4:25

it's it's a whole thing. There's an ISBN

4:27

number blah blah blah. So I ordered

4:30

the shadow and the star and instead of getting

4:32

like the Fabio cover. I

4:34

got the one where there are people very

4:36

far away in the distance of

4:39

Isn't that the

4:40

worst? When you're so excited.

4:42

And then Well, lessons learned

4:44

in book collecting. There are ISBNs, everyone,

4:47

and you should know the ISBN for

4:49

the edition you're looking for, and it saves

4:51

you both money and disappointment.

4:54

Yeah. I was so disappointed

4:57

I didn't even think I wanted to collect books

4:59

at that point, but then my partner ended up buying

5:01

me the Fabio cover because they

5:03

knew I was sad about

5:04

it. So that was kind of my fill

5:06

in that

5:07

It's a real love language. Story. Love

5:09

language. His original Fabbio cover.

5:12

One of the things I've struggled within this

5:14

area is I mean, I have a huge number

5:16

of paper books, but I

5:19

read a lot in e. Like, right?

5:21

It almost feels like paper books and

5:23

some ways are collectible, but I mostly

5:25

read ebooks just because they're with me

5:27

everywhere. And I've really struggled

5:30

with the automatic updating of the

5:32

covers. Right? So it's like,

5:34

if there's a cover you have, the the

5:36

cover I bought, and then if it gets

5:38

changed or updated, which, again, rejecting

5:40

is something that happens. I'm in no way

5:42

saying that's like an inappropriate activity.

5:45

But I am like, but that's

5:47

not the one I want. I wish you

5:49

know, I I hope at some point, I

5:51

can either I will say this. Turn it down. Not

5:54

a thing that authors

5:57

at least have any

5:57

control.

5:58

Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure because I have

6:00

a self published just one self

6:02

published thing sitting out there, and

6:04

I've changed the cover on it. And I

6:08

I didn't have a choice to say, Right. Keep

6:10

the old cover. Of

6:11

course. Of course. Thanks, Amazon --

6:13

Rood.

6:13

-- root. -- terrorbird. So

6:16

you you like us became really

6:19

into old, what we call old

6:21

school historical. And then

6:23

but but what's fascinating because

6:25

I read your stuff stack religiously and

6:27

I'm fascinated by it? You are

6:29

also far more knowledgeable

6:32

about the pre nineteen seventy two

6:34

romance novel than we

6:36

are. So I wonder

6:38

if you could talk a little bit about how you went

6:40

backwards. Yeah.

6:42

So I think

6:45

kind of a lot of my interest in, like,

6:47

older romance novels is because

6:50

people like to tell me about them and

6:52

I think they're wrong. Fair.

6:56

So that's kind of like, I

6:58

would get comments on TikTok that were

7:00

kind of frustrating. That would frustrate me

7:02

when I would talk about books and they would be like, oh,

7:05

well, these were always like this,

7:07

or we've come such a long way in -- Yeah.

7:09

-- that they were super ringy and Yep.

7:12

Yeah. And I'm like, you

7:14

can make criticisms and I

7:16

would but I don't the way you're

7:18

talking about it, I don't read of them, so I'm

7:20

not listening. To you. So I

7:23

kind of have an interest

7:25

in kind of I

7:28

spent a lot of time reading, like, not just like

7:30

trend pieces, but like, listening

7:32

to kind of what people are telling me and how they feel.

7:34

People have a lot of feelings about

7:36

older historical romance novels because

7:38

I think that there's a

7:41

vested interest in romance being

7:44

moral and some in some ways

7:46

didactic. And and

7:48

that kind of prove the value of romance.

7:51

So if we prove that we've come this far

7:53

and we've improved this much, then

7:56

then there's this huge it's

7:58

it's good for us. It's good for us to prove that.

8:00

But I think that kind of like

8:02

papers over a lot of troubling

8:04

things that are happening

8:06

continuously. And I think

8:08

when we kind of like look at progress

8:10

as being linear, we're missing a lot of

8:12

like really cool things that people used

8:14

to do were,

8:17

like, flattening the discussion.

8:20

I think that's why I became

8:22

AAA Chels fan because I you

8:24

know, AAAAAAAA fan girl. Because

8:27

Jen and I have spent so much time over

8:29

the years talking about how you don't throw

8:31

the baby out with a bathwater. Right.

8:33

But, simultaneously, a

8:35

a round romance in modern

8:39

Roman circles, there are so

8:41

many names that you don't. You can't

8:43

say out loud. Right? Like, we can never talk

8:45

about what it is because of,

8:47

you know, the flame and the flower. But, like, that's

8:50

an important text. And,

8:52

you know, she wasn't it wasn't just

8:54

the first one hundred pages. Right? And

8:56

those first one hundred pages are doing a lot of work

8:59

that, you know, that

9:01

maybe are is valuable in at

9:03

least in my in my mind. And

9:06

I appreciate that so much that when you

9:08

talk about older

9:09

romances, you're not throwing the baby out with

9:11

the bathwater. I think that,

9:13

like, having, like, a certain level of honesty

9:16

about it is so much more interesting

9:18

to me than just saying that

9:21

things were bad then and things are good now

9:23

because And you're also not being

9:25

honest about how things are

9:26

now. So what who Duels

9:28

that serve? To me, it seems

9:31

to serve like, the continuing

9:34

sort of cultural narrative that,

9:36

like, these books are not worth anything. Right?

9:39

And so if you can prove or,

9:41

like, claim. I mean, I don't think this

9:43

is even an original thought. Like,

9:45

there's always, like, like,

9:49

bellwether bad thing that is ten years

9:51

old. Right? So it was like, now it's like

9:53

fifty shades of gray was so terrible. Right?

9:55

And then one of fifty shades. It was like Fabio

9:58

covers are so terrible. Right? And I

10:00

and I wonder lot about why it

10:02

is yeah. Like, it's not only

10:04

just like throwing out the baby with the bathwater,

10:06

but almost like being a will

10:08

like a willing accomplice to

10:10

that kind of narrative as long as we're

10:13

talking about something that happened in the,

10:15

like, the previous generation of romance

10:16

readers. I'm also really

10:19

fascinated. I think you sort of walked

10:21

us immediately up to the TikTok

10:23

discussion. Right? Because I

10:26

think one of the things

10:28

that I've been really thinking a lot

10:30

about recently and I know others in the genre

10:32

have been thinking about? Is this idea that, as

10:34

you said, when we when

10:36

we sort of say, like, that was old romance

10:39

and it was

10:40

bad. But new romance has

10:42

solved all these problems. Right?

10:44

We are as I love papering

10:47

over them. What's going on in

10:49

modern romance, which is it's

10:51

very fascinating to me because I think

10:53

TikTok, when I look at

10:55

And I'm not active on TikTok, but

10:57

I endlessly scroll in the middle

10:59

of the night like so many of us. And

11:01

so when I look at

11:04

what is happening on book talk, many,

11:06

many of the books that seem to be bubbling

11:08

to the surface and then hitting the bestseller

11:10

list, you know, becoming, you know,

11:12

huge Huge books in the genre

11:15

now in twenty twenty three

11:18

seem to have in many ways a lot of

11:20

the characteristics that we

11:22

that some of us are papering over. Right? The

11:24

part of romance is saying that's not here

11:26

anymore. And then another part of romance,

11:29

a huge number readers are also reading

11:31

say dark romance, which has so much

11:33

of that content that -- Right.

11:35

-- we're pretending doesn't exist anymore. So I

11:37

wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

11:40

I don't know what the question is that the question

11:42

is, you know, what's happening on

11:45

what is the compelling piece of that that is

11:48

that is working so well on TikTok?

11:50

It's so interesting because, like, I

11:52

think, romance TikTok I

11:56

think Jenny kind of alluded this to

11:58

this a little bit earlier, maybe before we were

12:01

recording. But, like, the way that people

12:03

feel about romance novels and TikTok are

12:05

a little bit intertwined. And

12:07

some of the TikTok hit pieces that

12:09

have come out recently, one was in

12:11

British GQ, and one was in the London

12:14

Review of Books, and both of them had a Milsom

12:16

boondig. Yeah. Like, isn't that funny? Mhmm.

12:18

I think both of them. An ancient

12:20

dig. I think we've heard of stuff right here.

12:24

Congratulations.

12:25

You're not at all creative. Whether

12:28

they want to admit it or not, like a lot of

12:30

times when people talk about TikTok books

12:32

and TikTok users, they're kind

12:34

of talking about romance readers, they

12:36

kind of obliquely reference them in a lot

12:38

of ways. And then when you mention

12:40

that, they're like, oh, we weren't saying that. So

12:43

I think so there's kind of a, like,

12:46

a lot of concern about, like and

12:48

this is kind of comes up a lot with Colleen Hoover,

12:51

which we know Colleen Hoover does not

12:53

primarily write romance novels. She's a multi

12:55

genre author, but a lot of people

12:57

don't know that. A lot of people talk about her

13:00

and her books as if that she as

13:02

if she just writes romance novels and that her

13:04

books are dark romance. Like, people talk about

13:06

her books being harmful. Yeah. Yeah.

13:09

So there's there's kind of a lot of,

13:11

like, there's a little bit of a moral panic

13:13

around some of the books that TikTok

13:16

that are popular on TikTok. But

13:18

it's kind of as you mentioned,

13:20

Sarah, it's like very similar

13:22

themes. Like, people are interested in,

13:24

like, the spectrum of human behavior.

13:27

Like, I

13:29

think that there's a way that you can critique

13:31

books without, like, trying to make

13:33

it into this big

13:35

huge, like, I guess

13:37

moral panic is the right word about So

13:39

I think it is the right word. Yeah. Chels,

13:41

and I think for us in America, that

13:44

relationship between the moral panic

13:46

about these books and then

13:48

what we see happening in, like, libraries. And

13:52

and school libraries, right,

13:54

where people are literally, like, they're

13:56

I mean, you know, it's like it seems to me like they've

13:58

eradicated, like, sex from the movies.

14:01

And now, like, it's like, can we get rid of them in

14:03

books? Can and and so I do I

14:05

think that there's a lot of it at its

14:07

core almost always seems to

14:09

be

14:09

about, like, sexual liberation.

14:12

I mean, that's like too broad of a statement. I

14:14

think people could kind of tie it together because

14:17

there's there's like a lot of

14:19

fear about like queerness and

14:22

porn and it's

14:24

just kind of any kind of anything that's considered

14:27

deviance? Yes. But

14:29

a certain group of people is usually

14:32

is usually kind of the first things

14:34

to go. So I

14:37

yeah. And on, like, a larger a larger

14:40

scale, it's, like, definitely not formats.

14:43

It's, like, that books written by certain

14:45

types of people, but

14:47

people kind of tend to hyper focus on

14:49

TikTok itself. Because

14:52

it's the dancing app for teens,

14:54

and they wanna they wanna watch

14:56

a dance.

14:59

This week's episode of faded mates

15:01

is sponsored by Juniper Butterworth,

15:04

author of

15:05

Shipwrecked, being a tale of true

15:07

love, magic, and goats and everyone,

15:10

this is the first in

15:12

the sea goblin series. Juniper

15:14

Butterworth is back. Yes. She

15:16

sponsored our episode a while

15:19

back. With her Goblins and Cheese

15:21

series, which was also

15:23

about Goblins. And at

15:26

the time I started following her on Twitter

15:29

and now she posts this very

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relaxing like cheese content or

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she makes different kinds of cheese and post

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pictures online, and it gives

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me lot of joy. And so we will put

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links and show notes to how you can also

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follow her for her excellent making

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content, and also Goblin art. But

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back to this, this is

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sea goblins book one, set

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in sea goblin village, which is

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a very quiet, relaxed, groovy

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place, which is upended

16:00

by the wreck of a pirate ship in the

16:02

harbor. Chels our

16:04

heroin, wrangles magical

16:07

goats for a job.

16:09

She rushes down to help

16:11

the crew of his pirate ship only

16:14

to become instantly smitten

16:17

with the dashing captain Heron.

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I love it. Who? Heron? Poor

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Heron. She's been navigating one

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disaster after another since her twin HAVEN

16:26

gave birth to a rare goblin

16:29

baby who is presumably

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magical or, you know, of

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interest to lots of baddies. And

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now, Heron just wants to get back to

16:38

her job, raiding, you

16:40

know, dreamstone caves and

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collecting enchanted items. So

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no intention of one night standing

16:49

with Telev becoming anything more

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than a one night stand. But she has

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a great one night, except

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suddenly afterwards, the

16:58

captain's niece, the baby, this magical

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baby, is kidnapped by goats, and

17:03

taken to a magical pocket

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world and the pirates

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and the goat wrangler are

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going to have to work together to rescue

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the baby from, quote, learning

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the worst manners possible. Listen,

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Listen. I'm gonna read it immediately.

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If you are interested in finding out more

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about shipwrecked. You can check

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it out on kindle unlimited. Please

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support, Juniper

17:48

Butterworth, we thank her very much for

17:50

sponsoring this week's episode. There's

17:54

a community of readers who

17:56

have found each other

17:59

on TikTok who have

18:01

a comment who have common genre

18:04

interest. Right? And I'm not just talking about I'm

18:06

not talking about romance abroad. I'm talking

18:08

about there is, like, dog, romance take

18:10

dog, and, like, erotic

18:12

romance take dog, and, you know,

18:15

academic romance take dog. And

18:17

so it feels like a natural extension

18:19

of there was dark romance good reads

18:21

and historical romance good reads and, you

18:23

know, whatever. And now it feels like

18:26

younger people or people who are as

18:28

we become more tech savvy as a

18:30

as a society makes sense that it

18:32

would become video that the thing that

18:34

we all kind of participate in. And

18:37

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about

18:39

how about discovery on TikTok. And

18:42

how you find a

18:44

community there. The algorithm is

18:47

kind of

18:47

inscrutable, and

18:49

it's kind of cause of lot of,

18:51

like, frustration and but

18:55

basically, when you

18:57

on TikTok, there are two feeds.

18:59

There's the following page and the

19:01

four EU page. When

19:04

you follow a lot of people will

19:06

follow people on TikTok and then never look

19:08

at the following page again. It's been most of their time

19:10

on the FYP, which forty page. And

19:13

that is where your videos get

19:15

pushed out. And once they get like a certain

19:18

amount of traction with your followers, It's

19:20

gonna they're gonna put it on the FYP, and

19:22

that's where you reach a broader audience. You

19:24

can people who don't

19:26

follow you see your videos if you show up

19:28

on their FYP. And

19:31

so that's kind of why TikTok

19:33

posts feel very ephemeral. You

19:36

have to consistently be posting

19:39

in order to consistently get that engagement

19:41

and get out there. It seems like

19:44

growth is more of the focus

19:47

for the app itself. Uh-huh. A

19:49

lot of people on Book Talk are resistance

19:52

to being

19:53

pressured, like, that

19:55

implicit pressure of doing

19:57

that, I would include myself in that

19:59

because I do everything wrong.

20:01

Like, I don't think use sounds.

20:04

I have all my videos are three minutes

20:06

plus. Like, I you

20:09

know, I'm just like, I I can't

20:11

I'm just gonna do what I wanna do. But,

20:15

yeah, finding your community. So there's

20:17

kind of the more you interact with

20:19

a certain type of content, video

20:22

creator, the more that you're gonna see that, which

20:24

is why I I have some hate watches.

20:26

I see those people every day because I'm

20:28

just and that is my fault.

20:30

So I could just block them. So

20:33

yeah. And so once you start, like, interacting with,

20:36

like, a hashtag or people's videos, you see

20:38

more and more of them, you kind of start to form a

20:40

community, like, you're posting, they're

20:42

posting, you're commenting, they're commenting.

20:44

You get kind of like you

20:47

get kind of the group. So I'm I'm pretty

20:49

heavy in dark romance TikTok. It

20:52

would just kinda like bodice ripper TikTok and

20:54

darker moments TikTok. Yeah. Sure. I'm

20:56

saying that as if there's anybody else

20:59

on Bada server TikTok except for

21:01

me. The queen, the queen of Bada

21:03

server TikTok. Some

21:05

times people will come

21:06

in. They'll be, like, commenting to stay on bodyship

21:08

or TikTok. I'm, like, dude, that's me. That's

21:10

just me. Like, I don't Yeah.

21:13

There's one. Yeah. This is like a Highlander

21:15

situation. Come over. We'll

21:17

talk.

21:18

There should be bonus Ripper TikTok

21:20

though. Where are

21:21

you? If you're out there, follow, Joe.

21:23

Going to find the people you want more

21:25

often than letting it tell you what you wanna watch

21:27

is gonna be the best thing to do. As

21:30

always. Yeah. You do have to be

21:32

kind of intentional about that. And

21:34

there's also, like, TikTok is

21:37

not perfect by any means.

21:39

It can be actually pretty scary in a lot

21:41

of ways. And something that comes

21:43

up probably should come

21:45

up more is that the algorithm has

21:47

been accused of being racist,

21:50

and I think there's good evidence

21:52

for that. TikTok has

21:54

also admitted in the past think in,

21:56

like, twenty nineteen of, like, hiding

21:58

content from disabled creators. So

22:01

it's not a level

22:03

playing field. And nobody

22:05

knows anything about their algorithm except

22:08

for TikTok. So I think

22:11

it's just kind of like one of those things where

22:14

you get their if you wanna

22:16

find something, you kind of have to look

22:18

for it because if you rely on

22:20

the algorithm, you don't know what it's

22:22

gonna spit out at

22:23

you. Even after

22:25

training it a certain way.

22:27

Yeah. Absolutely. That's good to know.

22:30

So there, I think, is a narrative

22:33

in publishing and

22:36

maybe kind of coming up

22:38

that, like, you know, TikTok is now what sells

22:40

books. Right, or that tick top

22:42

creators are now the people that sell books.

22:45

And it's just like a really fascinating way

22:49

it feels almost like it's

22:53

shifting responsibility for what cells

22:56

from, like, marketing departments to

22:58

just, like, TikTok.

23:01

And I don't I know that I've seen Chels,

23:04

I've seen you tweet about sort of

23:06

the illusion of sort of in some ways,

23:08

like, that TikTok is just the driver of

23:10

book sales and it's

23:12

all this is really complicated. I'm like, very

23:15

strange, I think, is just someone who loves

23:17

books to kind of feel

23:18

like, well, wait, what's going on here? Yeah.

23:20

So I don't think there's any

23:23

strong evidence that TikTok influences

23:25

book sales that will people tell us they

23:27

do over and over and over again.

23:30

The, like, underlying source for

23:32

book sale data in the United States

23:35

is NPD BookScan. Okay.

23:37

Melanie Walsh has this article called

23:39

whereas all the book data and public public

23:42

books dot org that is

23:44

really great at kind of explaining this.

23:47

But BookScan is actually where

23:49

you get lot of the flyers, where that

23:52

start all these trend pieces about

23:55

Book Talk being like this huge

23:58

this huge influence in book

24:00

sales. And what they've

24:02

put out is really extremely

24:05

limited. They're just like dinky

24:08

little graphs that don't really mean anything.

24:10

And then they're like, look, a correlation between

24:13

two things that aren't super related. And

24:16

I think that it's kind of interesting to me

24:18

because like BookScan, their primary goal

24:21

is to prove their value to publishers.

24:24

Oh, I guess I should have blend. So QuickScan

24:26

is they're subscription service

24:29

that's only accessible by publishing.

24:32

So if you're a journalist or an academic.

24:34

You cannot get granular, comprehensive,

24:37

book data, and that's something that

24:39

I learned from Melanbia's article. Right.

24:42

And so yeah. And so what

24:44

they do though is they do give

24:46

spoonfeed journalists kind

24:50

of, like, big, broad picture

24:52

stuff. They say, here's a graph,

24:55

and it's because of book talk. And then you're kind

24:57

of are supposed to believe that. AND

25:00

SOMETHING THAT NOBODY EVER TALKS ABOUT

25:02

REALLY IS THAT THE RISE OF BOOK TUCK

25:04

AND THE PANDEMIC HAPPENED AT THE

25:06

SAME TIME. UPright. And so

25:08

the New York Times in twenty twenty, like, what

25:10

they I think they were talking about big dogs

25:12

memoir. And what they were saying is that new

25:15

writers in the early days of the pandemic

25:17

were struggling so much, but

25:20

best sellers and books by

25:22

celebrities were doing really, really good.

25:24

And so when you look at the book talk books of

25:26

that year, like, I

25:29

think it's Colleen Hoover, Lee

25:31

Bartugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid.

25:33

They had those big vesicles that kind

25:35

of like those along with what they were saying was happening.

25:38

So you can't really attribute that solely

25:41

to book talk. I'm not saying that book talk didn't

25:43

influence it because it totally

25:45

could. But I just kind of question

25:48

I question why people are so invested

25:51

in proving the

25:53

book talk Chels so much. And

25:56

I think that think you

25:58

kinda mentioned this Jen, but

26:00

they're maybe trying to, like, take

26:03

take some of the blame away

26:05

from their decisions.

26:07

Like, I don't know. It's kind of like, if publishers

26:10

won't market your book, then you have to market your

26:12

book on TikTok. Or if publishers aren't gonna

26:14

promote Books by author of Color. It's

26:16

because Book Talk is not doing it, and you

26:18

can't really hold Book Talk accountable because

26:20

Book Talk is a is

26:23

siloed. It's an app

26:25

of people with different ideologies.

26:28

Like, I There are a lot of people

26:30

on book talk that I want nothing to do

26:32

with. Right? Yep. Can't really organize

26:34

them like that. And

26:37

we're also hobbyist. Yes.

26:40

And I just wanna say and

26:42

this is sort of a small tiny little piece

26:44

in the corner but not

26:46

everybody is good at -- Yes.

26:48

-- a fan book talk. Right?

26:51

Not every the same way not everybody

26:53

is good at Twitter or not everybody

26:56

is good at Facebook or Instagram, not

26:58

everybody is good at Book Talk. So

27:00

if you're out there authors and you're getting emails

27:03

from your publisher that say things like, well,

27:05

maybe you should start a book,

27:07

a a TikTok account, and

27:10

that sounds like something you'd rather crawl into

27:12

a dip undo. Don't

27:15

do it. Yeah. It seems

27:17

like the person who has cracked the code

27:19

on authors being on TikTok

27:21

and and really succeeding at it is somebody

27:23

like Tessa Bailey who just

27:25

clearly loves making little videos every

27:27

day. So if that seems like your thing,

27:30

go off and do it and have fun, but

27:33

oh, boy. Write your next book everyone. I

27:36

think that's exactly

27:37

Make it as good as you can. Now

27:39

my really big question here, the

27:41

important question we've all been waiting for, is there a dueling

27:44

TikTok? And if so, what

27:46

are they saying about romance

27:47

novels? Look at this transition

27:50

time. Chels is very,

27:52

very excited. I don't I

27:54

have, like, I have, like, seven

27:56

or eight dueling TikToks that I

27:58

want to make, but I'm, like, I'm

28:00

waiting for this episode to draw. I'm,

28:02

like, Like, we're gonna get this all out at

28:04

once.

28:05

Yeah. Yeah. Now that we know how to work.

28:07

I know too much. Like,

28:09

I I looked back at the initial email

28:12

that when we were talking about duels

28:14

and I was just like the way that

28:16

I was so flippantly, we

28:18

were referring to Fooling

28:21

process. I didn't know

28:22

anything. I was a fool. Back

28:24

then. I'm gonna Yeah. But now now

28:27

I know

28:27

we've read all the books I know.

28:29

I think the thing that kinda broke me as I

28:31

found out that developing is not

28:33

honorable. Like, I thought romance novels

28:35

convinced me that that was Excuse me.

28:38

Yes. I discovered that too

28:40

in my research. Have I flipped

28:42

it to Looper? Thanks,

28:44

George and Hair. I came I'm

28:47

sure we all kinda came across the same things,

28:49

but, you know, this whole list

28:51

of like, III ended

28:54

up finding a lot more about, like, American Duels,

28:56

like, but, you know, the code Duels

28:59

is is this what we're talking about, right, which is,

29:01

like, covering the practice of dueling

29:03

and points of honor was settled

29:05

in seventeen seventy seven,

29:08

and it is this fair. You want

29:10

an extensive lesson about okay. Wait, you

29:12

guys. What

29:12

happens? That's good. Everyone. We

29:15

we're now down a rabbit hole our listeners

29:18

are going west to low bay. Okay.

29:20

Hope what's happening is playing. We're talking about

29:22

TikTok. Okay. Okay. So now

29:24

comes part of of the of the episode

29:26

that is an interstitial about dueling.

29:29

Chels selected it themselves and

29:32

because we said what do you want to do?

29:35

And this is what they asked for.

29:37

And so here we are. We're ready to go.

29:41

We are gonna talk about dueling in romance.

29:43

I expect most of the books we talk

29:46

about are gonna be historical. I'm gonna go

29:48

on record. Saying that's probably

29:50

the case. I had, like, a brief moment

29:52

where I

29:52

thought, should I find,

29:55

like, an example

29:56

of, like, you know, two dudes just

29:59

fighting. And then was like You know what? No. Nobody

30:01

no contemporary romance is taking off a glove

30:03

and throwing it to the ground. There

30:05

are no pistols at dawn in

30:08

a good Deborah roving

30:09

heads. And we should talk

30:11

about why that is. It's a disappointment,

30:13

to be

30:14

honest.

30:16

So the death of Bondur. Yeah. Let's

30:19

talk about dueling. Chels,

30:21

it sounds like you have done a great

30:23

deal of

30:23

research, so I'm gonna talk this

30:26

softball to you. Chels

30:29

everybody about tooling. Oh,

30:34

Just

30:34

like everything. What is everything? What

30:36

is yes. What is the Duels?

30:38

So it's a dual is is

30:41

a It's a fight with intentionality

30:45

between gentle ends. So you

30:47

can't just

30:49

shoot somebody and it be a Duels. You have

30:51

to kind of declare your intention. I'm

30:53

going to shoot you.

30:55

Yeah. I'm going to shoot you tomorrow

30:57

morning. Yes. Asset of

30:59

this other guy. Yes. And a bunch of

31:01

people who haven't been to bed. I mean,

31:03

who just all rolled out of

31:05

Club. When I entered the park, can I read

31:07

to you the best description I found for dueling

31:09

in my research, which was from Jay

31:12

Store Daily, which I don't know if people out

31:14

there -- Oh my god? -- I don't know if everybody

31:16

realizes the glory of j store daily. So

31:18

j store is a huge humanity's

31:21

database. So if you're just doing,

31:23

like, random research, like, chances are

31:26

you have maybe hit j

31:28

store, but they have an amazing it's

31:30

called j store daily where they write some sort of

31:32

article every day where they, like,

31:34

kinda dip into the j store archives and

31:36

it's usually related to something that is

31:38

happening in pop culture. So it's a

31:40

really like actually a super fun

31:42

Twitter account and Often when

31:45

I'm like doing random research, I come across

31:47

a j store daily article. And in this

31:49

case, it was last year at this time and

31:51

it was in response to, they wrote an article

31:53

about dueling in response to the slap,

31:55

which is what happened at the Oscars. So, you

31:58

know, he sort of wrote a whole art about

32:00

dueling and what they found in and he found

32:02

in j store, and he described it this author

32:04

as dueling as a highly codified

32:07

one on one act of ritualized

32:09

violence. And I was like,

32:11

there you go. That's a nice definition for

32:13

it. Sure. It is. You need to send

32:15

a letter

32:17

Like, you that's they're

32:19

jeweling codes. There are rules.

32:21

Right. Yeah. And those rules are codified

32:24

in Jen once

32:25

again. The code Duels. Is that what you

32:27

found as well?

32:28

There are different ones in different

32:30

countries.

32:30

Yeah. So they're kind of like because

32:34

it kind of varies a little bit depending on

32:36

the year and

32:39

where your location is. I

32:41

suppose,

32:42

But it would have been great. When

32:45

young gentlemen, when young gentlemen go

32:47

on a grand tour through Europe, they

32:49

would be delivered prior to that

32:51

so a grand tour is when you come

32:53

of age and then your rich family sends

32:55

you on trip through

32:56

Europe. Like, go see all the

32:59

marbles that have been taken.

33:01

Anyway, so you go and you you

33:03

experience all the cosmopolitan cities

33:05

of the of

33:07

the continent, right, of the continent.

33:09

And on your way there, you are

33:12

given these small leather

33:14

bound books And there

33:16

are largely a list of sex workers who

33:18

you can visit and their particular specialties.

33:21

And they were often bound and given

33:23

to young men so that they could go place would

33:26

be awesome if they also included the

33:28

rules of dueling, the code in

33:31

France at this

33:32

time. Sure.

33:34

That's,

33:35

anyway, a lot of information

33:36

to know. I don't know. I yeah.

33:38

I'm just generous. Know it's amazing. These are

33:41

important, but in fact, for those

33:43

of you who watch harlots, Harlitz

33:46

is actually based on a

33:49

piece of non fiction written by

33:51

Hayley Rubin Hold. I'm

33:54

pretty sure that's her last name, which

33:57

is based which is a

33:59

piece of nonfiction about these particular books

34:01

about sex workers.

34:02

Wow. That's interesting. Anyway,

34:04

I'm just I'm just sharing. Gail giving you

34:07

all more information. They wrote all this stuff

34:09

down. Right? Yeah. There are lots of

34:11

pamphlets about doing behavior, and there are a lot of pamphlets

34:13

for how to properly behave as a second.

34:16

That's actually more important

34:18

than the Duels speech

34:20

They do all styles. And they

34:22

do they're the wedding planner

34:24

of the They do everything.

34:27

Amazing. So yeah. So with the

34:29

second so it's pretty much you you

34:32

challenge someone to a

34:33

duel. You cannot duel right then because if

34:35

you duel right then, it's like

34:37

murder, basically. It's

34:39

pre it needs to be premeditated.

34:43

Yeah. It has to which is kind of like a paradox

34:46

So I read this. It's so interesting

34:48

because, like, if you you would think that making

34:50

it premeditated, you are more

34:53

likely to get charged, but juries don't

34:55

want to convict someone who is followed

34:58

dueling

34:58

code. So even though you're doing something

35:00

that makes you look more guilty, the

35:03

juries are gonna be like, well, he was so

35:05

honorable. Right. A noble scoundrel.

35:09

I would also like to shoot someone who said

35:11

something bad about my sister. Or

35:13

my wife or

35:14

whatever. And now the other thing

35:16

I would point out is this is

35:18

the business of the aristocracy.

35:21

Regular folks did not have to

35:23

participate. They don't have time for this

35:25

shit. They

35:27

didn't have jobs and food and

35:29

healthcare --

35:30

Yeah. -- to pay like This is about

35:32

social capital. Right? Like, I'm proving

35:34

my honor as a gentleman. I'm

35:36

proving my honor as

35:38

approving my worth and my value that I'm

35:40

like following these rules of society or

35:42

whatever. Right? Aristocrats would use

35:44

that to get out of things sometimes too. Someone

35:47

would challenge them and they'd be like, ugh, but you

35:49

aren't a gentleman, unfortunately. Oh.

35:51

So I don't have to do

35:53

that. Perfect.

35:55

That's interesting. Actually,

35:56

kind of a big thing that happens in the do lists,

35:58

the Ridley Scott movie. Like, I think they're

36:00

both, like, they're both In

36:04

Napoleon's army, but, like, when they aren't the

36:06

same rank, they can't doable. So

36:09

they're telling to bear, like, you

36:11

gotta you gotta get up in the ring so this, like, wily,

36:13

squirrely little guy leaves you alone.

36:15

Like, that's Harvey Keitel. I

36:18

made the the best. Yeah. So

36:21

there are a lot of rules. In

36:24

romance, however, we have been taught.

36:26

We have been taught The

36:28

rules of dueling probably by George

36:30

that Hair, let's be honest, who

36:32

made up a lot of stuff. And one

36:34

of the things we have been taught as romance

36:37

readers is that all

36:39

the time, people did something called

36:41

Deloping, which means they would

36:43

get to the they would get to

36:46

the the park

36:48

at dawn, there would be definitely

36:50

missed happening. And

36:53

the, you know, they've walked there however

36:56

many paces and they would turn

36:58

and they would throw away their

37:01

first shot. They would shoot into the air

37:03

or shoot off to the side. And

37:05

that was their, you know, way of

37:07

saying that this is we've acknowledged

37:10

that neither of us are going to admit

37:12

wrongdoing here, but

37:14

we're also not gonna we're not in the market to kill

37:16

each other. And this is our sort of way to

37:18

I guess, wave away the possibility of a hero

37:20

being a murderer. I think I don't know. It

37:23

doesn't matter. Heroes kill a lot of people

37:25

also in romance And

37:26

look, maybe I'm wrong here, but it feels like,

37:28

okay. So if drooling is a product

37:31

essentially of, like, I'll say, toxic

37:33

masculinity. Right? Would

37:35

it is that possibly true? I

37:37

don't know. I'll just throw that out there. This

37:40

is not something

37:42

your average romance reader buys into.

37:45

Right? So it's like we want so it's like

37:47

the characters are acting based

37:50

on, like, one set of social

37:52

moors, but that's not what the readers

37:54

want. Right? This

37:57

week's episode of Fated Mate's sponsored by

37:59

Mila Fanelli. Author of

38:01

mafia Target. You

38:03

all have been waiting for this one at book

38:05

number four in the Kings of Italy

38:08

series. I sure

38:10

have. So in book number

38:12

one, we meet Fausto

38:15

and his oldest son, Giulio,

38:18

was supposed to be, right, like, the

38:21

intended groom for the for

38:24

Francesca. But he

38:26

is gay man, part of the mafia. And

38:28

at the end of the book, he sort of, like, exits

38:30

that life and we just, like, wish him good luck, but

38:33

he is back. And he

38:35

has essentially been cited.

38:38

And so Fausto's enemies send

38:40

out and ascended named

38:42

Alexio to get him. So

38:46

there is this huge game

38:48

of cat and mouse between the two of

38:50

them as a Lesio chases Giulio

38:53

throughout Europe, and

38:55

they end up in a small Scottish

38:57

village together where they have

38:59

like a nice romantic interlude

39:02

before more mafia assassins

39:04

come to find them and take them down.

39:07

I love it. Yes. But together,

39:09

they are determined essentially to

39:12

Right? Even though Alexio has been hired

39:14

to kill himself, he's like, I'm not

39:16

gonna have that let that happen. These

39:18

two band together they are

39:20

going to just set the

39:22

whole world on fire and each other

39:24

with it.

39:26

Chels, I mean, we are a vowed

39:28

mill of finale fans here at fated

39:31

meats. In fact, she is joining us

39:33

next weekend at fated meats live

39:36

in Brooklyn. You can still get tickets for that. That's

39:38

a little aside. But if you wanna

39:40

read mafia target, it came out this

39:42

week. You can get it as part of

39:44

your monthly subscription to Ku or

39:47

in ebook from Amazon or

39:49

in print. So thank you

39:51

as always to Mila for sponsoring

39:54

the episode. Chels,

39:57

I ask a question? Are there is there

39:59

a list of things that you can't

40:02

that are acceptable reasons to do

40:04

all in these

40:05

codes? Or can it just be you

40:07

made me upset? Anything? Anything?

40:10

It's anything from, like,

40:12

you slept with my wife to Did

40:15

you hear about the duel that was fought over

40:17

billiards? No. But

40:19

you wanna do yeah. Oh, you wanna

40:21

know? Okay. So it's like two French

40:23

guys. It's two French guys, Lanfon

40:26

and Mailfons. They're

40:28

playing billiards. They start

40:30

to fight over the game. They

40:32

named their seconds over the billiard's table.

40:35

The seconds are like, hey, why don't we joule

40:37

with the billiard balls? So

40:40

they draw to see it's to throw the

40:42

billiard ball first. One

40:44

and undrawns gets the red billiard

40:46

ball and throws it at the other guy's

40:48

head. And then that guy dies

40:51

on the spot. Death by

40:53

believe ball. That's amazing. Yeah.

40:56

See, now listen. This was also had to

40:58

do with the fact that there was not a whole lot of fresh

41:00

water in all these

41:01

cities. And so they were shrinking

41:04

all the time. Oh,

41:05

yes. All the

41:05

cities. But, definitely, they were drunk

41:08

Just as just endless

41:10

bar fighting it. So here's

41:12

something. I did find this one little fact that I

41:14

felt in sing, which is like during the reign

41:16

of George the third, which is, you know,

41:18

big bromance time in his prior alliance, but

41:22

that's our guy. They're one of that

41:24

guy. I know that guy. One hundred

41:26

and seventy

41:27

two known Duels.

41:29

No. No. That's the important. Right?

41:31

But that cost sixty nine fatalities.

41:34

I mean, this is like a pretty like, if you entered

41:36

into one of these things, that's Well, because

41:38

did you know you couldn't wear In England,

41:41

you couldn't wear glasses. To book to

41:43

your Duels, unless you wore glasses

41:45

all the time. So there

41:48

was there was one of the rules.

41:50

So, you know, if you don't

41:52

wear glasses all the time and you're

41:54

whatever twenty paces, which has to be

41:56

that number of a fair number of yards that

41:59

are away from each other, you

42:02

can't see very well. Also

42:04

those guns, they weren't Grace And

42:08

also, if they're fighting with billiard balls,

42:10

what are the odds? What were

42:12

their seconds

42:13

thinking? They were not? They were drunk?

42:15

They were yeah. They were yeah.

42:18

Because the seconds the role of the

42:20

second is prem. Their first job

42:22

is to stop the from happening. Which

42:24

is something -- No. -- billiard ball.

42:27

Yeah. That did not happen there. No. But that actually

42:29

kind of gets me into romance a little bit because

42:31

in a lot of heterosexual historical

42:33

romances, the heroine takes

42:36

that primary role of

42:38

the second. Like, she's, like, hurtling

42:40

to the field. Screening, note,

42:43

Duels. And I'm just yeah.

42:46

It's it's perfect. Like, because you

42:48

need that you need that moment for

42:50

because there's kind of a level of intimacy between

42:53

the second and the list, but you're

42:55

you're writing a romance

42:56

album. You're like, I'm not trying to could go up with

42:58

the second, so I got

42:59

it. Which would breathe?

43:00

Yeah. Honestly, K. J. Charles, where

43:02

are you at? That's

43:03

what I want. Joanna

43:05

Chambers has one at the -- Oh,

43:06

nice. -- enlightens

43:08

where the the second is

43:10

the love interest. Perfect. Yeah.

43:13

So but also there is a certain it

43:15

layers in what were you saying ritualized

43:18

violence? Yes, then. Right. Ritualized

43:20

violence. Is compelling

43:23

in romance Duels clearly.

43:25

Right? Well, this is why we have an entire

43:28

subgenre of contemporary romance is

43:30

centered around MMA

43:31

fighters. Right?

43:32

That's why we love a tyrannical fighter

43:34

in historicals. This is I mean,

43:37

like ritualized violence is birth

43:39

birthed by toxic masculinity for

43:41

sure. And

43:45

there is at least in in

43:48

heterosexual romance, some

43:51

the Duels is often based

43:54

in some sort of desire

43:56

for the hero to

43:59

protect the honor of Chels

44:04

woman in his life, which

44:06

is an interesting I mean, that's

44:08

fundamentally right. You can't get away from

44:11

that as thread a theme

44:13

in in romance heroes

44:15

over the

44:16

years. That's, like, super weird. Right? Like, these

44:18

this is, like, the virginity fights essentially.

44:20

Like, to me in some ways. And I was thinking

44:22

a lot about, have you all read chronicle

44:25

of a death foretold by Gabriel Garcia

44:27

Marquez? Yes. So in

44:29

this book, it is it's not

44:32

quite a but it's very similar. Their

44:34

the Vekario twins are in their village.

44:37

And their sister has gotten married.

44:40

after the wedding, she

44:42

in the groom go off and then he comes

44:45

back in the middle of the night her and dumps

44:47

her on the doorstep and is like

44:49

she's not a virgin. And

44:51

so her brothers essentially

44:54

forced her to say who it was.

44:57

And the whole rest of the book

44:59

is these two brothers are gonna kill

45:01

this man Santiago. And the

45:03

full entire time, you as the

45:06

reader and the people of the village, it's

45:08

a really fascinating book. I love it.

45:10

And short, it's only maybe two hundred pages.

45:12

Are pretty convinced that Santiago not

45:16

only did not deflower this woman, but

45:18

literally it's like probably never talked to

45:20

her before. And so it really

45:22

does do so much more

45:24

with, like, how wild it really

45:26

is that, like, the thing that is driving

45:28

there, like, you know, we're gonna go kill

45:30

him. And it's like, right? Like, we is

45:33

her honor. Right? Like, somehow, she's

45:35

defiled the family.

45:37

And therefore, we have to, like, it's

45:40

I don't know. It's I I found myself thinking

45:42

about it a lot as I was doing like my research

45:45

because it's so different

45:47

the way it plays out in that book than sort

45:49

of the kind of toothless

45:51

way it it is in romance

45:53

instead. Right? Chels, because really

45:56

what you want in that case, if you're talking

45:58

specifically about men not like

46:01

a peacocking around -- Right.

46:04

-- related to AAA

46:06

moment of dishonor for a

46:07

heroin, whatever means you want the

46:09

hero climbing over the billiards table and

46:11

just taking the guy down. Right?

46:14

I mean that, but that's but

46:16

I'm ashamed to say that. Mentally. Right?

46:19

Is the is when I say you, I mean, you

46:21

gen and also I mean, most romance readers

46:23

or looking

46:23

for that kind of, like, drive a pack. No. I'm, like,

46:26

sorry. Yes. I hated an toxic

46:28

masculinity and also get

46:30

me more. I know. Chels, we're really trying to behavior,

46:32

but we're just so basic track. I am

46:34

I'm fast fascinated. This

46:37

is

46:38

great. It's how I meant

46:40

that. Perfect. Okay. Like,

46:42

it would be with the spy glass. So

46:45

maybe you could tell us though. So

46:47

what is outside of this, you know,

46:49

basic desire to see you

46:52

know, this. What is the appeal

46:55

of the Duels for

46:56

you? Yeah. So

46:58

the duel for me, I think that

47:00

there's, like, a lot of, like, really cool character

47:03

stuff that you can do with Duels. I

47:06

think kind of, like, the because,

47:09

like, honor is so nebulous

47:12

and it it has a lot

47:14

of meaning to people and can be very personal,

47:16

but it's also a way that you can just, like,

47:19

keep someone underneath their boot. So

47:21

that's something that just

47:24

the way that, like, the ritual

47:27

of it, the I think I was

47:29

initially drawn to the gloves left to the

47:31

face, which is also something that doesn't happen that

47:33

often because most duels happen with

47:35

the letter instead. But,

47:38

like, kind of in the romance novels

47:40

that I had been like reading

47:42

about Duels to kind of see

47:44

kind of like why I liked them so much.

47:46

A lot of the time, they would have like

47:49

a sort of character reveal about

47:51

the heroin, even if she wasn't participating

47:54

in the Duels, it was

47:56

the way that she interacted with

47:59

the hero in order to either get

48:02

him in that position, which is usually

48:04

the ones that I would be reading because I'm reading

48:06

the older ones. Or

48:09

or to try to extricate himself

48:11

from that position on, like, how that

48:14

how that works? Because it it's a lot of a

48:16

lot of thought into, like, the the

48:18

hero's

48:19

journey. I think that actually means something, and

48:21

I'm just saying it. So I apologize. I'm

48:23

saying that as in his notes or his

48:24

Lower page. Yeah. Yeah. Lower

48:27

lower that case.

48:30

And yeah. So I don't know if that

48:32

you'd

48:32

Yeah. About one that's kind of like this. So

48:35

let's do it. Yeah. So one

48:37

that I was thinking of, and I love this book

48:39

so much. So it's the flesh in

48:41

the devil, and it's a nineteen eighty

48:43

bodice stripper and gothic gothic romance

48:46

by Teresa Dennis, who's she's

48:48

the pen name of Chels Boone editor,

48:50

Jackie Bianchi. I think she died in the

48:52

eighties. I think she wrote two books.

48:55

So this book is set in being

48:57

right after the inquisition, and it begins

48:59

with the heroin, Wanna being

49:02

sent by her family to marry the

49:04

Duke. And so she's very

49:06

young and beautiful. And she's also

49:08

really angry because she had a

49:10

childhood sweetheart named Jaime, that

49:12

she was intending to marry, then now she has to marry

49:14

the Duke. So

49:17

even though she's endeared to marry

49:19

the Duke. She's her love interest is this guy

49:22

named Felipe, who is, like, this scarred

49:24

and screwed up. Englishman. Yeah.

49:26

You know, clap twist. He's the

49:28

real not really a hero because

49:30

it's a bodice stripper. He's a very

49:33

bad man. But he's

49:35

he says, like, everything he says is very metal.

49:37

So I

49:41

love it. He's like he's like

49:43

a servant, but he everybody's afraid

49:46

of him. So he's and so you know that he's

49:48

back. There's something up with this guy. Yeah. But

49:50

he's not really serving. Broads

49:54

is so great. It's unmatched. romance

49:56

is unmatched. Honestly, my

49:59

favorite thing is the suitor event that everybody's

50:01

intimidated

50:02

by. It's just like something's up with this

50:04

guy. Yeah.

50:05

That's that's him. So

50:07

the Duels actually happens between Felipe

50:10

and Jaime. Jaime was the guy if he

50:12

remembered that she was in his lips. That's not

50:14

the dupe. Not the dupe. Not the dupe.

50:16

Yeah. So Haines comes to Lana's

50:18

rescue. He is acting as

50:20

the night errand of her dreams. But

50:23

he ultimately makes himself foolish by

50:25

challenging fully baked to a dual. And

50:27

then when they start to yeah,

50:30

Jaime cuts him with the sword. Felipe

50:32

hasn't drawn yet because Felipe is not scared.

50:35

And then Jaime sees

50:38

the blood on Libe, and he

50:40

turns tail and runs. So

50:42

this is like a huge moment. Howard

50:44

We're Yeah. I know.

50:47

So scared. This is a huge

50:49

moment for Anna here because this

50:51

is the because this is a bodesterbird

50:54

and a Gothic romance, so a lot of it is about,

50:56

like, her descent into becoming

50:59

someone meaner and worse

51:01

than she initially thought she was gonna be.

51:04

And so this duel is

51:06

like the final blow to wanna

51:08

hopes for Jaime, who is someone that she

51:10

still hold a candle for. You find out that

51:14

Wana's just a little bit more

51:16

and Jaime is just a little bit

51:19

less. So I thought

51:21

that was just so interesting and the

51:23

way that Yeah. The way that

51:26

and then also this book is like postacquisition Spain.

51:28

So there's a lot about, like, the kind

51:31

of hypocrisy of the Catholic church.

51:33

It's like a big thing in Teresa Dennis'

51:35

books. So how they deliberately met

51:38

out violence and then hide behind his layer of

51:40

morality, and that's Jaime in his

51:42

book. Like, he -- Yeah. -- is the one who

51:44

initiated do he's the one who cuts

51:46

Fleet Bay. He's the one who's like, it's for

51:48

honor, but he who's the violent

51:50

one? Yeah.

51:51

Right. Uh-huh. Yeah. The

51:53

heroin journey lower

51:55

case. One

51:58

of the ways that

52:00

I

52:02

and Sarah and I, I think both do this. It's

52:04

like, I've read a lot of books. So sometimes

52:07

I'll just feel like romance novels with duels

52:09

and, like, look for the list. And then it's

52:11

kinda like, oh, I've read this. I've read this. Right? So

52:13

it's kinda like the way that I will, like, do my

52:15

research. And I found that

52:17

that list does not exist. So Maybe

52:19

that can be, like, an action item for us.

52:22

And so I couldn't I couldn't really find,

52:24

like, a list. Even at good reads, I was having

52:27

trouble, like, really just, like, books with Duels.

52:29

So then I was like, well, okay, how am I

52:31

gonna remember these books I've read?

52:33

So I went back and

52:35

then just started googling essentially

52:37

like old school authors plus Right?

52:39

So it was like Joanna Lindsey, books with dueling,

52:42

you know, demanded QuickBooks with dueling,

52:44

Jude Devra, books with dueling, I could kind

52:46

of, like, just, like, gather and

52:48

make a list. And then I

52:51

basically went to see what I had

52:53

in

52:54

like, what my local library had because

52:56

I am I'm

52:57

sorry, a little outraged by paying, you know,

53:00

ten dollars for Joanna Lindsay that's

53:02

twenty five years old, but that's like the me problem.

53:04

It's fine. So I ended

53:06

up reading a Joanna Lindsay. I read a couple

53:08

of different books but I read a old Joanna

53:11

Lindsay book called Make Me Love You.

53:13

Now, I am sure that when I read

53:15

old Joanna Lindsay books that I've read them before,

53:19

Right? Like, I I'm like, I've definitely read this.

53:21

Like, right, I but at the same time, it's

53:23

spent a long time in a lot of books, perhaps

53:26

millions pages since then, so it's all

53:28

new again. And in this book,

53:30

I was really fascinated by it.

53:34

The hero's name is Lord

53:36

Dominic Wolf, of course. And

53:39

he has he

53:41

has challenged Roberts, this

53:44

guy Robert, to three duels

53:46

in a row. And everyone

53:49

in town is basically like

53:52

What the hell? Who

53:54

is it that why why

53:56

is this happening? Like, no one knows why?

53:58

He keeps challenging him to a duel. And so the

54:01

Prince Regent rolls up and

54:03

it's like your family is needing

54:05

to fix this by marriage. So

54:07

Robert's sister is Brooke.Brooke is gonna

54:09

have to marry Wolf in order to, like,

54:11

make this go away. And

54:13

if that doesn't happen, Right?

54:15

If that doesn't happen, then

54:19

I get to take, like, your money. I

54:21

don't know. Like, the print region apparently was

54:23

always, like, blackmailing people

54:24

into, like, doing shit that then if

54:26

you would like, that's what I would do. Yes.

54:29

Right? I will take your

54:30

call lines. Oh.

54:31

I will take your call lines if you do not do this

54:33

thing. Something

54:33

I told you to do. And I think the

54:35

thing that was really fascinated by

54:38

was the fact that

54:40

in and it takes a while for

54:42

Brooke to figure out why they were dueling

54:44

in the first place, why Wolfe wanted to challenge

54:47

him to Duels. But then also,

54:49

it took a little bit of a of

54:51

a why, like, what

54:53

happened? Like, why three times? Because the

54:55

other thing I'm really expecting in these

54:57

books is that, like, the dude is gonna be an

54:59

awesome Duels. I'm really good

55:02

at it. Everyone fears me and no one would

55:04

want to duel with me because I will kick your ass

55:06

or kill you or hit you on the head with the billiard

55:08

ball. But in the first duel, he

55:11

ingers Robert slightly enough

55:14

that it should have, like, made

55:16

him feel like I wanted, therefore, my honors

55:18

restored, but doesn't, so he challenges them

55:20

to a second one where they both

55:22

miss. And then after

55:24

the third one, Robert endures him

55:27

in the upper thigh and Brooke

55:29

arrives and is like, was he trying to, like, unmanue?

55:32

Like, basically right? Like,

55:34

was he shooting at your you

55:37

know, junk -- Yeah. -- on purpose. And

55:40

he was like, no. We are both really bad shots.

55:42

I was like, what's fascinating? You know, that is

55:44

a bug. Right? And so the full

55:46

book is her trying to discover why

55:49

the Duels happened, and she essentially, like,

55:52

spoiler alert since it's an old book.

55:56

She reads his dead sisters

55:58

diary and and he she

56:00

was pregnant. And he

56:02

she thinks and Wolf thinks tried

56:05

committed suicide rather than face this

56:07

and that Robert was the father. And

56:09

that he, like, cruely, you know, like, had done this.

56:11

And of course, like, throughout the whole book, you find out all

56:13

this other stuff about whether or not that was true.

56:15

But I was really fascinated as I was

56:17

reading it by starting

56:20

off with the

56:21

essentially, the duels have already happened.

56:24

Right? And then we're starting off with

56:26

him being honestly kinda bad at

56:28

it. And it was fascinating,

56:30

old and fascinating. I

56:33

don't know what else to tell you about it except that it

56:35

was really wild read. So that's

56:37

really interesting because I think that there are

56:39

in the structure using a

56:41

Duels, in your

56:43

book where was the dual?

56:45

But this was

56:46

kind of a rare one and that it was, like, a

56:48

bit midway.

56:50

Most of the time when I read them there at the very

56:52

beginning, and I called those dual interrupted.

56:55

Because that's when you is usually

56:57

what happens at the

56:58

beginning? Yeah. That's my

57:00

that my recommendation or

57:02

my you know, the one I wanna talk about

57:05

is a Duels is I love that dual interrupted.

57:08

Although, to be honest, I feel like

57:10

almost all duels and romances are

57:13

interrupted in some way, as

57:15

you said, to put the heroin on page.

57:18

Yeah. Yeah. In a at least in a hat room,

57:20

ma'am.

57:23

So structurally, it feels

57:25

like starting with the Duels is literally

57:27

starting with a bang. Yeah. Right? Your

57:30

you're dropping the reader into the

57:32

story. You're immediately

57:34

setting up the hero to either be

57:37

very skilled at what he does or not.

57:39

Very skilled at what he or noble,

57:41

or a scoundrel, whatever however the Duels

57:44

progresses. And then the

57:46

other option is

57:48

to put it right at the end. Right? It becomes

57:50

part of the climax of

57:52

the book. There's It's the final

57:54

test of the relationship in largely

57:58

because it is about him

58:00

having the hero having to

58:02

reconcile, you know, his single

58:05

emotion for there when

58:08

my feeling. Right. One

58:10

a feeling. It

58:12

hurts my feeling. And

58:16

so I think so my the book I

58:18

wanna talk about is Mary Balogues more

58:20

than a

58:20

mistress. Which is part

58:23

of her mistress duology. Have you

58:25

read this one,

58:26

Chels? Yes. Oh, yeah.

58:28

I mean, it's fascinating because I

58:31

Mary Ballard writes,

58:35

she's such a careful writer, and

58:38

she her books are so

58:41

deeply, emotionally invested

58:45

invested and so romantic

58:48

but she does not waste

58:51

feeling. Like, she's not like me, like, all

58:53

over the place with drama. She

58:55

works so hard to

58:59

articulate feelings in, like,

59:02

in beautiful steady streams. And

59:05

so her characters, one of the ways she does that

59:07

often with her heroes is she makes them

59:10

so completely impenetrable at the beginning

59:12

that they are it is almost impossible

59:14

to imagine that they will ever feel a feeling.

59:17

And not in the same way as the Lindsay's,

59:19

the Gar Woods, the Devereaux, where

59:22

they just seem like animals

59:24

who then have to become a human, her

59:26

heroes are almost always just so

59:29

gentlemanly and proper that

59:31

the idea of a feeling messing up their

59:34

robot would be just

59:36

too much for them. This

59:39

book begins with literally

59:41

begins first sentence. We are in the middle

59:43

of a duel. There are seconds. We're in a misty

59:45

field. We're there in high park in a corner.

59:47

They're like, a reference Mary's

59:50

clearly done a bunch of research. There's a reference

59:52

to the fact that, like, you really should be doing this at Wimbledon

59:54

Commons because that's where there's more privacy. But

59:57

like here everybody's rolled out of wherever they

59:59

rolled out of and they

1:00:01

arrive. And he

1:00:04

has the hero, Jocelyn, has

1:00:08

He has been with another man's wife.

1:00:11

And so right off the

1:00:13

bat, it's sort of a this guy's not he

1:00:15

is not a a great dude. He's

1:00:17

not great. But he's clearly

1:00:20

very handsome, clearly very powerful, clearly

1:00:22

very skilled, this is not his first Duels.

1:00:24

He is he has chosen

1:00:26

his second. There's a lot of

1:00:29

cracking dialogue in the first

1:00:31

you know, chapter of, like, him being just

1:00:33

awry and one and, you know, clever.

1:00:38

He is starts

1:00:40

the Duels with or the duel begins,

1:00:43

there's a lot of discussion like what's going

1:00:45

to happen and then suddenly out

1:00:47

of nowhere, servant

1:00:50

girl just come screaming into

1:00:52

frame. The going. Wait.

1:00:55

No stop. Stop this.

1:00:58

And it seems as though she

1:01:02

just doesn't. She just doesn't want there

1:01:04

to be a duel. She's like, this is not sensible,

1:01:06

whatever this is. He

1:01:09

is distracted by her, not because she's

1:01:11

beautiful, just because she's there. In fact,

1:01:13

I think I mean, she's just yelling.

1:01:15

Yes. She's

1:01:16

yelling. She's yelling. She's there. He

1:01:18

does not like this woman instantly,

1:01:21

but he stops because lady

1:01:24

or girl or whatever.

1:01:27

Disruption, mister as woman. Right.

1:01:29

Yes. And then he

1:01:32

gets shot. The other guy who is trembling,

1:01:34

like you are led to believe this is just nonsense.

1:01:37

The other guy is trembling. He

1:01:39

fires the shot, shoots the hero,

1:01:42

Jocelyn, in the leg,

1:01:45

and he refuses to he doesn't

1:01:47

even move. He, like, takes the shot and

1:01:49

stands like marble.

1:01:52

Right? And does not like,

1:01:54

he could get shot in the leg. No problem.

1:01:56

Do it again. And then he

1:01:58

raises his gun to the sky, slopes.

1:02:01

And everybody's like, almost and

1:02:04

just everything goes crazy. And

1:02:06

then he calls this girl,

1:02:09

he imperiously the phrasing is so

1:02:11

perfect. He, like, reaches out his hand and imperiously

1:02:13

summons her to him. Then

1:02:16

uses her to lean on

1:02:19

while he goes to his horse because

1:02:21

in the surgeon there has to be surgeon at a

1:02:24

Surgeon is like, oh, we'll have to take this leg off.

1:02:26

He's like, I'm gonna call my own doctor. Thank

1:02:28

you.

1:02:29

Oh, that's great. The surgeon has to wait, guys.

1:02:31

This is three pages. I'm not

1:02:33

even on pace for you. It's just

1:02:35

it is the fracking, the

1:02:38

speed that this is going at. He

1:02:40

gets on his hoists, She's,

1:02:43

you know, at his ear telling

1:02:45

him, like, how stupid dueling is.

1:02:47

He's at her ear going shut up.

1:02:49

Let me lean on you. Get to his horse,

1:02:52

climbs up on his horse and promptly passes

1:02:54

out and falls off.

1:02:56

He needs a nurse. Y'all.

1:02:59

Of course. He needs a nurse. For

1:03:01

three weeks of recovery in his bed.

1:03:04

And so what more is there to do?

1:03:07

She owes him She is the

1:03:09

reason he has been shot in the leg.

1:03:12

And so, she becomes his

1:03:14

nurse and that at the end of the three weeks,

1:03:17

she doesn't wanna leave him, and he doesn't

1:03:19

want her to leave, but he can't admit that he doesn't

1:03:21

want her to leave. Sure. So instead,

1:03:23

he says, well, I do need a mistress.

1:03:27

And she says, this is for all of you who

1:03:29

loved a who like a contract in a romance

1:03:31

novels. She's like, well okay, but I need a

1:03:33

contract. Good. Listen,

1:03:35

don't agree to be someone's mistress without a contract.

1:03:37

It's the lesson that I have learned from this book.

1:03:41

Lajid. Lajid. If I remember correctly,

1:03:43

like, wasn't

1:03:43

she, like, really intense about,

1:03:45

like, she was, like, oh, she was,

1:03:47

like, why do you need all that? And she's, like,

1:03:50

Why do you need mistress? Like, I think

1:03:52

that she I mean, like, that is one

1:03:54

of the before you set Duels, I

1:03:58

would have said, this is a contract

1:04:00

book. Yeah. Because that's one of the the

1:04:02

clearest memories of this book

1:04:05

of reading this book was how much

1:04:07

of a business woman she was. He's like, you're

1:04:10

you're a woman with sexual needs and she's like,

1:04:12

yeah, but I want it on paper how

1:04:14

this all

1:04:14

goes.

1:04:15

So smart. The other thing that I love about this

1:04:17

book is that he gives

1:04:19

her a house because

1:04:21

she's his mistress. And she walks into

1:04:23

it and she's like, and it's a, you know, it's

1:04:25

a very well appointed house. She walks

1:04:27

into it and she's like, oh, this was designed.

1:04:30

This is designed for as like a sex stand.

1:04:32

And I think she even it sleazy

1:04:34

on page. And he's like, you

1:04:36

mean, nobody's ever complained, and she's

1:04:38

like, everybody loves I'm

1:04:40

getting the red satin sheet edit. I'm in

1:04:43

a

1:04:43

coupling. Yes.

1:04:44

Sounds great. Oh my god. That sounds

1:04:46

a on the merry bit. Oh, no. I mean,

1:04:48

she's great. She does the job. That's

1:04:51

amazing. Alright.

1:04:53

Chels, do you have I have other ones, but Kjell's,

1:04:55

I know that you must as well. So you wanna

1:04:57

give us another one. Sure.

1:05:00

This is my favorite part, like the talking about

1:05:02

the book's part. It's been a delightful week

1:05:04

of reading for

1:05:05

me, by the way. Doing all my dueling romance

1:05:08

reads. Yeah. No. This is this

1:05:10

is super fun. I guess I had another one

1:05:12

that was kind of similar to

1:05:14

a question that devil. In that, it was,

1:05:16

like, another, like, heroin Duels

1:05:19

interrepted well, no. This one actually had.

1:05:21

The pride of lions by Marsha Canham, but

1:05:24

I think maybe I'm gonna do

1:05:26

something different where the heroine actually

1:05:28

is in the

1:05:29

Duels. this is Moonstruck Madness

1:05:31

by Liliana

1:05:32

Bain, one of my favorite.

1:05:35

Before you do this, do you have the original of

1:05:37

that

1:05:37

book? Because that has gifts oranges

1:05:40

with the horse and the you

1:05:41

know, and the Tom Hall cover? Yes.

1:05:44

I do have that one. Gordja. We'll make

1:05:46

sure everybody, when you look down right now,

1:05:48

you'll be able to see it. And then I'll put all these, like,

1:05:50

the original covers on the show notes I

1:05:52

promise. Yeah. That'll be.

1:05:54

It's it's quite pretty. So,

1:05:57

yeah, Sabrina Varek is the heroin,

1:05:59

and so if she had just survived Colotenmore

1:06:01

and come to England as a young team with like

1:06:04

her brother and sister and her

1:06:06

dad is a mark was, but

1:06:08

he's like ignoring his children and he's ignoring

1:06:10

his estate. So she is starving

1:06:13

basically. So she needs to take

1:06:15

care of her brother

1:06:17

and sister. And so she decides to become

1:06:19

a highwayman named Bonnie Charlie

1:06:22

as one does. Sneezing. Why

1:06:25

aren't they more high women? Well,

1:06:27

the funny thing to you about because, like, Sabrina

1:06:29

is already she's still a teen

1:06:31

at the beginning of the

1:06:32

book, and it's like been doing this for five

1:06:34

years. I was like, how small? She's a

1:06:37

fat just tiny little high woman.

1:06:40

Don't don't worry about that. Just --

1:06:41

Yeah. -- just people. We don't we

1:06:43

don't think about that. We

1:06:44

don't -- Oh, shit. -- how does people do that? Like, okay. I

1:06:46

don't know. We don't know. We don't know.

1:06:50

She had a growth spurt very early.

1:06:53

So she robs a party that

1:06:55

the Duke of Camaret is attending, and

1:06:57

so this duke is like a starchi

1:07:00

fur boating figure with a scar Chels.

1:07:03

she straddles his gold snuff box

1:07:06

and then threatens to give him a matching

1:07:08

scar on the other side of his face.

1:07:12

And

1:07:12

so a few days later, the duke stops

1:07:14

to assist people who are having trouble

1:07:16

in the road, and then he gets held up by

1:07:18

Bonnie Charlie again. So

1:07:21

Bonnie Charlie slaps the duke when

1:07:23

he gets mouthy and the Duke is

1:07:25

really angry at this. He

1:07:28

ends up setting a trap for her, pretending

1:07:30

to host a party in hopes that she'll

1:07:32

try to him for the third time.

1:07:35

And she does take the bait

1:07:37

even though, like, her henchmen got his or,

1:07:39

like, I don't know, man. Let's see. It's

1:07:41

kinda fishy. And she's like, no, it's

1:07:43

fine. But, yes, she's There

1:07:45

is no house party. Instead, the

1:07:48

duke is is holding a gun

1:07:50

on her. And then she's holding a gun on

1:07:52

him. And then he's like, why don't we fight with

1:07:54

swords, which is what happens when

1:07:56

you're holding guns on

1:07:57

people. You're like, for the student who can do this all day.

1:07:59

Yep. You

1:08:01

know what? That reminds me of and I hate it.

1:08:03

For meditation. I hate to interrupt you, but one

1:08:05

of my favorite scenes in all of movies is the

1:08:07

dueling scene in raiders of the Lost Ark. Or

1:08:10

the guy has, like, his big, like, swashbuckle

1:08:12

and sword. And Indiana Jones just,

1:08:14

like, pulls a gun out and he's, like, it

1:08:16

shoots him dead. And I was, like, I

1:08:18

like that a lot. So yes. Sorry.

1:08:20

Same

1:08:21

magic. It

1:08:21

it could have been you, Bonnie, Charlie.

1:08:26

It wasn't. So he he and he

1:08:28

literally says to her, like, no one slaps

1:08:30

me and goes unpunished. You

1:08:32

may not be much to look at, but you're a vicious little

1:08:34

fellow. And I think it's about time you learned a few

1:08:37

lessons in manners, which is hilarious. And

1:08:39

then she threatens to cut

1:08:41

the other side of a space again because she's

1:08:43

hilarious. Well, now

1:08:44

she has a sword, so can do a job.

1:08:46

Like, gosh, she's like, I'm that. Yeah.

1:08:48

She's she's like, remember this promise.

1:08:51

I'm gonna steal your snuff box. I'm

1:08:53

coming back for you. So

1:08:56

they fight he

1:08:58

stabs her, and then he's

1:08:59

like, uh-huh. And he unmasked her, and Chels like,

1:09:01

oh my gosh. It's extremely

1:09:03

tiny, beautiful. Bonnie Charlie is

1:09:05

a woman. Beautiful woman

1:09:07

that I now have to take care of. And

1:09:09

I'm like, gravity defies. Hair.

1:09:12

Of course. Yeah. And

1:09:14

he, you know, kind of becomes

1:09:17

obsessed with her. But something that

1:09:19

I think is quite funny about this. And

1:09:21

I I keep trying to make every Duels and

1:09:24

I realize that. But I think that

1:09:26

their Duels was a courtship and

1:09:28

he, you know, he didn't know that

1:09:30

she was yeah. Well then, so

1:09:32

I had yeah. I I see it.

1:09:34

And I I don't know. I just

1:09:36

like that one a lot. That book

1:09:39

is kind of

1:09:40

I don't know what I was gonna say. I like

1:09:42

that too. I mean,

1:09:44

he's not funny. So I also have one

1:09:47

that is a that

1:09:49

is like the woman involved in the Duels. Now,

1:09:51

I'm gonna call this more like a romance short story.

1:09:53

I don't even know if I would call it a novela.

1:09:56

And it was in a

1:09:59

an anthology called royal

1:10:01

bridesmaids back from twenty twelve.

1:10:04

So I was really like, this is not that old,

1:10:06

but, you know, in romance generations,

1:10:09

that's my grandma. So it

1:10:11

had three short stories

1:10:13

or novellas by one by Stephanie

1:10:16

Lauren, one by Galen Foley, and then

1:10:18

one by Loretta Chase. And actually,

1:10:20

I actually found myself wondering. I wonder if I

1:10:22

went back and looked. I wonder if the actual pub

1:10:24

date was earlier. Like, if this is just when it

1:10:27

hit, like the ebook or whenever. And

1:10:29

so in this anthology, the

1:10:31

Loretta Chase story is called

1:10:33

Lord loved in stool. And

1:10:35

in this and it's

1:10:37

really short. I mean, there's, like, the Duels

1:10:40

and then, like, Jably Raptor.

1:10:43

The main Chloe Sharpe,

1:10:46

her sister is you know, they're from,

1:10:48

like, the merchant class, so they have a ton of

1:10:50

money. And her sister is marrying

1:10:53

some European aristocrat. Right?

1:10:55

Like, she's the money is gonna save

1:10:58

the you know, his castle or whatever.

1:11:01

And she and her sister are,

1:11:03

like, you know, her sisters and her her

1:11:06

dress or whenever and they overhear

1:11:08

a bunch of, like, aristocratic jerks

1:11:12

sort of essentially saying this is

1:11:14

you

1:11:15

know, the only reason he's marrying the

1:11:17

sister is because of money.

1:11:19

And, you know, her sisters aren't broken. She's like,

1:11:21

I really I thought I'd love me. Right? And Chloe's

1:11:23

like, he he Like,

1:11:25

don't listen to those guys. And

1:11:28

she, like, gets her sister calmed down and happily

1:11:30

married. And then she, like, flounces

1:11:32

back into this, like, drawing room full of men

1:11:34

and she takes she slaps

1:11:36

the guy in the face, which I really liked.

1:11:39

The guy who is, like, really shit talking, Lord loved

1:11:41

in, and fee essentially

1:11:44

is drunk herself. Right? This

1:11:46

is like, you know, she's like been drinking really good

1:11:48

champagne all night because this is like a fancy

1:11:50

wedding. And she challenges Lord

1:11:53

loved into a duel and he is

1:11:55

like, you know, a full

1:11:57

of on we, but all of a sudden, this very

1:11:59

interesting woman is in front of him. And,

1:12:02

wow, who is this spitfire? Right?

1:12:04

So he says they

1:12:06

exchanged, Sarah, you would love this part, some

1:12:08

very, like, sexy

1:12:11

letters, right, where he says, like,

1:12:13

okay. Let me you know, send her a letter. I'll see you tomorrow

1:12:15

morning at seven or whatever. And she's

1:12:17

like, what are you talking about? I was drunk. You know?

1:12:19

And she he's like, no. You have to be there,

1:12:22

name your second, and Like, it's really

1:12:24

cute. Like, they're, like, seven little letters

1:12:26

Right. -- sexy letters. And

1:12:29

he's he tells her, he's,

1:12:30

like, feed murder letters. Sassy murder letters.

1:12:33

Just trust me and pull the trigger is basically

1:12:35

how the letters end. So the next morning, he

1:12:38

brings out this pair of,

1:12:40

like, very strange looking stoles.

1:12:44

And it turns out that they are

1:12:46

singing bird pistols. And

1:12:48

this is like a real thing. I watched this

1:12:50

video on like the Christie's auction

1:12:53

website. Right? And it's these like

1:12:55

now million dollar like

1:12:57

gold pistols where when you pull the

1:12:59

trigger instead, of a

1:13:01

bullet popping out, like a little

1:13:03

bird pops out and sings. And

1:13:06

so it was like a just a romantic

1:13:08

just her, and she is delighted by

1:13:10

it. And they fell in love and

1:13:12

live happily ever after, even

1:13:15

though, like, they And it was honestly

1:13:17

I was like, this is fucking cute. It was really

1:13:19

cute and these pistols are really cool.

1:13:21

So yeah, I was totally like

1:13:24

you could tell around Chase, like actually listed

1:13:26

the link. Like, shit, you know, I'm the authors, and I was

1:13:28

like, this is a real thing. Loretta's

1:13:30

famous for that for finding an

1:13:33

item in history that existed. It's

1:13:35

that the dance cart

1:13:38

in Lord of Skoundrels Yes. -- the fan

1:13:40

where people wrote the names. That's a real

1:13:42

thing. And that she discovered

1:13:45

in, like, some obscure

1:13:46

house in England. It was so so

1:13:49

anyway, it was super cute. And

1:13:51

I was, like, this is an adorable little

1:13:53

story, and it's available in eBook, which some

1:13:55

of these old, older,

1:13:57

like, you know, books really aren't. So, like, they

1:14:00

have digitized it, and it was, like, two bucks. And I was

1:14:02

like, that was like worth my two dollars to read

1:14:04

this cute little story. So that

1:14:06

was really it was

1:14:09

Also, these dueling pistols are really cute

1:14:11

and I just wanna know where the people are that

1:14:13

are making cool things.

1:14:15

Now Well, it's really cute. It's

1:14:17

really cute. I

1:14:19

get tweets and messages.

1:14:23

Probably every every few months from

1:14:25

people who have stumbled upon the

1:14:27

nude Duels, the topless lady

1:14:30

Duels, do

1:14:32

know this. So In

1:14:34

eighteen ninety two, two Austrian

1:14:37

noble women, Princess Pauline

1:14:40

Medernick, and countess Anastasia Kiliman

1:14:43

Fag were had an

1:14:45

argument over this Chels.

1:14:47

Here we go. We had an argument

1:14:49

over the floral arrangements for the

1:14:51

Vienna musical theatrical exhibition.

1:14:54

Oh, I told you seconds were wedding planners. We

1:14:57

called it. It

1:14:59

turned critical.

1:15:02

And they decided they were going to

1:15:06

to to Duels. They

1:15:08

the doctor now because they were women,

1:15:11

all the seconds had to be women and

1:15:13

the audience could only be women. Men were

1:15:15

not allowed at this stool, so the

1:15:17

doctor also had to be a woman who

1:15:21

was a happened to be a baroness. And

1:15:24

they all traveled to,

1:15:26

you know, took some time to get this tool organized.

1:15:28

This was not like tomorrow morning. We

1:15:30

need women in all of these positions. So

1:15:33

let's do this. And the doctor who arrives

1:15:35

said, well, I'm just gonna be honest, I'm

1:15:38

concerned if you fight with swords

1:15:41

and the swords go through

1:15:43

your the layers of clothing that

1:15:45

you are wearing, If anything

1:15:47

gets into the wound, it could

1:15:49

fester. So the

1:15:51

solution that these women all came up with

1:15:54

was let's just take our tops

1:15:55

off. So they

1:15:57

fought in skirts. What's

1:16:00

the exhausts?

1:16:01

Yeah. I mean, listen.

1:16:04

Pick no notes. I mean,

1:16:06

you wanna If we are a Duels it

1:16:08

is. That is clear. That's

1:16:10

so funny. Also, There's

1:16:13

another duel that I was reading about. That's

1:16:15

kind of the same thing. His name was, like, humphrey

1:16:17

Holworth. He was, like, a surgeon and MP,

1:16:19

and he showed up to the Duels and

1:16:22

the other guy's like, why are you naked? And he's like, well,

1:16:24

if you shoot me and the clothes gets in the wound,

1:16:26

it's gonna get

1:16:26

infected. So I'm not gonna

1:16:28

wear

1:16:28

a pleasant And the other guy is, like, why

1:16:30

don't we just not duel

1:16:31

this? What yeah. Well, that'd

1:16:33

be one way to get out of it. Right. I don't wanna duel

1:16:35

a naked guy. Well, I

1:16:37

will just say this. This is this is

1:16:40

you're gonna love this, Chels. So the

1:16:43

seconds, allegedly. Now here's

1:16:45

where it sort of all

1:16:46

goes. Into well, I mean,

1:16:48

as though we're not in a alleged plan,

1:16:50

already territory for being built into

1:16:53

alleged territory. No. This Currently,

1:16:55

the second fainted and

1:16:57

then the cries of all the ladies

1:16:59

because they they had both they both drew

1:17:02

blood. The second spainted at the side of

1:17:04

blood. Both of them terrible seconds,

1:17:06

by the way. Yeah. I

1:17:07

mean, that seems to be, like, the the only

1:17:09

job of a second should be -- Sure. -- stop the

1:17:11

doable.

1:17:11

And eight hours. But don't share it yet. Clean it

1:17:14

up. Makes sense. And then the prize of the

1:17:16

crowd brought the brought servants

1:17:18

rushing who happened to be men

1:17:20

and they were, quote, beaten back by

1:17:22

the baronast, the doctor. With her

1:17:25

umbrella, who as she shouted,

1:17:27

avert your eyes, you lustful

1:17:30

wretches. Oh my gosh.

1:17:32

I believe that's true. I do believe

1:17:34

that's true too.

1:17:35

True.

1:17:36

numbrelli baroness doctor. That

1:17:38

seems right. Yeah.

1:17:39

So if you

1:17:40

can't beat a man with an umbrella, what's

1:17:42

even the point? Point

1:17:43

of half. Why are you even at a duel? Yeah.

1:17:45

Now I I have one more to talk

1:17:47

about it, but Chels but Sarah, do you wanna

1:17:50

talk about nine

1:17:50

rules? It wrote a I

1:17:53

wrote a dule. It was the climactic

1:17:56

scene -- Yes. -- a dule. The

1:18:00

Well, if you haven't read this listen, that book is

1:18:02

very old. If you haven't read it, then I'm

1:18:04

I'm about to spoil it for you. Yeah. That

1:18:06

premise of nine rules is that a heroin kind

1:18:08

of makes a list of all the things she would

1:18:11

do if she were more than, you

1:18:13

know, what the world thought of her. And one

1:18:15

of the items on the list is a tenda And

1:18:18

the hero, there is this

1:18:20

is my first book. It is full of all the things

1:18:23

I loved in romance novels. Every trope

1:18:25

I could possibly have loved, I packed

1:18:27

into this first book as though I would

1:18:29

never write another book again. And

1:18:32

so over the course of the book, there is

1:18:34

of course like a kind of smarmy

1:18:36

villainous person

1:18:38

who makes a bet with the hero

1:18:40

that he can't win the heroine.

1:18:42

I mean, literally all

1:18:43

the hopes that you that I loved are

1:18:46

in this book. And Ultimately,

1:18:50

that that smarmy character

1:18:52

insults the heroine and

1:18:55

the hero feels the feeling and

1:18:57

says, pistols are done. I don't think

1:18:59

he says pistols are done, but basically

1:19:01

says pistols are done. They

1:19:03

get there. He has every

1:19:05

intention of developing. Or

1:19:08

no, he does not. I can't remember who has an

1:19:10

intention. But bad, the other guy

1:19:12

deloops. As the heroin

1:19:14

is screaming across of fields, shelves.

1:19:16

Perfect. I mean, like, no original ideas

1:19:18

here. She's running

1:19:20

toward them. The the villain

1:19:23

villain slopes. To

1:19:25

the side, not up.

1:19:29

And then, of course, the hero sees

1:19:31

that the heroine might get harmed

1:19:33

so he drops his gun and

1:19:35

runs to save her and gets shot.

1:19:39

And then You'll never guess

1:19:41

what happened. Amazing.

1:19:44

Yeah, I put a bullet in his shoulder, and

1:19:46

then the the professional love, I think,

1:19:48

is as the surgeon is trying to dig the bullet

1:19:50

out of his -- Yeah. -- right shoulder.

1:19:53

It

1:19:53

has the best time to do it. Yeah.

1:19:56

It's your mind off the pain.

1:19:58

Into a different type of pain. I mean,

1:20:01

just digging around in there.

1:20:03

It does sound terrible. I was

1:20:05

like, you know what? This really reminds me of something.

1:20:10

Exactly. The feeling, the state

1:20:12

all when you only can feel one

1:20:14

feeling, gosh. It just they all feel

1:20:16

the same.

1:20:16

Yeah. Like

1:20:19

pain. I just had a thought

1:20:21

and

1:20:21

this is I can't believe

1:20:23

we haven't talked about Hamilton. And

1:20:26

I still wanna talk about romance novels

1:20:28

because I have one

1:20:28

more. But I well,

1:20:31

can I -- Yeah? -- say something that I haven't

1:20:33

seen which is I thought there would be

1:20:35

more duels in more

1:20:37

recent romance Duels. Because

1:20:39

of Hamilton. Yeah. But that does not seem

1:20:41

to be the case.

1:20:43

It's harder to find a Duels a modern romance

1:20:46

novel than I expected.

1:20:47

Yeah. They seem to go have gone out of fashion

1:20:50

like dueling itself. Yes. Right.

1:20:52

Well, yeah, I think that's why I felt the same way.

1:20:54

Well, and that's why in the letters, in

1:20:56

the Lord, loved ins, dual.

1:20:58

They kept signing off your obedient servant. And

1:21:00

I had a moment where I was like, oh, did they write this after

1:21:03

Hamilton? And then I was like, oh, no. Maybe

1:21:05

that's just how you signed off at what you were

1:21:07

gonna do with somebody. Maybe Lynn

1:21:09

Manuel Miranda read read some

1:21:11

dumbass

1:21:11

novels. I think he read the actual

1:21:14

hamilton. Bad letters, but fine. Maybe

1:21:16

both. Duels a courtship? Yeah.

1:21:19

It's a special kind of nutball guide

1:21:21

though to, like, go out the actual dueling field

1:21:24

where his own son died dueling and

1:21:26

do some

1:21:26

dueling. Like, that's a part where it really

1:21:28

broke down for me. All that information. New Jersey

1:21:30

is a huge we have And

1:21:32

across the River. Yeah.

1:21:35

Strange. Okay. I

1:21:36

think because it was legal there and not in New York.

1:21:38

Right. It's not a There it's all these legalities

1:21:40

too. Also, we talk about the fact that dueling

1:21:42

was in fact illegal. Yeah.

1:21:45

But, like, in the seventeen hundreds, it was outlawed,

1:21:48

but didn't stop anybody. Yeah.

1:21:50

Chels, do you have another?

1:21:52

Oh, a book? Yeah. Yes. Yes.

1:21:54

So I guess I'm gonna circle back to the one

1:21:56

that I was skipped earlier because I

1:22:00

love this one a lot. So

1:22:02

my friend Emma has this thing

1:22:04

where she categorizes heroines

1:22:06

and this heroine falls into a category

1:22:08

called Emma Woodhouse experience is a

1:22:10

consequence. Thank you.

1:22:14

And that's actually, like, one of my favorite types

1:22:16

of heroines. So she's, like, a total brat.

1:22:19

In the beginning of this book. And she's

1:22:21

super unlikable. It's amazing. So

1:22:23

it's the pride of lions by Marsha

1:22:25

Cannon. And if you haven't read it, it's kind

1:22:27

of like a kingdom of dreams

1:22:29

meets Outlander, and I mean that as

1:22:31

both praise and criticism of them.

1:22:35

So this is a Spanish man, English

1:22:37

woman pairing set during the

1:22:40

forty five uprising. Katherine

1:22:42

Ashbrooke, the consequence

1:22:45

experiencing woman, is young

1:22:48

and beautiful, and she's a huge

1:22:50

snob and extremely careless with their

1:22:52

people's feelings. So she has

1:22:54

her sights set on this English

1:22:56

guy. He's a lieutenant named Hamilton

1:22:59

Garner. And he's a hot

1:23:01

headed. He has no stranger

1:23:03

to Duels. He kind of uses

1:23:05

honor as a guys to skewer

1:23:08

people and prop up his ego. So

1:23:11

Garner previously one of those Duels that

1:23:14

Garner previously won was actually on

1:23:16

Katherine's behalf. So she thinks

1:23:18

that he has feelings for

1:23:20

her and she doesn't know that for him,

1:23:22

it's kind of onanistic. So

1:23:26

she bets her brother that she can get garnered to

1:23:28

propose during a ball. When

1:23:31

she moved to approach garners, she noticed us that

1:23:33

he's really irritated by this other man. So

1:23:35

Katherine is like, I'm going to make him

1:23:37

jealous. So she decides to dance

1:23:40

with this newcomer unbeknownst to

1:23:42

her is a Scottish spy named Alexander

1:23:44

Cameron, who is the hero of the

1:23:46

story and her love interest. So

1:23:49

Katherine knows that Garner is irritated

1:23:52

by Alexander and she hopes

1:23:54

that by dancing with

1:23:55

him, she'll make Garner proprietary enough

1:23:57

to actually move forth and

1:23:59

propose to

1:24:00

her. This doesn't go to plan.

1:24:03

Katherine and Alexander coral and

1:24:06

kiss, and then Garner catches them

1:24:08

while they're kissing. So, to

1:24:11

avoid culpability, Katherine

1:24:13

lies. She says that Alexander

1:24:15

accosted her. And so then Garner

1:24:17

challenged Alexander to a and

1:24:19

Alexander is, like, are we really doing this okay?

1:24:23

And so they fight the Duels.

1:24:26

Alexander is less boisterous,

1:24:28

but he's a lot more skilled. So he

1:24:30

ends up boomding Garner.

1:24:32

It looks like Garner is about to die. And

1:24:34

this is actually, like, Gartner's villain origin

1:24:37

story. He's, like, a huge villain in,

1:24:39

like, the the two book series and

1:24:41

this is, like, the very beginning of the first book.

1:24:44

Because he's losing a Duels. Is

1:24:46

his villain origin story? Losing

1:24:48

the Duels and poor baby girl because

1:24:51

he, like, it's not really he just would love

1:24:53

Katherine. It was kind of obvious that No.

1:24:55

But it's the principal of

1:24:56

the gang. Excuse me. He's just like, He's like, this

1:24:59

this this guy is just gonna come

1:25:01

here and gonna take the thing

1:25:03

that I didn't

1:25:03

want. Yeah. Oh, dear. Yeah.

1:25:06

Oh, dear.

1:25:09

I'm so gonna be a villain for two whole books

1:25:11

now. Yes. I And

1:25:13

so yeah. And so Katherine, she was just

1:25:15

like, oh, I'm gonna start with someone and make them

1:25:17

jealous. And she's like, I'm responsible for

1:25:19

a man being mortally wounded. Specifically.

1:25:23

Is that a good thing or a bad

1:25:24

thing? I mean, it's kinda bad.

1:25:27

No. No. No.

1:25:27

No. just wanna know how she feel

1:25:29

it.

1:25:30

She feels she feels that she's just like,

1:25:32

oh, no. I didn't think this said -- Right.

1:25:34

-- I didn't think me lying about this

1:25:36

to the Duels when Start

1:25:39

any kind of consequences. Amazing.

1:25:44

God, that's so great. So the the

1:25:47

last one I read And I it

1:25:49

was really interesting. I read let me make sure I

1:25:51

was the right one because it's it was

1:25:53

dangerous by Jane Incrance. Oh,

1:25:56

a classic. A classic. And the

1:25:58

funny thing, Sarah, is I was reading this, is

1:26:00

I was like, I bet this is one of the dueling

1:26:02

books Sarah loved. And the thing that's

1:26:04

also interesting about this book,

1:26:06

is this to me a lot of

1:26:09

these early, like, Amanda

1:26:11

QuickBooks essentially. Right? I

1:26:14

remember when I I read them,

1:26:16

like, in real time in the nineties, feeling

1:26:19

like like

1:26:22

Baby Jen understood that

1:26:25

the they were really playing around

1:26:28

with some of these classic romance tropes

1:26:31

in ways that Chels, like, really

1:26:33

original. And, like, like,

1:26:35

on purpose, like, kinda winking at me.

1:26:37

Right? And part

1:26:40

of that was the way, like,

1:26:42

characters were named, like, the heroine

1:26:44

of this book is Prudence, Maryweather. And

1:26:46

I just remembered the time being, like, prudence.

1:26:49

Like, are we for real here? Right?

1:26:51

And and just like the way, right, that, like,

1:26:53

it sort of played around with this. And so in

1:26:55

this book, Shade knocks

1:26:57

on the door of the Earl

1:27:00

of Angel Stone in the middle of the night

1:27:02

because there is going to be a duel

1:27:04

the next morning between the Earl and her

1:27:06

dumb younger brother. So

1:27:09

Ed Ball, the Earl asked

1:27:11

her prudence to dance and they had

1:27:13

a grand old time and it's really interesting none

1:27:15

of some page because she

1:27:17

they ended up, you know, she's like a paranormal investigator.

1:27:22

And he's just like interested in her

1:27:24

methods and they had like what she feels was very

1:27:26

business like conversation. And

1:27:28

so she knocks on his door in the middle of the night

1:27:31

and, you know, you

1:27:33

know, tells that think the, you know,

1:27:35

the butler to get him out of bed and the guy's like, he's

1:27:37

awake. What are you talking about? It's three AM. Why would

1:27:39

he be in bed? And so she

1:27:41

convinces Sebastian, but Earl,

1:27:44

to essentially she's

1:27:46

like, look, my brother is young and dumb

1:27:48

and stupid. And

1:27:50

he thinks he's protecting my honor, but

1:27:52

we both know that nothing happened. So

1:27:55

I'm gonna need you to apologize to my brother

1:27:57

and avoid the

1:27:57

dole. And Sebastian's like,

1:28:00

excuse

1:28:00

me? And she's like, come

1:28:02

on, you're a man of the world. I mean, it's

1:28:04

so funny. There's a point where she's like, you're

1:28:07

practically you're practically

1:28:08

forty. So I mean, obviously, you're the mature

1:28:10

one here. I'd use, like, I'm thirty five.

1:28:13

mean, I have, like, literally had such a

1:28:15

great time reading this book. I can't even you this

1:28:17

whole scene, the same thing with the Marybelogue. Like,

1:28:19

it just starts with this amazing scene.

1:28:22

And she's like, but you and I both

1:28:24

know that you're not interested to me, and of course, he's

1:28:27

thinking, I am interested in her

1:28:29

why. You know, she's this it's

1:28:31

terrific. So she convinces him

1:28:34

and she's like, I'm gonna save my brother

1:28:36

by getting you to apologize. And

1:28:38

what's that? It's not gonna even cost you anything.

1:28:41

So he instead apologizes

1:28:44

everything and makes a mockery

1:28:46

out of her brother who could tip used to challenge

1:28:48

him to duels. I'm sorry you're such

1:28:50

a idiot. He instashes like

1:28:53

No. Thank you. So he's humiliating

1:28:55

the brother. And of course, prudence is like,

1:28:57

this isn't what was supposed to happen at all.

1:29:00

And they fall in love.

1:29:03

And it's so great though, but it would really

1:29:05

was, like, as I was rereading it.

1:29:07

This was one as I was rereading it, like, kind

1:29:09

of all came back to me. And I

1:29:11

just was so charmed by

1:29:14

the whole, like, woman

1:29:16

intervening. Right? In a

1:29:18

way that she thinks is gonna, like, solve

1:29:21

or fix this toxic bad scalability problem.

1:29:23

But instead, it just, like, ramps it

1:29:26

right back up. Right? Gosh. But how

1:29:28

many romance novels have

1:29:32

arrived at the heroin looking at the

1:29:34

hero going, why can't you just apologize?

1:29:36

Yes.

1:29:38

You know, speaking of things that romance

1:29:42

does over and over

1:29:45

to prove a point.

1:29:48

The wolves are never having to say you're

1:29:50

sorry. Perfect. That's right. That's

1:29:52

right. Put it

1:29:52

out of the t shirts. It's

1:29:55

true. It's like I mean, it is, like,

1:29:57

this fascinating thing because even

1:30:00

when no one Duels,

1:30:02

if nothing no comps sequences at all

1:30:04

from the Duels, you still don't have to apologize.

1:30:06

Yeah. Now that's just cleared off the books

1:30:09

and we move forward.

1:30:10

Yeah. here, I'll give you another from

1:30:12

an article I read in the Smithsonian about

1:30:14

how Andrew Jackson joined hundred and three times

1:30:16

and everybody knows he was a real dirtbag. Duels

1:30:20

were fought in defense of what the law would

1:30:22

not defend, a gentleman's sense

1:30:24

of personal honor. The

1:30:26

way the world has suffered for a gentleman's

1:30:28

sense personal on? Well,

1:30:30

in this particular article was all actually

1:30:32

about how it is about the American South

1:30:35

and the antebellum south how yeah.

1:30:37

We haven't even talked about American duels.

1:30:39

Well, they would all it was really interesting.

1:30:42

Like, essentially, the article be the case

1:30:44

that these southerners would only

1:30:46

would only battle each other because peak like,

1:30:48

senators from New England, like politicians

1:30:51

from New England, like wouldn't play their game.

1:30:53

So all of these, like, all these dueling

1:30:55

politicians I mean, it's, you know, essentially,

1:30:58

are dueling each other, and then they talk

1:31:00

about how you know,

1:31:02

when senator Brooks, like Kane's

1:31:04

Sumner in the senate chamber, they,

1:31:07

like, connected to, like, dueling

1:31:10

like the like the and I was like,

1:31:13

it was real honestly, it was really fascinating

1:31:15

and also, like, maybe it does still

1:31:17

happen and we just don't

1:31:19

know. Chels, I

1:31:22

mean, all you have to do is write a letter.

1:31:24

Like, you just have to tell them. Yes.

1:31:26

And then it's yeah. As long as you tell

1:31:28

them in

1:31:29

advance, it's like, hey, we're me. We're

1:31:31

me. It's also like, there

1:31:33

are little threats that's still living there's

1:31:35

in that sort of high school sort of after

1:31:37

me, after school, and we're gonna

1:31:40

fight this out. Oh, man. We

1:31:42

should talk about those specific duels.

1:31:44

Yeah. Right? Exactly. They are.

1:31:47

Choose here. I guess they do those those

1:31:49

kids choose their

1:31:50

seconds. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes

1:31:53

in thirds and fourth. Yep. Like

1:31:55

and then also in early earlier

1:31:58

duels, the seconds would also participate.

1:32:02

In the duel itself and in the violence. So

1:32:04

in in the way a school yard, if your

1:32:06

your friend wants to help

1:32:07

you. I said, why didn't

1:32:09

there also a sort of rule among

1:32:11

seconds, maybe not. But I've always

1:32:13

perceived that there was rule among seconds that

1:32:15

if the firsts couldn't do any if the

1:32:17

firsts couldn't do anything. Right?

1:32:19

The second was there to take to

1:32:22

do the fight. Now, I

1:32:24

think I think the idea

1:32:26

was that something was supposed to happened to the

1:32:28

first. Like, they were supposed to, like,

1:32:31

die or get hurt. Right?

1:32:33

And then what would the second do?

1:32:36

The seconds just mace basically sets

1:32:38

the rules of the

1:32:39

Duels. Like,

1:32:40

something that faces. What are the weapons?

1:32:42

Yeah. They they used to. I think

1:32:45

that stops mid seventeenth century

1:32:47

at least in England. There

1:32:50

are some famous Duels. There's famous tool

1:32:52

where the two

1:32:54

lords kind of ended up killing each

1:32:56

other and then the second spreader rumor that

1:32:58

the other second actually killed one of them.

1:33:02

So it's revenge. They're there for,

1:33:04

you know, light light revenge

1:33:07

on the back

1:33:07

end.

1:33:07

Yeah. Yeah. So you could yeah. You could have a second

1:33:10

kind of the wild card. But

1:33:12

it was kind of like everything that I read

1:33:14

about seconds was so interesting because it

1:33:16

was so far removed from what I thought they

1:33:18

were supposed to do

1:33:19

that. They're just basically supposed to

1:33:21

make sure everything is, like, up to

1:33:23

code. I mean, I still think going

1:33:25

back to your billiards second thing. It

1:33:29

still feels like maybe they did think

1:33:31

that if they fought with billier

1:33:32

Chels, that would be the safest way. Yeah.

1:33:34

Right. And that it was

1:33:35

just a lucky shot. Or

1:33:36

an unlocked one. He was just like, oh, he's gonna

1:33:38

have a really bad headache. And I was like, you don't know

1:33:41

how art this man throw that?

1:33:44

Go the other back to my j store

1:33:46

daily article, is it made the case that

1:33:48

it was actually, like, not just,

1:33:50

like, personal honor, but, like, an like

1:33:52

an economic thing.

1:33:54

Right? You essentially prove your

1:33:56

credit credit worthiness through character.

1:34:00

Right? And so it's,

1:34:01

like, it makes sense. Right? So, like, one

1:34:03

of the ways in which, you

1:34:05

know, these are, like, you know, and that's like

1:34:07

those top line aristocrats. But like so if

1:34:09

you're gonna prove yourself and your worth in

1:34:11

the world of the aristocracy, then

1:34:14

it's like if when all you had is your

1:34:16

honor as a gentleman, you have to keep proving

1:34:18

it. And so it could be a threat also to your

1:34:20

business. Or your your economic

1:34:23

interests, which then like also made a

1:34:25

strange sort of sense when you think about,

1:34:27

right, like, younger men you know,

1:34:30

in this case and dangerous. Right?

1:34:32

Like, he's a young man, challenging

1:34:36

an older man, and it's not just about

1:34:38

honor, but it's also about, like, I

1:34:40

am worthy in this work. It's also

1:34:43

packed mentality. Right? It's, like, challenging the

1:34:45

silver back or challenging the, like, the alpha

1:34:47

wolf.

1:34:47

Like, We're

1:34:50

all just animals. Chels

1:34:53

did I know you did a lot of research too because

1:34:55

I saw you talking about it. Did we hit all of

1:34:58

your what is, like, the thing that

1:35:00

you really were hoping to say and you haven't

1:35:02

had chance to talk about it

1:35:03

yet? I think kind of we

1:35:05

did hit pretty much everything. I think the

1:35:07

only thing that makes me kind of laugh is that

1:35:09

I wrote duels or miscommunication. Sure.

1:35:13

And which I do firmly believe after

1:35:15

reading about how seconds are primarily

1:35:17

supposed to be mediators. And

1:35:21

and so that's I don't know. People

1:35:23

say that they hate miscommunication in

1:35:25

romance, but if you just picture someone with a sword,

1:35:27

you can't hate that. Mm-mm. I

1:35:30

love it. Don't hate it. Don't hate

1:35:32

the player. Hate the game. Yeah. I

1:35:34