AFBH 14: Pages 206-210
.Episode 14. Quaan.
The Book of Mormon, and Covenant and Foamfollower are met by warriors from Revelstone.
http://fantasybedtimehour.com/episodes/EP14.php
###Pages
206-210, starting with “‘Hail, Rockbrother!’” and ending with “‘We must see Revelstone.’”
###Expert
Dave
###Intro/Beginning
The intro opens with Julie reading a book that doesn’t look like Lord Foul’s Bane—but she thinks it is, and tells Heatherly that it’s “getting really erotic” (01:59).
At 02:03 the book is revealed as The Book of Mormon while Julie reads an excerpt: “He had on a loose robe of the most exquisite whiteness, he was naked, also his arms naked a little above the wrists, also so were his feet naked, as were his legs, a little above the ankles, and I could discover that he had no other clothing on but this robe, as it was opened so that I could see into his bosom!” This is from “Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith” and is Joseph Smith’s description of ‘Moroni’, who Smith claims led him to discover the Book of Mormon.
Julie then flips to a picture in the book, which I assume is a picture of Jesus Christ. Heatherly asks if it’s “Atrium” (02:33), and Julie says no, it’s a dude, and then flips to what I assume is a picture of Joseph Smith, saying “I think this is Thomas Covenant” (02:36).
At 2:37 Heatherly notices that the book is not Lord Foul’s Bane. Julie is shocked, and says some friends of Heatherly left it in the house and that she assumed it was Lord Foul’s Bane. Heatherly asks what “an erotic passage like that” is doing in the Book of Mormon (02:56). Julie replies that she doesn’t know, but that they don’t have time for it.
We then cut to the usual intro, although some of it is filmed upside-down, and Julie presents what looks like a very tattered copy of Lord Foul’s Bane that has no cover, or any pages before p11. No explanation for what happened to the rest of the book is provided.
###Analysis of Pages
Heatherly is holding the damaged copy as she begins to recap what happened since the last episode. She says that they were on the river for days, and that Foamfollower offered Covenant this drink (p189) that Heatherly calls “diamond drought” (03:49), which she thinks is “like Everclear“. Julie asks if it’s a beer, saying that “drought is usually like a beer” (03:54). Heatherly suggests that it’s a beer that’s as strong as Everclear (04:07). Julie suggests Zima, and Heatherly says it might be like Zima, but strong (04:12).
They’re talking about diamondraught, described in the glossary as “Giantish liquor” (p476).
Heatherly continues with a description of Foamfollower giving Covenant clingor (p202) (04:19). She says that it turns out that it’s the giant’s will that keeps propelling the boat (p196) (04:31), and that he’s getting really tired. Julie asks if he’s getting hungry and whether he wants to eat Covenant at this point (04:38). Heatherly says that “guys on horses arrive” and says that they’re where they’re picking up the story.
She recites Quaan’s greeting (p206) (04:56), and covers Quaan making it out to the boat and rescuing Covenant and Foamfollower, who has slumped into exhaustion from the tiring journey.
After telling how Covenant pours diamondraught over Foamfollower’s head to try to help him, Heatherly reads Covenant saying “What good is being a hero if you don’t stay awake until you get contgratulated?” (p208) (06:25), and says that this is Covenant being “a whiny bitch”.
She then reads Covenant’s explanation of Foamfollower’s exhaustion (06:48), followed by a somewhat broken rendering of Foamfollower’s conversation with Quaan—Heatherly has Foamfollower waking and Quaan saying that times change and “we’ll be at Lord’s Keep tonight” (07:03). Julie is confused by this (as she should be, since it makes no sense), and Heatherly has no explanation.
Heatherly misreads “a litter to bear you” (p210) as “a liter of beer”, which she assumes that Quaan is promising Foamfollower (07:11).
She ends the reading with Foamfollower saying, “we must see Revelstone” (p210) (07:28).
Julie says that this was one of the more action-packed chapters that Heatherly has read (07:44), and asks if Quaan is Asian (07:54). They say that it’s about time there were some Asian characters, before recalling that the “hot chick at Pacific Bell was Asian” (08:13).
They ask why Covenant poured the diamondraught on Foamfollower’s head, which Julie characterizes as disrespectful (08:28), especially since Foamfollower had shown such restraint by not eating Covenant. Then she again criticizes Covenant for his remarks about Foamfollower not staying awake to be congratulated.
Julie asks what bracken is (08:52), but Heatherly doesn’t know.
Julie comments on how funny it is that there is a “Lord Mormon” in the book when they were just reading The Book of Mormon (09:14).
Julie asks Heatherly if “Saltlick Foamfollower was a legume from the Seaweed giants” (09:38), and Heatherly says that he’s a legate from the Seareach giants (she doesn’t correct Julie on “Saltheart” versus “Saltlick”). Neither of them know what “legate” means and Julie asks if Foamfollower is French (09:49). They think about this, and parrot noises can be heard in the background.
They keep thinking about this, and Julie keeps thinking it’s “legume”, although Heatherly corrects her. They think about it until 10:33, when Julie says she knows what it is—”a legume is a vegetable!”
They then ask for viewers to mail if they know what a legate is.
The most important aspects of the 25 pages they skip between the last episode and this one are the exchanges between Foamfollower and Covenant. First, Covenant refuses to be affected by Foamfollower’s laughter:
> He could not afford to be the victim of any more seductions. He had already lost more of himself than he could hope to regain.
>—p181
Covenant’s attitude is quite clear here, he seeks to protect his identity and is unable to see that it could be expanded by his experiences, only that it could be diminished.
Foamfollower reveals that his people had suspected that Foul was not destroyed by the Desecration (p182), and tells Covenant the story of the Seareach Giants: how they journeyed from their home thousands of years ago in an attempt to explore the world, how they have been unable to find their way back home since then despite much searching, and how their numbers are now diminishing, down to five hundred from the thousand that founded Seareach and built Revelstone for the Lords.
Presumably their homesickness has an impact on their fecundity, because clearly if they always bred at diminishing rates they would never have become numerous as a species—although, of course, in a magical world their origins may have been unnatural.
In telling Covenant this tale, Foamfollower also tells him a myth about the creation of the stars, that the stars are in fact the children of the Creator, who wandered into the sky through a hole in a rainbow that the Creator had made—a hole that was the work of the Creator’s Enemy. The Creator decided to remove the rainbow to deal with the hole, not realizing that his children had come through it, and so trapped them (p186). This myth is rather important as a semi-description of the greater cosmology of the entire series.
Foamfollower tells Covenant about how the Lords helped provide strengthened wood for the tillers of boats such as the one they were in, to ease the journey from Seareach to Revelstone, and also reveals that his will impels the boat (p196) and that Covenant has been asleep for two nights and a day. Covenant asks if he can help, and Foamfollower says that of course he can—referring to Covenant’s ring. Covenant asks if he wants the ring, and Foamfollower says that he is tempted, but when Covenant asks him if he knows how to use it, Foamfollower says that he does not, that Giants do not have such lore (p198).
Covenant then tells a story, which he introduces as being about culture shock (p199). The story is about a man who comes originally from a culture that quarantines lepers and their families entirely, and who moves to a more “modern” society. He contracts leprosy when he is older, and is sent alone to a leprosarium, where the spread of disease is halted, and he is trained in how to take care of himself as a leper. And he is sent back to his home. Where his community shuns him. As his home culture didn’t have treatments for leprosy, he at some level believes that once the disease has stopped spreading, he has been ‘cured’, and so stops taking care of himself as well as he should, so his leprosy does get worse. He comes to find that his family wants nothing more to do with him, and send him to the leprosarium again. But on the plane, he locks himself in the bathroom and slits his wrists. (p200)
At this point Covenant comments that it is much easier to commit suicide in some way that is not familiar to your culture, saying that Covenant could not slit his wrists, but that he could drink belladonna tea (presumably the common method for this man’s culture), and that the man lets himself bleed until he realizes that what he’s doing is just like drinking belladonna tea, and that he then tries to get out of the bathroom but cannot.
Foamfollower asks if this is why Covenant gave up telling stories, and Covenant reacts with the following angry outburst:
> “This Land of yours is trying to kill me!” he spat fiercely. “It—you’re pressuring me into suicide! White gold!—Berek!—Wraiths!— You’re doing things to me that I can’t handle. I’m not that kind of person—I don’t live in that kind of world. All these—seductions! Hell and blood! I’m a leper! Don’t you understand that?”
> —p201
Again, what Covenant is essentially saying here is that he’s not only suffering from culture shock, but that the assumption of any role that is not “leper” results in the destruction of key aspects of his psyche, and that he cannot accommodate any of the new aspects that would come from a different role, thus leading him towards breakdown and suicide.
Foamfollower’s response to this is to attempt to relieve Covenant of the pressure associated with people assuming that he can wield his white gold ring, by giving Covenant a sheet of clingor that Covenant can wear on his chest and affix the ring to (p202).
Foamfollower gets weaker and weaker until he is unconscious when Quaan greets them from the banks, and Covenant calls for help. Quaan and his men manage to rescue the two of them. Covenant is not castigating Foamfollower for being asleep when he says, “what good is being a hero if you don’t stay awake until you get contgratulated?” (p208), but rather making a wry comment about how exhausted Foamfollower is.
When Foamfollower awakes and tells Quaan that a Council must be convened, Quann tells him that there is no need to worry, that one of the Lords (Lord Mhoram) is a seer who foresaw the need for one ten days before, and that all necessary participants for a Council will be at Revelstone that night (p209). Foamfollower reminds Covenant that he has kept his promise to bring Covenant to Revelstone quickly, and Covenant replies by saying, “nothing’s that urgent. What good does anything do you if you kill yourself in the process?” (p210). Foamfollower doesn’t reply directly, but says that they must go to see Revelstone.
###Key Misunderstandings
Diamondraught is pronounced “diamond draft”.
Foamfollower is still uninterested in eating Covenant.
Covenant not assailing Foamfollower for falling asleep, but making a wry comment about his heroics.
There is no indication that Quaan is “Asian” in the text.
The name of the Lord who is a seer and Oracle is “Mhoram”, not “Mormon”.
Foamfollower actually asks for a convening of the Council, and Quaan tells him that Mhoram is a seer and has already called a Council for that evening.
Foamfollower is a legate, an emissary of the Giants, and is not a vegetable.
Foamfollower’s first name is Saltheart.
###Action Sequence
The Fantasy Action Sequence begins at 10:43.
The first character we see is a man wearing a black T-shirt and holding a plastic bag. He raises the bag and the words “Delivery Boy” are overlaid on the screen (10:53).
There is a cut to another man, wearing a kimono and with heavy white makeup on, and the words “Framing Geisha” are overlaid on the screen (10:58).
Another cut, and we see Quaan, who is wielding nunchaku in a clear Bruce Lee reference. “Quaan” is overlaid as text on the screen at 10:54. The next scene shows the three of them holding out their right arms and saying “how” (11:11).
At 11:14, Quaan says “Hail, Rockbrother”, but it is clear that the voice we hear is someone else’s dubbed in.
Quaan greets Covenant and Foamfollower initially with words from the text, but diverges with “Lord Mormon sent us. He saw with the Ummum and the Thummim that matters were moving on the river today.” (11:31). This is a reference to the Mormon claim that Joseph Smith used the Urim and Thummim to interpret the source materials for The Book of Mormon.
Covenant asks for his help, saying that Foamfollower is dying (11:37), and Quaan jumps onto the boat, shoves Covenant aside, and starts trying to rouse Foamfollower. He says something to Foamfollower that is ‘translated’ in subtitles as “Excuse me but you can’t park here. Super Burrito.” (11:48). Foamfollower wakes up at 11:57, and Quaan helps him sit up. Twice.
At 12:24, Quaan (dubbed) shouts “get the clingor” and “Delivery Boy” and “Framing Geisha” run towards them holding a long roll of plastic wrap (12:26), which they throw to Quaan. Quaan then wraps this around the surfing monkey at the prow of the boat while his dubbed voice mumbles. “Delivery Boy” and “Framing Geisha” then pull on the clingor/plastic wrap.
It should be noted that the boat is obviously already at the side of the river during this entire process.
At 13:00 the following scrolling text appears:
> pg. 207
>
> “Covenant groped
> momentarily for
> some way to help,
>
> then lifted the…
>
> diamondraught over
> Foamfollower’s head.”
After this we see a 40-ounce bottle of ‘Olde English “800′ malt liquor (13:04), which Covenant is holding and which he proceeds to pour on Foamfollower’s head—after first pouring out some of it (13:11). Foamfollower wakes up and drinks some of it, and evidently makes it to shore, since the next cut is to him sitting against a tree (13:33). He drinks some more and falls asleep, prompting Covenant to splutter contemptuously, “That’s a fine way to end a song! ‘Then he fell asleep.’ What good’s a hero if you keep passing out all the time?” (13:54). Covenant then takes the bottle, tips out some more of it, and drinks.
Quaan comes over to Covenant and sits beside him, accompanied by a loud gong noise on the soundtrack (14:13). He then stares intently at Covenant, who drinks and then says “What? He’s Saltlick Foamfollower, a legume from the Seaweed Giants! He hasn’t rested for three days in this journey [unintelligible] he took me here!” (14:31)—to no apparent reaction from Quaan, who keeps staring intently. Covenant stares back briefly, then drinks again. Quaan nods (14:40), then he and Covenant nod in time until Quaan touches his forehead to Covenant’s (14:45). Covenant then starts crying, and keeps drinking.
We then see “Delivery Boy” and “Framing Geisha” taking care of Foamfollower, who apologizes to Quaan for being sleepy. Quaan (still dubbed) says “I see you. Do not be concerned. Revelstone is near.” (15:17) Foamfollower says that they must get to the Council of the Lords, and Quaan replies, “don’t worry, the Council is set up. They’re going to have little doilies, and place settings, and tables and chairs and little [dust balls?]—anything you like, you know, it’s all sorts of fun. It is the Council after all, you know, ha ha ha, well, that is the Council.” (15:41)
Foamfollower says that that is well, that these are troubled times, terrible purposes are abroad (15:49). “Framing Geisha” approaches him and says (dubbed) “So we have seen, Saltlick Foamfollower, you have done many great deeds, and I will write a story about them, and then I will give you many many pints of ale, and you will make sweet, sweet love to me, hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee. Ooooweeeoooweeeeooweee…” (16:04)
The next scene is of Foamfollower and Covenant laughing and saying, “off to Revelstone!”, followed by a sepia-toned scene of the two of them horsing around. This starts at 16:21 and ends with them walking away together at 17:01.
The Fantasy Action Sequence ends at 17:01
###Expert
The expert is Dave, who appears on screen at 17:15. He is wearing the expert jacket. He has read Lord Foul’s Bane 25 times (17:24) and understood it every time (17:38).
Heatherly tells Dave that he smells good (17:44) and asks him what he’s wearing. He attributes the scent to the expert jacket. Julie says he smells like brains (17:59), at which point he bursts into laughter.
Julie then says that he really does smell like brains because he works at the NASA Research Center (18:13), which he agrees is true.
Heatherly asks him if the character of Thomas Covenant is more like an astronaut or an eskimo (18:23). Dave answers that he’s more like an astronaut (18:32), because “he’s such a pioneer”.
Julie asks if Quaan’s group and the Council of the Lords are in China or Japan (or “something like that”) (18:51). Dave looks distinctly unimpressed with this line of questioning, while Julie, Heatherly, and Cameraman Jenn start arguing about which Asian countries are most likely to be the “right answer”. Dave eventually gets to say, “they’re from the Land” (19:28).
Heatherly then reads the segment from p209 that she left out in the reading/analysis, in which Quaan explains that Lord Mhoram (which Heatherly pronounces “Mormon”) is a seer, and Julie asks what’s up with Lord Mormon (20:05). Dave explains that they’re not Mormons, but doesn’t really get anywhere as Julie and Heatherly start to speculate about whether Lord Foul’s Bane was written before The Book of Mormon and could be some kind of founding document.
Julie asks why Foamfollower, exhausted from powering the boat with is own will, “didn’t just eat Thomas Covenant” (20:42). Dave’s answer is that Foamfollower can’t eat Covenant because Covenant is the reason the giant is there. He also explains that giants in the Land don’t eat people.
The next question concerns why the people in the Land don’t just call clingor “Saran wrap” or “cling wrap”, and why they treat it like a special thing. Dave says that it’s not just cling wrap, since they were able to pull a boat with it, but Julie says that in the action sequence, it “totally looked like cling wrap to me” (21:43).
Julie reads from what she calls an erotic part of the book: “Ahead, the plateau now appeared nearly a league wide, and on its west the mountains stood erect as if they were upright in pride” (p208) (21:58). Dave points out that this passage actually does refer to mountains, which are standing up.
They ask why Covenant poured the diamond drought [sic] on Covenant’s head, and Dave explains (without correcting their pronunciation) that it is like a powerful liquid that revives and gives strength (22:51). They ask him if it’s like MGD, or Everclear, or High Life, or Zima, or Red Bull, or Red Bull and Vodka. They argue with each other as Dave tries to give his answer that it’s a powerful substance that Covenant (rightly) thought would help Foamfollower.
They start chart-writing at 23:42, on the topic of “What do you think the Land looks like from outer space?”
Chart-writing ends at 24:15.
Julie’s chart (24:18) shows Pacific Bell, the Soulsease River (which is so big you can see it from outer space), Soaring Wood Helvin [sic], Stones Down [sic], the ranynin [sic], Kevin’s Watch (a gigantic staircase), Uranus, and “the Land 1 shuttle”.
Heatherly’s chart (24:53) shows a view from outer space that’s been zoomed in “a little bit”. It features mountains that are standing erect (naturally, these are phaillic in aspect), Kevin’s Watch, Soaring Woodhelven, and the ranynin [sic].
Dave’s chart (25:27) shows a large skull, which Dave says represents Thomas Covenant’s disease, as the Land is a metaphor. Around the skull are fear, loathing, self-hatred, cowardice and weakness, all things that Covenant has to challenge. He has wild magic situated at the eyes of the skull, which he says are not eyes but rings. (His chart also features what appears to be a space shuttle somewhere in orbit around this skull.)
The “post-coital” segment begins at 26:33.
Heatherly says her favorite part was when Covenant and Foamfollower were all chummy and went off to see “Raven… Revel… whateverstone” (27:05).
Julie says her favorite part was when they found out the giant wasn’t going to eat Thomas Covenant (27:20). They thank Dave for clearing that up.
The end credits feature out-takes of Quaan messing up and messing around with the nunchaku.
###Words Defined
Bracken: A large fern. (Not defined in the episode, but Julie asks.)
Legate: An emissary, most often papal. (Not defined in the episode, but Julie asks.)
###Firsts
First appearance of damaged copy of Lord Foul’s Bane, 03:14
First mention of “Lord Mormon”, 09:10
First appearance of Quaan, 11:00
18 Oct 2006 at 14:19
It should also be noted that the buddy music at the end of the action sequence was the theme song from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father