Normal Gossip - Holiday Bonus: That's Fourth Wing, Baby!

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

We've got a present for you from our secret feed vault! Rachelle, Kelsey, and Brandy gather over a bottle of wine to discuss Rebecca Yarros' FOURTH WING. If you'd like to get in on these monthly extra episodes, subscribe as a Friend or a Friend-of-a-Friend.Subscribe to our newsletter for writing from Rachelle, Se'era, Jae, Alex, and Kelsey, plus blog recommendations and secrets!You can support Normal Gossip directly by buying merch or becoming a Friend or a Friend-of-Friend at supportnormalgossip.com.You can also find all kinds of info about us and how to submit gossip on our Komi page: https://normalgossip.komi.io/Episode transcript here.Follow the show on Instagram @normalgossip, and if you have gossip, email us at [e-mail] or leave us a voicemail at 26-79-GOSSIP.Normal Gossip is hosted by Rachelle Hampton (@heyydnae) and produced by Se'era Spragley Ricks (@seera_sharae) and Jae Towle Vieira (@jaetowlevieira). Alex Sujong Laughlin (@alexlaughs) is our Supervising Producer. Justin Ellis is Defector's projects editor. Show art by Tara Jacoby.Normal Gossip is a proud member of Radiotopia. Support Radiotopia's fall fundraiser here. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hi, it's Rachel Hampton, the host of Normal Gossip. I'm here with Alex Tujong Loughlin, the host of Try Hard and producer extraordinaire. Hello, Alex. Hello. And I'm here with Patrick Redford, the host of Only If You Get Caught. Patty, what's up? I'm doing great. It's good to be here with you again.

So, now that the year is almost over, what are you excited about for 2026? This year, you have overseen a transition of normal gossip. You've launched your own show. You've helped Patty launch his own show. Are you going to take over the world next year? Yeah, I am tired. As we're recording this, I am counting down my remaining work weeks of the year. Real.

Because I'm ready for a rest. I went a little bit hard in 2025. Something I really appreciate about Radiotopia is that they don't pressure us to, like, always be producing and always be putting stuff out. And so I think I'm going to take a few months to just cook, to just, you know, let the ideas compost, process everything that's happened this year, work on my book. And then maybe in Q2 I'll come back. And I'm really amped to get started on future seasons of Try Hard and Only if you get caught. That is so exciting and also such an important point that you make, that Radiotopia gives us so much. freedom to take the time we need to reset between projects because I think at this point

we all are aware that constant production does not create the best products. And so I fully agree with you. I'm super excited for season 10. Oh my God. A huge season. This is coming out in 2026. Exactly. We're calling it all stars. And that means that we want to make sure that it lives up. to the idea of 10 seasons of normal gossip, which means that we want to put as much time as possible into it. And Radiotopia really allows us to do that. Oh, my gosh, I love that so much. Patrick, what are you excited for? Well, I guess maybe this is a selfish answer, but I'm looking forward to having the whole season that we made out there. Like, people seem to really be liking the first few episodes that came out. But we're just sort of getting to this, like,

larger thesis that we're building to through everything. So, like, I'm excited to just keep building On that, I'm excited to listen to the rest of gear. I had a lot of people hitting me up saying that they only find out about the podcast through the trailer on that show. So I'm excited to be surprised, honestly. Like, that's what I like when I refresh the podcast app and see, like, that a new app has popped up. I'm like, oh, like, song Exploder got them?

Like, that's crazy. You know, just I like being caught off guard. I mean, sounds like 2026 is going to be a huge year for all of us, which is why it would be so incredible if y'all could donate. to the annual Radiotopia fundraiser to help us make our dreams come true. If you want shows like ours to exist and thrive in 2026 and beyond

and help our podcast neighbors at Radiotopia, please donate today at radiotopia.fm slash donate. Thank you so much. Free audio post-production by alphonic.com. Hello and welcome to Normal Gossip. I'm your host, Rachel Hampton, and in each episode of this podcast, we're going to bring you an anonymous morsel of gossip from the real world.

Now, technically, you are listening to Rachel of Christmas past, because Rachel of Christmas present is probably drinking a hot toddy and watching die hard for the fifth time this month. We here at the Normal Gossip Team cannot say how much we appreciate y'all and the way that you have stood ten toes down behind all of us this year. So to express our gratitude, we wanted to share this steamy little holiday treat. Every couple of months over on the subscriber feed, I host our boozy book club where I make some of my colleagues drink wine and discuss esteemed literature, such as Rebecca Yaros' fourth wing.

We recorded the following episode from a hotel room floor at our annual defective retreat in August. It is truly one of my favorite memories from this year. And if you absolutely love this episode, which I have a feeling a lot of you will, consider subscribing at the friend or friend of a friend level. We just released our second boozy book club installment where we discussed Ice Planet Barbarians, which is somehow even hornier than fourth wing. I know. If you want to give yourself the gift of joy and smut for as little as $5 a month, go to defector.com slash normal gossip to subscribe. Merry Christmas, y'all, and a happy new year. Hello, friends and friends of friends.

I am reporting to you live from our company retreat and I am joined on the four of a hotel room sipping some rosé by none other than Kelsey McKinney and Brandy Jensen. Hello. Hi, so happy to be here. Hello, Rachel. Hello, hello, Brandy.

I'm so excited for today's episode, which I have corralled all of you into because I decided to read the Romanty novel fourth wing by Rebecca Yaros, which is very popular. And I think we all have a lot of thoughts about it. I, when you said you had read it, I was like, oh, yes, I devoured that in a day last year, have also read the sequel, remember absolutely nothing about what happened in it, because to me, it was what I'm looking for in the Romantici experience and what it provided is the feeling of having information sort of caress the outside of my brain without ever

settling into any of the creases or burdening me with anything that even remotely approaches knowledge. And it was perfect for that. It's just, you know, a sort of light tickle of the exterior of my cerebellum, maybe other places. I don't know. and that it was gone in the morning. It was a perfect one-night stand of a read. Yeah, I read the book specifically so that we could have this conversation in which I feel like I've served my country to do so. But as I was reading it, I was becoming more of an apologist for a court of thorns and roses because I was like, oh, I actually like I liked reading those books and I felt like the plot was better. But now that you're speaking, I'm like, is it possible that it's just been so long that I forgot what was in those?

books entirely. It is so possible. What a positive experience I had in the past. You remember only the Sarah Bellum tickling finger of Sarah J. Mass and not any of the other parts of it. I feel like we should establish both our Romanticie and Fourth Wing bona fides. So I will start off. I, um, Brandy knows this because she heard me say this in a meeting, but my intro to writing was writing self-insert Twilight fan fiction, which is why I I am here. This is why I am the woman I am today. So Romanticy is deep in my bones.

But I haven't actually... This is the first one of the recent boom of Romanty novels that I've actually read. Like, I never read a Court of Thorns and Roses. I don't even know what the other ones are that all have the kind of same cover, where you see these bookshelves on TikTok where all the books kind of look the same. And I'm always like, what is that? I do love Holly Black, who was an old... school Y.A. Novelist. Um, but this is my first intro into like TikTok Romanticy.

Uh, so I am a, a long time fantasy lover and then separately from that, a sort of more recent, uh, romance reader. And so I, I got into Romanticy as somebody who really enjoys fantasy. And I often find myself in the position of sort of like pushing my glasses at my knows and saying, like, I object to an inconsistency I've discovered in the magical system that this world is deploying. I think, actually, if you're going to be converting pleasure into the ability to, like, move objects with your mind, then I don't think that you could be able to. Yeah, so I, like, really, I nerd out on that aspect, and it annoys me. But I do, I find Romanticie interesting, just from somebody who's interested in trends in the publishing market, I think

that, so Rebecca Yaros is a great example. She's somebody who had written a very traditional romance books. She wrote military romance. She's like a military wife. And so she wrote, you know, romances where a woman's husband is like deployed and then comes back. I don't know. I haven't read any of them. I assume that's what military romance is. So you're talking about fourth wing. But then her agent was like, oh, there's a big interest in Romanticy. Do you want to, like, can you write of, can you insert fantasy into like the military romances that you already have been writing? And this is where Fourth Wing comes.

It's like a kind of like, she wrote it sort of on spec because the interest for something like that existed before her meeting the need. And I find that dynamic fascinating and like a little unsettling. That also makes a lot of sense to me because I feel like the romance aspects of Fourth Wing are much stronger than the fantasy aspects. And particularly the world building and like the way that magic works feels very weak and strange to me. And so it makes sense to me that she like came from writing military romances because at its core, this book is like kind of a military romance. My relationship with Romantasy is I don't really have one. I read all the like rom-coms. books like the Emily Henry's. I read those. My problem is that I don't like fantasy. I don't want to read about a battle. In fact, when I'm reading fourth wing, I'm flipping flip, flip, flip, flip through the battle. That's not my business. Goodbye. I don't care. I want, I want a sorcerer. I want a mage. I want, like, give me magic spelled M-A-G-I-C-K. Please. I want it. I need it. I love it.

I'm like, tell me who's dead and let me out of here. You said, give me the list of dead and dying at the end of the battle, and that's all I need. Yeah, I don't need it. I feel like we are kind of dancing around the plot of this novel. So I feel like we should get into. So is the novel. And you know what? We're going to get into that.

But I feel like I think this discussion will probably flow from us going through the plot of this novel. And, you know, pinpointing the moment at which you started flipping and the moment at which you started flipping. And the moment at which I was like, I'm going to start listening to this. in the audiobook form, because that is how I finish this novel, was on 1.2x speed on Spotify. When winter really sets in here at home, I start dreaming of a warm winter getaway. And this season I'm looking at visiting Riviera, Maya, and Mexico. There's truly nothing like stepping off a plane from negative 10 degrees Celsius, weather, and feeling that instant hit of tropical air.

So this winter, I plan to find a beautiful home on Airbnb right near the beach in Touloum, and here are some of my dream accommodations, maybe a plunge pool, some bright open windows, maybe a little hammock to lounge in. I can look for my ideal spot by using the guest favorites feature, which will show me the most love homes on Airbnb. And my ideal day on this winter getaway starts kind of slow with a morning walk down to the with a coffee, and in the afternoon, it's time to explore some notes and grab some tacos for lunch. At night, we would head home and relax and cook simple dinners, maybe have a little drink out on the patio. And for me, staying in a home on Airbnb instead of a hotel makes a trip just feel slower and more personal, like we're actually living there for a little while. It's exactly the kind of break we need from winter. It's warm, it's restorative, and a reminder that sometimes the best way to enjoy the cold is to get far, far away from it. This book starts off with our female main character, whose name is now escaping me.

Uh-huh. See, it just tickled right over. It's gone. Does anyone here remember her name? Violet. You're right. Violet Serengal? Yes. Violet Soren Gale. Soren Gale. That was close. Very close. That is one benefit of the audiobook. I learned how to pronounce all these names, which is very helpful, specifically with the female dragon's name, because it's spelled S-G-A-E-Y-L. And I saw that. Sagael. Segal. So this is about a society that has been at war with its neighbors for 400 years. And they're now at the point where every child is conscripted into some sort of service. Either you are an archivist or you are a... Dragon Rider or you were just in the infantry. You're just cannon fodder. Basically. I think there are also other places you could be, but they're not our business.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So Violet has been trained from birth to be a scribe. And then her mother, who is the general of the army, evil. Evil decides, she's mean, mommy for real. She decides at the beginning of the novel, Violet, I know you trained to be reading books, but you're going to go write a dragon, even though you have a disease that is very clearly Ailer's Donlo syndrome, which Rebecca Yarrow's also has. Self-insert, Queen, hello, I see you, and I respect you. I too want a large man named Zaden to love me. Not Zadden is the name of our male hero. I feel like my extreme joint flexibility could come in really handle a certain situation.

I'm just saying. What's funny though she doesn't even use that. No, not at all. Not at all. So Violet enters this military academy where she is literally, her entire thing is she's going to die. Because you have to be the strongest of the strong to be a dragon rider. And basically something like 40% of the people who enter the Dragon Rider Academy die. Yeah.

This book, I feel, really suffers from a problem, which is the main stake is she going to die. Yes. And the problem is there are 600 pages of this book. And also two other books. Also several other books. So you're like, if there are, I don't know, 1,800 pages of material to come after this, she's certainly not going to fall off this plank she has to walk. Like, there's no way.

I also, like, this book suffers, again, from this sort of world-building problem that you have, which is, okay, we're supposed to buy that this is a society in which parents willingly just gamble like on one out of four children are going to die in this academy. You would think at some point there might be some kind of popular uprising that says, hey, can you stop feeding our children into like the meat grinder of this endless war? Please and thank you. Especially since the Dragon Writing Academy takes children of like, you know, noble birth. They're like the upper crust of society and they are cut down just as easily.

I just do not buy that rich people in any society are actually willing to sacrifice their own in service to the cause. It's also kind of wild because not only is your like potential for death very high, the potential for death is mostly also while you're still in school to become able to ride the dragon. And I'm like it feels like maybe you could just like look at some of these people and say not you actually. you're going to go home instead of being like, I don't know, why don't you run up this gauntlet and see if we, we'll see if you die. It's very wasteful, yes. Yeah, a lot of wasted lives.

So many wasted lives to the point where I'm like, no wonder your military force is constantly needing replenishment. All these kids who could have been doing something else are all dying in the first 24 days of this Dragon Academy. So you get to this academy.

You go through your first year, which includes a series of challenges. The first one is you have to run across this, like really long bridge that has no railings and people fall off immediately. The second challenge is called The Gauntlet and it is apparently, my friend Danielle told me this, I haven't fact check it. So if it's not true, I'm so sorry. But apparently in describing the gauntlet, it's quite literally just an American Ninja Wars course. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It is. Also, though, the, like, so the first test that you have to like cross, you know,

sort of rickety rope ladder. Yes. over an endless crevasse to get to school. I feel like that would so be my story. I would be like, all right, time to start my adult life. Wee! Wee! Exactly. I also would have fallen off immediately,

also because you're holding a huge pack on your bag as you're walking across this parapet or whatever. So this is the moment. As soon as our hero, Violet, walks across his parapet, she meets the love of her life, who we don't know is the love of her life, but obviously is Zayden Riorces, who is her

born enemy because her mother killed his father? I think it's Zayden reared in. Okay. Because I will say a lot of the resistance characters have like vaguely Celtic names. They reminded me like the IRA.

I want to be clear that none of us know what this man's last name is and Alex just offered to look it up and I said it wasn't important. So don't be mad at us. We don't care. And I think you're right. All we need to know is that his name is Zaden and it's spelled X-A-D-E-N, which tells you everything you need to know about him. Is X-X-X-X-A-D-E-N. Exactly. And he hates her because her mother has killed his father because, I mean, speaking of an uprising, there was an uprising at one point for reasons that I don't think are ever fully explained as to why this section of the country decided to rebel.

But the leaders of the rebellion were all killed. And then their children were branded by dragons. And then they have to go into the Dragon Academy to either die or become dragon writers to prove their loyalty to the country. So that's how they punish dissent in this country. The thing that makes me feel crazy about this book in general is that every time you say something like that, I'm like, but that doesn't make sense with the rest of the book. Like, why would the dragons agree to brand people of the reasons? resistance. All we've seen of dragons in the book is that they just light people on fire and they die. Like, when did they become able to brand? Do you know? So, having read this sequel, but I've heard

the third one is terrible and so I haven't gotten around to it yet. Perhaps one day I'll be desperate enough to actually do it. But so the like the dragon council, it's, I am never more in my fucking element than when I can say look, what you have to understand is that the Dragon Council operate as a sovereign entity. It's called, so the

title of the series is like the Imperian Chronicles, I think, and the Imperian is the name of the Dragon Council. And they do operate sort of in concert, but ultimately independently, how

does this bore you? Kelsey, I love that you and I are so different and are yet able to love each other across this difference. That's beautiful. When you're saying those things, it just reminds me of like people, people who watch MSNBC on election night where what's his face is like this county, which is controlled by this. And I'm just like, I don't care, man. Like just tell me what you think is going to happen. But it's dragons. I don't care for them.

Um, yeah, the dragons also enter kind of late in this novel. I think it's like maybe, speaking of late, what's actually late in this novel is the fucking. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they enter late, but they enter sort of resoundingly with the twist that it turns out that you are psychically bonded to the dragon that picks you to ride them. And then those dragons also mate with each other. And so, yeah, yeah, there's a meeting. But, you know, like, we couldn't see this coming from across a vast parapet that you used to get to your fucking college. Zaden's dragon and Violet's dragons, be fucking.

And through that psychic bond, it's sort of like, it's like an only one bed convention, but an only one dragon mating. Yes, yes. And they're also the most powerful dragons in the army, to be clear. Yeah, I think one of the thing that I think we need to make clear is. is that Violet is the definition of, I think, like a Mary's Suit character. And that every single one of her flaws just ends up being her strength in that she has, again, Ailer's Domlo syndrome, which is like mixed ear ligaments weird and fucked up, which makes her unable to do most of the things that she should be able to do as a dragon rider. But nevertheless, she overcomes every single time and ends up becoming her strength because she poisons all of her opponents. she knows how to throw a dagger

she rises to the point that Zayden starts referring to her as violence as a nickname which is the point in this novel where I started crashing out a little bit it was very so I'd like to keep track of in action movies when they cast

like a very frail woman as sort of like assassin you know it's like the Galgado thing yes who is problematic for many other reasons but yeah so like one of her it turns out like she can't fight but because she's constantly in pain she's just able to like take a blow in a physical fight like her opponents can't figure out because she's just so used to being in pain that she's able to turn this to her advantage

and yeah she was supposed to be a scribe so she's like smarter than everybody so she figures out that like book learning can defeat you know a large muscular opponent which as as a book learner I can tell you in my experience no doesn't doesn't help yeah also everyone is trying to kill her but no one succeeds which I think is really again you've raised in a very important point of this novel which I think is the thing that interests me about the difference between romance and Romanticy, which is romance, there's a defined narrative arc. It has a happy ending. That's the entire point. With Romanty over a series of five books, it's hard to draw out narrative tension if you know that the person at the beginning of the novel is going to live through everything. It's like,

okay, well, how important can any of this be? Really? Well, so what she did in this first novel, which is also sort of a classic romance thing, is that she did introduce the possibility of a love triangle, Right. There was the other guy who was her childhood friend. Dane. Dane, who's like the son of her mom's closest advisor or something, who she thought, you know, that she had, like, carried this torch for for years. And he was incredibly protective in, you know, that classic way of like, oh, it turns out he's just babysing her. You know, he wants to be her father and Zayden wants to be her daddy. Yeah. Wow. Wow. say that one thing I do really have to hand to her is that Rebecca Yarras clearly just took a list

of tropes and then was like I can put them all in there watch me I will and I have to hand a tour on that right like it's like love triangle childhood crush evil man mating kink right like it's just like all of them and that is fun in a way enemies to lovers enemies to lovers, family feud, mean mommy, mean mommy, sibling dynamics. Yeah, I think Rebecca can get many points for me. I mean, I quite frankly respect anyone who can write an entire novel, let alone three, because I have many ideas.

And yet I will not write any of the transitory scenes that get you from my idea idea. And neither will Rebecca. Because as soon as the scene is, As soon as a scene is, I got to the point, especially listening to the audio book, I got to the point where I think maybe a graph before a chapter ended, I was like, next chapter's coming up. I can tell because she's like, and this is how this action-filled scene ended in next action-filled scene. And I was like, you know what? Hell yeah. I don't know.

No filler. We're literally all just gimmee to garbage about this book. It's delicious. It does have, in that sense, it's a very like TikTok friendly, quick cut kind of narrative aesthetic. It is very, it's ripe for adaptation in a way that as soon as I started reading it, I was like, so who bought the rights to this? And the answer is Amazon. Yeah. Can I bring us back to the fucking?

Please. I was just about to say the question with the adaptation, though, is like how dirty. they're going to get kinky. So Amazon is sexless. I want to start with the first scene in which they are, I don't know, kissing physically intimate at all. And the whole reason that they even get together, her and the forbidden one, is that their dragons are fucking. And it's hard for them to block that out. And I was just like, this I like, this is crazy. Like you're, oh, you've become incredibly horny because your dragon is having. sex and you can't figure out how to separate his horny from your horny like okay great i'm locked in sure that was a beautiful device i do i was talking to one of our colleagues about this and i was like i'm not going into this hearing romanticcy and dragons i was like will you assume they fuck the dragons yeah i also assumed i would be reading some kind of monster smud and i was like the logistics of a human fucking a dragon sounds very complicated so i was like maybe because

there are made of dragons, we'll get some insight into that. And the answer is no. It's all about the human to human contact, which is kind of disappointing. But we skipped a few scenes. Oh, please. How Violet and Zay didn't get together throughout this entire trial

and tribulations that she goes through. Again, enemy of lovers, very standard fare of Violet is slowly figuring out that this person who is her lifelong family enemy is actually a good guy and actually maybe her mom is on who's wrong and actually maybe the government

is keeping secrets from them and actually maybe everything isn't as it seems. Listen, who among us has not experienced a political awakening because of a hot guy? Who among us hasn't gone to college and been like, wait. Like, wait a minute. The government

is lying to me. But that hot man never would. He's so tall. He's so tall and beautiful. Yes, exactly. And then Violet goes through the whole gauntlet process of bonding to a dragon and zaden is like i want to save her from these people who are trying to kill her and violet has to go up against three other people because she wants to save a tiny golden

dragon who is a huge liability to the rest of the squad but it's so beautiful and perfect and who is that an analogy for who could it possibly be and violet's like i will defend this tiny golden dragon to my death which allows her to bond with the larger more powerful dragon who's like I like, I like your spunk kid. Like, I like your moxie. Yeah, the idea that in this, like, relentlessly militaristic society, like, actually showing honor and nobility will serve you well. Right.

It's incredibly funny that, like, the whole book, she keeps making the same, well, she's constantly making the same points over and over again, but one of the points she's making over and over again is that, like, honor is irrelevant here, right? Like, you can do whatever you want at any time. The only thing that matters is the quote, quote codex, which is like a book of rules. But the book of rules seems to only be you can't kill each other when they're sleeping. That's it. That's the only rule that matters. All the other ones are irrelevant. You can just stab people while you're wrestling. That's fine. And then the dragons are

like, no, we value honor. That's what we care about. Well, I mean, this does feel like a good lesson in how sort of inculcating young people into a violent ideology works, right? Is that you pit them against each other. You tell them that there is such a thing. as rules of engagement, and then outside of that, anything is allowable. And then you also get them to think that concepts like honor and courage and nobility, like, entail in what they're doing. And meanwhile, you're sending them out to slaughter innocence on your behalf. Yeah, the tensions between what morals, the leaders of this military society are actually valuing is very not clear. Because on one level, they're like, you can kill anyone you want during training.

But the moment that you're out of training, that's your best friend. And it's like, I was trying to murder him two days ago. And you want me to protect him now? Well, but this is where the background of being somebody who writes military romance, where it's like, oh, what you have to understand is that even when the system goes wrong, there are good people who are caught up in the system who want to make it right. One good apple. Like violet. The best apple. So the dragon that Violet ends up pairing with, well, actually she pairs with two,

which has never happened in the history of dragons ever. First time, threesome. Yeah. It's really like, man. But yet, no. No threesome forbidden for no reason at all. And then she bonds with these two dragons. One of them is mated to Zadent's dragon, which means made dragons cannot be apart from each other for longer than four or five days.

So that means that Zaden and Violet for the rest of their careers are going to be next to each other. And so this means Zayden is like, we can't fuck. It would be a mistake. And Violet is like, are you sure? Are you sure about that? As soon as that plot point came up that was like, bonded dragons can't be apart for more than four or five days. I was like, is this a Christian book? I was like, wait a second.

Is this a Christian book? And then, you know what happened? I went to the acknowledgments in the first line. is like, I want to thank our Heavenly Father. And I was like, I fucking called it. Absolutely called it. Listen, so much romance and so much Romanticy is inherently Christian, oftentimes, specifically Mormon. But I saw all of that before I got to like the big sex scene.

So I was like, wait, our Heavenly Father, we're thanking for this? Well, for this? We're thanking for this because it's like, it's spicy, but it's spice in service. to like eternal pairing, right? Like this is, it always cashes out as this kind of like faded. We will be together forever, right? And often there's like this device that comes in that assuages like a lot of our anxieties about contemporary dating, right?

So our like our dragons are mated and therefore we are somehow also meant to be together in the court of Thorn and Roses. It's, you know, we are, we're mates. something about being like a fay as opposed to being a human man that says like, no, once I have like locked into you, that's it. I know you don't have to have any anxiety about me ghosting you or like not returning your text or being ambivalent. Like it is, there's no sense of like ambiguity about these relationships. They are overwhelming. You like there's no sense resisting because this is fate intervening in your life and you are going to be together forever. And so if you do

have, you know, some premarital sex that can probably be, you know, be swept up under the fact that you, you know, the two of you have been like, um, overwhelmed by some sort of higher power, right? I think what I'm saying is like, you've got to hand it to her a little bit where I'm like, if this is propaganda for Christianity, like, I tip my hat to that, babe. Like, incredible work. I also have the moment of being like, Is this Mormon? And I don't think Rebecca Yaros is specifically Mormon, though it is giving shades of twilight. I think the thing that made it feel very similar to Twilight is the way that the female man character is the one who's really propelling this relationship of being like, the man is the one who's like, no, we must be logical and we must not fuck.

And it wouldn't make any sense. And I don't want to hurt you. And then she's like, well, actually, as a woman who has agency, as a woman who has power over her body, as a woman who's in control of her emotions, I'm the one who's saying, I want this. And I know you want me. So fuck that. And it's like, all right, yeah, sure, what I'm. Why not? But then it always turns out that he's resisting because he is worried about being so overcome by emotion, right? It's not that he's resisting because he's ambivalent in any way. It's that he knows that he, like, loves you so much. Oh, wait. That were he to just get, like, one little sniff, it would be over for him.

I'm just realizing that that's actually the fantasy part of this book. This is the fantasy part of this book. The fantasy is not the dragons. The fantasy is that you will have a man who is like so enamored of you that he realizes it will lead him to ruination if he got even slightly close. To be fucking clear, textually, it will lead him to death. Yes. Yeah. And yet unto death.

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What do you wear for that important, historic moment? What do you wear for that moment? I do love that. See, now what you're doing is dangerous. You're making me like Kate Middleton, and I never thought that I would get there. I feel like the two of you could hang out and have fun. We probably could have a very good time. A very good time.

Listen to the reheat wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things we haven't mentioned yet is that once you're attached to a dragon, you can channel their power, which means that they all have these different stignet powers. And Zadens is obviously controlling shadows because he's Zaden. And then Violets is controlling lightning, which no one has done for a hundred years. And it's like, well, yeah, fucking course. But how this comes up is that there are moments where they're fucking where she literally blows out windows because of her lightning power. Or people are like, there was a weird storm like two miles away from here in a forest. And it's like, oh, that was me coming five times.

And yet, that lightning is brought down by vaginal penetration. That lightning is brought down by a dick in a pussy. And can you come five times? which is, again, like, the Mormon sort of underlay of all of these books is that the height of depravity that they can imagine is a dick and a pussy, right? That is, like, that is as depraved, as disgusting as it gets. And I read so many of these, and I'm just like, I'm begging you, like, have somebody lick an armpit, like, something.

Just one thing. Like, please, can I just get, like, a foot in? a mouth. Can I get something? No, you may not. But let's see that these people are like some other form of perverse, other than like the least perverse thing that you can be a pervert about, which is dick and a vagina. He gives her oral sex.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Tell him of a pussy. What other perversion? Are you talking about? I do you find that? I want them to fuck the dragons.

Same. I was going to say, I find it funny that this warring society that has no indoor plumbing seemingly, like the logistics of where we are in history are not explained at all. Because they're in a castle, no one talks about where the toilet is at or whether or not they're doing chamber pots. They don't have electricity. Yeah, they do have, but they have mage lights. But they also have some kind of like anti-fertility drug. And I'm like, all right, y'all have gone to the point of birth control.

Do you have vibrators? What's going on here? Great question. Is there a vibrating? Crystal? What's going on here? Okay. Can I just say it to see? I don't need to be in the mic. Do it. At one point, somebody says, for the win.

Yes. That, I wanted to just like tear the book in half because like, that is an internet phrase. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. That was that was that was that was our queen Alex. Thank you, Alex. You have to chime in at that point. But that was a moment where I texted my friend and I was just like, why is this feudal society that's been at war for 400 years using the phrase for the win. And she was like, that's fourth wing, baby.

And I said, you're so right. It is fourth wing. This is really hard for me to move on from that. Because I do not catch this. Because, you know, to me, I'm scanning a lot. Because this is so prevalent in romantasy is that they will like pepper it with these like very contemporary idioms. in a way that, like, I have just learned to gloss over at this point, right?

Like, the big one that I, the one that I do notice is you'll get, like, a paragraph of text about, you know, the, like, physical properties of a man. And then you'll get he, period, was, period, so, period, hot, period. And it's like, they're typing it out like it's a Tumblr post. Yeah. Like, they are doing the sort of, like, you know, grammatical emphasis thing. And I'm like, I just, oh, okay, well, it's. good luck with your cauldron that you're going to next.

I want to go back to the kinks for just one second. So all of these books are very clear about why they're introducing things, right? Like nothing is introduced that is not immediately clear what it will become. It's all very transparent, which you know what? Fine. I understand this. But then they introduced the fact that her dragon is wearing a saddle. And I was like, this must be a kink.

I was like, it must be coming. But no, that was the one time I thought we were going to get a little. little bit of something. No, that's just because her joints are bad. And so she needs to be lashed to her dragon. Listen, we've still got, this is a five book series. So it could become a cake at some point. This, the saddle could be the Chekhov's gun of fourth-wing sex scenes. To be clear, I won't be reading the next four books. So I'm going to need someone to tell me whether or not there's a saddle sex scene. I feel like this is a good place to do a meta-commentary of, what was, let's do some roses and thorns.

Because I feel like we maybe shouldn't spoil the actual end of this book Because there's a really one thing I always respect about romance that is multiple books Is that the cliffhanger every single time really gets you where I'm like you know what If I was really invested in this plot line I would immediately buy this book It worked with me with the Ferrante novels Yeah Which is a completely Maybe the first time in history that somebody has brought up

Fordering in the Neapolitan quartet. If you think about it, though, in a way, the Neapolitan novels are also a romanticese. And they are. About having a best friend. Well, it's by historical romance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But so we're not going to spoil the end

because there's some major character death, which I appreciate in a romance novel. I do like that they're willing to kill people. I do, too. And they start from the beginning. Literally from the moment they're running across the parapet, someone dies immediately. And I was like, you know what?

Hell yeah, Rebecca. Let me know people will die in this novel. I appreciate that. that. Wait, that does remind me that the novel has a content warning at the front of it. Does it? Did your copies have this? I do not remember. My copy of Fourth Wing had like a block of text before the dedication that was like, FYI, people are going to die and fuck, but longer. And I was like, wow, I really could have seen that one coming. But thank you, question mark. Once again, you know, were I like a 12 year old reader, I'd be like, thank you. I am definitely going to

check this book out of the library. It really reminds me of the conventions of fan fiction. Like that reminds me of what you put at the top of like an A.O.3 fan fiction story where it's major character death or like the really fucked up one which is dead dove do not eat which is you just don't. Yeah.

I don't do not enter that door. I am making a face right now which are yeah. Yeah. Well I can't tell you exactly what it refers to. I know it references a specific fan fiction but if you see dead dove do not eat on a fan fiction, there's something extremely

fucked up in it. Like, not even in the way of like, oh, you know, like non-consensual sex. That is something people will tag or like rape, etc. A dead dove do not eat usually means something that you will never forget. That's not your business. Unless you want to make it your business. Okay. And then it will be your business forever. And because of the way my brain works, I'm not a fan fiction reader, but I am going to specifically search out. I'm hoping that we will continue to drink rosé for long enough that phrase will be wiped from my brain and I can save myself.

No, somebody is going to listen to this and just go to the dead dove do not eat tag on A.O.3 and suffer a lot. And the person is going to be me. I will not be held liable for anything that happens after this episode. I'm telling you, it literally says dead dove, do not eat. I don't know what else to tell me is. Sorry, you were talking about how we're not going to ruin the ending. Yes. Okay. And I was also saying we should do roses and thorns of this entire experience. Kelsey, I want you to go first because you texted me when you started reading this, which is I started reading the first page and I want to shoot myself. Yeah, I also texted Brandy that because I was like, I was like, you too are implicit in my death, potentially, and you should know. Okay. My rose is that I do think the first big sex scene. was pretty good. I was like, okay, all right, sure. Like, good sex scene. I'll hand it to you. I like it.

My thorn is everything else. I think that like there were so many parts of this book that I really wanted to like and just couldn't because I kept getting like yanked out of it by the narration. And like that's maybe a me problem genuinely. But the book is in first person. And the thing that is repeated the most is her being like, I feel scared. I feel like. I feel like. I feel I can't do it. And I'm like, I don't know that that's really how people think. And so that is my thorn, I think. My, I might to understand that roses are what I like and thorns are what I did.

Correct. My rose is that I read it in a day and I read so much romanticcy that I will just, I'll get 40 or 50 or 60 or sometimes 80% of the way through and be like, nope, I've reached, like, I can't finish this. It's too bad. I'm going to feel bad about myself if I continue to read one more page about this. And so it was like engaging enough that I read it in a day. And again, I got that, you know, brain-tickling sensation that I enjoy so much.

So that was my rose. My thorn is, yeah, I guess most of the rest of it. To be clear, I will be recommending this book to people. Like, even though I'm like, it's garbage, I didn't like it. I don't think it's successful at the things I wanted it to do. I'm also like, if you want to read a book in a day on the beach, baby, this is for you. So there are, there, I would recommend it as a reading experience. I would not recommend it as a book.

That's it. And these are. Fuck. Yeah. No, same. These are pretty, potentially two different. categories for me um i do think that mine follows up on that which is that my rose is that this is the first time i've understood the appeal of audiobooks oh yeah you have to speak on this because the

audiobook the narrator does dragon voice right i want to confess that i also listened to part of the audiobook because i had to drive here to ocean city which is like a three-hour drive and so i was like well i have a hundred pages left to this book i'll simply put it on and so i also experienced audiobooks for one of the first times. Did you experience dragon voice? I did not experience this and I feel like I'm missing out. Voice acting. Literally voice acting.

I mean, I will say to the point of the quality of the pros, I was finding it hard as I was reading it to honestly not start zoning out in the middle of a sentence because I was like, I know where this is going. But when it's being read to you at 1.2x speed and you're playing a little phone game at the same time. Optimal reading experience. Again, that's a reading experience. But also the audiobook was like,

I really respect people who can do that because the narrator is going from being like, and then he like plunged his hard member into me. And then the next thing is you hear the dragon being like, control yourself. What's also funny about the dragon voice? Like, I thought this voice asher was honestly quite good. But the thing that's the funniest about it is she didn't do voices for any of the characters.

Yeah. It was the only dragons. No, exactly. So you had no idea who was really talking to each other. And so it was a dragon? Exactly. You knew what a dragon was talking about. When a dragon was talking, but specifically only one of the dragons, specifically Tairn,

who is Violet's dragon, who is like the biggest, baddest dragon of the mall. But he has this, like, you, as soon as you started speaking, I was like, oh, that's Taryn. That's him. That's him. So that's Myros, which is that I finally understood the appeal of audiobooks, which I'm like, oh, it's nice to be able to read a book while doing other things. She's doing air quotes for read a book.

Not that audiobooks aren't reading a book, but sometimes, like, I've listened to, in cold blood on audiobook and that was not something where I was like I'm playing a phone game I maybe wash a dish but I was like I kind of need to pay attention to what's happening here I do feel like we've really missed a trick just technologically

that we couldn't record Truman Capote reading in Cold Blood Mandy that would have been incredible because the narrator of that audio book is kind of trying to do like a Truman Capote-esque thing not like full full sin but very much like trying to be and that it kind of like a mid-Atlantic accent in a way where I'm like

you know what all right sure whatever an audiobook that I have listened to before um always at the beach is Cole Kidman read the waves the Virginia wolf book and she does this like old English accent the whole time and I was just like that's beautiful to me congratulations ma'am yeah I love it too so yeah audiobooks a plus that's my rose my thorn is um that this was the first book where I think I actively was like, I can't read this. I need this to be read to me at a faster pace than my brain can actually go. Okay. See, I'm, I am, uh, you're built different. I'm so happy for the two of you that, like, the floor of your shame is so much higher than the floor of my shame. I want to be clear. I think I was really, really in trouble when I started this book because the book I read before this,

This was John Steinbeck's East of Eden. And I read it for the first time and I was like saluting American literature. Like I was like, wow, we used to be a country. Like this book rules. And then I came straight into fourth wing. I was in a graduate program for English literature. No, I know. I know.

I'm saying I think the direct juxtaposition of the two did not do fourth wing any favor. Also, to be clear, I read fan fiction. I think what I'm not used to is like fan fiction is straight to the plot. There's no filler. There's no world building because you're already in a world that you understand. And so I think the combination of, I think we all agree, not great world building with like the actual parts that I wanted to get to. I'm like, you're going to explain things to me and I'm going to be like, that doesn't make sense. And that's going to wash over me because none of that actually matters. But I will read some terrible things, Brandy. Don't. Don't get a twisted. Control yourself. Exactly. this was beautiful this was beautiful friends we drank a whole bottle of wine we do we respect we let people enjoy things if you liked the book good for you we also liked it in our own special and beautiful and evil ways and we will be recommending it do not yell at me for

my opinion on fourth way honestly please yell at me for my opinion now forth come at me I've read trashed and none of you people can can even begin to understand. This has nothing. I love, I am a connoisseur of trash. All right. You can, you can send me emails, but I won't read them because I'm too busy reading about minotormel cage. And the way that you know that we all read garbage is that we knew what she was talking about. I didn't need any explanation. Kelsey, Brandy, thank you so much for joining me. This was so fun.

I love you. Thank you for having us. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Alex. For the win. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to Normal Gossip. If you have a gossip story to share with us, that email is NormalGossip at Defector.com,

or you can leave us a voicemail at 2.6. If you love this podcast and want to support us, become a friend or friend of a friend at support normalgossip.com. You can follow this show on Instagram and TikTok at at normal gossip. Normal Gossip is hosted by me, Rachel Hampton. Our lead producer is Sierra Spragley Ricks. Our subscriber episodes are produced by J. Tolviera. The co-creators and Dowager Queens of Normal Gossip are Alex Dujan Loughlin and Kelsey McKinney. Defector's project. editor is Justin Ellis. Jasper Wang and Sean Coon are Defector's business guys. Alex Sujong Loughlin is Defector's supervising producer. Tom Lay is our editor-in-chief. Thanks to the rest

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