"Music explains itself. It is the road and the map that shows the road."
"Can you explain how music works without using music?"
That brought me up short.

"The majority of important things cannot be said outright," Elodin said. "They cannot be made explicit. They can only be implied." He looked... around the lecture hall. "Name something that cannot be explained."
...
"Naming?" Fenton asked.
"That is a cheap answer Re'lar," Elodin said with a hint of reproach. "But you correctly anticipate the theme of my lecture so we will let it slide." He pointed at me.
"There isn't anything that can't be explained," I said firmly. "If something can be understood, it can be explained. A person might not be able to do a good job of explaining it. But that just means it's hard, not that it's impossible."
Elodin held up a finger. "Not hard or impossible. Merely pointless. Some things can only be inferred." He gave me an infuriating smile. "By the way, your answer should have been music."
"Music explains itself," I said. "It is the road and it is the map that shows the road. It is both together."
"But can you explain how music works?" Elodin asked.
"Of course," I said. Though I wasn't sure of any such thing.
"Can you explain how music works without using music?"
That brought me up short.

...he added a small, frightened silence to the larger, hollow one. They made an alloy of sorts, a harmony.
"...and the final ring was without name."

...my mind used the first door [the door of sleep] to numb the pain. The wound was covered until the proper time for healing could come. In self-defense, a good portion of my mind simply stopped working - went to sleep, if you will.
Of course I played. It was my only solace.
Eventually I could play from when I woke until the time I slept.
I began to play something other than songs... I would play until I got the feeling right.
I remember spending three whole days trying to capture Wind Turning a Leaf.
Somewhere in the third month, I stopped looking outside and started looking inside for things to play.

He looked at me. His dark eyes steadied me somewhat. Slowed the storm inside me. "Aerlevsedi," he said. "Say it."
"What?" Simmon said somewhere in the distant background. "Wind?"
"Aerlevsedi" Elodin repeated patiently, his dark eyes intent upon my face.
"Aerlevsedi," I said numbly.
...
His eyes caught mine. The numbness faded, but the storm still turned inside my head. Then Elodin's eyes changed. He stopped looking toward me and looked into me. ... He leaned forward and his lips brushed my ear. I felt his breath. He spoke... and the storm stilled. I found a place to land."

"With my lute back in my hands, the rest of my life slid easily back into balance.

"Offstage I worry and sweat. Onstage I am calm as a windless winter night."

"What is the purpose of the Lethani?" Tempi asked.
"To give us a path to follow?" I replied.
"No," Tempi said sternly. "The Lethani is not a path."
"What is the purpose of the Lethani, Tempi?"
"To guide us in our actions. By following the Lethani, you act rightly."
"Is this not a path?"
"No. The Lethani is what helps us choose a path."

1. Controlling the Narrative Around Kendrick’s Silence - From the release of Push Ups until Euphoria, Drake was doing great manipulating public perception. ‘Dropping’ Push Ups and then hitting a back to back with Taylor Made was a great move. It pissed Kendrick off, showed how low Drake was willing to go, and made people scrutinize Kendrick for not responding. Pair that with his constant trolling on IG and Drake had people looking at Kendrick worse for not dropping within a week than they did at Drake for not dropping within three. Combine that with having his team push the AI Kendrick song as real for days alongside his other antics and he was up in most people’s eyes for over two weeks.
2. Great Rapping - I’ve always been on Drake for his inconsistency when it come to his rapping quality on his recent albums. Way I’ve seen it he’s an A student who consistently turns in C+ songs because he knows he can get away with it. But every single project he’ll come out with at least one song that reminds me that when Drake is on he’s a top tier MC. With diss tracks, Drake never has that dip in quality. Look at his catalogue. Back to Back, Duppy Freestyle, Family Matters. Except for Charged Up (and a track from this beef I’ll be getting to in a later section) Drake hasn’t released a bad diss track that I can remember. He did a lot of stuff that I really loved here. He absolutely beat Kendrick when it came to the MJ/Prince flips. He consistently had double and triple entendres throughout his best songs and generally didn’t feel overwhelmed or outmatched from a solely lyrical perspective against another all timer. While I expected him to cook, Drake surprised a lot of people with how good he was here.
3. Making the 20v1 Narrative - Drake was smart when it came to how he played this (At least initially but we’ll get back to that). He fed into the Thanos narrative really well on Push Ups and demonstrated exactly why the vast majority of the rappers dissing him waited until someone like Kendrick was leading the charge to say anything about Drake. It really felt like he was taking on the industry by himself and that gosh darn it he was holding his own at worst and winning in the eyes of a lot of people. He made sure to address everyone who came for him on Push Ups and while he didn’t destroy anyone’s career or anything, they were all solid shots and he definitively put himself in the lead.
4. Moments - Drake had a lot of iconic moments throughout the beef. Whether it was telling Metro to shut his hoe ass up and play some drums or crushing the GKMC van or even the first moments when AI Pac and Snoop hopped on Taylor Made, there’s a lot of stuff that got people talking on Drake’s end. A lot of these moments are going to be talked about for years to come and even if not on a wider scale, members of his fanbase will appreciate them for decades to come. Creating moments is one of the most important strategies when having a battle in this day and age. Virality is oftentimes the judgment by which outsiders will judge the beef by when the credits roll.
5. Underhandedness - While it might not seem like a positive, rap beef is rap beef. Lying, low blows and smear campaigns aren’t just accepted but encouraged. You and your opponent are essentially doing your best to try and ruin the other person’s image as much as possible and Drake showed that if nothing else he had the stomach to do whatever it takes to piss of Kendrick and play to the crowd. AI Tupac, baiting Kendrick by mentioning Whitney, making fun of Kendrick for being “abused” etc. While the success of these tactics varied MASSIVELY, I appreciated the fact that Drake showed that for him all restraints were off from the get go.
6. Keeping a few consistent Narratives - Now Drake picked up and put down a lot of angles throughout this beef but he stuck to his guns throughout the latter half on two things, Whitney was cheating on Kendrick and that Kendrick was an abuser. And while he never really got those narratives to stick as much as the ones levied against him, they’re still out there in the public consciousness and he kept the story consistent from Family Matters to the Heart Part 6. If nothing else he kept the allegations in people’s mind and caused people to question Kendrick’s character more.

1. Overplaying the 20v1 Narrative - Look it was pretty obvious based on the music video and the teaser at the end of Push Ups that Family Matters was at the very least conceptualized before the release of Push Ups. While there were a few modifications like the whole “Nigga I said it I know that you’re mad”, this track would have been thought up while We Still Don’t Trust You was fresh in Drakes mind. As a result he played into the 20v1 narrative heavily. However by the time of Family Matters actually releasing, the only person who responded to Push Ups other than Kendrick was Rick Ross. Euphoria and 6:16 in LA had just dropped and it was pretty clear now that Kendrick was the main threat and who Drake needed to be worried about. Think about how many people were calling Drake Thanos and talking about him taking on the industry after Push Ups released vs in the lead up to Family Matters. He did not need to waste the best beat on Family Matters dissing A$AP fucking Rocky.
2. Underestimating Kendrick - Look let’s be honest for a second. Family Matters was the red button. It had a music video, Got teased on Push Ups, Drake called the beef twice in the second verse plus he announced his leave, and the Heart Part 6 mostly stuck to the same digs at Kendrick. If Drake still had a red button, the Heart Part 6 never gets dropped and we’re all better for it. The issue is that when Drake tried to 8 Mile himself by predicting Kendrick taking the pedo angle on Taylor Made, Drake didn’t actually have a decent response set up as we saw, he was just hoping the nigga would scrap the idea and use something else since he thought mentioning it first would take the sting out of it. When Kendrick predicted Drake saying stuff about his family on Euphoria, it’s because he had something prepared if he did. Drake figured that Kendrick was trying to do the same thing as him and get ahead of the familial problems angle without having a decent response if it went there which is why he still banked on Family Matters being enough. He had no real plan for what to do if Family Matters didn’t kill Kendrick and he certainly didn’t have one for what to do if Kendrick dropped 20 minutes later and overshadowed his release.
3. Making his lies too obvious - Look, this is a rap battle not a court room. The vast majority of claims made on either side are made by someone who has all the motivation in the world to lie about their opponent and isn’t required to give any evidence. Unverified claims are the backbone of most diss tracks. And I’m going to assume a decent amount of those are lies. However the problem Drake had throughout this beef, especially on his last two tracks is that he didn’t just make claims that are unverified but impossible to disprove, he made a bunch of claims that anybody with google or common sense can prove are straight up lies. Drake calling Kendrick an abuser can’t ever be truly disproven, nor can Kendrick saying Drake is a diaper sniper. But Kendrick not giving back to Compton is an easily searchable lie. So is Baby Keem writing Kendrick’s best stuff considering he wasn’t an adult for four of his five studio albums. So is Kendrick not having gang ties. So is Kendrick being molested on Mother I Sober. And as of a couple days ago so is Drake planting the evidence from the cover art of Meet the Grahams and of the secret daughter. A lot of what Kendrick has said is similarly unverified and unreliable but almost none of it is definitively without a shadow of a doubt proven to be false. Now that doesn’t make it true in the slightest but it does make Drake look goofy when he’s talking about all his stuff being facts when he gets caught definitively lying so often. If you’re going to lie on someone, make sure it can’t be debunked.
4. Failing to Consider Public Perception - Drake has always been a very controversial figure in Hip Hop. Whether it be in the early days where people were after him for being too lightskin or too soft or the present where he’s being lambasted for a variety of reasons (some more/less valid than others), he’s never been universally liked at least as a person. Drake is no stranger to controversy and has moved pretty suspiciously both behind the scenes and to our faces. It’s safe to say that while way more people love than hate Drake, he’s polarizing in a way Kendrick isn’t. Prior to Like That the worst thing anyone really said about Kendrick was that they weren’t fans of his music. So when he comes out and says stuff about Drake, it seems more real because Kendrick has no real marks on his credibility the way Drake does. Furthermore when Kendrick alleges that Drake has a secret daughter or likes kids, there’s a lot of heavily publicized behavior of Drake’s that doesn’t confirm but does lend credence to the allegations in a way Kendrick’s doesn’t. Now obviously Drake has a much more public personal life than Kendrick and for all we know the latter actually is a monster behind closed doors while Drake just got caught in a series of unfortunate events. But when one party is already controversial and has a history of consistently weird behavior with underage girls, has a well documented record of promiscuity, and already got one kid exposed in a rap beef and the other has a rather spotless public image as well as nothing supporting the DV case but an allegation from 10+ years ago that got no attention from any major media outlets and that had a lot of pretty obvious holes, the public is a lot more likely to believe one crime happened over the other.
5. The Heart Part 6 - It seems to age worse literally every day it’s out at this point. It’s probably the first or second most poorly received track released since the start of this conflict and my personal least favorite. The big reveal of him secretly manipulating Kendrick sounded like bullshit when it first dropped. If he had the proof, he could have just made it the cover art instead of the Dave Free comment (if it was audio he could have sampled it). He could have won right there. He could have posted it on his story instead of just repeating ‘I don’t have a daughter’ in the face of Meet the Grahams. Anything instead of let two extremely well received diss tracks drop on his head and let a record breaking song come out saying he doesn’t go easy on the young ones. Even if he were telling the truth he’d look like a total goober not a war general. But with everything that came to light with that EbonyPrince2k24 account it’s now a fact Drake lied about planting the evidence and even Akademiks corroborated that. He also came with zero new evidence of his claims on Family Matters which on its own wouldn’t matter since, again, it’s a rap battle. But it rings pretty hollow when he’s seen as less reliable as Kendrick already by the public and he himself is asking for proof from Kendrick and claiming that “All [his] shit is facts”. Probably one of the worst things he did here was also how he defended himself from the allegations of being a baby bandit. A diaper sniper. Catching a bad case of “Teenage Fever”. Being P. Drizzy if you will. I mean aside from all the weird stuff about Kendrick hating child molesters because he was molested as a child (which would have been a bad angle even if it wasn’t easily disprovable), saying that you’re too rich and famous to be a creep is asinine. Weinstein, Epstein, R. Kelly, P. Diddy, Mick Jagger, MJ, Cosby etc. All got away with their depravity for decades before there ever came any mass movement to depose them with most of these guys having careers well after the first allegations were levied with their downfall only coming when their accusers numbered in the low dozens and they were mostly geriatric despite these crimes going back in some case to their twenties. In fact the majority of weirdos you hear about are the higher ups in politics/entertainment etc. It’s such a weird thing to say in your own defense.
6. Gassing Out - It’s very clear what the gameplan was based on Drake’s actions looking back. Put Kendrick in a position where he needed to respond (hopefully with his supposed nuke) then clap back with Family Matters to secure a definitive win in the public eye before riding off into the sunset and taking a much needed vacation. He probably had that break planned before he even dropped his first track. That’s is not what happened. Drake dropped as many tracks in the span of the past four weeks as Kendrick dropped in the span of four days with the latter seemingly upbeat and raring to go on his last track whereas Drake seemed low energy and unceremoniously ended things on the Heart Part 6. Compare his attitude on the Heart Part 6 vs on Taylor Made Freestyle and the difference is very clear. Drake wanted a short and simple battle where he baited a beatable response and then slammed it with Family Matters ala Story of Adidon. Instead he was put in a position where not even 20 minutes after he’d dropped he was already back on the defensive and then a day later got hit with a back to back a lot nastier than even the actual Charged Up/Back to Back combo with the promise of more on the way if Drake didn’t back out. Drake wanted out since Family Matters but if he left the game for a while without responding to Kendrick’s two tracks he’d look like he totally pussed out even if he announced his leave before Meet the Grahams/Not Like Us were released. There was never supposed be a Heart Part 6 and it shows a little too obviously in his voice and lyrics on the track which to an outside observer doesn’t seem strong.

• Chuck Lorre can be persuaded to pause or end his near-blood feud with Charlie Sheen (a big assumption)
  
• Charlie Sheen is sincere in his attempts to reconcile (an even bigger assumption)
  
• the network would allow for a longer series finale in their now-failing show (the biggest assumption)
  

• Alan and Walden find out that Charlie has a ton of unclaimed royalties; include a joke about Alan finally being able to start his own life, and Walden finally being able to get rid of the house
  
• They find out that they need a death certificate to claim them
  
• They find out no-one actually has a death certificate for Charlie, and that Rose is the only person who says that he died
  
• They find out a woman claimed the money a little while later; Alan thinks it was rose, while Walden remains unconvinced
  
• Walden hires a PI to look into things while the duo talk to all of Charlie's exes; most of them have wildly different opinions on Charlie, and a few of the kinder ones offer Alan condolences, but all say that they received a large amount of money and a note apologizing for how he acted
  
• Alan has an outburst at one of their apartments; tells Walden that Charlie started acting like an asshole and drinking more right before he went to Paris, and honestly honestly kind of glad that he's gone
  
• They arrive back at Walden's house; Walden comments that he didn't remember hiring a landscaper, only for the PI to reveal himself (ala Gene Parmesan)
  
• Part 1/Act 1 ends on the reveal that Rose flew out to Paris only a few days before Charlie's murder, and didn't fly out with him at the end of "That Darn Priest"
  

• They both receive threatening messages (bricks thrown through the back window) saying to not look into this "if they know what's good for them"
  
• They both go to the cops
  
• The detective assigned to their case has the same last name as Rose
  
• They receive another threatening message, telling them the cops won't help them
  
• They both decide that they have to break into Rose's house themselves
  
• They both call their former significant others
  
• They both are at best feigned sympathy, at worst rebuked by them; Walden is chastised for not having any direction in his life after his co-founder took the Microsoft buyout money; Alan is chastised for being a mooch, and only caring to go on this extended charade because there's still money in it
  
• Alan begins arguing with Judith/whoever is the harsh ex, and wanders into the living room
  
• Right as he's about to win the argument, a quiet knocking is heard from the front door
  
• Alan grabs a golf club/vase/some other vaguely comedic weapon and readies to swing while he opens the door
  
• The door opens, and he swings, only for Jake to dodge out of the way
  
• They both hug; Alan asks why Jake's in town; Jake says that he's back stateside because he's on vacation and figured he'd surprise his dad
  
• Jake makes a joke about not coming home if this is how he's going to be welcomed
  
• Alan explains that Charlie might still be alive
  
• Jake immediately knows it's Rose, and asks if they want him to break into her house
  
• Alan is stunned by Jake's initiative, while Walden shows up and gives a much warmer hello to Jake
  
• The two ask Jake how he was able to get leave from the Army; Jake explains that he was discharged from the army because of an injury, and has found work for a local company in Japan as a translator. He then explains that he met his wife while working there, and that technically this is a "working vacation"
  
• The three decide to break into Rose's house after they see her car leave, and wouldn't you know, they see her car leaving the house right after they say that
  
• The trio break in, corny spy music plays, and they find an ajar door leading to a basement
  
• Walden wonders how a beach house could have a basement as the other two head deeper into the house
  
• The camera pans to behind the three of them as Jake looks down into the basement; he says that it's a dungeon, with chains on the wall, Charlie's clothes and cloth gags in a cabinet, a taser and other torture devices laid out on a table, and even a small pit dug into the ground, with a bed placed at the bottom. The three begin loudly discussing where Charlie could be if he wasn't there
  
• "I'm right here, you idiots. What are you doing in my house?" Charlie says, as he and Rose arrive home
  
• The three explain they thought he was dead, but then wasn't dead, but then thought he was being kept hostage, and ask what the dungeon's for if he's not a hostage
  
• He explains that he was a dead man walking; he spent the first week in Paris doing awful things (Alan responds "like you weren't doing that already?"), and that Rose found him in an alleyway outside of a hookah bar out of his mind, mumbling about Tiger Blood and how much he was winning
  
• She nursed him back to health in Paris, and Charlie realized finally that he couldn't keep acting the way he was to people he cared about; not everyone is crazy enough to stick with him through his assholishness like Rose is ("No offense" he says to Rose)
  
• They came up with a plan to fake his death while Charlie went to rehab, after which he figured that everyone else was probably doing fine without him
  
• He only recently realized that he still had a lot to apologize for, so he took his accrued royalty earnings and tried to send everyone notes and gifts explaining that he's a changed man
  
• The three of them ask where their money is
  
• He gives them a look, and explains that 1) He has no idea who the hell Walden is, 2) He didn't know where Jake lived, 3) He never would expected Alan to get another guy to mooch off of like he did Charlie
  
• He composes himself, and apologizes to Jake for not keeping in touch more
  
• He then apologizes to Alan for not appreciating him more, and for not telling him that he was still alive sooner
  
• Alan calls him an asshole, and then hugs him and says that he's glad he's not dead
  
• The scene cuts to all 5 of them a couple nights later; all of them reflect on these past 12 years and how crazy they've been
  
• Charlie says something like, "Hey, do you guys realize what we're doing right now?"
  
• Alan responds "What's that?"
  
• Charlie says "Winning" and then the camera pans out to show the beach; the credits roll on the beach background, while the 5 of them all sing the Two and a Half Men theme song