Month: February 2021

The problem with fantasy morality is that in Tolkien, orcs ARE always evil.

So the sentiment ‘let’s kill some orcs’ isn’t necessarily bad because the orcs are always bad. There’s no more morality than in a Punisher movie.

And that’s it. Tampa Bay won the Super Bowl. Tom Brady is now the greatest quarterback to ever play the game.

I’ve never met Brady. Don’t really follow the game. I’ll watch if other people are but won’t go out of my way to do so. Still, Brady is a pretty big star in the US, so I’m familiar with him.

In the lead up to this game, there has been rampant speculation regarding whether or not Brady is good by himself and great with Belichik, or great by himself and also great with Belichik. People have discussed how he thinks and what he might be thinking now. With absolutely no knowledge of what’s going on inside his head, I speculate that it’s this: “Win Football Games.” Fullstop. Goto line 10.

I doubt anyone wins at [activity] at that level if things other than [activity] take up too much mental real estate. Other peoples opinions, statistics, and history are all probably extraneous. As a human being, those things probably can’t be completely tuned out, but if a human being is playing that well, I bet the extraneous thoughts are turned out pretty well.

When I do root for anyone, I root for Denver or DC. So yeah.

But I wish the guy well.

What do you call a giant hobbit?

Or two halflings standing on each other’s shoulders, wearing a trenchcoat?

This is why adding fractions can be complicated.

Am I two halflings in a trenchcoat?

“Large boulder the size of a large boulder is now a large bounder the size of a small boulder.”

There’s a backstory, but you can figure out what’s going on in that tweet thread.

So the list price reverted to $14.99, but the buy-it-new price is still $11.99.

I’m so confused.

Amazon sets price guidelines, and I don’t have a whole lot of input within those guidelines. That can be frustrating, but if I was working with a more traditional publisher, I’d have less input. So be it. But why is it $12? Is it going to stay that way?

Is it $15 for other people?

Anyway, please read Mara because I need to pay rent. It should be available for free on Kindle Unlimited. (Is it? IDK) If you do read it and like it, please leave a review or a star ranking, and also, super please, tell me what happened. How much was it? Was it free? How’s the formating? I wrote the thing, and I really don’t know.

The paperback looks professional.

Zeus wasn’t a good guy. He was powerful and full of gifts, but not altogether good. It got even worse for entities like Artemis or Apollo. In some, Aeschylus, he was generally good but flawed, and Aeschylus treated Zeus like a father. Homer treated Zeus like an entity: real, present, and powerful but as good or bad as a wind.

The various Abrahamic gods were/are all made out to be fairly purely good, without vice.

Now, it’s not accurate to think this is unilateral. Edge Lord Euripides contributed much to our notion of ‘the gods are bad’, while a similar Christian notion, Gnosticism, has largely been lost. This wasn’t accidental, of course, but that happened to other people in other religions too. Care for a drink of hemlock, Socrates?

This notion I see often, that any character, creature, or thing that is written about must be considered ‘good’ by the author, is odd. But you see it everywhere. I want to call attention to that notion, that supposition. ‘Because you’re writing about *****, you must think it’s laudable.’

Why?

I forgot. Someone left me kudos on Lanterns, so thank you.

I burned my chicken.