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Mala fide intent. I like that. Used like bona fide, only for hostility.

I think I’m overwatering my garlic.

There was a marked difference in the rhetoric coming out of NKorea before Kim Jong Un disappeared for a month and after. Before, he was rattling sabers and threatening SKorea. There were missile and rocket tests.

Then he disappeared, and all that stopped. Now he’s touring flood zones.

I think something happened there, and I’m not sure what. The official story is Covid 19, and Kim went into seclusion to avoid it. But NKorea is right next to China, and China has a habit of disappearing people for a while. Fan Bingbing was one of the more famous cases. She disappeared, reappeared, and confessed to tax fruad. What happened while she was gone? Hard to say. Was Kim disappeared by Chinese powers? Hard to say.

Well, easy to say, but there’s no evidence one way or the other. He could have just avoided Covid.

But it is quite odd how the rhetoric changed. I wonder what the Chinese calculus on that was: not even about what they did, but how Bejing saw Kim’s words, actions, and interactions with the US and SKorea.

Again, there is no evidence one way or the other. It’s just odd.

How is there an east and west Antarctica? It’s all north! If you’re in the middle of Antarctica and going in any direction, you’re going north!

And if you’re talking about relative to anyplace else, it’s all south.

You know what’s east of Antarctica? More Antarctica.

Yeah, I get what they mean, but what they mean doesn’t make any sense.

Oh. Someone left Kudos on the Nine, and Raksha_the_Demon left some on Sauron Explains It All.

I really do appreciate kudos. Every time I get one I open the fic and read for a while. Both of those are pretty blocked, but I poke a bit, see if anything dislodges.

So there are a few major problems. They range from scope to motivation.

First, I’m not super interested in the vast cast. It’s too many people. If I’m running each thread to what I think is doing it justice, things get lost along the way. Flora’s use of the assassins is an example of that, because I meant them to be important but understated, and I don’t think anyone recognizes them. Huge casts are also kinda boring and too much work.

Secondly, the five act structure is constrictive and unpleasant. It makes me rush to an ending, but the entire movement of Melkor vs Random with Sauron, Corwin, et. al. waiting in the curtains has not yet started. As I setup things, I’ve only got one act left, and Melkor vs Amber is too much for one act.

Third, not everyone has an epic motivation. Corwin’s kinda done. Llewella is trying to go along to get along, and that’s realistic but not epic. Random has just fallen under the sway of the ring, and I’m not one who thinks he should topple like a playing card. Julian is motivated to protect Amber. Caine’s a coward. Benedict is dead. Gerard– there might be something in Gerard. Vialle is interesting because she’s not epic, and the contrast between her and Random, and especially her to Corwin, is what makes her such an interesting character. The fascinating element of her conflict is her juxtaposition with the Amberites. But that becomes boring if she starts smiting bad guys for great justice.

Who else do we have? Fiona? I’m going to level with you, I just don’t like Fiona. Bleys? Martin? Merlin? Hell, Dara?

On the Tolkien side, Turin is Corwinesque in that he’s fully understood his folly and consumed by despair. He’s in his prison cell blinded. Gogomoth is a balrog. I dig him, but I don’t have much ammo there.

Sauron?

Sauron is honestly a boring character. That’s what made him great in LotR. He’s an impersonal but off-screen source of malice and angst, and he deserved exactly as much screen-time as he got: almost nil.

New characters to take the plot are usually fairly annoying.

I just don’t have anything, and much as I want to play in this sandbox, I don’t have a plot.

I really want to play in this sandbox.

The last time I went on political Twitter there was so much bad spelling I thought someone was live tweeting an epileptic fit.

No. They were talking about Congress.

A nunatak is an isolated mountain summit that peeks out of a glacier. Isolated may mean there are no ridges above the glacier connecting it to other peaks, or there may be no other nearby peaks. They seem to be common in Greenland and Antarctica. It’s an Inuit word originally, and an accepted technical term now.

The people who hate mini cupcakes are unnecessarily harsh. I can eat eighteen, twenty of those little guys and enjoy every one.

My time in the Army was pretty rough.

It wasn’t the worst. It wasn’t the best. Innumerable people had it worse than I, and innumerable had it better.

But those are red herrings.

You need one egg to make four cupcakes. You want to make twelve cupcakes. They will be frosted with store-bought chocolate frosting. How many eggs do you need?

The frosting is a red herring. It doesn’t alter the question. You need three eggs.

The Army was pretty rough.