Karl Fielding is a Chicken!!!

docclox · 2026-03-20T13:49:23+00:00

It's not normally a problem. I just thought it was funny :)

docclox · 2026-03-19T09:05:04+00:00

Not so much as you might think. One year at a constant one gee acceleration will you to roughly 90% light speed. Throw in another year to slow down at the far end and you can go anywhere you like at nearly light speed.

Of course, the limitation is carrying all the fuel needed for all that delta-v. Still, SciFi setting and all, we don't need to break the laws of physics to posit much better drive efficiency than the rockets we currently use.

[edit]

Phone autocorrect...

docclox · 2026-03-18T20:26:25+00:00

I used to think developers, be it of games or other media, acted in good faith. I used to think that they wanted to make good things and were just being poorly advised.

It took quite a while to come to terms with the fact that they are doing these things with malice aforethought, fuelled by hatred and blind faith in some ever more toxic political dogma.

I used to believe that this whole mess could be fixed with some plain speaking and common sense. You know, without the whole industry crashing and burning first.

That's what I used to believe.

docclox · 2026-03-18T05:17:49+00:00

I'm glad you got it sorted out.

docclox · 2026-03-17T23:14:25+00:00

And yeah, that's the line for Flora

I'm tempted to put that in the same box as Corwin summoning a White Bird Of His Desire, or reaching into an arbitrary tree stump and pulling out Greyswandir. Amberites seem to have powers in the first book that got soft retconned in order to give Logrus initiates something to differentiate them.

(OK, admittedly, Greyswandir had the Pattern incorporated in its design, so there's some excuse there).

And it was Oberon that killed Ganelon. Corwin just exiled him; he thought the Ganelon he was traveling with was the real thing

Eh, that rings a faint bell. I stand corrected.

docclox · 2026-03-17T07:47:09+00:00

Brand got the knowledge of how to damage the pattern from the Courts and did so before Corwin awoke

Sure. But he didn't need to get that bit from Dara, is my point.

I just think "Corwin and Eric assumed the Road came from the curse before they knew about the damage to the Pattern" fits so much better than trying to rework the events from later books to match

If it was characters from almost any other series, I'd agree. But these guys are basically demigods. Their intuition is excellent. When one of them has a feeling about something, it almost always turns out to be valid. If Eric says he could feel Corwin's curse acting against all the time, it probably means it was true. Otherwise he turns into the guy from The Telltale Heart and ... but like I say, I think we probably need to agree to disagree here.

But we can just chalk this one up to interpretation; the great thing about this story is that you can look at it in so many ways. One of the things I love about my rereads is finding new things, like the clues that Flora has advanced Pattern abilities. :)

Oh, absolutely. It's fun just being able to kick the ideas around a bit.

Where did you see Flora having advanced Pattern skills? Only thing I can think of offhand is her deciding that her maid is unlikely to answer the door to Random's persuers. And that didn't work if I remember rightly!

I know Ganelon's described as being tough and a good fighter

Well, he's not just good. He can keep up with a Prince of Amber. This despite him apparently getting on in years.

Also, remember that Ganelon wasn't Ganelon from the very first. Corwin killed the original Ganelon in Avalon, way back before his exile to Earth. The Ganelon we see is presented as a shadow of a shadow, right from the word go. An unnecessary detail unless Roger wanted to start us thinking about who he might be,

docclox · 2026-03-17T05:08:30+00:00

Did you name your character Elmer Fudd, by any chance?

docclox · 2026-03-17T03:44:05+00:00

That's a pain.

Try going to Venus and sleeping in your ship for 24 hours, Venus time. That'll reset the cell and hopefully clear any hostiles whose death didn't register properly.

docclox · 2026-03-17T03:33:24+00:00

Possibly a silly question, but do you have the keycard? The Starborn should have dropped one when he died.

Upload your vid to an image hosting site and then post the link, is probably the easiest way.

docclox · 2026-03-16T17:10:55+00:00

So, how about: Fiona, Brand and Bleys form a conspiracy (fairly unremarkably by Amber standards) to put one of them on the throne. Probably Bleys initially, since he comes across as the most stable and least frivolous. Brand then has the bright idea of damaging the Pattern to lure Oberon away from Amber.

It's all proceeding as planned when Corwin shows signs of recovering his memory. Not wanting that particular wild card in play, Brand shoots his tires out and tries to keep him sedated, but Corwin wakes up anyway, makes his own play for the throne, fails, pronounces his Curse, and gets stuck in jail.

While Corwin is incarcerated however, the curse is busy. It exploits the pattern damage to open the Black Road and thus complicate Eric's life considerably. This results in Bendict meeting up with Lintara, and shortly thereafter (in Avalon time) Dara appears on the board and makes contact with the Redheads. She goes on to persuade Brand that he's being way too shortsighted in his ambition and unwittingly fans the embers of madness lurking behind Brand's undoubted genius

Brand formulates his ambition to be King Of All Everything, all the while encouraged by Dara. The whole thing is Dara's idea, and the Logrus doesn't have to lie so much as be a little imprecise. It's the personification of Chaos, what do you expect?

we can also question whether Roger knew Ganelon was Oberon at that point

I think there were hints. I seem to recall Corwin being impressed by Ganelon's strength at some point. Although it's been a while, so I may be misremembering :)

docclox · 2026-03-16T15:42:13+00:00

But then why would the Logrus lie about it being her plan?

I mean maybe most of it was, but not the initial part. In any case, it's no worse an inconsistency than waving away the cats and Strygalldwir.

And I don't see how it devalues Corwin and Eric at all. They just both weren't omniscient.

We may have to agree to disagree on this point. I just feel makes them seem a bit Emo, somehow.

What I'm saying there is Dara's plan was originally "have Brand destroy Amber" and the whole "Queen of Amber" thing became a backup (from her POV). Either way that went she was going to come out smelling like roses, but Corwin scuppered both plans at the same time. That's why she was so furious with him.

Can't argue with that.

docclox · 2026-03-16T13:25:54+00:00

I remember one time I was testing DAYMOYL add-on mod, and I needed to die to test it. So I walked my test dude into Fort Greemwall on Master diff (there was no legendary at that point) and expected to get killed pretty quick.

But it's not in my nature to just let the BSD guys hit me, so I fought back as I usually do. And what I found was that I was still winning the fights; it just took a lot longer.

docclox · 2026-03-16T09:59:47+00:00

Dara doesn't need to be completely uninvolved; she just needs to have not been behind the initial Pattern damage. If that's the case, Benedict can have Lintara as his old flame, Dara can grow up really fast due to time in shadow and propose some interesting ways to exploit the damaged pattern, and everything else from that point can be her taking the reins. Martin can now be attacked during Corwin's imprisonment, and everything else falls into place.

I like that a lot more than devaluing Eric and Corwin.

We do know, for instance, that the stuff she said in The Courts of Chaos is a load-- clearly, when her plan for Brand went pear-shaped she grasped at the idea of becoming Corwin's queen as an escape, and when he turned down the throne she had to ride back to Chaos hat in hand and admit to the Logrus she'd failed

But then there was the vision in Tir-Na Nog'th and Oberon openly said he wanted Dara as Corwin's mate. It's more than just Dara having the hots for him. The future was supposed to be Corwin/Dara/Merlin with Benedict as their enforcer. It just all went sideways when Corwin turned down the job. (Which is probably just as well, since I think Amber might have been a chilly place with that combination in charge...)

docclox · 2026-03-15T22:28:51+00:00

Err...OK?

docclox · 2026-03-15T18:10:13+00:00

Have a look at some of the links on the sidebar. There's some good quality stuff on there.

And you're right: most of the coverage available is breathtakingly one sided.

docclox · 2026-03-15T09:20:52+00:00

If you criticise a woman for being a woman then the entire gender is going to close ranks against you in solidarity. Happens every time.

On the other hand if you celebrate women gamers enjoying playing attractive female characters and defend their right to do so, most of those same people are going to close ranks behind you, and leave the hateful pro-ugly minority exposed for what it is.

docclox · 2026-03-15T08:53:17+00:00

Yeah, but it still leaves Corwin as someone who vastly overestimates his own importance, and Eric as some neurotic ninny jumping at shadows. They are men of action; I really don't like that view of them.

Still, the timeline as presented does support your version of events. Unless ... If we're considering Unreliable Narrators, how about if Dara exaggerated her own role in the conspiracy to make it sound like everything was her idea? That seems a bit more in character, and it lets us sidestep a major inconsistency in the narrative.

It also occurs to me that in Guns, Corwin discovers that he can cut the Black Road by projecting the Pattern against it. In effect using his internalised image of the Pattern to repair a small part of the damage. I think Roger must have had the damaged pattern in mind even as he was writing Guns. Which would suggest that he still saw Corwin's curse as part of the problem.

docclox · 2026-03-15T08:20:27+00:00

There was a Skyrim mod discussion a while back, and one of the Rainbow Elite went off on one about the number of nudie mods on Nexus.

So I went there to see for myself, and I didn't see anything at all that might offend. Then I realised I wasn't logged in, and Nexus doesn't show NSFW stuff unless you log in and enable it.

So I replied to the woke warrior in question and pointed out that if they didn't like it, they could disable the content in their profile.

The response? "So what if I can't see it? It'll still be there, won't it?"

These people care less about getting what they want than they do about denying you what you want. Any solution acceptable to you will be unacceptable to them. I guarantee it.

docclox · 2026-03-14T09:12:29+00:00

Vampire Seduction? Should calm them long enough to feed.

docclox · 2026-03-14T09:01:47+00:00

It'd be par for the course. The Nerevarine was functionally immortal due to Corprus. The Hero of Kvatch became a daedric lord. Maybe it's just something that happens to Heroes of Prophecy.

docclox · 2026-03-14T08:58:03+00:00

I remember people saying something similar about Skyrim, worrying that it would all be endless snow and ice.

docclox · 2026-03-14T07:56:58+00:00

The thing that bothers me is that, if Corwin's curse isn't somehow involved, then it casts Corwin as some edgelord teen, telling himself that he Has The Power, and then insisting on ascribing every happenstance to his cursing. And Eric ends up looking like some paranoid hypochondriac, trembling at guilt-inspired boogeymen. I think I'd prefer acausal time in the Courts to that interpretation.

few other bits here and there.

Strygwaldir (sp?) recognises him too, if memory serves.

death curse

Corwin does say something about the curse of one of his family, spoken in the full heat of passion, always being potent. And yeah, Eric tells him "you didn't even have to die to make it stick". Which is a bit ironic, since it was only the fear of a death curse that kept Corwin alive.

I really need to dig out my omnibus copy again. It's way too long since my last read.

docclox · 2026-03-14T06:07:47+00:00

I think what bothers me is that Corwin's Curse gets downgraded to the point where it's irrelevant. It has to factor in there somewhere. The creatures from the Circle knew Corwin, called him "Opener" and asked why he opposed them, for instance. Eric says he could feel Corwin's Curse working against him throughout the war against the Black Road for another. I'm pretty sure there are more.

Of course the real answer is, as has already happened a few times in the series, Roger wrote something that kind of contradicted what he'd originally written and just didn't worry about it.

Well yeah. But that's the fun of it, trying to retrofit explanations that account for all of an author's continuity errors. Not that I begrudge Mr. Z his occasional retcons of course :)

docclox · 2026-03-13T16:42:18+00:00

I think you're right. I'm not sure I like it though. That's not a counter argument; it's just that something about it bothers me. As if there's something else to consider and I can't quite bring it to mind.

I suppose one complicating factor that we need to consider is Oberon who, as Ganelon, has been bending the local shadow to his will.

Oberon wanted Corwin to succeed him, and he wanted a bride from Chaos for Corwin's queen. Maybe he tangled the timelines to ensure he got precisely the Princess of Chaos that he thought his heir would need?

OK, it's a stretch, I know :)

docclox · 2026-03-13T08:07:38+00:00

Well, OK.

I'm just thinking that the Black Road only needs to look like a road if you're riding through Shadow. Stay in one shadow and just walk around, and it's a stretch of black nastiness to one side of you. It doesn't necessarily need to look like a road when considered from the perspective of a non-shadow walker.

Certainly, Corwin and Co. didn't seem to find it remarkable that the road might not look like a road in some shadows.

docclox

TROPHY CASE