WWJ IX: Psychotic Penguins: The Crossing of Helcaraxë

[Anguirel]

Ah, fair ladies, what a fanbase you are...

Ahem. I can see in retrospect that maybe I wasn't playful enough, and I sympathise entirely, I mean, you brought me along for the entertainment and I seem to have been rather dull. I heard a lay, long ago, about the Lord of Evil Morgoth before Tulkas captured him, and how he used to turn minstrels that bored him into tortellini.

But personally, I'm not quite sure I'm so desperately guilty as charged. I might not have been playful, but, as spawn herself readily admits, there wasn't all that much to play with at the time of writing. Yet I had to churn something out as I had picked out that section of the morning for my main period of imput, leaving the rest for some work.

Now, naturally, you've called me away for rather harder work. I feel a thousand bills trained on my effete minstrel frame. Yep, bills.

Originally Posted by Spawn

His first post is a noble attempt to make an analysis with minimal amount of material. Maybe a bit too noble, actually.

The island resonates to my gulping at this point. Should've guessed it from that tricolon earlier. Incidentally, Ungoliantina m'dear, what happened to your Firefoot and Roa analyses? Not enough material?

Originally Posted by Spawn

At that point ten people had posted and he picked six of them (who had posted once or twice) to inspect. All the statements of the villagers contain a positive and negative side, but we don't get any kind of a real conclusion of that. Yes, it's hard to tell, but that hardly provokes discussion and it's something a WP would want to do in order to appear helpful.

The stringent criteria for my choices were simply the ones that caught my interest. I might as well criticise you for not examining Firefoot and Roa-though in fact I'm not going to do so. I was saying as much as I could and what I genuinely thought, not just some vain controversy-courting gauntlet-chuck challenge. Seems it didn't pay off.

-He said that he likes fighting with phantom, but phantom makes sense. Ang is suspicious of phantom until he's proven innocent, but he agrees with phantom's points.

Yes, that's what I said, and I meant it. Unlike the redoubtable phantom, I don't instantaneously see a case against anyone I choose to accuse. Now (as with Saucy in an earlier adventure) I suspect phantom but am damned if I can justify my fears. He's just as usual; indeed predictable.

In Ang's second post he answers Macalaure that the Seer theory has two sides, but phantom's plan seems pretty good unless he is a WP. Next thing he says that he'd rather not have hints at all because we should concentrate on the enemies instead of gifteds. To me the plan isn't about concentrating on gifteds, but trying to distract the WPs while we pay attention to catching them.

IE...this is your "not flip-flopping exactly, but" point. I don't regard so called flip-flopping as an invariable crime. To me a post should be a fluid unit of thought not length, and if you start at a different position from where you began it can actually be helpful.

About Seer-hints vs their lack-you're frightfully keen on pushing this, spawn. I simply think not doing something en masse is rather easier than doing something en masse. If we go along with the plot, some will hint, and some won't because they're individualists, or foes, or nervous Gifteds, or just don't like the plan. This gives the penguins a framework which may ultimately harm us more than them.

He asks if phantom wants to go with his ancestor's plan about lynching volunteers and says that he'd not support the idea.

In his third post Ang just refers to his ancestor and explains why he thinks that lynching volunteers is a bad idea. Well, why to bring it up in the first place, then?

You emphasise my leaning on "ancestral" advice, and I don't much like the implication that I'm a wicked, superior pseud who just rises above the press with a few tedious anecdotes. Now I'm not only a second-rate jester, but rather a bore as well.

I brought up that phantom theory because the phantom, as I said, is enormously predictable and having seen him wave about his tired old Seer hint plan, crafted many, many moons ago, I was interested in whether he was sticking with the rest of his usual manifesto too. I was sort of carrying out a preemptive strike against those smug flourishes of his that we all know and love.

All in all, Ang has been more, well, not necessarily flip-floppy, but careful than what I would have thought. I don't get the usual innocent feeling when reading his posts, and having no certain opinion about anything looks penguinesque, so I look forward to his future posts.

And vice versa. I continue to have the highest regard for your analysis.

Now, I suppose I'd best pick a target for you bloodthirsty masses to be amused by. Get back to my duties as the unwitting Cobbler. I am forced to vote early, but will attempt to round off some fairly token reasoning.