Hello everyone, your friendly neighbourhood imposter-author here.
(ref: previous post - thank you to everyone who commented, I do read your comments, laugh, smirk, nod my head with paternal sagacity at them all.)
Just a quick post to point you all to an excellent article over at Lobster & Canary where fellow author, Daniel A. Rabuzzi, waxes wise upon Mister Mervyn Peake and a more southern fantastical tradition. I am finding it very helpful (I speak in present tense for its help is still with me) in remembering that with all my Tolkienesque desire to make the Half-Continent firm (hello explicariums!!!), it was always intended to be also grotesque, a place where caricature is its normal - I had forgotten this. So Thank you Mister Rabuzzi, for reminding me of my first love, as it were.
(You might notice that this humble imposter is also mentioned in the article, which is in truth not why I recommend it to you, but because it is a subject so close to my heart: for Peake is the reason we even have the Half-Continent at all, that we are even communing, you and I)