@rjs
Ok, That worked. Thanks a 10^6 🙂 (to both you and @Bsch4477)
QUESTION: now that the effect 1099-MISC was completely canceled out in Schedule E, and taxes returned to baseline, I obviously still need to enter the earned $100k to get it taxes as long-term capital gain (citing precedent) and wanted your opinion on that. The suggestion online (byDMarkM1 at https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/taxes/discussion/how-do-i-report-patent-income-as-a-capital-gain-w...) was to enter the $100k under "Stocks, Bonds, ..." and then "Add more sales" and then pick other 1099-S and enter there, describing it as "Other" in the first pull-down menu, and then "something else" in the second pull down menu and then describing it as royalties on IP and then picking "Something other than a date" and then putting for "sold" the date the royalties, for proceeds the $ amount, and for cost basis $0. Now the royalty payments were given out quarterly through the year (the 100k on 1099-MISC is their sum) so I can make such an entry under "Stocks, Bonds, ..." four times! Does this all sound like the right path to you? It feels awkward.
As for your other question (the mystery why entering them as 1099-DIV works) my "brain signals had crossed" when I alluded to that – what I meant to say is that reporting the $100k as 1099-DIV, either in both boxes 1a and 1b or just in box 2a give the desired tax result and the taxes only rise by $21,354 in response to the 100k entry. There's no need to enter a -$100k (things are all set just by entering the 1099-DIV).
Circling back to the point above about where to enter the $100k after neutralizing it with 100k as Miscellaneous Expenses, it seems a direct path to get the capital gain taxes is to go ahead enter the 100k as if there were a 1099-DIV (but it would be making it up so again feels awkward).
