I've got a list of names | Glowfic Constellation

Afen is disappointed in the universe. He bounds back and forth across his room explaining why to his wife, his infant granddaughter, the end table, and a reporter flabbergasted by her good luck and cringing silently against the wall in the hopes he won't remember she's there.

"There is no reason to suppose that a species evolving independently of Amentans, with their own evolutionary history and living mammalian species likely related to theirs, would end up looking like us. None. Every explanation every scientist has ventured to the press has been unimaginative and unconvincing retroactive refitting of bad models to baffling data. Aliens shouldn't look like us but with different hair colors. Aliens that are not made out of carbon at all would be unsurprising; aliens with only as much physiological dissimilarity as exists between us and animal species on our planet would be mildly surprising; aliens with opposable thumbs would be truly remarkable. This is not remarkable and biologically enlightening; this is just inconsistent with everything we understand about the universe. It doesn't teach us new things about evolution; it should make us rethink evolution. - don't quote that part, they'll take it out of context."

Reporter nods rapidly.

"All of that said, I've picked up three of the languages and I'm working on building a good machine translator, it's a challenge with as little as they've produced in the way of electronic records. I'm absolutely going there to meet them as soon as the politicians figure out what to do with themselves."

"Do you have any predictions about that?"

"About politics? Why would I have predictions about politics? They deliberately obscure relevant information, for one thing, and for another it's deathly boring."

"- I mean, sir, surely you hear from your son about -"

"I have seven children and some of them are very dense indeed but not quite dense enough to try to interest me in politics."

"I was referring to -"

"I know who you were referring to. If you want a statement from Aitim go bother Aitim."

"Thank you for your time."

"I did not alter my activities in response to your presence and therefore you can't yet be said to have wasted any of my time though you should go before you do."

...out skitters the reporter.

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"There are a lot of people. Why do you think that affects needing to address social norm violations like that?"

wealth-of-nations

"Like, your peer group at Hogwarts is pretty much it - that's the people you'll marry, unless you're going to marry a foreigner or a Muggle and almost no one does that, your kids will go to school with their kids, you will buy your clothes and books and potion supplies from them, you're related to half of them - in a big community I think you can just cut social ties with people. When you can't do that, you need some kind of norm enforcement and people are too old-fashioned and stubborn to just use money."

- she giggles at the last statement. "Oh. It's very easy on Amenta to never run into someone you'd rather avoid unless you work in certain industries together or you're related. You can move from one city with thirty million people to a different city with thirty million people, or even just into a different building with a different six thousand people living there."

wealth-of-nations

"Yeah, I think that'd explain why you feel less need to resolve insults and romantic misconduct."

Nod nod.

wealth-of-nations

"What else is a wizard thing?"

"The way wizards think of Muggles is interesting."

wealth-of-nations

"I think it might change now that Muggles can produce things of value to wizards but maybe not, goblins produce things of value to wizards and we're still awful to them."

"I haven't even started looking into anything about other species."

wealth-of-nations

"You should ask Karen about that incident with the merpeople! One of them kidnapped her and we couldn't figure out which and so Hogwarts nearly murdered every adult merperson in the area."

"...okay." Hala writes that down. "I'm not sure why wizards are straighter than the Amentan versions of the same people. I wonder if that shows up statistically. Karen seems really nice though."

wealth-of-nations

"It's likelier to be a species difference than a wizards difference, I think. Karen's neat. When they went after the adult merpeople they weren't any because Theodore ran around de-ageing them all."

"I know there are some gay humans but I don't know how many. Were the merpeople okay, de-aged? Did they stay like that?"

wealth-of-nations

"It'd have worn off after a while. I don't think they were okay but they weren't dead."

"Oh. If it were safe it would probably be popular."

wealth-of-nations

"Oh, you can't live forever that way, people'd be all over that. There's supposedly the Philosopher's Stone for eternal life but Father hasn't been able to reverse-engineer it."

"No, that's not what I mean, I mean you could make a lot of money giving people a way to turn into babies long enough to give their parents a weekend like that if they'd just pop up again normal after. My parents are rich and I have a baby sister right now but I have friends who'd do it."

wealth-of-nations

" - I don't think it's dangerous, it just sucks because you have an immature brain and stuff again."

"Maybe some people'd do it anyway. When wizards have kids why do they have kids?"

wealth-of-nations

" - so you have heirs?"

"Does that mean poor wizards rarely have any?"

wealth-of-nations

"I mean, if you're poor but from a good family you can probably still get a decent marriage, depending why you're poor. If there's a correlation it's not a very pronounced one."

"Hm."

wealth-of-nations

"Some people like kids but I can't think of anyone who would want to use a deaging potion to have a baby again for a weekend."