And hopefully she gives up as soon as she realizes you can do that indefinitely.

We can hope.

He shakes his head. Also, Fëanáro clung to my ankles as soon as he woke up and we worked on the writing system for a while and now he is in fact trying to write a book.

Aww, what about?

I think that the premise is that a nine-year-old with the power that the universe lets him do science is dropped in Bella's world and makes it all better.

Oh gods that is the cutest thing. He is writing self-insert fanfiction about my universe. That is so cute.

His main source for what your universe is like is your textbook, so he might be getting some ideas a bit wrong.

I wonder how he takes to editing. Is it at least the history one?

I didn't hear enough to be sure, actually.

I'm a little worried he's going to demand all the nastiest stories...

Ones that a child that age shouldn't hear? You can tell him 'no', you know. It's probably good for him.

Yes, but then he'll guess, and he'll extrapolate way too much, and I'm not sure he doesn't have enough imagination that I'll wind up telling him genuine nasty facts because they're less nasty than whatever he cooks up...

That does sound like exactly what he'd do.

He does not make himself hard to know.

He's a very straightforward kid. It almost harms him, because if he were a little subtler he'd make people feel less manipulated whenever they interacted with him.

It's really backward, isn't it? But yeah.

He's very young. It might get better.

Maybe I can figure out a way to just - explain the indirections and why people use them. I'm good at explaining, I'm less good at indirection itself, but I have the hang of it more than he does.

You strike me as perfectly socially competent. And that might work, yes.

I've worked on it, but I think my actual skill there is being able to see stuff from the outside because it seems weird and silly to me and I had to learn it the long way.

I think he's very logically minded and there are lots of logical reasons to not leave everyone with the impression you're an entitled and manipulative brat, so -

Unfortunately, yesterday he wound up concluding he didn't care if people liked him as long as they respected his accomplishments. I didn't get particularly far with 'but there are other reasons to want people to like you', at least not yet.

He shakes his head. It's not your job, though I appreciate it.

But how does a gift economy work if people don't see things that could use doing and adopt them as their job?

They don't need to adopt everything in sight! I am the only one who adopts everything in sight, and I only do that because it constrains me not at all.