Yeah. We could ask my sister if she'd be interested in parenting, she's not fundamentally opposed to the concept and kids with single parents don't actually end up messed up because of it--human kids, anyway.

Elves'd be weirded out but I guess they'd get over themselves.

Humans and Elves are sort of inherently weird to each other until we get used to it.

I'd expect aliens to be a lot weirder, really.

Yeah, on a cosmic scale you're astronomically implausibly human-like.

I wonder if it's like the names thing.

Might be. And the - commonality of humans, too -

That seems--less weird, for some reason? Having the exact same thing crop up in a lot of places--well, it's more obviously not a coincidence. Things that're more similar and not coincidences are less weird than things that're less similar and plausibly coincidences.

You wouldn't expect independently evolved life to land on human even if there were reasons it usually landed on humanoid -

I've studied genetics, and I've looked at Bar's selection of genetics research for a wide variety of human worlds. If this is in any way a coincidence I'll eat my wings.

So what is it -

I don't actually know. "This particular explanation makes no sense whatsoever" doesn't really tell you what the real explanation is. My best guess is--some kind of overarching--meta-causality or something--making universes more the same, if they were infinite I might guess that it was that if you have literally infinite universes then of course some of them are going to turn out exactly the same, and Milliways could just be choosing from suspiciously similar universes--but if it was that, I'd expect names to stop being bizarrely prophetic in Abbadon now that it's no longer being selected for that--I mean, we can't say for sure that it won't, but it seems unlikely--

- so something keeping worlds in line - 

Yeah, although how strongly I couldn't begin to guess.

Well that's - terrifying.

I mean, it can't be too strong, or there'd be more evidence of it in what I've read...

There's not much of it?

I mean, like--it's all the kind of stuff that would seem like a coincidence if there wasn't so much of it? Instead of something that looks like it pushes back if you push on it.

That's good. Since, you know, we're gonna push on it.

Yes we are.

So between you and Maitimo I've actually been curious for a while now if really, really great smiles run in your family.

I'm pretty sure he practices his in front of the mirror.

Whereas you probably come by it naturally on account of not giving a fuck about most people.

Something like that.

Either way, I'm not complaining. Have I mentioned lately you're beautiful? It comes particularly to mind when you smile like that.