Third installment. Nikola Tesla has been written as asexual in this story, though interpretations differ and Tesla himself apparently doesn't talk about it in real life (there's a footnote).

"Is the guy uncomfortable with stories being written about him that have character interpretations about things he doesn't talk about?"

"I don't know him to have commented about that either way, and would have expected a footnote on it if he had."

Giggle. "All right. - some faeries don't particularly like sex ever, though I don't know that they'd have identified as this being a particular trait they had."

The word's undergone some definition messiness over time, and so have corresponding words in other languages, trying to capture natural categories of experience. I'm accustomed to the vocabulary that was popular in English in my twenties but that's probably just because it was popular in English in my twenties.

"Is the human culture we'll eventually make contact with very different?"

Some, yeah. It got hard to keep track of after I died, none of my summoners till my current one ever let me talk. Reading noninteractively just isn't the same.

"Wait, what? Why not?"

Uh, apsels have a bad reputation. I don't know if you've read any of the Bible pages you reportedly have transcribed around here somewhere or if any of them mention 'demons' but they call us the same thing, mostly for cosmetic reasons.

"But you can't hurt humans by talking to them."

They are under the impression that we can, actually, many of them think demons want to steal their souls and can do that and are supernaturally good at persuading them to do that.

" - weird. Do they have souls?"

They have whatever makes the jump from life to the relevant afterlife situation. You could call it a soul; it certainly isn't the original physical body. Other than that not as far as I know.

"Huh. And can apsels interfere with that in any way?"

Not to my knowledge and I've been one for a while now!

"Huh. Well maybe some day I can be a lie detector about that."

Cam leans his head on Econ Faery's shoulder.

Oooh that's nice.

What's the exchange rate on depressing versus cheerful stories of these lengths? Is it by length or is it also assessing literary quality?

"It's a mix of length and quality and - differentness from other stories you've heard, the depressing stories will cost you less for one once you have heard more of them, and that should be true the other way around too but less so because your stories vary more in general structure and in takeaways. Yours are costing more mostly because of all the explaining you're doing right now."

Oh, huh. So formulaic stories you can read lots of compared to an assortment? Does it matter how recently you read others of the formula?

"It matters how well you are predicting this one but not how long it's been per se, and if a story were really predictable for some reason other than having encountered stories like it, that'd count."

Huh! What if you're guessing correctly but not for a good reason?

"Good question. I have no idea."

Cam writes this question down with other things he wants to know.