traveler said: Yes, part of fleshcrafting is crafting it so the plant stays healthy.

gingercake said: so it wouldn't work on nonmagic Amentan plants?
yamo4 said: this is sure more talking about plants than you expect from a conversation with an alien
5050501 said: what do you want to talk about, yamo
yamo4 said: man I don't know. how do aliens have sex.
yamo4 said: I guess we sort of covered that a little bit but I'm permaspringing yanno

traveler said: The plants here aren't magic, I'd expect it to work fine on yours.
traveler said: Crafters are pretty private about our sex lives but the biology looks similar.

soundandleaf said: my brother will be so disappointed
5050501 said: even if they had interesting porn bits it wouldn't work, they die if you touch them!
gingercake said: but if the biology is the same they aren't exactly pollinating each other from a conservative distance
soundandleaf said: maybe you need magic to boink a crafter

traveler said: It's only bad if we're touched without freely-given permission or in a way we weren't expecting, it's a territory thing. So we'd have to trust you a lot but it's not impossible.
traveler said: Also fleshcrafting can add all kinds of interesting parts, those just don't come standard.

soundandleaf said: my brother will be only very briefly disappointed then! if he can cozy up to a crafter. will crafters join dating sites
gingercake: what if they don't work out cross-fertility?
soundandleaf: I don't know what his plan is for that but somebody's got to try, right?

traveler said: I haven't heard about dating sites yet. From the translation, maybe we would, it sounds like something we'd find useful.
traveler said: I'm sure our genecrafters will be interested in figuring out if cross-fertility is possible. We're already talking about taking a trip to talk to our best one, goosewing, about easing your springs; I don't know if they'll have time to work on both but there are always other genecrafters in the area there to learn from them, we can probably find one who wants to try.

yamo4 said: a dating site is a website like Mingly or Choosy or Flower Basket where you have a profile with some information about you on it and it suggests people who meet your criteria and vice-versa
soundandleaf said: Mingly is a purple site.
yamo4 said: I'm not on it, I just know it exists

traveler said: That does sound useful. At least if it won't be a problem that we don't have castes and probably won't care much about yours.

5050501 said: might inconvenience sound's brother
soundandleaf said: I think it'll just go by patrilineality if the mom's a crafter, surely

traveler said: Oh, for children, I meant for partners.
traveler said: That sounds fine to me but it might be smart to see what mixed-species children are even like, first, sometimes there are surprises with that kind of thing.

gingercake said: I mean they have to be something. purple is probably the safest thing to try first, since if they have magic they can do that.

traveler said: I wouldn't assume they'll be able to live in a city when they're grown up, they might need a crafter territory and need to be able to look after themselves in one.

soundandleaf: I mean, sure, but they might be more like an Amentan and then they'll need a caste.

traveler said: Whoever raises the first few is going to have a real project on their hands, figuring all this out.

The chat continues until 5050501 forgets to ping before going to the bathroom, and soundandleaf's everything battery dies, and gingercake has to go address a family emergency, and yamo4 says "you have my Breakout ID right?" and drops when this is confirmed.

Meanwhile, the red community organizer assigns a delegate who is competent enough to handle the interaction but disposable enough to throw himself under the bus as a lone actor if necessary send a short message to the provided crafter email address.

What is it you want?

The reply is delayed by traveler's Chat Shuffle adventures, but not much beyond that.

We want help figuring out how to avoid hurting you.

We have robotic machines, and we don't think we're going to be able to keep the other castes from learning from them; they're too common.

- traveler

well, then I think we're gonna get hurt.

Maybe if we knew more about the problem we could come up with something, can you help with that?

-traveler

I don't know what you could possibly come up with if they're going to have robots.

I don't see why having robots would make them violent by itself, so there's probably some other part of the problem, maybe we can figure out how to do something about that. Or maybe we can add a third factor that offsets the robots. We're still figuring out everything crafting can do for Amentans, there might be something that isn't obvious.

-traveler

They don't like us, but they need us. With robots they won't need us.

That's horrible.

I don't know how Amentans do outside of your city but maybe we can find crafters you can live with.

-traveler

That won't work either. If they thought reds were living let alone reproducing anywhere they couldn't keep track of the pollution they'd go nuts.