One of the disadvantages of Tongues (or Share Language, even) is that if you think you already know a nearby concept, Tongues will go right on and helpfully map that word onto its neighboring concept in your own language.

Esta knows the word 'masochist'!  It's a Kuthite / Nidalian thing!

Also Esta is so incredibly straight, strictly dominant, and strictly sadistic, as to have a ready counterpart existing in dath ilan.

And unlike Estha, Esta has never in his life heard the phrase 'typical mind fallacy', and wouldn't have any preexisting concepts or frameworks about subduing cognitive biases if he had.  So far as Esta knows, he can query his own mind to figure out how sexuality in general will operate.

Esta understands that pain is supposed to produce submission, which makes total Asmodean sense to him.  You submit to people in hopes they'll hurt you less!

Esta has also heard, and on some occasions encountered, that there's a complicated girl thing that mixes up submission and sex.  Esta has never particularly gotten this part -- maybe because he's never had a prospect of getting pregnant, whereas a woman needs to act appealing around a man who she wants to go on taking care of her baby, as he continues hurting her and forcing her to submit?  This situation has never personally arisen for Esta, so he doesn't really get it intuitively.  But he can see in principle how it could be logical for a woman.

But that's not the same as 'masochism'.  'Masochism' is a thing where Nidal thinks that sex is supposed to hurt -- for both partners, not just the weaker partner, because of course Nidal says so.  And there is also -- supposedly, says rumor and approved comparative theology lessons -- another Kuthite thing, which says that hurt is supposed to sex.  Like, directly.  Esta frankly does not see why that would fit with Zon-Kuthon theology at all, but he's heard about it from multiple sources.

After querying his own brain to find out how sexuality works in general, Esta has always figured that a whole lot of this 'masochism' business was some sort of complicated coping mechanism about trying to make pain hurt less -- or deny how much it hurts, or deny to yourself how you're really being crushed underfoot -- by mixing it up with something you could pretend you were trying to do on purpose, like sex.

Esta has generally tried to steer clear of this sort of business.  He doesn't want to have to figure out what is or isn't Asmodean.  Esta doesn't want to have to justify what is or isn't Asmodean.  He'd rather not have Aspexia Rugatonn suddenly showing up in his office, looking stern, to interrogate him about his sex life.  His sex life has been designed with that use-case foremost in mind.

Wizards running Detect Thoughts on Mariona had reported to Esta:

- That Mariona had a submitting-to-authority feeling about Esta hurting her, which was perfectly fine and Asmodean;
- That Mariona often felt straightened-out and set right after being tortured by an authority as high-ranked as Esta, which showed her clerical potential and explained what Asmodeus saw in her that was worthy;
- That Mariona was attracted to Esta's authority, in the usual way of a woman being instinctively attracted to authorities whose backing might prove useful to her, which seemed proper and feminine to Esta;
- But that Mariona didn't want any dick in her vag, regardless of who did or didn't hurt her.  (This also seemed very normal to Esta on a sexual level!  Esta wouldn't want a cock in himself either.)

Esta had thought he'd understood what was going on there, and that it was simple and straightforward and Asmodean on both sides.  You would believe, you would think, that you didn't need to deal with weird supposedly-Kuthite oh-actually-pain-is-sexy complications, if you were hurting a woman who wasn't into sex.

And Esta is frankly not seeing with how it makes sense as Mariona's perfect dreamworld, on that hypothesis of Merrin's origin.  Or why 'I now like pain but not genital contact' would be the result of the Dark Tapestry turning Mariona upside down into Merrin, on his other theory.

What does dath ilan think about whether you're supposed to hurt Merrin?  Are there any planetwide cultural traditions about hurting Merrin specifically, by any chance?

Uh... no?

Hurting people is wrong.  Pain is bad and ouchy.  Nobody would ever want to be hurt during sex.  If you feel like doing that to somebody, it would be a dark secret that you only told therapists, or very trusted friends who might forgive you for having this black fantasy that you'd never acted upon.

...well, okay, actually, that's not the whole truth and there are some people who are into being hurt, including apparently this Merrin person.  But that is even more of a secret.  You do not tell your closest friends about that part; it would be an injury to them.  You wouldn't go around telling people that any more than you'd blurt out the names of Outer Gods in public.

Why the ACTUAL FUCK would that be the case, dath ilan.

Look, Cultural Adaptation just tells you how to behave and the rules to follow if you want to blend in.  It doesn't tell you why those rules exist.

(Possibly because, not to throw too much shade here, the spell was invented by somebody who grew up in Golarion, where cultures don't actually have carefully reasoned justifications that you can look up, so the spell just presumes that all the rules are there for random incompressible historically contingent reasons.  Really that's kind of implied by needing a Cultural Adaptation spell in the first place, rather than just being able to derive all the cultural rules from first principles, or rather, from knowledge of dath ilan's empirical truths plus its utility function.)

From the outside, alter-Estha again looks pensive and is silent for a time, after the culturally signaled fashion of somebody who is carefully hearing out your evidence and trying to update all of his hypotheses about it.

Finally alter-Estha says in colloquial Baseline, "Thank you very much, Merrin; that combination of replies refutes every hypothesis that I previously had."

"Was it the case, in your memories, that the truth about your masochism was not only secret but an infohazard?  And if so, what was the reason?"

WHAT set of hypotheses could he POSSIBLY have had such that the…existence of masochists?? invalidates all of them at once??? Or is it the rarity of masochists, or the fact that someone can be a masochist and otherwise mostly asexual??? Or maybe the part about her endorsing being pointed out to Exception Handling????? He did not actually say WHICH of her answers was refuting which part of which hypothesis, just the combination, but he did say ‘refuted’ which implies quite a dramatic update on his probabilities, more than just ‘it seems somewhat more likely that the correct hypothesis is one I haven’t thought of yet’…

“- My understanding is that there’s a tradeoff to navigate related to masochists being a much, much smaller fraction of the population than - potential sadists, at least - but the thought is that a lot of people haven’t realized they’d be into sadism, so the lack doesn’t actively bother them - and if they did know they would either be unable to afford it, and be unhappy, or they’d bid up the price for seeing a masochist and someone else would be unable to afford it and be sad. Some people will realize either way and be unhappy already, and if they can afford it then it’s more likely the Keepers will err on the side of not keeping the secret from them.” After a moment, “- that’s the position the you I remember was in. I had, um, assumed from the time you mentioned - the amusing amount of pain - that you did know about it already…”

Apparently when Shelyn was done having Her way with Abadar, She turned matters over to Her lost brother Zon-Kuthon, who was next in line for forcing a rapebaby into Abadar.

If all of this is in any way related to Mariona, then she had a much theologically richer sexual inner life than Esta had heretofore suspected.

...does dath ilan want to expand on this 'Keeper' business, the word sounds like it has depth?

Um... cultural behavioral rules... you would treat a Keeper with respect?

If a Keeper landed on this situation, they would immediately take charge because of the [Outer God] aspect, and you would defer to them; that's exactly the sort of thing that Keepers are for.

It's fine to tell Keepers about masochists; they cannot be hurt by such things.

Are Keepers mortals or a kind of outsider?

Esta does not really trust devils or Asmodeus to behave in a Lawful fashion toward him, but he could trust Keepers to do so!

They are utterly reliable; all the weight of the world can be placed upon them and entrusted to them.

...this is some kind of horrible Dark Tapestry thing, isn't it.

WHY DOES EVERYONE ON OTHER PLANETS THINK THAT AS SOON AS DATH ILAN TRIES TO CONVEY THE CONCEPT OF A PERSON WHO ACTUALLY DOES THEIR JOB

And now Esta needs to figure out what to say to Mariona about all this, because she looked a bit surprised by the question, there.

Thankfully, Esta has by now figured out how to bypass dath ilan yelling at him to STOP LYING; you just ask what a dath ilani would find plausible if you were constructing an elaborate deception around them for purposes of revealing it to them later, as is apparently right and proper in dath ilan.  Cultural Adaptation is apparently fine with guiding Esta's instincts around that.

"The way we first met is that I hurt you.  Or to be precise, at very first I was instructing you in a classroom among other students.  The hurting happened afterward and was just the two of us.  Which it was my job to do, as designated by our department, for reasons having to do with how we both related to the [divinity] that granted us spells as [clerics]."  He uses the Utopian words in Baseline; it's only a little jarring.  "That was the foundation of the relationship we later formed.  We also had sex, which from my perspective was enjoyable not least because it was hurting you, and from your perspective was a matter of being hurt within your relationship to our [divinity].  I backed your assumption of greater responsibilities in our department, including your current job that led to us encountering the [Outer God].  You had trouble believing you could do that job, and you were in fact very good at it and much better than the person you replaced -- as I'd predicted to both you and our managers.  All that I have just described was considered normal and standard operating procedure within our department, being surprising neither to us nor to those observing the process."

....It takes a moment for Merrin to actually make the connection, because she's not, actually, a big romance reader. She certainly hasn't bothered to seek out the (relatively tiny amount of) romance literature written for masochists, because even knowing that was a thing overlapped entirely with her Exception Handling career and she was very, very busy, and did not exactly have a lack of romance in her life with her actual boyfriends. And also she hasn't consumed a ton of eroLARP type materials

But if she mentally edits out the sadism and madochism, then “people can get superpowers from sex stuff” is SO TOTALLY an eroLARP trope, that’s not even subtle. It's not exactly a trope she is personally familiar with for this to route through being a [cleric] of a [divinity] that is the kind of entity that makes sense to describe oneself as having a "relationship with", but that still feels like it could be a thing, just not one she's happened upon because she really has not read a lot of that genre. 

And - in terms of her work, that Estha is being very cautious in telling her about, she - was a more junior person in a department that ended up encountering an [Outer God], and therefore was probably regularly dealing with matters that would be secret? And she was very good at it, with a possible implication that her being a masochist was what made her good at it?

It does feel like it fits as the alternate-universe-backstory explanation for her masochism being secret. 

(Merrin hasn't actually found an angle yet where penetrative sex is fun for her, including the masochism kind of fun, but like, she was already kiiind of hoping she would eventually figure that out given a few years, and if she could get COOLER SUPERPOWERS out of it then, yeah, she would definitely have been more motivated...) 

Orrrr maybe that is totally not a good analogy for the situation and she’s jumping to conclusions in the process of trying to map it to something familiar. Merrin is trying to be careful not to do that or at least to notice when she might be doing it! There’s a culture gap and she should not be anywhere close to confident that she understands it yet! 

Also, the main point right now is not what alternate-universe-Merrin is up to, it’s where all of that leaves them now.

Merrin…does not, currently, super feel like being in an eroLARP plot? If that’s a way the narrative tropes could go if she leans into it, then, uh, she would perhaps instead rather not do that? Also it still feels like she’s probably missing some very big pieces of context, and “wow it sounds like you’re from the eroLARP alternate-universe” is a super weird and awkward thing to say that is probably importantly false in some way, and so it doesn’t feel like deception to avoid dwelling on it.

”…Okay,” she says. “That maybe - clarifies my understanding of some things - though it’s also possible that it’s exactly the wrong amount of context and I’m making assumptions and actually more incorrect, but - I’m not planning to make large decisions from my understanding of it, if you’re still worried about infohazards and would rather not explain everything.” 

Pause.

“…One assumption I’m making is that it sounds like in your memories, we - weren’t not dating but there was maybe a lot of other more complicated context too? And - I’m not sure how that affects how it makes sense to be relating to each other right now. Since I don’t have that context. …Uh, I guess there might also be non-obvious context that I have with the you I remember, but I can’t obviously tell what, from my perspective it was really very straightforward.”

"I had thought my relationship with my Merrin was straightforward.  But depending on exactly how you are related to her, or on my current best guess transformed from her, it suggests that there were as many as several things going on in our relationship that I perhaps did not fully comprehend."

"What's your version of the straightforward relationship we had?"

Yyyyyyup culture gap. Merrin would super not describe the...thing he described...as 'straightforward' even if her eroLARP gloss on it was mostly accurate!

...Her own current top hypothesis is that, if she was in some sense 'transformed' from the alternate-Merrin – if dath ilan is the alternate-universe of some other narrative canon – then, well, it's still not a 'transformation' that involves her having any continuity-of-consciousness with alternate-Merrin, or any hidden memories to be dug up. But it's a pretty uncertain hypothesis and it's also REALLY SILLY so who knows. 

"You were a sadist, obviously, which isn't unusual but you were also one of the people who noticed this about yourself and was unhappy about - not getting the thing that would make you happy - and you were also pretty wealthy, though I actually have no idea what work you did to become wealthy, you didn't talk about it and I figured it was secrecy-oath stuff. But you put in a high enough bid to see me, it turned out I liked you a lot, we made each other happy. That's - kind of it?" 

"It may take me a while to figure out what this says about, one, the straightforward relationship I thought I had with my Merrin, two, the pattern of your relation to my Merrin, and three, what the [Outer God] could possibly be trying to do and what that implies about how we maybe get free of this planet."

Indeed. The last thing sure is also a question that Merrin is, herself, chewing on, and does not feel this conversation has resolved, and - 

- is not telling Estha anything about her stupid ridiculous alternative-universe fanfiction crossover theory, apparently, which is prerequisite context for the eroLARP trope that she would kind of rather subvert because that's just - it's too silly, okay, Merrin is aware that this is ridiculous of her but it feels too undignified (and, therefore, unsexy? like, this would just not in fact be a Merrinfantasy?) for the narrative resolution here to be that she (re?)acquires [cleric] superpowers from a [god] who likes sadomasochism, and they end up solving all of their problems with the power of kinky sex– 

Is that her actual reason, in its entirety? That it would be undignified and therefore she wants to avoid mentioning it out of embarrassment and social awkwardness? 

....Okay, fine, when Laeirthe puts it like that it's clearly a really stupid reason to keep a secret from her alternate-universe boyfriend. And, like, if she kept a secret that was relevant to both of their survival from her Estha from dath ilan, that - feels like something that would be wrong on relationship-ethics grounds - 

- but this is not her Estha from dath ilan. This is a different Estha, somehow, and Merrin does not need to know which Estha ""came first"" or understand the exact mechanics behind his differences to notice that he is different, even if he feels a lot more familiar when he at least shares the language of dath ilan with her. 

And she - there's a culture gap, she's not sure that if she said it he would hear the thing she really meant, and it's such a stupid theory, and possibly making any decisions on the basis of it makes things go worse rather than better– 

...She's really digging for reason why it's reasonable and correct of her not to tell him, isn't she. Are any of them the actual reason, or is it just that she's - no, it's not just that she's embarrassed and feels silly and it's awkward, because if it was her Estha then she wouldn't hesitate on those grounds, she would expect him to tease her and that would be fine - is she just being incredibly unfair to alternate-Estha because she's stressed and in a weird headspace from all the months of isolation and on some level perhaps feeling a little bit of resentment that things are complicated instead of simple - 

Wow. Who is Merrin even arguing with in her head, right now? Her mental model of Civilization? What the acid shit is her mental model of Civilization doing here, it doesn't exist here and maybe doesn't really exist at all, it's none of its business. In fact, it's no one's business whether Merrin likes alternate-Estha and trusts alternate-Estha exactly as much as she likes and trusts the other one! In fact, Kalorm would like to throw the entire concept that Merrin has social obligations to anyone into the sun! It seems like it's making her stressed and she could just stop that!

......Wow. 

Um. 

Thanks, imaginary Kalorm, for some reason it does help to have an imaginary Kalorm in her head right now, but Merrin....does not actually think she endorses all of that? 

Honestly, Laeirthe is not super sure if they have paranoia grounds on which to avoid explaining the hypothesis?

But he's also not sure they don't, he's running on really incredibly limited processing bandwidth right now. And Merrin seems to have a hesitation, there, and - Laeirthe is kind of inclined to say her hesitation might be pointing in the useful-paranoia direction? He can try to think about it when they're not mid-conversation. He's really much better at thinking about things when they're not mid-conversation. In the meantime, he is on Team Kalorm that, like, it would be pretty surprising and inconsistent-standards if Estha did think it was a serious violation of interpersonal-relationship-ethics for Merrin to keep back some of her thoughts when he's doing even more of that? At least as long as it's true that she hasn't thought of a blatantly obvious plan that would obviously work if her hypothesis were true and is therefore worth trying to test it? 

Okay. 

"I also have some things to think through after this conversation, regarding hypotheses I've had that might relate to what the [Outer God] could possibly be trying to do," Merrin says, which is at least acknowledging that those hypotheses exist. 

And there is something that she still thinks she feels uncomfortable hiding from alternate-Estha, because this one feels like it's a lot broader than an intimate-romantic-partner interpersonal-ethics expectation, it's - something that would also be relevant to a coworker, and they are approximately coworkers right now. 

"...This is only sort of related but I want to explicitlyflag," the connotation there is that she doesn't expect this to be entirely new information to him but wants to raise the salience of facts he's already observed but may not be interpreting in the direction she's pointing at, "that I was - that I remember being, at least, on this planet alone for multiple months, frequently in potentially-life-threatening danger, after a stressful plane crash that I expected to end in True Death, and - on priors those factors aren't good for someone's mental health. I think I'm functioning at my usual capacity, and I'm not in active emotional distress. The Exception Handling training I remember was effective preparation for extreme stressors. But - on priors, I might not be entirely okay and my judgement could be affected." 

(Merrin is aware that interpersonal-ethics is not just about whether someone will be mad at her later or have hurt feelings, but it does feel like Estha - like the one she remembers, at least - would be less hurt about her not feeling totally comfortable with him and telling him everything on her mind, after she made sure to bring up that she might have reasons to be, for example, compensating less well than usual for underlying neuroticism and social anxiety.)