"So, what, ask Governance to send us somebody who I'd find very annoying, but who had a lot of mathematical talent and a Lawful frame of mind?"

"Oh no. I changed my mind. This is how we get Keeper Avaricia and I don't want Keeper Avaricia."

"You think Lady Avaricia is annoying?"

" - do you not find her annoying?" 

And here she'd been assuming Ione was WRONG about the TROPES thing.

"- she seems like a pretty standard '????????'* which, I guess, doesn't really have much of a Taldane translation now that I go looking for it."

"Um, person who finds it hugely painful to be the slightest bit tactful to anyone or hold back her thoughts, and is constantly noticing how everything in Civilization is falling way short of her standards for how it ought to look namely perfect.  You don't meet any of her standards either, but she thinks that way about everyone, so it isn't anything personal, or really about the person you yourself are at all."

(*)  Dath ilan doesn't quite have the concept that some other places might call by names like 'autistic', because it's a pretty different phenomenon when the weirdos in question have INT 22 and WIS 16, and also are embedded in a larger Civilization that doesn't think about weirdness the same way as some other places; namely weirdness = difference = specialization direction = exploit for comparative advantage.

- and is that a romance trope. This is a very important question.

" - huh. That does seem like it ...describes her. I haven't met anyone else like that but I wouldn't make that a strong prediction about how rare they are because they sure wouldn't go to the Worldwound. And is the idea that dath ilani - don't find it annoying because they know the complementary ways to act? Or because it's common enough you know they're not doing it at you?"

"I guess the second one, that it's not directed at me?  It hadn't particularly occurred to me that I should find a ???????? annoying especially while they were in the middle of helping me out with chemistry research.  But sure, if she treated only me that way and seemed to feel like everybody else except me did meet her standards, that would be annoying, yeah."

"Huh, okay. - I don't have an issue working with her in class, you don't have to like people for that, but I definitely wouldn't expect to end up friends and in fact was assuming she disliked me specifically-rather-than-generally. 

I wonder if she knows she's a ????????."

"I mean, presumably Lady Avaricia knows who she is, what with her having lived that whole life from the inside and all.  Not having a word for a category to categorize yourself with, or not knowing the statistical commonality of other people resembling you in some dimension, isn't the same as not knowing what you are.  Asmodia didn't have a word for 'asexual' or 'demisexual', but she knew that she'd only felt a couple of flashes of possible sexual attraction over the course of her life."

Carissa decides not to make the observation that Avaricia's weirdness might also be explainable-including-to-Avaricia by her being the heiress to a county; Asmodia's right they don't want to look too closely at that. "I'm sure she has noticed that she thinks everyone else is deficient and disappointing, but I wonder if she's noticed that other people don't feel that way about each other, and wondered why she is different in that respect. ...I know to a dath ilani that's an extremely obvious mental move, but it's not, really, in Cheliax, any more than I thought to check whether Avaricia disliked me specifically or generally. You can be quite smart and lack that habit entirely."

"Fair.  I'll check in with her at breakfast tomorrow.  Nice thing about ???????? is that you don't have to bother with being at all tactful yourself, around them.  They're not going to be happy with you no matter how carefully you phrase anything, so there's no point in bothering, and they don't expect you to do any better."

"Lady Avaricia should actually be easier to be around than most other people, once you understand all the places where you don't need to put in any effort because the normal social thing you'd be trying to do is impossible?"

"...though I should probably explain to everybody else that it's nothing personal, and they shouldn't try to be tactful to Lady Avaricia or make her seem socially happier with them."

"That does seem like a helpful announcement to make."

......probably not a romance trope. 

PL-timestamp:  Day 23 (19) / Long Night

"So the good news is, Keltham doesn't think you're annoying."

Obviously Keltham doesn't think she's annoying. He's not as full of petty resentment as the rest of the people in charge here.

"He has concluded that you have a not-uncommon innate personality type where you cannot bear to be tactful or courteous, ever, to anyone, but don't care if anyone's courteous to you either, and are perpetually disappointed with the world for not meeting your standards. He's used to such people and doesn't mind hiring them, and wants to make an announcement to the class so that no one mistakenly thinks you're being rude to them specifically rather than as the instance standing in front of you of the general inadequacy of the world."

"I am trying to figure out what that implies about dath ilan and not getting very far."

Shrug. "Not your job. Your job is to have that personality for the duration of the project. This is, as I'm sure you realize, very good news, don't ruin it by trying to convince Keltham that actually you think you're superior to other people for political reasons."

You keep rounding off what I think of you to things that are easier to tell yourself aren't true.

She's not going to say that to the Chosen of Asmodeus. 

"Understood. Is anything more known about this personality that I have."

She hands her the transcript. "This is it. Listen carefully when Keltham explains it to the rest of the class, and then work with what you have. All that Splendour's got to be good for something."

"It makes your underlings with excessively fancy headbands nervous when I improvise."

"- oh, grow up. Yes, if you stress Asmodia out she might light you on fire, even if you didn't have any other obvious plays to make instead. Nothing really bad will happen as long as Keltham's happy." She has a vague floating sense she'd have given a different answer a week ago but she's not sure which Carissa is right and this one seems Eviller, so, probably that's fine.

"Understood," she says again, and waits to be dismissed.

PL-timestamp:  Day 24 (20) / Breakfast

"Good morning, Lady Avaricia.  How is the Project disappointing you today?"