"That's very straightforward! Why would it be hypocritical?"

"So, basically every esper is pushed into dungeoneering. It's sort of what we're for, kinda. Dungeons started appearing and we started appearing. And I...dislike that. I think there should be more thought given to ways esper powers can bring value to the world aside from killing dungeons.

When I got my power, I was pretty bummed because, well, it's 'useless', quote-unquote. In the sense of being useless for dungeoneering, of course. The only esper career path that was presented to me was basically 'professional partner for an esper with an Actually Useful Power'. And at the time, when I was younger, I rather resented that, and thought about how I might use the power I had to make money. Which led to me signing with an agency who was interested in my illusion food idea.

It's more severe in the East, I think, where espers are given letter grades based on their usefulness in dungeoneering and not just power classifications. I have a Filipino acquaintance whose power is cooling things down, and she makes flash-frozen popsicles as a party trick, at her D-rank useless esper meetups.

I do like that construction and healing espers have established themselves in the public consciousness as something which espers can do which aren't dungeoneering, but I think it should be broader. I feel that...power testing attitudes are too focused on dungeoneering ability, or how this ability might help with that. And it should be something more like, trying to push the boundaries of your power, seeing if you can use it creatively, finding uses or weird niches it could fill. As an example, it took me an embarrassingly long time before I realized that my power meant that I could let people taste physically impossible foods."

"Huh! Did you have any other ideas for using it that didn't pan out?"

"Well, I tried seeing if my power could be used for combat, right. My limits for how spicy I can make an illusion go pretty high. But dungeon monsters have different tastes than we do, if they can taste at all — in the few times I've gone into a D-rank dungeon to try it, it didn't seem very helpful.

My power works on animals too but I don't think there's much value in doing that. I suppose I could let dogs know what chocolate tastes like without getting poisoned. Regrettably, being that I am human, I can't go and taste poisonous-to-human things and then transmit that thought to others. Otherwise, I'd want to try out stuff like lead acetate — sugar of lead — and add those to my repertoire.

I suggested to my acquaintance that she should look into using her power for targeted cryotherapy. We do it for skin conditions like warts but maybe if her power is flexible enough and she has the finesse for it, she could do it internally or something. Or she could help with physics experiments that require very cold conditions where they study near matter near absolute-zero — she has poor backlash rates, which makes her not useful for dungeons, but in a lab setting it could be viable.

I basically" and he is making circles in the air with his hands, which is regrettably not transmitted by the medium of phone, "think there should be more creativity in thinking about the applications of esper powers."

"I'd suggest that you could offer new vistas of flavor to my monster cat but he seems perfectly able to eat anything a human can. There are other monsters who might benefit, though; the talking unicorn in Johannesburg is an obligate carnivore and might appreciate an illusion salad."

"Oh, that would be great! Thank you for telling me that — I should contact them."

"There's a whole list on the References page on the blog. Do you think the Eastern ranking system is harsher overall than the subratings people get over here which, if I recall correctly, put you at 'psychic control 1'?"

"I will take a look!

Yes, my power is classified 'psychic control 1'. Well, I haven't experienced it first hand. And the idea of it is...it makes sense. We rate dungeons S, A, B, C, D — so you sort espers based on which dungeons they can take on, or which they would be able to support with. My issue has to do with the...essentializing and totalizing nature of the ranks. It compresses esper capability into one dimension and I feel like this exacerbates the issue where an esper thinks their power is 'useless' and stops trying to consider how it might become useful in nonobvious ways. And it can make things very hierarchical, where higher ranked espers are treated way better than lower ranking ones. Not just in the sense of being paid more or having more benefits, but...socially, structurally. Using only classifications seems like it would blunt this tendency, since there are many classifications and they're less directly comparable — although there is still a numeric component.

Again, I haven't experienced this firsthand and only go by what I read and what my friends and acquaintances tell me, so please don't put that much stock into my opinion."

"I'm a dungeoneer myself with very limited civilian applications, but I often like to think in terms of how dire a dungeon - or a non-dungeon disaster - has to be before you pull in a particular esper. Which as an approach tends to favor powers that would be higher-ranked, because there are more places they could do good and you have to sort those more aggressively, but it inverts the Eastern ranking system's inclusion of backlash efficiency, because people with useful powers and poor efficiency need stricter rationing than equally useful people who can do twice as much. My go-to example there is Columba, who can find dungeon cores."