"It wouldn't really help, would it."

"Is that - entirely Sauron's influence on them, or -"

"Not really- that's not even just humans, at Cuivienen Elves would occasionally have wars that were just as ugly."

"Not our kind of Elves."

"I bet the difference is circumstances, not kinds."

"There are no conceivable circumstances-"

"You seem to have a very narrow conception of the set of circumstances people can find themselves in. Not - defending them, of course."

"I don't think it's kinds if by kinds you mean soul versus chip. There might be something else going on but - I don't know what -"

"Nor do I. We didn't have writing back then so we can't even ask Bar at what point my world's works diverge from - innocent Elf worlds -"

"Chip Elves invent writing earlier, if it's not me it's Rúmil - I don't know if there's a version that's like yours but with chips, there could be false matches -"

"- worth checking - Bar?"

Bar cannot find any chip Elf Ardas which seem to her likely to be plot matches with Midnight's world and its cluster.

"Maybe having writing earlier changes it, Hazel humans would get the horrible reaction from the Valar but Revelation humans might not..."

"Humans seem much more ethically malleable in response to technology differences than Elves do, but maybe."

"Orcs and Elves are - the same kind of thing, fundamentally, do orcs have a crime rate -"

"Not a big one by - multiverse standards - but yes -"

"So that might be all Elves from my world have but it's enough to have caused lots of problems - and, oddly, to have made us more equipped to handle other ones -"

"It's convenient in a way, yes."

"It didn't feel that way at the time but it sounds like we lost a lot fewer people getting to Beleriand than the nicer worlds where 'a fight over the boats' hadn't occurred to anyone as a thing which might happen until it did."

Nod.

" - people will not exactly be thrilled to learn there's a world where they naturally are the sort of person the Valar were trying to modify us into, even if it's objectively better - there's a lot of trauma there -"

"I can see that. It's not identical, my Valar are for example fine with gay people, but yes."

"Huh. Were from the beginning or were talked into it?"

"Talked them into it. Well, they weren't totally sold until they... found out what Eru's priorities are like... but I got them as far as 'suspend the practice of changing people for it until further review, stigma does more harm than good even if in the end everyone ought to be heterosexually married and people should be discouraged from making baseless assertions about other facets of moral character on that basis...'"

"It sounds as if we really, really could have used one of you."