Elfthreads!

[Ezra]

Ah yes, that story. Good question then.

[Unbitwise]

… what is the Order in Tower?

http://alicorn.elcenia.com/stories/tower.shtml. I think DanielH was missing a definite article.

“Tower” is the title of the story so it does not have any article. “the Order in the Tower” could be an in-universe description, but it would not fit the story, because in the story “the Tower” is not capitalized and (more speculatively) none of them actually live in the tower nor is the tower seen as uniquely significant to the applicants before the test.

[DanielH]

This is what I meant, yes. I suppose I should have put the story name in quotes or made it a link, to make that clearer.

[Kaylin]

*follows link*

*reads story* !!!

I love it!

[anthusiasm]

Wait has no one told Kaylin about Alicorn's short stories before now

Kaylin you have to read Muse

Also:

the latter of which is accompanied by traditional red caste lullaby No One In The Cemetery Will Hurt You (All Of Them Are Dead) until she is napping on a chair.

Pffffft

[DanielH]

What if a non-red hears that?

As a “flower-haired shopkeeper” I am terribly offended at the implication that my shop brings in so little money that I cannot afford a coat! Do you allow your garbage to sing such songs?

Edit: to clarify, this is a quote from my imagination which I am asking about, not a quote from the story that anybody missed.

Or, if that only works for foreign royalty and higher-social-status castes, I am offended that you think my life as a grass-haired artist is boring enough I will die of old age.

[Kaylin]

Wait has no one told Kaylin about Alicorn's short stories before now

Kaylin you have to read Muse

I spent a significant portion of today binge-reading All The Stories, don't worry. :D

[anthusiasm]

Yay!

Also:

"I don't even understand why they - what's the - what else do they hate, do they hate - sunsets -"

I relate to this dude

[DanielH]

Two Elf-related questions, given what thread this is

1. Is part of the standard set of marriage blessings the ability to have kids, or was the part about all steps being necessary an oversimplification because no Elf would dream of having children out of wedlock?

2. In what way is the statement “the ships have to get up to 97% of lightspeed to jump” meaningful, given special relativity? Especially since at any acceleration a human can survive sustained that long, it would take far more than five days to get that fast?

And one non-Elf question: why have the colored-hair mostly-humans bout fine through the demographic transition?

[lintamande]

1) Chip Elf women are like soul Elf ones default-infertile; it is probably not literally physically impossible to get the blessings that you'd need to get pregnant while unmarried but it'd take some serious determination.

2) The ships have to be traveling 2.91E8 m/s. How to get ships to go that fast and how to do the acceleration without killing the people on board are Sufficiently Advanced Technology.