Quotables!

[Kappa]

(pursuant to a conversation about how "autoincorrect" is a technically-inaccurate way to refer to software keyboard parsing errors)

(11:05:24 PM) kappabeta: Quick, somebody get a software keyboard and swipe "you tried" really badly and whatever it says will be the new "autoincorrect".
(11:05:41 PM) Teceler: pffffffffffff
(11:06:15 PM) tecephone [~androirc@PSI-5B647610.lightspeed.ltrkar.sbcglobal.net] entered the room.
(11:06:37 PM) tecephone: Toy differed
(11:06:44 PM) kappabeta: that's PERFECT
(11:06:57 PM) Teceler: it's... actually kind of hard to swipe badly enough not to get either of the words right XD

[MaggieoftheOwls]

(Jack may be used to rule sets best described as "Calvinball.")

XD

[DanielH]

If I say 'also Timothy has stopped lighting things on fire when he's mad and my other cousin gets along really well with his boyfriend he bought so they bought his sister and in a few months my parents will be done making necklaces and I can tell them all about it' would she kidnap me.

[DanielH]

He’s doing this on purpose, isn’t he? I didn’t realize that when it was just the thing about buying a boyfriend.

[Bluelantern]

I would like to inform that kappa has been crowned poofmonarch and Teceler the poofprincess.

[lintamande]

Mingling's doing it on purpose, yeah. He's doing it especially with stuff he knows Is Bad but has no sense of /why/ - like, he knows why hurting people is bad, he wouldn't feel the need to lampshade instances of the peal hurting people. But he knows /that/ buying a boyfriend is bad, and bad even to people who don't think /having/ a boyfriend is bad, and same for other instances of negligent-about-complicated-kinds-of-harm behavior, so he just talks about them and learns things from the reactions.

[DanielH]

He doesn’t understand why his parents leaving him alone for months would seem bad to a human?

[lintamande]

So the thing about Maitimo's relationship with his parents is that it's not that they are negligent, it's that he /knows when he is not the most interesting thing they could be doing/. Like, most small children go through a phase when they want to hear a song sung thirty times, or a book read over and over, and their parents are so sick of that stupid book but read it again anyway because they love their kids.

And Maitimos know. And they have parents who are unusually easily and intensely nerd-sniped. They stop asking for things like that. They find it really distressing to be given attention that comes out of a sense of obligation, even though that's just a completely normal way parents relate to their small children, and they work really intensively at being interesting whenever they are given attention and totally undemanding whenever they are not. If he went over and interrupted his parents, of course they would stop their work and sing to him and play with him (and probably be glad of the chance to see him, and definitely be glad that their child felt free to interrupt them), but they would stop their work and experience a flash of irritation at the work they lost and so he will never ever go over and interrupt them.

By the time they are 15 or so Maitimos understand how people can have complicated preferences like 'I want to be the kind of parent my child interrupts to need affection, even when I'm in the middle of something' and then they quietly cut that out and pretend they weren't doing it. But the little ones do it. And he knows that people would find this bad but not /why/.

[DanielH]

I was imagining Elf timescales were more than compensating for Elf increased parental involvement, such that an Elf hearing that might think it was kinda bad but not nearly as bad as it would be for a human. I think somewhere in the thread they said that a Year and a half wouldn’t be enough time for him to start really missing his friends or something?

[lintamande]

That is true but partially compensated for by Elves thinking of parenting as more of a full-time job.