A Sufficently Desperate Amalgamated Waffle Sorter

Are you sure it isn't time for a colorful metaphor?

[waffle-sorter]

... Let's recap, shall we?

Humans entered this galaxy three millenia ago. In that time, they have not managed to:

Join the local alliance of intelligent species

Reverse-engineer the "energy barrier" that aliens use instead of airlocks

Terraform more than one planet

Establish an artificial ecosystem on a space station

Improve their air recyclers, or otherwise provide any treatment for the Space Asthma that gives its sufferers a life expectancy of 35 years

(Mind, I don't think the energy barrier thing is the best idea - what happens when you have a power outage? - but it's nonetheless something they specifically covet.)

There also doesn't seem to be any equivalent of cell phones or credit cards, no significant robots except for security drones, no ftl communications... all they've got is universal translators and starships that don't seem to need any kind of fuel.

[waffle-sorter]

I'm sorry, WHAT?

Like, okay, "you either never go home or you get kicked out without any memory of us" is not great, but I can see how that'd come about. But "any connections you had there will be induced to forget you"? How does anyone who's ever cared about anyone else think that's an acceptable idea? Especially when there's rarely, if ever, more than one witch who can do memory modding?

[waffle-sorter]

Okay, but what are the parameters here? So far we've got a passive lie-detection kind of thing that runs without any apparent effort or intent; a few (maybe different, maybe not) protection effects that run purely on conscious intent; whatever the snake thing was, that may have started by conscious intent, but seems to have mostly been directed subconsciously; the worldhop, which appears to have been subconscious; and now the language thing, triggered purely by a physical ritual with no knowledge, intent, or belief required. How do the magic work?

[waffle-sorter]

I'm sorry, "most people are content"? Most people settle, I'd believe, but society is very big on "reach for more, dream of The Big One, and work your shoulders off for us on the assumption that's how you get it"

[waffle-sorter]

Look, I'm sorry, but if you get them by breeding, then they're not going to be new species. Heck, the parents are probably barely separate species in the first place.

[waffle-sorter]

Um... duh? Dryads don't need to breathe with their lungs if they've got leaves.

[waffle-sorter]

I mean. Androphile is already a thing, right? That'd be a person who's attracted to men. For a person who's attracted to an android, I'd probably go with robophile, or maybe mechanophile if you want to stick with Greek.

[waffle-sorter]

Bzzt, try again. Polygyny is specifically one man and multiple women; polygamy is any multiple marriage. Though you're right that polyamory is a separate thing.

[waffle-sorter]

If New Millennium can mass produce them, the applications are mind-blowing. Continual glucose tracking for diabetics,

Doctor. You're in a book that was published in 2016, and by all indications set around the same time. The first real-world CGM system got FDA approval in 1999. Admittedly, it was probably less convenient than this literally futuristic device created by magic, but the Dexcom I started using in ~2017 wasn't exactly tough to apply and use.

[waffle-sorter]

Stars in the whole sky, this is going to be one of those stories, isn't it? The ones where I feel Extremely Seen even though there's barely any resemblance to my actual lived experience, and the characters spend so much time being uncomfortable...

[waffle-sorter]

Staaaaaaaaars

[waffle-sorter]

Stars in the whole sky, this is going to be one of those stories, isn't it? The ones where I feel Extremely Seen even though there's barely any resemblance to my actual lived experience, and the characters spend so much time being uncomfortable...

[waffle-sorter]

"There's not a single openly-gay superhero anywhere in the world."

"You mean I get to be first at something?"

[waffle-sorter]

🤷‍♀️ Maybe it's just me, but I feel like this book - with its inciting incident involving a minor going to a dating site to talk to ai chatbots - might well have been entirely different if it'd been written a few years later. (It was published in 2021.)

[waffle-sorter]

I do like when I can do that kind of thing.

Character gets empathy powers for a couple of minutes. They start picking up people's emotional states one by one. After the first one, I point - in a direction with basically no relation to how I'd been picturing the characters being arranged - and think a character's name, and sure enough, that's the next character that gets sensed. Then I do it again. And again.

[waffle-sorter]

See, this is one of the things that bother me about rl-style spy stuff. Your orders are, to your certain knowledge, harming your agent-on-the-scene's professional relationship with his team and his personal relationships with his sister and girlfriend; your plans are getting derailed by people on your side being good at their jobs; at least four uninvolved civilians have been harmed by the fallout of all of this... but you keep going "stay the course, don't read anyone in on what's going on". I doubt things'll be going even this smoothly by the midpoint of the book. At this point I'm desperately hoping none of the main characters are too high on the casualty list.

[waffle-sorter]

I definitely do like the timestall/true speedster distinction.

Timestall speedsters basically pull themselves a little way outside of time, so that they can move through an all-but-frozen world. "True" speedsters just go fast, and have brains that can process inputs that quickly too.

(Because, like - Usain Bolt doesn't move through any slower of a world than you do. He just has a higher maximum speed. The world around you doesn't feel frozen when you start your car moving, you're just faster within it.)

[grumblesaur]

shipping-related thoughts:

someone should write Lady Uzume femslash. (I certainly will if I get a decent idea)

are there any Golden Sun fans who are monsterfuckers? even with all the Sirens and Wolfkin and humanoids that get transmogrified into dragons and (in Dark Dawn) Beastfolk, the closest we've come is stuff with Sveta and/or Volechek?

who has OCs that aren't framed as additional party members or Isaac/Felix/Matthew replacements? The Researcher of the Rift is all that comes to mind (also it's trans femslash and that's based)

[waffle-sorter]

If you want ideas, I could toss you a few. (Young Uzume falls in love with a dancer from another island. Due to reasons, the dancer can't visit Izumo again, and for the life of her Uzume can't remember where she was from.)