Do not mock the humble survey

[poll_the_stars]

Avet... has found herself annoyed. She has only one form. This isn't the problem, but this is what led to her noticing the problem. There is no way to preview what a dragon will look like. There are species books of birds and bugs and animals - but some of them are sub-par on noting where the dragon's colors go, and miscellaneous gods that she doesn't worship help you if you want to see what your color will look like on the form.

She is going to solve this problem. By taking some surveys. As in, grab photo paper, gather up a list of lines to go visit, and then knock on some doors and ask some questions and create a book series that organizes all possible forms, all known forms, what known lines look like in the forms - that sort of thing.

She starts with blue groups, because blue groups have the most available forms - she's gotten all of the big lines (well, all of the big lines that gave her the time of day) and is on the smaller ones. The ones with only one or two people. Or, in some cases, none.

This particular one's easier than some others; she doesn't need to fly to another country. It's Esmaar. She flies to the address of one 'Avar,' no line name. Apparently he had one and had some kind of explosive spat about it and gave it up. Not that it's her business. He's just another person for her survey.

She knocks on his door.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

Nerd time! Nerd time!

[poll_the_stars]

Nerd time!

First step: read the notes.

"... Um?" says Avet when she gets to a certain part of it mentioning what shrens look like in terms of dragon magic. "That is what a shren looks like to the analysis?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"What, constantly on the verge of dying? Yeah, pretty much," says Mial.

[poll_the_stars]

"That's kind of disturbing. Uh, no offense."

[thisvorlunatic]

He shrugs. "None taken. But yeah, that's what it looks like. Infected or hatched, same result either way. Mother was originally trying to find some kind of cure, but it's not the kind of condition you want to mess with if you don't know what you're doing, and at a certain point you can't figure out what you're doing any better except by messing with it."

[poll_the_stars]

"How awful. Ugh. ... Again, no offense to you."

[thisvorlunatic]

"What's amazing is that when you say 'no offense' you seem to actually mean it."

[poll_the_stars]

She laughs a little. "What, do people usually not?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Mostly it's just the 'how awful, ugh' without the 'no offense'. But sometimes it's 'no offense' meaning 'in case you hadn't noticed, I just offended you, make sure to pay attention'."

[poll_the_stars]

"Charming. I don't know if I should feel ashamed that I'm using the same vocabulary as these people, or proud that I am redeeming it."

[thisvorlunatic]

"A difficult decision."

[poll_the_stars]

"I mean, I'm not - I really hope you don't think I am going 'how awful, ugh,' at you, because I'm not. If anything I have quite a lot of respect for you as a person. It's just - the situation is kind of awful."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Well, that's why we're fixing Draconic. Although if you want to fix shrenhood too while we're at it, I'm all in favour."

...Thoughtful pause.

[poll_the_stars]

She notices the thoughtful pause.

"Mm?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Mm," he says. "Just - thinking. About what I would do if someone came up with a cure for shrens."

[poll_the_stars]

"... Fly, assumingly?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"What? No."

[poll_the_stars]

... She looks at him curiously.

"Or not?"

She looks terribly confused but like she's pretty willing to listen to him explain.

[thisvorlunatic]

"This is the first time this has actually occurred to me, so I may not be perfectly comprehensible about it," he warns. "But. Look. Why would I actually want to stop being a shren?"

[poll_the_stars]

She almost says why wouldn't you? but - doesn't. She closes her mouth and stops and thinks.

"... Stop dealing with lizards, fly, stop having a language that hates you...?" she lists, uncertainly.

[thisvorlunatic]

"We're going to fix the language thing," he reminds her. "Well, try, anyway, with at least as much effort as we try fixing shrens and probably first. So what's left is flight and lizards. I can fly, just not in my natural form. It's not really a big deal to me by itself. That leaves lizards, and honestly, if all the other shrens in the world were cured and I stubbornly remained, getting yelled at by lizards for my degeneracy would bring me immense perverse joy. No, the only real reason to stop being a shren is the tiny risk of accidentally infecting somebody else - and assuming a working cure that's any damn good at all, that's much less of an issue all of a sudden. So why would I want to stop being a shren? Just to stop being a shren? No thank you."

[poll_the_stars]

She looks at him very strangely. Sort of like he is a very frustrating puzzle that she doesn't understand.



"That would be proving them all right?" she tries, after a very brief empathy consultation and some very atypical-for-a-dragon thinking.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Sort of," he says. "Not even proving. It would be accepting that they were right. And they're not. If I decided to stop being a shren just to stop being a shren, I would be acting like there was something wrong with being a shren. And I have gone to a great deal of trouble my whole life to maintain that there isn't, in the face of intense and unceasing opposition from the word itself."

[poll_the_stars]

"Huh."

(If he were an empath, he would likely catch a brilliant flare of admiration, even when purposely not paying attention. But he's not.)

"I think I understand," says Avet slowly. "I would call it brave but that seems - condescending. Mm." Draconic. C'mon. You can do it. Ha, look, she has a word for this one! "Admirable." (In a moral sense, in the sense that what is being admired is what the world should be, in the sense of seeing someone fight for a cause and agreeing with it)

[thisvorlunatic]

"...Well. Thank you," he says. "First time anyone's said that about my weird shren opinions."