#vaguely coherent ramblings

[maebird-melody]

Tharkay masquerading as Laurence to get the Russian army's attention is something I do not think book one Laurence would have ever allowed. Book eight Laurence still holds tightly to his senses of duty and honor, but how he sees them enacted has grown decidedly...flexible.

[inumbrapugnabimus-maybe]

Making decisions after 2 am is a great idea *posts all of my oc art with no context*

[monsterqueers]

YK, I'm thinking that the true mark of a mech pilot isnt that they pilot a vaguely human-shaped robot, but that they have Something Fundamentally Wrong With Them.

The Something Very Wrong With That Guy is central to the character being well suited to being encased in a giant shell to do Incredible Violence.

That something wrong can be something slapstick and funny, or it can be a incredibly traumatic backstory, or mental illness, or vague amoral bloodlust , or whatever- but there is Something Wrong With That Guy

Mech series that forget this part tend to fall short- Vld had many sins, but that most of their guys were pretty normal mentally for a mech pilot is certainly a factor in it's level of Flop.

And my money for why this is the case is on the fact that its because they dont have they key flavor of Something Is Very Wrong With That Guy being a driving undercurrent. When people write plot focused/gen fanfic versions of a mech thing that are considered 'better then canon' they ADD the Something Wrong as well in many cases, if you notice.

All the long celebrated and cult classic mech stuff all has this going on; Gundam, NGE, Xenogears- There Is Definitely Something Wrong With That Guy(or many guys in there) and thats what really makes them shine.

You have to make your mech pilots a little fucked up to make them proper mech pilots.

[itskaist]

when you hit the tag word limit you know you should just make your own post

[caterpillarinacave]

i saw in the tags of your henry and mortmain posts that you’d like people to ask you about them :) — and tbh i’d love to hear more about the parallels between them that you mention in the post :D

Before I begin, I’m so sorry I took so so long to answer! I have been pretty busy and could definitely do a longer breakdown of all this but it’s already been a month and it’s going to drive me insane if I leave thing unanswered any longer. 

I’ll need to do a full re-read of the trilogy to really answer the questions but here are some thoughts that are very interesting to me. Please excuse any incoherent-ness, (and grammar issues, and repetition issues, and poor citation, and spelling, and rambling, etc, etc) i have spent so long staring at the document i wrote this on trying to get my brain to work I may have totally lost the plot. Just trust me guys I’ve got a PhD in Henry Fairchild.  

Lets start off with the most obvious parallel, that being their work. On a strictly physical level the work they do is very similar- they both approach magic through science and vice versa in a notably unique fashion. Stylistically and functionally the things each of them create has a decently sized overla and Henry has no problem understanding Mortmain’s creations. Mortmain favors clockwork for his creations and while Henry doesn’t specifically focus on such things he is very familiar with them, and interested to boot. 

Mortmain is quite brilliant, in multiple ways. Most people could not manage the type of thing he pulls off consistently; Henry *probably* could. It’s worth noting Henry is severely limited by Shadowunter laws; in the third book we see the only reason he hasn’t invented a portal entirely by himself is because he can only work with a specific set of runes (Clockwork Princess, pg. 282). Even working in the tight restraints of Shadowhunter resources, and only being around 21 in the books, he’s extremely competent. 

Furthermore, Henry does not approach things with the period typical Shadowhunter judgement; as a matter of fact he essentially does not function within society as a Shadowhunter. To unpack that lets look at where Mortmain and Henry stand in relation to broader society. 

The London Shadowhunters in this time period can be described, for lack of a better word, as pissy. Judgmental, bored, aggressive, whiny, chronically dissatisfied, dramatic, dismissive, sometimes downright cruel, etc, etc. Pissy. They’re really pissy. 

Henry, objectively speaking, does not fit into all this, and is punished for it (see pgs 281-283 CP3). The general public treats him horribly. Recall in Clockwork Angel Charlotte tells Tessa that Henry was the one who told Mortmain what a Pyxis was (which is, again, a different rant), that he wants her to tell the Clave and that she won’t because “they already treat him so badly”. And they do- nearly every single interaction involving him and broader Shadowhunter society involves some sort of insult, mockery, slight, etc. Almost nobody but Charlotte ever objects to this behavior and her objections have zero effect. “Making fun of Henry” is pretty much an unopposed standard. 

There’s no fair reason for this. Henry is, by all accounts, an extremely pleasant person. He’s repeatedly described as “kind”- Tessa has him pinned as a trustworthy person almost immediately (“it’s only Henry, after all”). He’s rarely upset, laid back, well intentioned, and generally polite. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. 

Imo he probably would have been treated better if he did respond in kind- or even if he had just fully withdrawn from Shadowhunter society. His persistent refusal to hold a grudge, a generally positive trait, shoots him in the foot. This is only compounded by his general disinterest in things like physical fighting, politics, and social structure. He hasn’t done anything wrong- quite the opposite- but he’s being punished by his peers for the crime of being earnestly odd (coughhasblatantlyautisticcough). 

Mortmain, being a human child raised by warlocks, obviously does not fit into any particular standard. He doesn't have any particular loyalty to a party. Rather, he mostly defines his identity with his hatred for Shadowhunters, and connects with other groups transactionally with this in mind. 

He has been wronged by the Shadowhunters, when his parents were killed and then in the aftermath. The Clave denying his request for reparations and, by extent, denying any wrongdoing in their actions, is a smack in the face from a powerful society. 

With this in mind they would be both well within their rights to resent the Shadowhunters and they respond to that in fully opposite ways. 

Henry doesn’t resent them- at all. Despite how horribly he is treated, which, one can note, does not stop after the battle of Cadair Idris, he chooses to let it go and actively work to make life better for those same people. (Clockwork Prince; “You know it isn't just tinkering for me. You know I want to create something that will make the world better, that will make things better for the Nephilim.”), He views that cruelty as a part of life as a Shadowhunter but not the defining part of that society. It’s just a thing that happens- it sucks, it hurts, but he’s not going to blame or punish the whole group because of it. 

Mortmain’s is entirely the opposite. He hates them and views all the Shadowhunters as irredeemably wrong, fully deserving of a violent fate. All of them. He’s obsessed with destroying all these people despite most of the individuals who hurt him directly being gone. He blames them all, intends to carry out a mass punishment and doesn’t care about anything else.

He is deeply resentful, yeah, but he also wants more for himself. He doesn’t just want revenge, he wants a disgusting amount of power, a total victory over anything he choses, power mainly for the sake of having power. 

Now we can circle back to that earlier point- Henry could be like Mortmain. 

Recall in Clockwork Angel when they first bring back the automaton for Henry to examine in his lab he’s not just interested in the machine- he’s excited about it.He recognizes it to be a brilliant work of science and design, something incredibly impressive and compelling. This is not the sort of thing anyone sees everyday and it’s certainly not the sort of thing a Shadowhunter would interact with. This is exactly the sort of thing he loves, the sort of thing nobody else ever brings up, and it’s exciting to see. 

As the books continue nobody else is ever caught up on the functional skills of the machinery itself. People talk about Mortmain, about what is happening, what to do, etc, etc, but the fact that the automatons are a feat of engineering is just not on anybody's radar. It’s not the sort of thing any Shadowhunter gives shit about, save Henry. 

So Henry has the same intellectual capacity as Mortmain, the same scientific and magical capacity, and a not dissimilar approach to thinking. 

He could pretty much disappear and do whatever he wanted forever. He could ditch the Nephilim. He could walk off without telling anybody and never bother with the Clave’s again. He could go off and study all the things Shadowhunter’s are banned from. He could create whatever he wanted completely unencumbered by the restrictions of the Nephilim (see pg.283 of CP3). Chances are nobody would pick up on it. One of the major flaws of that group of Shadowhunters is that they’re very self focused. If someone they aren’t particularly fond of, who doesn’t fit into their narrow view of someone that deserves respect, stops showing up and interacting with them they are not gonna make any real effort to figure out where they’ve gone. If Henry wasn’t around to “annoy” them none of them wouldn't go looking for him and they don’t have enough respect for innovation to wonder what he’s up to. 

Remember, nobody cares about what he does (Clockwork Princess: Henry blushed a scarlet color. It was clear that no one had ever complimented his inventing before, except perhaps Charlotte. Pg. 282 ) 

He could have a whole new world of resources without having to deal with a society that thoroughly rejects him. He could do the one thing everyone thinks he loves the most. Hell, from an outsider point of view, the only thing he loves. He’ll happily spend days straight working, forgetting to eat, sleep, or anything else.

It’s theoretically not difficult to imagine a universe where he skips out of Shadowhunter society completely and has been wandering around the same circles as Mortmain for forever. 

(He doesn’t ofc because that would be betrayal. It would require breaking the law, throwing away all social and civic responsibility, abandoning the whole kit and kaboodle, blah blah, certainly not related to other very elaborate thoughts I have about this character.)

The point here is that they are so similar save that fact. Their scientific approach to the world, which absolutely defines that way Henry exists and, at least at some point in his life, probably defined Mortmain, are so similar. If you laid the basic facts all out to someone with no context other previous knowledge on the characters (here is what they do, here is what they’re best at, here is what they bring physically to the table etc and exclude personality, morality, relationships, etc) and asked them to point out a character most like Mortmain they’d probably point to Henry. 

Hell, I’d point to Henry. I’d say yeah, that’s a set up for someone to go full mad scientist and wander off to do whatever he wants. I’d say that's the character most likely to agree to use human bodies to power machinery. 

Recall back to Clockwork Angel (and like, two paragraphs ago) about the automatons that are so fascinating to Henry. The beginning scene is the most exciting he  ever is about this incredible tech:

���[The automaton] is not precisely a living creature at all… A mechanical creature, made to move and appear as a human being moves and appears. Leonardo da Vinci designed one. You can find it in his drawings- a mechanical creature that could sit up, walk, and turn its head. He was the first to suggest that human beings are only complex machines, that our insides are like cogs and pistons and cams made of muscle and flesh. So why could they not be replaced with copper and iron? Why couldn’t you build a person? But this. Jaquet Droz and Maillardet could never have dreamed of this. A true biomechanical automaton, self moving, self directing, wrapped in human flesh.” His eyes shone. “It’s beautiful.” 

“Henry.” Charlotte’s voice was tight. “That flesh you’re admiring. It came from somewhere.” 

Henry passed the back of his hand across his forehead, the light dying out of his eyes. “Yes- those bodies in the cellar.” (pg. 160-161, Clockwork Angel. )

That characteristic earnest excitement that he displays towards nearly everything new dies on the spot. “Miranda” and the other automatons are not less interesting because they’re made with human body parts- if anything that should make it more interesting. But the scientific brilliance is negated by the cruelty associated with it. It’s impressive, it’s “beautiful” and it’s not worth it. Innovation that opposes life, as opposed to promoting it, doesn’t count (see tags). 

So their work, especially in this context, is interchangeable- it’s their intentions that make the whole difference. 

Tessa says it best in Clockwork Princess; Henry brings things to life. Mortmain destroys. Where one of them has devoted his life to protecting people, regardless of how he’s been treated, the other one has devoted himself to slaughtering people, because of how he was treated. Where one invents with the specific intention of protecting life 

In other words, two very very similar people differentiated by a fundamental love for humanity and a fundamental disregard of it. 

TLDR: I need to reread the books to make this post but their style of work, approach to science and magic, and interests parallel. Also I have no idea if I’m coherent anymore please ranting in the tags for thoughts on everything here. 

TLDR the TLDR: They’re both inventing shit in a series hinged around these things that have been invented

[transmascutena]

Hey hey, I forget if you've ever posted about this, but one thing that fascinates me about Utena is the food side of everything. How Akio bakes, how Anthy basically only successfully makes shaved ice, and how Utena talks about the food going bad from lack of refrigeration. How it's not the job of the Rose Bride to cook. How Wakaba being able to prepare food makes her a good wife. I have thoughts about this, but I'll avoid saying too much because I wanna hear what you have to say too

i have gotten an ask about anthy's cooking before, where i talked about the ability to make food as a symbol for agency/freedom/independence, and how anthy can cook certain things like festival food, shaved ice, rosehip jam, the cantarella cookies, but not really anything that counts as a substantial meal (the curry is a bit of an outlier here. i guess it shows that her agency is mainly expressed through messing with nanami?) anthy says she wants to get better at cooking, and i'm inclined to believe her. i think she has the potential to be good at it too, but that akio has.... discouraged her from trying, as a way to make her more reliant on him. although, i actually can't recall if akio ever does anything in the kitchen other than (allegedly) bake that cake to impress utena, so maybe i'm way off. or maybe that's another piece of symbolism i haven't quite figured out.

you bring up a good point about gender roles here in regards to wakaba too. cooking is traditionally a woman's role in a lot of cultures, which makes it interesting that anthy, who as the rose bride is supposedly meant to be the ideal bride/wife not only cannot cook very well, but, according to touga, should not cook at all? i guess that ties back to the agency thing, though. but does wakaba have a lot of agency? she has a certain degree of freedom, at least, that comes with not being tied up in the main narrative most of the time. i'm not sure. i think food and cooking is one of the (many) things within this show that does not have one specific meaning that can be used to interpret everything related to it. i suppose my conclusion is that cooking can be both a limiting role if it's forced on you (in the sense of "you need to cook well to make for a good wife which is of course something you should want to be"), and something liberating if you do it for yourself. it's also just kind of a necessary survival skill, which is why it's so telling that anthy doesn't have it.

surprisingly enough i've never really posted about utena's food talk in episode 33 or how it may or may not play into this symbolism, so i guess i'll take this as an opportunity to do that. first, during the othello game, she talks about messing up measurements when cooking, and about the flavor coming out wrong. "you can't undo it once it's done." this shows her worries about what is happening/what will happen, and is already hinting at her regret afterward. it's a metaphor, but it also kind of ties into the agency symbolism. it tells us that utena is not very good at cooking either, and hints at the similarities between her and anthy. later she talks about what to make for lunch the next day. she's rambling, trying to distract herself, dissociating, and i don't tend to read a lot into what specifically she's saying. that's not really what's important. however, i do think it's signicant that she's bringing up anthy, for one, but mostly that she's talking about something urgent she needs to do that isn't here. she's making excuses to go home, to stop. if you buy the cooking as agency thing, utena's worry about the food going bad could once again reflect her worries and doubts about the whole thing. is there symbolism to the fact that she specifically brings up salmon and eggs and asparagus and sandwiches? maybe. but i think it's too easy to get caught up in all the little details and miss or ignore the bigger picture of what actually matters (very vaguely referring to an analysis of this scene that i hate. if you know you know.)

[lazaruswitch]

that post from eveningdawn22 (I think??) about "not palatable (notably to tim) transfem jay" is only reassuring my ideas and thoughts for the lily todd au but in like a different specific-to-me and specific-to-this-au way

speaking from experience tim drake Would be weird about lily* (for context: lily as in lily todd, from an au where jay is a transfem Muslim, among other things)

this isn't like a character condemnation thing, this is me speaking from experience about what people are like about queer Muslims. (bruce would also be very Weird about it but i think the source would be first and foremost bruce/batman shit, particularly in relation to jay specifically, before we hit the like more general social aspects and whatnot)

people around here (new jersey, but also america in general) are just Like That. the white kids (esp rich white kids from those gated mansion communities or whatever) around here are especially Like That. i've been going to school with them for years and have even been "friends" with some (for a given definition of friends) and they all inevitably to some degree will be Like That. in fact the vast majority of the world is Like That, to varying degrees of severity, not just specifically because of the Muslim bit or the queer bit, but because of the two things together in one person.

(from my personal experiences, it's not always a malicious thing or an intentional thing, but it is inevitably demeaning and isolating in a particular way that's supposed to be acceptable and is brushed off as like, "people can have different political beliefs blah blah blah". microaggressions and the taint of Islamophobia and all that)

there are a lot of places and people that are theoretically queer friendly or push this idea of no prejudice, like my uni, but it's inevitably not actually that straightforward

(tim and tbh a lot of the batfam, or even superheroes/vigilantes in general, are or would be like that. not even your beloved heroes are immune to propaganda, overt or otherwise. jay is already basically a freak in canon. in the lily pot au, lily is a freak existence for arguably "worse" reasons. "crazy" white boy is vastly more preferable to transfem niqabi mom.)

there's a specific idea of queerness people have in mind when they talk or think about acceptance, and it's one that does not involve the majority of the real world or communities, and they react poorly when asked to confront that

none of this is new or revolutionary information or ideas; queer bipoc people, especially Black and Indigenous queer people, have been talking about their personal experiences with this for ages, and have been demanding attention and change for just as long

some people are receptive, some people are theoretically receptive, most people don't like confronting or acknowledging the status quo

but i almost never see those kinds of discussions about or from Muslims, especially Muslim women or hijabis (i specify this bc of the visibility of hijab)

if anything it seems like everyone is deeply uncomfortable with just Muslims existing in a way that is not in fact "Other", and having to think too hard about Muslims as people who can have similarities that Really don't fit certain narratives (e.g. devout hijabi who is also proudly queer) even "positive" ones is just so.... incomprehensible, and disgusting, to them

it's exhausting when even the blue-hair-and-pronouns cannot stand the blue-burqa-and-pronouns but everyone pretends that's like. fine. and acceptable. if they acknowledge it at all

tim drake would think lily todd was weird and freaky and he'd be with the majority on that

[devotedlystrangewizard]

the school arc to me is so good because it drags ciel out of his position as a powerful figure and literally places him in the shoes of the person he could have been. the circus arc ALSO drags him out of his position as big bad queens watch dog/head of the phantomhive estate but the school arc feels like a mockery of a future that never was. this is what he could have been had his parents not died. and even then its NOT because he will never be that kid.

he never was.

[chestersbraincell]

The line that sorta goes like “I don’t recall hatching a bunch of arachnid babies being on your list of childhood dreams” makes me think that, in the childhood version of Wonderland(back when I assume Gidget’s gender issues weren’t as pronounced, afterall this is what the tree takes issue with and I assume it happened after their wishes became “corrupted” and they moved on from Wonderland to live the rest of their lives, before coming back as adults ofc), Gidget’s wishes would’ve involved them being like a pretty princess type of deal and that Cecil was then their doting butler. Also had an inkling of Cecil being an imaginary friend sort of parental figure Gidget used to cope with their own parental issues.

Well anyways, in that way, I feel the death of Cecil in Arc 5 then further symbolises them coming to terms with their gender identity and expression. ie “killing” the childhood dream of wanting to be a “pretty princess”, which was represented by Cecil, their butler. Also perhaps because Cecil acted as a sort of surrogate parental figure this would’ve been representative of Gidget killing the care they had for their parents’ oppinion and expectations

idk

[variousxcruelties]

trying to move my body and stay motivated to move my body bcs i am very out of shape and unhealthy and feel awful all the time and like i’m way too young to be losing this much mobility…but holy shit doing like a hot 15 on a treadmill with relatively low incline and speed put me in actual fucking pain. like my lower back was burning so much that it made me a little lightheaded by the end. and i want so badly to be able to give myself grace and remind myself that it will get better with time as long as i keep doing my best to move but i cannot help but to literally dog on myself for letting it get this bad. for rotting in bed for most of my teen years but especially the majority of my twenties so far and just???

idk.

trying every day to love myself and the body that i’m in no matter what state it’s in. trying not to buy into the idea that i need to be small in order to be worthy. but i hate myself a lot. i have no self esteem. i think i look worse than i have ever looked before and i’m terrified that everyone thinks i’m so disgusting and ugly and lazy. i wish it was easy to want to take care of myself. i wish it was second nature like it seems to be for so many other people. but everything feels like such an uphill battle that i have to fight for to get any basic consistency.

this is just a ramble atp. i just wish things were easier. and i loved myself more. and that walking didn’t cause me so much pain rn because i want to do it and i want to be better but it hurts a lot and i don’t know my limits.

[sp1resong]

yknow what. re: this ol' post--

[gnosisandtheosis]

This piece will come as no surprise to any remotely progressive or leftist Christians. Of course this brand of hyper-individualist, hyper-capitalist, and hyper-nationalist evangelicalism would find its followers rebuking Christ and His message.

One quote from Russell Moore here really stood out for me: "When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis"

Now I haven't read the full interview yet to read this quote in context but it astounds me. The whole point is that Jesus message is *supposed* to be subversive. Both individually and in society we are supposed to challenge the status quo.

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

When we look at the world that we have created and compare that to the one we are called to co-create with the Divine, everything will need to be subverted for us to get from here to there.

I came to bring fire to the Earth, and how I wish it were already kindled

[abstractlesbian]

Find someone slightly annoying but in really small harmless ways so I decide none of the behaviours are worth bringing up with them → realizing: hey, Im also annoying! solidarity! → realizing we have a lot in common and starting to bond → finding out other people find this person annoying and are vocal about it behind their back → finding out this person has ADHD like me that's (at least one reason) why we have all these traits in common → fear.

[bitegore]

someone who is not me has definitely said this before but im coming to think that the existence of power is bad. Like. in a super fundamental way. Power requires someone to be subjugated to someone else's . well, power, lol, authority or control or whatever, because the construction of power is that someone can force or coerce or threaten someone else into doing something they otherwise wouldn't do by application of some consequence or another. even the soft power of 'this person is wise and knows a lot' is a construction where ignoring that person or not listening to them leads to some potential negative consequence, so we obey this wiser and older person for their ability to steer us clear of some imagined dark future mired in suffering; things only get harder from there really. But by like dint of existing in the same space as another person tehress nothing that necessarily subjugates someone else until we start playing power games and using power as a method of organizing the social group.

and like we live in a very power-centric world (obviously) so it's hard to concieve of the world without structures of power in the same kind of way it's hard to concieve of a world without, like, language or the cultural idea of the color blue or whatever, where it's this ingrained logic that just straight up Is part of how the world is run (to us, right now) but we live in a world where we have had problems that existed for millenia that we are killing, one piece at a time, like we are gods who can just turn our backs on cholera and infant mortality and widespread poor crop yield that produces famine and so on (if we choose to, which broadly we have made exclusively available on an exchange-for-money basis because this world is still running entirely on power) so i have to choose to believe that one day we will be able to turn our back on the idea of Forcing someone to do something as the only way to make any headway in society or to allow civilization to function and we will be living in a world miles better for it

[mothbeasts]

ok since you're the fabby expert riddle me this bc i've been thinking abt this all day for some reason. what do u think like. her childhood/young adulthood was like. i rotate her in my head all the time but it is SO difficult to think abt her outside of the state she's currently in now. i know she didn't spawn upon this earth like that. but that's the only way i can picture it so i need insider intel on this subject

SO glad you asked because i think about this extensively. disclaimer that this probably does not line up with Actual Canon it's just my fun little version of events that happens in my brain.

With that out of the way. What was younger fabby like?

For starters. she was 100% a theater kid and finds it embarrassing as an adult. But you cannot stop being a theater kid. Ever.

Honestly. I feel like she was fairly normal as a kid. Maybe a bit TOO interested in morbid things like poison and murder but honestly. That feels Normal. She would've been the kind of kid who like enacted the strangest scenarios and drama with dolls I think.

Things get interesting at around her young adult era. See, in my mind, a lot of her issues started at around that time. Her general constant stress and poor sleep schedule were Definitely worse when she started university. But she powered through (mostly on spite) to get her engineering degree anyways. And then got a job with Zoraxis. Which in no way helped anything ever. In my mind she also got a minor in an art field - not entirely sure what but that's just how I imagine it going. Probably something fashion related, if we wanna take that watch poster into account.

Another thing in my mind is that she was far more reserved in. i wanna say the late teens-early 20s range. Quiet, not really drawing attention. Very absorbed in her studies. Her turn towards evil science was kind of simultaneous with her becoming more like the Fabricator we see in the games; by the time she's gotten a cozy spot near the top of Zoraxis, she's got her act perfected. But the perfect evil science persona DOES take time to craft and that wasn't really the direction she had intended to go at first. She started off just wanting to go into normal engineering or something. Even into her early days with Zoraxis, she was a bit eccentric perhaps but not quite at evil science level for some time.

I think her interest in poisons and such started to take a turn for the worse when she got access to university level chemistry labs. And then her engineering education obviously went towards murder.

The summary is she was honestly Pretty Normal in my mind up until she started working for Zoraxis. After that she realized she actually thinks the whole evil thing is fun and she wants in on it.

HONORARY OTHER HEADCANON MENTION: I tend to draw her with a prosthetic arm. Why, you ask? Lab Incident. She accidentally blew herself up really bad. This happened shortly after the start of her career at Zoraxis.

[strixcattus]

I want to make a list of everything that needs to agree with something in the time travel conlang, just to get my thoughts organized.

The guiding principle here is: Everything that might have cause to agree with something, does so. A Watsonian explanation for this would probably be something like, "there are a lot of ways time distortion could drop information or cause someone to miss it, and they would really like to know whether they're talking about their friend or an evil future version of their friend." The Doylist explanation is absolutely that I think it would be funny and fun and also I've never done any sort of agreement in a conlang before and have a lot to make up for.

The numbers this conlang inflects for are: —Singular (needs no explanation) —Monogender plural (a given group of one gender) —Multigender plural (a given group of multiple genders) —General plural (used for blanket statements that may or may not have exceptions, such as "stars give off heat" or "cats have fur")

The grammatical genders of this conlang are: —Null (always and exclusively used for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th person) —Former (past variant of myself, you, or a familiar 3rd person entity) —Future (future variant as above) —Alternate (alternate-timeline variant with a branch point in the past) —Split (alternate-timeline version of a future variant, with a branch point in the future) —Dopple (they're not a past or future version, our lives are identical, but somehow we exist separately at the same time and I need to gender them somehow)

(The distinction between 3rd and 3.5th person can get complicated. If I'm friends with someone named, say, Alice, and her future self travels back in time to now, then regardless of whom I'm speaking to, Alice is referred to in 3rd person and future-alice as Future 3.5th. If, however... let's say Nikola Tesla. If Tesla were to time-travel to 2023, and I met him, I would refer to him in 3rd person, because he would be the only Tesla I am familiar with and the only Tesla in this time frame.

On the other hand, if my grandfather were to travel through time as a young adult, and we met in the present, I would refer to him in 3.5th person, because I already know my grandfather as someone else. However, if I did the time-travelling, and met my grandfather in the past, I'd refer to him in 3rd person, and the version of him who is my grandfather in 3.5th... unless I happened to bring my present grandfather with me, in which case my present grandfather would be referred to in 3rd person and the past version in 3.5th.

Get it? By default, the native version of a person in the current time frame is referred to in 3rd person and all interlopers in 3.5th... unless they do not exist in that time frame, in which case the one with the greatest familiarity to the speaker is referred to in 3rd and all others in 3.5th, or if the speaker is travelling with the native version of that person to their time frame (or another person native to the same time frame who also knows the person), in which their native version is referred to in 3rd and all others in 3.5th.

As a sidenote: If my young grandfather (3.5th) time-travelled to a point after his death, but within my life, I would be well within my rights to refer to him in 3.5th person, even if he is the only version of himself in the current time. Those who did not know my grandfather at his current age, but met my time-travelling grandfather, would be well within their rights to refer to him in 3rd person and my present-day grandfather in 3.5th (future gender—or alternate, if my present-day grandfather didn't do any time travel in his own life).

(I don't know what you would do if Nikola Tesla showed up in 2023 in his time machine, then took you back in time to meet his self from a few years later in that self's native time. Leave it as exercise for the reader, I guess.)

—Adjectives agree with gender of the nouns they modify, by way of suffixes. If they need to agree with multiple genders, the suffixes are stacked in a set order. They're also inflected for number and for person, because you can expect to have an adjective attached to a 1.5th, 2.5th, 3rd, 3.5th, or 4th person noun/pronoun (e.g. in 1.5th person, "the evil me").

—Adverbs agree with the verbs they modify in terms of objective tense, again by way of a suffix.

—All persons of noun and pronoun that have multiple genders inflect for gender and number.

—Verbs are conjugated first for tense in objective time, then affixes are attached (these can be prefixes or suffixes) which encode person, gender (if applicable), and subjective tense for the subject and object. The positioning of these affixes is fluid, but they each point towards the nouns they're agreeing with.

—"No tense" is a valid objective tense for a verb whose objective tense is unknown, but whose subjective tense is known. For instance, if I know I'm going to mail you a letter, but I'm not sure when in time I'll be when I do so, I can refuse to inflect the verb for tense.

—A particle (which may act as an adjective or an adverb) can be constructed to indicate objective and/or subjective time for something not normally indicated. For instance, it might be attached to the noun "his texts" to indicate that the texts have not been written yet, or that whoever "he" is hasn't written them yet, but the texts themselves exist already, or to a verb to indicate that some third party (with which it agrees in number, gender, and person) has already experienced an event which is in the future for all other players in the sentence.

Verb objective tense conjugations tend to indicate the subject's person in some way. Some objective tenses lump 1st person with 1.5th person and so on, and others distinguish between them. I haven't decided yet, but this may be dependent on the base form of the verb. Like French! But worse.