intelligent nametags

[thaumobabble]

Jane alerts everyone to the existence of a new Bell, the nature of her wives and children, and the presence of her mother-in-law.

She stands ready to move in anyone who wishes to attend this new party.

Glass stands ready to receive them.

Comments

[calendarofcrime]

"Interesting," says Steel. "Does it need solving?"

[luminous_regnant]

"Well, otherwise we won't know why it's happening," laughs Golden. "It doesn't seem urgent for any practical reasons."

[calendarofcrime]

She contemplates the question.

Then she says, "Why not ask Glass?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Do you suppose that's the kind of thing her aura-sense can do?" wonders Juliet.

[calendarofcrime]

"I think there is one obvious way to find that out, and no obvious downside to trying."

[cross_and_bow]

"Yeah, fair enough. Hey, Glass!"

[thaumobabble]

Glass appears and kisses her wife and says, "What's up?"

[luminous_regnant]

"There are some odd regularities in how various languages are magically translated into one another and we were wondering if you could shed light on the subject," says Golden.

[thaumobabble]

"Uh. Hm. Say some of the words?" Glass asks.

[cross_and_bow]

"Witch, witch," says Juliet, switching between languages, "wizard, wizard, sorceress, sorceress."

[thaumobabble]

"And you only just noticed this because the local language has words for those things and isn't English. Hmmmmm." Glass nibbles her lip, closes her eyes. "Witch, witch, witch - There might be a - no, I can't really make sense of it. I'm still figuring out how I work now."

[calendarofcrime]

Sherlock kisses her anyway.

[thaumobabble]

Kissees!

[luminous_regnant]

"What were you going to say? I promise not to take it as an irrefutable fact of the multiverse."

[thaumobabble]

"I was going to say, meta-language," says Glass, "but I have no idea what that would mean."

[calendarofcrime]

"Can it not just be essentially a coincidence, deriving from the fact that the kinds of magic user in question don't have direct counterparts in the various worlds but the magic chose to translate the terms anyway?"

[thaumobabble]

"Nnnno, I think it's not that - not on the level I'm seeing through aura, anyway, that might be what we'd find on a causal level. There's some sort of reason wizards get the same terminology as Cam and witches the same as Amariah or Golden."

[cross_and_bow]

"There's witches on my world too," Juliet adds. "Just, I'm not one."

[thaumobabble]

Glass nods. "And it wouldn't be just as good to call them sorcerers-in-my-language, and when you pentagon the language you know that, and Milliways knows that."

[calendarofcrime]

"Do we trust their judgment?" wonders Steel.

[thaumobabble]

"I'm not at all sure. It doesn't seem to be making any egregious mistakes?" offers Glass. "...I think there's a reason we have all-male wizards and Amariah has all-female witches, I think we'd never find the reverse case but I don't know why."

[calendarofcrime]

"Interesting again."

[cross_and_bow]

"Those words in English do have some gendered connotations, in those directions," muses Juliet. "I think in my world it's technically gender-neutral, anyone can learn the magic, but women are somewhat more likely to use the word 'witch' - I don't know for sure, I haven't met many of these people in person and my written sources are not overwhelmingly reliable."

[luminous_regnant]

"There isn't another word for the phenomenon in English on Aurum, and among people who are clued in to it being a general phenomenon - which is most people without their heads in the sand, at this point - it's gender-neutral, but historically media of various sorts which has fictitious varieties of magic-user gender-biases the words like that."

[thaumobabble]

"English, or some distilled meta-version of it, could easily be the metalanguage I'm hypothesizing," says Glass.