"I'm not sure I'd actually say 'low'. Materia has a surprisingly high standard of living considering."

"Weirdly Earth-like, right? Is there an explanation for that?"

"No, not really. Sort of like there's no explanation for alts in general."

"Maybe eventually we'll stumble across it."

"Here's hoping."

"Is it needed for anything?"

"Uh, your human alt and Iobel want their own Elspeth. And it could provide some insight into what the fuck Erus are doing."

"Materia seems unlikely to let Eru do anything, and yet it had alts of us. Well, some of us."

"Yeah, and no Erus are next to each other but Ardas are samey..."

"That could follow just from the Erus being alts, right?"

"Yes, but then that still means alts need explaining."

"I'm almost more disturbed by all known Earths having the same apparent trajectory until the late 20th century despite vastly different underlying magic systems."

"Space Arda seems even weirder than that to me - Earths are at least geographically alike, and Space Arda is spacey and more populous and missing magic and I'd have expected literacy earlier to do more than it did -"

"More than getting them to the point of FTL instead of swords?"

"Nah, for narrative purposes lightleapers just equal boats, but the more - social-effect advances - should've had social effects."

"Human populations change socially because the people in charge die."

"I guess that could be all it is... Endorë was also still itself though."

"I don't actually know much about any Endorës."

"They usually don't have writing at all until the Noldor show up. Maybe I'm overestimating the importance of writing, but writing."

"Yeah, wow. ....I guess in the dark it's less useful."

"They have stars and Elves can see in the dark really well!"

"They probably don't have trees you can make into paper! Or animals you can make into parchment!"

"Endorë has not only trees but tree people! Which I suppose introduce their own paper related complications."

"Maybe slightly. How does Endorë have trees."

"Yavanna maintains them, betraying a slight failure to understand how trees are supposed to work."