parodeity | subnautica ic inbox 2.0;

Aside from like...our shared stupidity over anythin' emotional. You never make me feel like I'm an idiot when I don't know somethin'.

[ because he DOES feel like an idiot a lot in relation to dirk when they realize they fucked up something that could have been solved easily or they just misunderstood, but - whenever dave admits to not knowing what dirk's talking about or misses a reference, dirk never gives him shit over it. usually he tends to claim dave is smarter than dave considers himself to be, instead. ]

So askin' you to help me with this wasn't really that scary.

[A silence. Then a flicker of something like a smile at the corner of his mouth.]

You just opened yourself up to a vaguely philosopretentious statement on learning and ignorance there.

[That is not what he says. What he says is instead:]

It's nice that we can both ask each other things like that without getting scared.

I feel cheated of my vaguely philosopretentious statement. Pay up?

[ you can't just say you have one and then not say it, dirk. even if dave's little smile morphs into one of his actual ones. ]

It isn't one of my best ones. Not even a drop of irony in it.

[Shameful!!]

Only the willful rejection of knowledge can be condemned. The impossibility of omniscience, on the other hand, is the great gift of the human condition.

Except when it really feels like it isn't. [fuck you sburb and the stupid shit you were arbitrarily vague about]

Yeah, wow, our entire everythin' kinda fucked over that statement, didn't it.

[ hes kind o amused here. ]

Man, I wonder how many philosophers we'd totally fuckin' wreck with just, like, our general lives?

Almost the entire history of world philosophy has been spat on by our existence.

[They really are such asses.]

Allowing for how much I hate not knowing things I need to know, learning is still something I enjoy a lot and see a great deal of value in, and I doubt I'll ever stop doing it. It might be best to designate that one conditionally philosophical.

I suppose I'm...used to not knowin'? A lot of my bullshit relied on, you know, trusting my instincts or myself in various iterations, while havin' basically no details. Or, well - dumb details like how many iterations there were for a certain thing, or stupid shorthand I'd get? But I never knew everythin' and I was used to it. You're more like Rose, I think, in mindin' the uncertainties sometimes.

[ but he does like to know. it's nice. sort of comforting. he didn't know that, before? even before the game and time bullshit, he was in a constant state of flux in regards to what he knew. ]

I don't think I want to stop, either. Although I might change my mind someday about what I want to learn.

Me and Rose definitely agree. There's a difference between not knowing how astrophysics works, which is an opportunity for learning, and not knowing how the fuck I'm supposed to navigate a completely arbitrary game or what the actual purpose of anything in it is, which is annoying as all fuck.

Admittedly, there are some aspects of the game I just don't want to know more about. [Like. The Trickster stuff? He doesn't want to know anything else about that. He's fine in his ignorance. Let him rest.]

We'll have to pass on locking you in as Science Kid For Life. [actually dave as a Science Kid seems hilarious and they need to do more Bill Nye things.] It's sort of a benefit of our immortality. We have literally all the time in the universe to keep learning whatever we want.

Hopefully it will remain irrelevant for the immediate future.

[ JUST HOPEFULLY. ]

And...yeah, that is kind of a cool thing. Textbook me again? I was like, talkin' the other day about maybe picking up languages that are not, like, alien.

Which ones are you thinking about?

[Also he gives Dave THE NEXT IN THE STACK OF ALGEBRA BOOKS wow there's so much algebra. He gets the next geometry one for himself.]

Spanish or Hindi.

[ time to POST IT NOTE THIS SUCKER UP. ]

Probably the latter. I can actually probably handle language studies [ with jake maybe???? he's not sure where they fell on that??? ] on my own. Maybe human languages will be even easier than the alien ones I keep havin' to pick up in self-defense?

One of those is not the expected choice.

[It's the second one??? Because he doesn't know this choice is spurred on by Bollywood Nights with Jake & Dave.]

Human languages are at least guaranteed to use organs for sound production you absolutely have.

Yeah, I would have expected me to know more Spanish, too.

[ he's texan??? it's right down there by mexico. also look dave will keep this secret as long as possible. which...who knows how long it will take dirk to call him on the amber he gave to jake thing. that jake keeps by his bed now i guess. will jake crack and explain. will dirk figure out how much effort went into that? no one knows DAVE'S ALIBI IS ROCK SOLID no it's not ]

Ok, if that was a crack at my Kharaa accent, you can't even make it 'cause yours is basically exactly mine.

Which brings us to wondering why you want to learn Hindi?

[WHEN WILL DIRK KNOW in the dumbest possible way, one day]

It was an objective observation about the difficulties of cross-species communication.

Why wouldn't I want to learn Hindi? Gotta start somewhere in the languages of the world, y'know?

[ honestly who can tell at this rate DAVE'S COMMITTED TO NEEDLESS CAGINESS, because why the fuck wouldn't he. about this thing that 100% doesn't need to be remotely secret. ]

We should learn Spanish though. [ gesturing back and forth between them. ]

Apparently you wouldn't learn Hindi because we're going to learn Spanish.

[The. Two of them? Apparently? Like, Dirk isn't going to disagree. He will sign on to learn this thing he probably doesn't need to know. Why not. But. ???]

Uh. [ there's that typical moment of belated uncertainty that dirk displays so often after making a decision for the both of them. it is probably precisely like dirk's, really, mirrored back entirely in tone and stance. ] If you want to learn Spanish, I mean? Since. That isn't really immediately useful I guess like, say, Kharaa or even learnin' to read Alternian or whatever, but.

[Good job, kids.]

It isn't like I've ever based my educational choices on what would be immediately or even potentially useful.

So you do want to?

[ confirmation is key ]

I just figured since you're always, like, gung-ho about the Texan cuisine it...kind of counts as a thing we might maybe give a fuck about. As Texans.

Yeah, I do.

[NOW HE FEELS. Slightly called out on this.]

It is apparently our heritage. So is being space babies, but I don't jump to get in touch with my ghostbuster backstory.

Well, yeah. Doesn't bein' Texan mean more to you than that though? You literally forcibly picked up the accent.

[ the calling out continues although dave mostly sounds baffled as to why dirk is suddenly sounding vaguely tsundere about texas ]

You're correct in your observations [even if they're SHAMEFUL CALL OUT POSTS] but you're focusing on the wrong source here. I did not pick up the accent because my meteor happened to land in the ocean where Houston used to be.

[He's hesitant here. He doesn't want to cause a thing about his Bro. But it is related, and he has to try to explain it.] It was a way of connecting to family that I could never actually encounter. I was trying to close an impossible distance.

Now, it's a way of bonding with the family I have, which is a different exercise. I just, uh... like it as a way of being closer to you.

[He really, really hopes he didn't mess this one up.]

[ at this point, dave's eyebrows just raise. ]

No, I know. I mean - I know it was about him. [ he's...not sure he knew it was about him, not the other dave. that's a weird thought he's not sure how to process, or how to quite believe. ] I always knew that? We've mentioned it before sideways. I figured if he'd been from somewhere else you would've been into, like, wherever that was. But, paradoxes. Source-wise.

Right. But that's the thing. The accent made sense because of him, but that is no longer the motivating force behind my interest in Texan things. [Sorry for the reinforcing of that thought, but there it is.] I like learning Texan cuisine from you because I get to join you on the level of that good. Learning Spanish, by which I mean specifically that rather than any general activity, only matters as a thing on whatever level it connects you and me. My heritage, as it were, is relevant only on those grounds.

[so. yes. congratulations, Dave: you are now his focus. have fun!]

It didn't matter a whole fuckin' lot until you took an interest.

[ a shrug, deflecting. but it's an honest deflection: for all he has the accent and some of the culture and has mentioned being southern before in conversations, it's not like dave ever felt super connected to the state he lived with on the level where he cared and it mattered. the things he connected to were mostly online, mostly solitary, and it's not like he spent much time talking to people outside of that. bro was kind of not huge on meeting the neighbors.

or the neighbors weren't huge on meeting bro.

one of the two. ]

It's...cool. To share whatever about it that you want to know.

[ he's still not sure what to do with the whole "it's because of you" thing give him a bit here ]

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