page 1411 – Well, How Did YOU Think They Were made?
Boy, it’s been a little while since I last cut loose with some random cosmic horrors out of nowhere, huh? Also, I know this has come up before, but I think it bears repeating that, for as much as she mocks her Dad’s belief in alchemy, Tabitha’s brand of “science” reeeaaally looks a lot like Black Magic.
“All I’m doing is mixing a specific selection of different base substances to transmute them into a new noble substance not represented in the original parts! This is nothing at all like Alchemy!!” –T. Caligari
(next, she will scientifically transmute some lead into gold to use in the ship’s wiring, and scientifically distill a panacea elixir from the aether for the ship’s totally scientific fuel source….)
We need to see Tabitha trying to do something else, accidentally create gold in the process, and immediately covering up all evidence that it happened in order to avoid giving her Dad the satisfaction.
Tabitha wouldn’t cover it up. She would say that’s the expected reaction for doing XYZ Scientific Process, and overlook the fact that her “scientific process” is connected to emotional resonance and many, quite frankly, unscientific processes than she expects. For example, only working when she’s in a particular mental state, despite the fact that all she’s doing is flipping a switch.
That’s a good point, Tabitha’s so honest to a fault that she wouldn’t say something she didn’t believe… so she’d just have to make herself believe whatever she wanted to say first 😀
So, pretty much the exact same thing, except in reverse, that her Dad does when he does science and convinces himself that it was really Alchemy. something about scientific apples not falling far from alchemical trees….
Ahh, the Newtonian approach then.
It’s also possible that her dad DOES utilise alchemical principals every now and again, and Tabitha simply chooses to disbelieve that he is actually doing that.
Dr. Caligari “XYZ Alchemical Principal is used here!” Uses XYZ Alchemical Principal correctly and produces the typical result.
Tabitha “Obviously that isn’t XYZ Alchemical Principal, but ABC Chemical reaction. Completely normal science with no mysticism involved, only things that can be proven to work in laboratory conditions” (the laboratory conditions needed to make it work in the expected manner include dirt on the floor, unsterilised air & a fully sentient human stirring a big wooden spoon in a cast iron cauldron believing that magic will make the concoction produce the expected result).
Actually, given how long it took to make that singular knob, is it REALLY going to be quicker to make this ship from scratch?
No, of course not. There’s at least a half dozen other things on board that could be made into a ship much faster. Heck, if the Cap’n looks through his lost & found there’s probably a couple small ships in there that the mad scientists he had on board left behind, they can be really absent-minded. Tabitha just wanted to make a food ship, so we’re going to make a food ship!
It’s almost as if Tabitha saw an excuse to do something she’d always thought would be cool to try, regardless of how practical it actually turned out to be 😀
It appears that if the Cap’n just had a vending machine with Reeses peanut butter cups, they could have used one of those without any modifications at all. Maybe something to solidify it.