Sentient behavior in Tau.
I'm seeing some folks not liking how human the Sentient society in Tau appears to be. They were looking for something more alien.
But I think this is actually a very poignant choice by the narrative team. The Sentients have tried to position themselves as superior beings to "bios." They saw themselves as above the corruption of humanity. And yet, when they themselves are presented with dire material conditions, they have managed to organize their society into a dystopia as well.
There's something fascinating in seeing machine beings, typically depicted as being logical and utilitarian elsewhere in popular media, as succumbing to the same types of hubris as humans. The hypocrisy of it is too juicy.
And it stems back to my earlier comments on Adis and Itzam around the Old Peace. The Sentients no longer think like machines. They no longer have perfect recall of information they've encountered. Not just any Sentient can become an Archimedean. Some of them have to cheat to pass their pop quizzes. Some of them have to organize a criminal empire to provide structure to the chaos they find themselves in.
The Sentients are now beholden to the burden of individuality, and all of the imperfections that come with it.
