Oh no, absolutely not, or at least not entirely; Taako joined for so many, so very Taako reasons. Because why not, because Lup had her heart set on it, because he has to do something, up and coming arcanist like himself, there's probably a guidance counselor somewhere he owes it to, whatever. Mostly Lup, though, but he has sense enough not to say that. It's a little late to correct his younger self's lack of individualistic direction. And it's not like that hadn't turned out to be the correct course. Shit, what if he had developed a little more and gone into something else, that--that doesn't even. He refuses to think about it. Fuck all of that, up one side and down the other, in their aunt's words. He hopes none of that horror made it onto his face.

And anyway, that wasn't what he meant in the first place. Not his vanity; society's, as a whole? Or something like that. "Nah, like. We were all kind of full of it, gonna go to the stars in a big shiny ship, looks great on a front page but you know she'd have," he swallows, "a few suggestions on what should have been done with all that funding, you know she would have." Lup probably better so than he does--resources and scarcity he gets, but the humane element is still Lup's bag, did he inherit anything worthwhile? It's sad those planes got eaten, but he didn't think to comfort Lup about it, didn't think of it at all, even dancing around the specter of the Hunger as he had been. Hey actually, fuck that too. "I don't remember that book, what color was it?"