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Well, I guess for me, the thing you have described isn't really keeping the concept either. Being aerodynamic in both directions but...more favorably aerodynamic in the reverse direction doesn't read, to me, like "backwards wings". It reads like "bidirectional wings". At which point the thing...

If you are changing the wings to be aerodynamic in the forward direction, they aren't backwards anymore. So I'm not really sure what you're preserving here.

What does D&D do mechanically? Yes, it does precisely that, because that's precisely what it is and has always been, mechanically, from its inception. D&D's engine is a wargame engine, but with a critical component removed: it is a "campaign" where one of the armies (the PCs) must continually...

Then I have nothing further to say to you on this topic, period.

It's perfectly achievable if you stop caring about diegesis...which was the whole point. You can invent whatever mechanics are needed as you need them for purely game-balance reasons, and insert them by mechanically-consistent but non-diegetic methods. And no, I don't think all possible...

Given this is precisely what 4e did, are you asserting 4e is not D&D?

The PCs' statblocks are not absolute. They change as the players change them--in the ways they are permitted to do so. Sometimes those changes are diegetic. Often, they are not. We simply handwave away the inconsistencies by admitting that the abstraction is imperfect. As for the other point...

...I don't really take "we see this imaginary star-figure boat from the rear" as much of an argument. Clearly they thought it was sailing away from them. Like a boat might do if it were, say, sailing to a faraway land to steal a great treasure.

Because: These wings are the wrong shape. Notice how hummingbird wings are shaped. They are smooth and continuous on both edges, leading and trailing, so that they can slice through the air either way. The topaz wings are not, and would cause enormous turbulence if you tried to use them that...

And, likewise, my sailing ship analogy. I can 100% buy a ship that sails through the water on magical power with no obvious means of propelling itself. It just exerts magical force on the water, or whatever. But a ship designed so that it has a completely flat, squared-off front...and a prow...

Good luck getting that to change.

No. It doesn't. It enhances setting consistency by ensuring that a particular threat is experienced how it should be, within the world. Because our abstractions of power and danger are flawed. The world isn't. We should adjust our abstractions in order to accurately represent the threat a thing...

There is no such thing for Fighters. They just do get better at things because the rules say so. You are now inventing post hoc explanations to justify why the mechanics would be the way they are. Numerous times, you have rejected this kind of reasoning as utterly unacceptable, as incompatible...

Given I literally quoted the thing you used as the basis of previous arguments, I don't agree. At all, in fact. So, what was wrong with the New Simulationism definition, that you should reject it now when it is inconvenient to you?

An absolute statblock is universally true. A goblin is this one set of data, always. The abstraction is the one and only abstraction valid for capturing what "a goblin" is. It is absolute. A relative statblock is...relative. it represents what a goblin means in context.

Fighter 6: Ability Score Improvement Fighter 14: Ability Score Improvement Fighters are literally better at improving their physical and mental capacities than any other profession. Rogues are slightly better, as they get an additional ASI at Rogue 10. No diegetic explanation is given for this...

No. The concept remains exactly the same. It is the abstraction which changes.

"6. If your abstractions do not match your fictional world, de-abstract until they do." You are demanding that the fictional world hew to the abstraction, rather than the other way around.

It wasn't a request for perfection. It was pointing out that the specific thing you speak of is, in fact, part of the current system and I've never once seen you complain about such a thing before today. I don't--at all--demand perfection in simulation. I am perfectly comfortable with imperfect...

And yet they do. They literally do. In 5e as much as any WotC edition--indeed, moreso! You change the nature of your physical being every time you hit not just an arbitrary point of growth overall, but an arbitrary point of growth within one specific discipline. Consider a character who gains...