Do you think Elidibus unknowingly tempered people?

[Iscah]

I think the problem with Livingway saying it's "just a tug" is that she's delivering important technical information that we don't currently hold, regarding a "proper" way to summon primals. It's not the same thing as the "teeny-tiny toy boat" where we can look at it and immediately see the joke.

So yes, we can step back and examine all of her script throughout the game and say she has a pattern of doing this, but it's not easy to review the whole game's dialogue like that, and in that particular moment she is giving important exposition and people are going to recall that line on its own.

It probably would been better worded something in the realm of "the slight problem of something that big still having an influence" than "the problem of something that big having a slight influence". Downplay the significance rather than the effect.