is this behavior taken for granted along all message-objects?
yes, this is mentioned in the documentation, in the manual, and in the control tutorial (see example 04.messages.pd)
Sometimes this is exposed in the help files, as with [line~], but not every time. I guess there are more examples where this can get exposed and reinforced. Math objects, [expr], [makenote].
I'm opening a ticket in pddp
cheers