if i were yours

[floofcoaster]

Behold the wolf in his unnatural habitat, eating the foods of his people in traditional quantities, his typical companion away in the distant land of The Bathroom.

That is to say, Zeus is in Milliways with one and a half heavily topped pizzas, waiting for Harley and Andrea to come back.

Comments

[instar]

"Also, templates come in two kinds, which we don't know anything about except that Glass can see them and your kind is much more likely to be bisexual masochists. You're purple, we're green."

[hold_infinity]

...

Robin cracks up.

[instar]

[pythbox]

Meanwhile, in Peace:

How much have you heard about the new Joker and Bell? asks Sue of Aegis. War just told me something funny - well, Joker-funny, dunno if it'll translate - and I'm not sure how much context to bounce.

[autokinetic]

I got Jane's gloss on it but I haven't been called in as, like, the expert-among-Bells-on-Jokers or anything, and I think Aether's taking point, so not much detail. What's funny?

[pythbox]

The thing that is funny:

Trouble (new Joker, previously known as Ophelia) skipped a phase on introducing his world's Bell to Glass. It felt like so; compare the feeling Sue and War had on deciding to step up to the Hegemony race, note similarities.

Trouble sent Robin (likely to be local Kingfisher) to check up on Butterfly and see how she was doing. Robin asked on Trouble's behalf if Butterfly wanted him to wait for her to emerge from her cocoon before commencing world-saving. Aether produced the sentence: 'If you let him go ahead without you my best guess is that you'll find whatever he comes up with to be stylistically displeasing, morally tolerable if more risk-tolerant than you'd like, and involve very little of you wearing a crown.'

Sue and War and the retirees and Harley all find this deeply hilarious - the other Jokers have dropped out of the link by now and haven't heard it yet. Trouble himself declined to share a reaction but the other linked Jokers suspect he is at least somewhat amused. The humour comes partly from phrasing, partly from wondering where Aether pulled this estimate out of, and partly from the dissonance between that image and how the central characteristic of Trouble's current phase seems to be its similarity to War's four years without Aegis. (The crown part fits, they do concede.)

[autokinetic]

I don't quiiiite get the joke. I get why the phrasing's cute - I bet you it's intentionally cute. Aether probably hasn't been paying tons of attention to your Hegemony and your phasing though.

[pythbox]

Well, yeah, and I bet if she knew what we know she'd have said something else, that soooort of is what's funny? But whatever, Joker sense of humour is a mystery of the multiverse, we knew that one already. If Butterfly actually doesn't let Trouble help save his universe I feel kinda bad for him, though, all that— (wordless reiteration of the commonalities between Trouble's and Sue's respective decisions: a strong sense of it being time to get down to business, the deliberate choice to take it upon oneself to do things about things) —and nowhere to put it. We can probably find him something else to do if he still has the itch after the dust settles, I guess.

[autokinetic]

Jane said they did not have a great working relationship beforehand. I can't imagine it being bad enough that she wouldn't, say, take coins from him, but I don't know how bad it gets, so maybe even after her self-reconstruction project she will not want him involved?

[pythbox]

We'll think of something. He's not gonna argue with her if she says she doesn't want him doing anything. Might move out of the universe, though, depending - he's got a girlfriend he doesn't wanna leave behind.

[autokinetic]

Anybody we know?

[pythbox]

Probably an alt of Zeus, Trouble figures.

[autokinetic]

What's his side on why things got this unpleasant between him and Butterfly in the first place?

[pythbox]

Sue asks.

He was - he was a really early phase, he says. Of what seems like our most fragile cluster. And she's got whatever problems you get when you're a Bell whose planet is infested with mind-controlling alien brain parasites? And she scared him a little even before they found out about the brain parasites, and then it just... he couldn't handle stuff the way she wanted him to, and neither of them really knew how to handle each other, and it got to be kind of a mess.

[autokinetic]

She scared him?

[pythbox]

They had this conversation about what she'd do with hypothetical magic powers, way early on, and she said some things that came off like... I'm not sure how to put it into words.

But he doesn't have to: he shows her Trouble's memory of the conversation, Trouble's resigned hypothetical fear at his new friend's avowed willingness to rid the world of pain even if not everyone would be okay without it. (Trouble is used to being in love with people who would do terrible things to him if they had a reason that looked good to them; Trouble is also in love with Ethan.)

[autokinetic]

Mm. This looks like a mess.

[pythbox]

No shit, Sue agrees. I feel bad for both of 'em.

[autokinetic]

Maybe him jumping phases will help, but I'm sort of worried she's too put off at this point.

[pythbox]

Sucks for them. Well, more for him on this one, she's not gonna be heartbroken if she decides she can't stand him.

[autokinetic]

She'll look at those of us conspicuously attached to Jokers and sigh about it, but yeah, not heartbreak.

[pythbox]

You doing anything important or can I come be conspicuously attached to you?

[autokinetic]

If you mean 'lend me added consequence' come now, if you mean 'make out' wait sixty seconds.

[pythbox]

Sixty seconds it is.

[autokinetic]