who will be coming?

[small_magics]

Aianon has made a plant in the open airless space above the surface of Thilanushinyel. It is a very, very large plant - some dragons will be attending the party, after all, even if Ansharil in particular is going to be assorted small things and stay on Sarion's person the bulk of the time.

The locals will be Sarion, her beloveds, their other beloved, the five conjured dragons (and their Bondmates, where applicable: Virgivere and Lissa), and Liselen - Magania has, as usual, declined, and so far no Bell party has featured Bell parents.

Amariah is bringing her boyfriend and spontaneous daughter and two of the spontaneous daughter's friends, as well as an Alethian instance of the Rupert template.

Shell Bell is bringing Pearl and Screwdriver.

Golden is bringing her usual large contingent, as usual not including her husband but including her daughter and daughter's grown fosterling (the other remaining at home) and his wolf, both mothers-in-law and one father-in-law, adopted siblings, staff members including the Joker and Nathan, and the children of the aforementioned.

Glass is bringing both wives, all three daughters, Kanim, and her cat. She invited Icarin and Valeria, but their parents are not willing to let them gallivant into other worlds unsupervised and had a scheduling conflict.

Stella's bringing a smattering of people including Alice, Anna, Sandy, Libby, Bridget, her college roommate Janine, and Lazarus.

Tab is bringing Aelise (but not Kers) and Luhan.

Etty is bringing only Nona.

Aether, likewise, brings no one but Celo.

Pattern comes with Ripper, Slipstick, Queenie, and Ghosty.

Aegis is accompanied by her four-bodied boyfriend, Merryweather, Whitlock, and Howlett.

Aurora comes with Brilliance, Lexi with her Device Persica, Agent Honey with her Device Adularia, and Beth.

Rose brings her husband and three children and her former apprentice, Luc.

Angela brings her husband, her four children, several of her friends, and some of those friends' children and grandchildren with and without wings. Keziah also brings a friend.

Juliet shows up with Soph, Minus, Red, Giles, James, Virginia, Minnie, Ike, and Val.

Cam brings Jellybean and Tilly and stops there.

And from unBelled worlds hail additional Sherlocks and Tonies, Darcy, Matilda, Pepper, and Eights.

Comments

[edgeofyourseat]

"Just never thought of it, I guess. I haven't talked to these ones a whole lot or anything."

But it seems fairly obvious to him that they are the same kind. There's name collisions, and there's face collisions, and then there's collisions of face, name, adoptive mother's name (in at least Agent Honey's case), general demeanour, and propensity for levitating things.

[self_composed]

"And I was also way too distracted at the time to notice that the one you were talking to is apparently from the Roald Dahl book."

[bellfounding]

"...What? Like Strat?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Yeah, I guess," says Alice.

[withmypowers]

"...We've all read the book," says Matilda, "it doesn't exist in our worlds but I found it in Milliways when I was six - are you saying she was actually from it? Our lives have plenty of similarities but also some obvious differences. Like being set in Lyndonville instead of Probably England."

[edgeofyourseat]

"She was definitely Probably English," says Alice. "And she'd read the book too."

[mute_pen]

"...Can someone catch me up, here?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"There's a book called Matilda in my world about a little girl who comes from a shitty family and gets magical powers. One time I met somebody who seemed to pretty much be the girl from the book, and we talked about stuff for a while and it was pretty great and I never saw her again."

[withmypowers]

"And now it seems like she's our alt, except that we're only mostly like the girl from the book and she's at least a little bit more like her than we are."

[subtly_artistic]

"So she's the Strat to your other-Sherlocks, or something. I guess that's not the kind of thing Glass would see unless she had her handy to look at? I wonder if Shell Bell can find her world if Alice stands next to her or something."

[giftedandtalented]

"I haven't read the Matilda book, though I did read some Holmes stories - but that's two templates discernibly book-related, are we just assuming Milliways cross-contagion and timefuckery or what?"

[bellfounding]

"How would we find out? Unless Glass sees something, how do we figure out what the books have to do with the Matildas? Resurrect some world's Roald Dahl and interrogate him? It's not necessarily something he'd know; Sherlocks converge on their template without their books when they have to."

[withmypowers]

"I've always thought of it as just an interesting coincidence," says Matilda. "The sort of thing that seems perfectly reasonable when it happens at Milliways."

[dark_light]

"...I had that book when I was a kid. It had daemons in it. So do the Sherlock Holmes books. Maybe books have templates and modify to fit their worlds? Or can be templates, just like intelligent species?"

[giftedandtalented]

"Maybe everybody should bring me copies and I should insta-read them to see how many little textual differences there are?"

[luminous_regnant]

"I imagine Glass would have mentioned it if she could see templateness or metacausality hanging around written media, but it could just be a gap in her aura."

[withmypowers]

"Has Glass ever perceived the templateness or metacausality of an inanimate object?"

[jovahs_heiress]

"No. Which, come to think of it, is already known to be a bit odd because so many worlds have duplicate planets and cities and so on in them."

[withmypowers]

"Sounds like a gap to me," says Agent Honey.

[autokinetic]

"Okay, so you have alts who are books, apparently, and we have another Matilda to look for. I didn't have this book when I was a kid, is it any good?"

[withmypowers]

"It has definite charms."

[edgeofyourseat]

"It made me cry," volunteers Alice.

[autokinetic]

"Okay. I wanna read the version with daemons, that sounds entertaining." Aegis conjures up a copy of Alethia's version of the story.

[withmypowers]

"What would our daemons be, if we had them?" wonders Matilda.

[dark_light]

"The book doesn't have an opinion, the character's too young to be settled."