festive rainbow mirror summoning!

[incanted]

There are now one dozen Bells.

They and most of their friends are all here on Planet Rainbowsand II, to celebrate the addition of Sarion, the elf one, and Aurora, the one with a sister.

Comments

[cardistry]

"You don't make any sense," says Brilliance, wrapping his arms around her waist and dropping his head on her shoulder.

[incanted]

"I make sense to me," Aurora says.

[cardistry]

"You don't make sense to me. I don't understand why - I don't understand anything about this weird thing you have with Charlie, where you pretend we're not fucking so he won't tell us to stop, but if you know he would tell us to stop and you're not stopping then why would it matter if he did?"

[toblameforit]

"Wow, that sucks," says Tony.

[incanted]

"As long as he hasn't actually said it," Aurora says, "then I'm not actually defying him. What he has actually said is we can't be in my room with the door closed. So we don't do that. He hasn't been more specific - he doesn't even want to be, he doesn't want to produce a list of actual things he doesn't want done, he doesn't want to live with me demanding to know why and having a long pseudolegalistic argument with him, he mostly feels like it is the duty of the fathers of teenage daughters to usher them into adulthood without any practical understanding of sex. He hasn't bothered to update his model of the world that says that people have sex in bedrooms and not on uninhabited planets they teleport to, so that's what the rule is about. If he changes the rules so it's actually about something I care about being able to do - well, it'd probably depend on how he tried to justify the rule, he's decent enough not to attempt anything serious by pure fiat, especially since I could move back to Renée's anytime and he probably suspects she'd be fine with it. But anyway, things would become so much less pleasant in my relationship with Charlie if that had to be an actual conversation we had. And I will not actually lie to him - I will not tell him 'Yes, Dad' if he lays down a rule that I'm going to ignore. So that rule would turn into a mess. I am avoiding that mess."

[lexicality]

"I know, right? But Bella fixed it. Bella's smart. The way it tricked me in the first place was it was all 'I can offer you limitless power' -" Lexi does an impression of the robotic voice of the control program - "and I was like 'cool, let's hook my sister up with that, because if I get instead I'll be lucky if I get Christmas off, she will guilt me into using my powers for good, like, constantly' and it was like 'I cannot wait' and I was like 'oh fine'."

[cardistry]

"That is weird," says Brilliance, "but I think it's mostly weird because of my trust issues, so whatever, not the point. I forget what the point is. Do we still care about the point?"

[incanted]

"I think I know enough about your end of the point to not mess it up with you, at least not about anything important like altering your species. Up to you if you want to quiz me about my end of the point."

[cardistry]

"...I don't really know what your end of the point is," says Brilliance. "What's your end of the point?"

[toblameforit]

"How'd she fix it?"

[incanted]

"Lying is bad. Not the worst thing ever, but bad. Lying by omission - isn't the same thing. People have a right to limit what information exits their heads, if they want to. And 'I refuse to answer that question' is information, 'let's change the subject' is information, and if that kind of information is something you want to keep to yourself, then you get to dance around it to keep it safe, I think. It's not always a good idea. It was sketchy for Stella to do what she did; considering that she's supposedly in in love with Alice it was especially bad. But - I wasn't there but I seriously doubt he asked her point-blank and she responded with a sentence that was in fact false." She closes her eyes. "Obviously it was an issue anyway since it turned out to matter very much to Alice what she was leaving out. With this cautionary example, I'm going to be more careful than she was. But that doesn't mean a complete open book policy, I can't do that, it would destroy me, we know that now -" She gestures vaguely at Sarion.

[lexicality]

"I don't know all the details, 'cause I was being possessed and couldn't see what was going on, but I think she picked up Brilliance-being-a-staff-thing and shot at it a lot or something. And then I woke up and she was wearing her magical girl outfit."

[cardistry]

"We need to know stuff sometimes," he says, "not a lot of the time, not all stuff, but. My end of the point goes something like. If somebody knows something, and they think that if I knew it that would change how I act in ways that I'd like better but they'd like worse, so they make sure I don't find out, then they're not my friend and if I trust them I need to stop."

[incanted]

Aurora thinks about this.

And then she says, "That puts a floor on how much goal structure you have to share with anyone you want to be friends with." Pause. "But basically I agree with you."

[toblameforit]

"The magical girl outfit is kind of awesome."

[lexicality]

"It kind of is! Very tasteful, very if Bella's going to wear a magical girl outfit it should obviously be this one."

[cardistry]

"Oh. Good," says Brilliance, and he hugs her again.

[toblameforit]

"Almost makes me want one."

[incanted]

Hugs!

"Of course," Aurora murmurs, "if telling people true things routinely makes them act in ways I don't like, then they aren't my friend, and I shouldn't trust them."

[cardistry]

"Well - yeah," he says. "That too. But, I dunno, there aren't a lot of ways people can act that I don't like that aren't about trying to control me."

[lexicality]

Lexi giggles. "Apparently they come with having a device? Like, Brilliance is Bella's device. But he doesn't seem to think people should usually have devices. Or maybe it's that people shouldn't make devices. Or something. He made her a little tiny one that doesn't talk, maybe that's different, but it doesn't have a dress that comes with. So I don't have one and I don't know how you'd get one either."

[toblameforit]

"If I want a magical girl outfit," he says, "I bet you I can get a magical girl outfit. Maybe not exactly the same kind, I guess."

[incanted]

"I'm curious about that," says Aurora, leaning her head against his shoulder. "I don't want to be controlled either, but it sounds really - fundamental to you."

[lexicality]

"Yeah, not a magically designed one, you could wear whatever you want but it wouldn't just get pulled out of noplace like Bella's."

[cardistry]

"It is really fundamental to me. It's really fundamental to all of us, but I'm far and away the most fucked up about it."