Of the two guests with wings, Angela's the speckly one! She is over there with Elspeth.

"Hi," says Angela.

Elspeth waves.

"Stella came up with them, not me," Angela points out. "But I think they ought to let you pick your own nicknames as you like, oughtn't they?"

"Yeah," he says. "But they don't let us pick the template."

"You don't like your template name?"

"Isn't it Alice's middle name? I'm not sure I understand."

"Sure it is," he says. "And he loves it. 'Cause it's from Stella and it's a cute joke. But he loves it for him. He doesn't want all of us to just be the Whistles to your Bells - half of us aren't, for one thing."

"I thought it was only three of you weren't, and that if you don't count mere employment. But apart from numerical quibbling -" Angela considers this. "Well, what did you want to change it to?"

"Jokers."

"I realize we already have a few templates where someone goes by the template name and nothing else, but it's not a situation I imagine any of us will like to introduce," Angela points out.

He shrugs. "We want a name that's ours," he reiterates.

"Why that one?" inquires Angela.

"Me and Ghosty and Queenie all used it," he says. "We picked it ourselves, for ourselves. And we're the most us out of all of us. We talked it out, and that's the name we all want."

"Hm. Why are you asking me? Instead of any other combination of you and Bells, or a complete conference call?"

"Micaiah said you'd probably say yes, and nobody else was sure. He's busy right now or he'd ask you himself."

"I would if it were my party, if we were all having this gathering in Samaria somewhere and the nametags were mine to fiddle with. I'm not sure about the other Bells."

"Does that mean 'go ask Stella'?"

"Well, I can ask her for you, if you like, but then if her answer is anything other than 'I'll just fix that right now' I wind up relaying messages between her and you," Angela points out.

"I don't know about Stella, but Mama's reasonably similar as Bells go and I don't think she'll love the idea because of the name's history," Elspeth volunteers. "Isn't it basically a terrorism codename? It's one thing for one of you to keep it because you've used it for a while, but another for you all to adopt it too."

"Innnteresting," says the Joker. "You could call it one'a those, sure. But what's it to her if that's what we wanna be called?"

"If you care so much about what people want to be called, why do you keep calling Mama 'Goldie'?" Elspeth inquires quizzically.

"She hasn't asked me not to."

"She doesn't like it," Elspeth says.

"Well, that's her business if she wants to ask him to stop or not, but the Jokers want 'Joker' on their nametags and are saying so," shrugs Angela; her wings ripple with the motion. "I'll see what I can do to convince Stella if you'd rather not approach her yourself."

"Much obliged," he says to Angela.

Angela crosses the room, finds Stella, and brings her over after a brief discussion.

"The lot of you are all agreed on this?" is Stella's first question. "Everybody wants to go by the blowing-things-up clown handle, up to and including the telepathic child soldier and the benign Edori and my Alice who actually has 'Whistle' incorporated into his name and whatnot?"

"Yes," the Joker enunciates.

"I don't think it really matters if it's to our taste," Angela tells Stella.

"Thanks," he says quietly.

"You're welcome," Stella says over her shoulder.

"Even if you're the most central example of the template," Angela says after a moment, "I'm not sure why that makes your name the best name. Pattern is the most central example of our template except for not having any magic - that's why she's called that - and the next best candidates are Stella and Golden. And they all go by Bella. But we're Bells instead of Bellas because that's what we have to cut it down to in order to include everyone. We're all Bells even if the only one actually named Bell is from a bit off standard."

"Mm, that's not quite it," he says, shaking his head. "It's not that we're taking the name because the name's mine and I'm us. It's that me and Ghosty and Queenie all took the name because the name is us."

"I don't understand," says Angela after a moment.

He glances at Elspeth. "Little help here, or are you lost too?"

"I - hm. I can't always do that sort of thing on purpose. Let's see." Elspeth closes her eyes. "The name Joker was chosen for reasons and in a way that are about the core features of the template in a way that none of the other names on offer were. If you had to symbolize Bells with a picture, symbolize and not just refer, you wouldn't do it with a bell. You'd do it with a pen, maybe, or a crown or with some culturally appropriate marker of self-knowledge or mental opacity - Bell is a sound where Joker is a meaning - Angela, you might not have the background for this, but in a deck of cards as used on standard Earths there's a pair of traditionally wild cards called jokers, in the deck but not part of it for most conventional games." Elspeth opens her eyes again. "How'd I do?"

"Pretty damn good," he says. "Thanks."

"You're welcome!"

"A wild card," muses Angela. "Yes, I suppose that makes sense."

"Doesn't it just," he agrees.

"I think if Elspeth had explained that while Stella was here Stella would have proposed that you call the template 'Wildcards'," Angela says. "To avoid redundancy."

"We wouldn'ta gone for it."

"Why not?" Elspeth asks.

"Only tells part of the story," he says. "Picked by somebody who's not one of us."

"I wonder what we'll wind up doing if we find someone who's definitely a Bell, but doesn't have a 'bel' sound in her name," muses Angela.

"Good question," says the Joker. "Couldn't tell ya."

"Do you care if we go on calling you Whistles amongst ourselves?" asks Angela. "I'm not especially likely to - I didn't really get the joke in the first place - but I imagine some of the others are."

"Mm, opinions are divided," he says. "I think the clearest way to say it is, we don't really want you to, but how much each of us cares about each of you doing it depends on who and who and what the relationship is."

"I'm curious what the conversation that led up to this request looked like."

"Somebody - I think it was Kas - said he felt funny about us being called Whistles, and Sue linked us up, and we all thought about it for a while."

"Hmm. I'll tell the other Bells, I guess, unless you want to."

[Isn't that going to be confusing?]

[And it was so cute, too.]

[It was very cute,] he agrees. [It won't be confusing to us.]

[It would be minimally confusing to everyone if you chose a new individual nickname,] Golden points out.

[I don't mind 'Jokes', speaking of cute. Or is that not minimally-confusing enough?]

[It isn't minimal, but it's improved.]

[Name change duly noted,] says Juliet, and there's a chorus of agreement.

[Thanks, guys,] he says warmly.

[No problem.]

To Golden alone, he adds, [A little bird told me you don't like it when I call you Goldie.]

[I have long experience with letting essential staff members call me what suits them.]

[If it bugs you too much, I can stop,] he offers.

[How much,] inquires Golden, [is too much?]

[That's up to you, isn't it?]

[It is not an ongoing source of misery. It is mildly irritating. Concatenating it with 'your majesty' does not help.]

[Sorry,] he says, giggling.

[It's not a big deal.]

[Okay.]

Golden has no further reply.