"I might stop in sometimes to ask for updates. Living arrangement's working and everything?"

"You're very tidy. Shasali's never home. Her boyfriend was briefly hostile but I told him I was gay and he backed off."

"...cultural thing?"

"I guess? Guys sometimes get like that about their girlfriends, it's stupid."

" - is it a concern that one's partner is so bad at being monogamous that if there's someone around they'll get distracted? ...he hasn't been hostile at me. Maybe Shasali told him I think she's made of spiders."

"Presumably whatever complaints he might have had with respect to you were already addressed when they got together, that way or some other way. And I guess you could summarize it that way, although he might also have been unsure of her motives for letting me move in or my good character or something like that."

Nod. "I don't think Shasali is made of spiders - not even subconsciously, anymore - but I'm also gay. It seems slightly commoner here - I think most Amentans with any flexibility of inclinations ends up with someone they can have babies with, while here everyone is very glad of the total absence of people they could have babies with."

"I don't recall the statistic. It's a minority - there's flexibly inclined people too, but it'd be harder to notice from observation."

"I think it was a few percent back home but I don't know for sure - the internet is like this extraordinary extension of your memory, you don't need to know things because they're three seconds away, I knew I'd miss it but I underestimated how much -"

"That sounds really hard."

"We're gonna get it back."

"It won't have statistics about how many colorful people are gay."

"And it won't have a web fiction serial I was in the middle of about time-travellers trying to topple the Oahk Empire early. It will be excellent anyway, bet you."

"Did it end on a cliffhanger?"

"It always ends on a cliffhanger so people'll pay to be a subscriber and see the next chapter early."

...snort.

"I am told it's not easy being green."

"...your hair is green."

"Nonsense."

"...do aliens have different color vision?"

"I am not possessed with the skills that are supposed to accompany green hair and was not fond of the opportunities available to people in the legal category 'greens' and thereby finagled being blue instead. I dyed my hair. Now I can't get my hair dye and any Amentan who sees me will think I am an inventor or artist and it feels very much like - well, if you knew that everyone who saw you was assuming you were a janitor, wouldn't that be annoying?"

"...I guess, but if they thought I was an artist that wouldn't especially."

"...fair. Well, I have green hair right now but I'm not green-the-social-category, and while I find this disconcerting I can't really justify hunting down hair dye when nobody cares but me."

"I'm not sure blue hair dye has been invented."

"And I can hardly invent it myself, that'd be a very green thing to do."