"I'm missing all the childhood stuff, and it's not just not being from an Earth, in translation Iobel's birthplace has a suspiciously similar name to the town Cam and Bella are from."

"So you seem to come in various genders, backstories, and families, and we seem to come in 'space' and 'not'. And 'rapist'."

"...similarly to not wanting to meet an evil Fëanor I do not want to meet an evil Bell."

"That was among the first things to cross my mind, yeah."

"We'll check new alts over a bit before going full speed ahead."

"Oh, is that what you were doing."

"Hey, you thought I might be maliciously impersonating you with witchcraft."

"Yes, yes."

"If the Valar hadn't happened to mention it I think the evil version of me could have leveraged the trust the non-evil versions earned a long way - certainly into getting free will and getting his father back - and if he pieced together at that point that we weren't all like him he might have been able to manage it a while longer."

"I don't think it crossed his mind that you might not be."

"I don't care if this makes me a little bit more like him, when the country's safe he dies."

"What if his Findekáno objects even with time to decompress?"

He buries his head in his hands. "I could persuade his Findekáno not to object but I suppose that's a very very bad idea."

The Findekáno in question may have been persuaded of too many things.

"Yeah. I - just - do not want to live in a multiverse with him in it, it's as bad as knowing there are still Thaurons about."

"You know what would be really trippy, would be a good Thauron."

"According to Thuringwethil he used to be nice enough but I'm not sure her opinion is worth the paper I didn't bother printing it on."

"Problem with checking whether the Enemy's still evil is that apparently, given warning, he can run away."

"I might be able to hold him given the knowledge that I knew I had to be doing that - in Edda-adjacent worlds, anyway - but I'm not positive - may depend on how exactly it is they moved and I don't know if even a reasonable-ized Vala would want me to perform the experiment -"

"If they were inclined to help with that I'd start worrying Elspeth did mind-control. Maybe Aule."

"Yeah, maybe a reasonable-ized Aulë."

"I don't do mind control unless I'm pretty much hitting somebody hard enough to kill them."

"If I thought you did I'd be having much more trouble pretending to be sociable right now."

"I take a pretty dim view of mind control. There's a couple witches who manipulate emotions left alive - one of them can't turn it off but she's got a pretty sharp range limit, other one uses it to wrangle newborn vampires because they're pretty out of control and dangerous."

"It was a favored tactic of the Enemy. He can't directly control minds but he can coerce oaths or he can tamper with memories at will and then run you through scenarios until he gets a result he likes, and it often came out to nearly the same."