"Bar, for every person who has come into Milliways and had their world's trajectory significantly changed, are there corresponding published works from a world where they never found Milliways?"

Not in all cases, no.

"So, sometimes? How many - no, that never works - guess it might work if it's constrained to patrons - what percentage -"

Of cases where I can remember clearly enough to be sure that they were in fact here perhaps thirty percent have what seems to otherwise be a corresponding alternate instance.

"So getting doors doesn't automatically or near-automatically branch your universe, that's something."

I vote that if it had been otherwise or we learn similar information in the future we don't tell Matt until we have an idea of what to do about it.

He's not going to suicide impulsively, you know. But maybe still better to come up with a plan first.

I don't think he'd immediately kill himself but it would probably be bad for him.

Yeah, could be.

Ugh. Why do things have to keep being terrible. They should stop that.

I'm sure there are some worlds where everything is lovely and nice.

It would be nice if they would show up! Ideally with Morgoth-killing powers.

You don't say!

Fucking landlords. Except, I mean, it's super great that we found this place--they're sort of bipolar in terms of usefulness, I guess.

NIce worlds wouldn't necessarily be ones with god-killing powers anyway.

Go ahead, spoil my snit with your logic.

I hate the landlords too, but not for that in particular, more for - coulda showed up six months earlier in Singularity, or before Ozymandias's Maitimo got tortured...

I see your point, but it feels...I dunno, hating someone for not doing the better than the good they did seems...disincentivizing.

But, on the other hand, Ozymandias Maitimo.

The Valar mostly - our set excepted - don't do anything, just sit around and let bad things happen. I don't feel at all bad about hating them for it. The landlords are more powerful than them, are risking less...

Yeah, but they also are working of a different scale--there's a difference between looking at one giant problem and going "hmm I'm not gonna fix that" and looking at all of the problems everywhere in the whole multiverse and going "If I try to fix all of this I am going to burn out and die." I'm not saying that's the landlords' mindset but it could be.

And they have the right to feel that way but the cost of that is that everyone'll be justifiably pissed at them.

I guess.

And it's not like anyone was demanding they handle it personally. Just putting Maitimo in here with someone with interdimensional transit would do it, any time.

Yeah. Hug. I love you.

Love you too.