"Eventually," she repeats.

"Well, I guess I have less of a problem with having a life dictated by narrative tropes if the ending is happy enough to include 'literally everyone lives forever.'"

"I'd still really love to be able to leverage that, somehow."

"Well, if you have any particular ideas I wouldn't mind helping you implement them, but I'm not sure how that would actually work - Pedro and I could write some sort of gratuitously-overpowered-Sadde-meets-parahuman-Dusk-and-automatically-solves-Scion story, but that wouldn't actually have any effect on either of your worlds, it'd be a new one."

"Yeah," he sighs.

"You mentioned standard vampire backstory me goes on to find a magic key that opens portals and I get to meet interesting and sexy people and gain new magic... Who've I met so far?"

Glam looks at Sparkles then at Ade. "Why does she get sexy people and new magic and I get omnicidal aliens?"

"You do too, Glam, it's just that she's the template that all those instances of meeting people come from, and you're actually one of the instances of your template. Your world tends to attract characters with useful magic more than sexy ones, but there've been instances with an instance of Steel with demigod-level earth creation magic and indestructibility, an instance of Revan with really excellent telekinesis and indestructibility - first thing that one did was throw Leviathan into space, and so far she's gotten away with it - and an instance of Miles with two kinds of otherworldly magic, one of which makes really amazing guns and the other of which hasn't featured in the story yet but is contagious, and gives people wings and a durability boost and personal pocket dimensions that can be used for various things including fast travel. And the one with the Miles instance is dating him.

"For vampire versions... I feel like there's at least one I'm going to miss this way, but right now there's two being written, one of which mated to a boy demon-but-not-awful version of Bell with arbitrary item creation powers, and the other one is talking to a pair of highly magical brothers in a world with a complicated magic system based partly on pocket universes with various interesting properties."

(The keeper, now that the conversation has moved on from keeper-relevant topics, quietly vanishes.)

"I have no idea who or what Steel, Revan, and Miles are, but those sound interesting. I think I prefer dating Bella, though. And, boy demon Bell?"

She looks at Glam. "I'm suddenly much more curious about what your Bella's like. If I mated to him, that's pretty good news for you."

"Why?"

"The way my kind of vampire works, we don't fall in love normally, we just take one look at a person who's mutually romantically compatible with us—the word 'soulmate' is sometimes used—and we instantly fall in extreme vampire love with them. If I mated to another version of your girlfriend that probably means you two are 'meant to be.'"

"...that sounds kinda creepy."

"It can be, but nobody's written one that way since the original story - it takes some kind of unusual circumstances that we'd have to actually try to set up. Usually it just means what she said - that the characters in question are definitely stably compatible. It's not even a soulmate thing in the traditional 'one and only' sense, most characters can mate to a few different people. I wouldn't be surprised to see an instance of you mated to a Miles, for example - he's got the same 'save the world' thing going on that Bells do, but he takes it a lot more personally on an individual-people level."

"Well, that's... nice, I guess?"

"I mean I understand where you're coming from, but I did very much become immortal, I think it's a small price to pay."

"Uh, right, I want you to tell me all about that. How immortal, exactly?"

"Vampires live forever unless killed, and they can only be killed by fire - and unless you dismember them first they can just put themselves out, usually. And with the super speed and strength and stuff, dismembering a vampire is pretty hard. There are downsides to becoming a vampire, though - the three days of agony while you turn is the big one."

"There's rather more to it than that, but that's the tee el dee are."

"Mmhm."

"...that's not enough for you, is it."

"Would it be enough for you?"

"It wasn't." She turns to Adelene. "This might be a good time for an answer to the question of how your fast-forward power works."

"I go sit over there and stop actually being here, and if what I'm skipping is simple enough your author just says it happened and updates your knowledge and mood and if it's complicated or interesting or certain kinds of important to you I spend some time reading and doing data entry while he writes it out, and when he's done he lets me know and I come back."