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“Hey Joe!” calls Tango, waving one arm in casual greeting as other Hermit approaches. The other’s busy loading purchases out of his inventory into the shulker at his feet – end-rods and froglights and a handful of beacons. His plans for the entrance to his new Decked Out had gotten… a little more elaborate than he’d intended. Thank god for Impulse’s willingness to cut deals, especially since Tango’s diamond reserves are. Well. Generously, they’re lacking. More accurateky, they’re non-existent. “How’s it hanging?”
It’s a lovely, sunny morning in the shopping district. There’s no wars going on, no devs flying around, no elections or resistances or any of the other absurd occupational hazards common to the Hermitcraft server. And, as far as Tango knows, Joe’s build is going great. The last he’d seen of it, it’d been a towering thing, stretching up hundreds of feet into the air out the ocean like some great kraken-beast. It’d taken his breath away, even just flying above it.
So, all in all, the answer should be a vigorous and excited, why, I’m doin’ most excellently, thank you, Mister Tek.
Joe, though, far from his usual cheerful-verging-on-manic demeanour, looks… distracted. “Oh– hey, Tango!” He sighs. Or– it’s not exactly a sigh. More a long, heavy exhale of air. “It’s. You know. It’s not bad, considering.”
Tango frowns, giving Joe a once over. Doesn’t look sick, no obvious injuries, nothing particularly concerning. Other than, like, the entirety of Joe, which is one big concerning thing walking around in a person-suit. But, beyond Joe-typical background radiation levels of weird, there’s nothing Tango can see wrong with him. “Considering what?” he asks, sending the shulker into his inventory with a flick of the wrist.
“Considering that it’s a Face Day,” says Joe, like that should mean something to Tango.
It does not, in fact, mean anything to Tango.
“…What’s a Face Day?” Tango asks, with what he considers a moderately justified degree of wariness. It’s entirely possible this is just some new thing Ren’s come up with, or a new server event, or even just a Joe-specific euphemism for something entirely mundane. It’s also entirely possible, given this is Joe, that it’s something completely and utterly insane.
“It’s my name for when the big ol’ floating face in the sky shows up!” says Joe, as though this is something that is both completely obvious and also a regular occurrence.
Tango’s wariness suddenly feels incredibly justified.
“I feel kind of bad being so down on it,” continues Joe, apparently not having noticed the way Tango’s staring, “seeing as it doesn’t really do anything, y’know? Other than pull weird expressions, sometimes, and grow, and go all see-through, I guess. But none of that is bad, or anything. It’s just kind of off-putting to be watched as you’re goin’ about your daily business by a face in the sky that gets up to, oh, say, fifty foot high. You know? It’s just like– come on! Give a man a bit of privacy!”
Tango does not, in fact, know. “Uh. No? Can’t say I do know, actually. Thats, uh, not. Not a familiar experience.”
“You don’t?” Joe looks at him, the slightest frown between his brows. “You’ve never had a Face Day?”
“Umm. Nope! No, I have not,” says Tango. “And…” He slows to a stop, and pauses, picking his words with an uncharacteristic amount of care and attention. That’s necessary, with Joe, sometimes. Sometimes, Joe makes it very easy to be accidentally cruel, if you’re not careful.
Tango’s not a huge fan of cruelty, accidental or otherwise.
“I would say,” he comes up with, eventually, “probably everybody else on this server has never had a Face Day, either. And pretty much everyone else on every other server in the entire universe. Pretty sure giant floating sky faces no one else can see is, uhh, an… unusual…? A pretty unique experience.”
“Well, I was talkin’ about it with Cleo the other day, and she didn’t say she’d never seen a giant floating face in the sky,” says Joe, in a stunning display of logic. Or, probably more accurately, display of Joegic. “And she’s not the kind of lady that’d keep quiet about not seeing giant floating faces in the sky, y’know? So I reckon at least some people have. Cleo, at least. Maybe Grian? Seems like the kind of thing that’d happen to him. Bdubs, for sure.”
“Cleo’s also not the kind of lady that’d keep quiet about seeing a giant floating face in the sky,” argues Tango, with what he considers to be quite a reasonable counterpoint.
“Ah, but, see, that only works if you start out assuming that everyone’s not seeing giant floating faces in the sky every once in a while.” Joe raises a finger, like a lecturer with an attentive but inexperienced student. “Which I’m pretty sure isn’t the case, given I see this one like, pretty often. And you don’t see me going around yelling about it, do you?”
“Yeah, but you’re– you.”
It sounds rude, when Tango puts it like that, but he’s really not sure how else to put it. Joe’s got a weird sense of rude, anyway, so it’s fine. Probably.
“I’m me!” Joe seems genuinely delighted by the acknowledgement of his existence. “And you’re also you– or, I guess, for you, you’re also me, or. I’m also me? Hmm. That gets pretty confusing. Either way! I’m a person – probably – and you’re probably a different person, and Cleo is almost definitely a whole other person again! Isn’t that wonderful? And we all have our own thoughts, and feelings, and experiences, and so we all start from different places. Meaning, really, none of us can ever really say what anyone else is thinkin’, or what the choices they’re makin’ are, or why they’re makin’ them.”
Joe pauses for breath in his little monologue, and Tango can almost see him physically wrestling his thoughts back under control. “Which is to say, it’s perfectly reasonable for me to assume that Cleo has seen enough giant floatin’ faces she just doesn’t think they’re worth mentioning, y’know?”
Tango’s not quite sure how to argue with that one.
He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. Closes it again. After a long moment, he realises he doesn’t even know what he’s arguing with, and gives up. The only thing that makes his complete word failure bearable is that Joe doesn’t look smug about besting him in debate – just cheerfully friendly and firmly self-confident as always.
“…Well,” Tango says, eventually, and tries to sound as cheerfully self-confident as Joe looks. “Is it– I dunno, nice to look at, at least?”
He doesn’t feel cheerfully self-confident. The typical bewilderment-and-psychological-exhaustion field that Joe radiates out around him is starting to settle in. A handful of people – Cleo, most notably – seem immune to it, but Tango most certainly is not. He already feels like he needs a nap.
Joe shrugs. “It’s just a face,” he says. In Tango’s opinion, no face that’s fifty feet high is just a face, but it’s been made abundantly clear to him that there’s a pretty large difference in opinion here on several counts. “It’s– well, now you come to mention it! It looks kind of like my face, as a matter of fact. But also kind of not. Like, it’s me but also not me, at the same time, you know? And mostly it’s just… big.”
“And this is, like, a regular thing for you?” Tango’s not sure why he’s still asking questions. The answers are in no way explaining anything – in fact, they’re mostly just giving him more questions.
He feels like he’s trying to get the shape of the thing, is what it is. Not physically. He absolutely does not want the physical shape of this particular thing, under any circumstances. But, for all Joe’s philosophising about relativity and individuality, reading between the lines, it doesn’t sound like he’s told all that many people about this. And if Tango’s gonna be part of the Joe’s Confidant Club, then by god is he going to make sure he earns his membership.
Which, he assumes, he does by understanding as best he can what the everloving fuck Joe is talking about.
“Oh, yes.” Joe nods, sagely. “Very regular, actually! It’s got a very strict schedule. Sticks to it like clockwork, actually, which I appreciate. Even if I wish it’d do something other than watch me.” Joe sounds almost fond. “I appreciate the reliability, you know? It’s kinda comforting, what with all the chaos on this server of ours.”
“Uhh. Sure.” Tango feels like, of all the words he’d use to describe a giant floating face, comforting would be close to the bottom of the list. But it’s Joe’s face, so he figures Joe can use any words he wants to describe it. “That’s something, I guess.”
If it were anyone else, Tango would be trying to figure out a way to politely ask whether this was a mental health but it’s under control thing, a cosmic haunting slash curse slash code glitch slash any other Hermit-typical fuckery you care to name thing, or a I’m currently tripping balls thing. With Joe, though, those questions tended to be simultaneously useless, meaningless, and the wrong ones to ask entirely.
So he doesn’t bother. Instead, he says, “Well, I, uh. Just wanted to check in, you know? Sounds like you’ve got it all under control, though. Good luck with the, uh– Face Day, and let me know if you need anything, yeah?”
“Yeah! Thank you. Though I think I’m–” Joe stops, like a paused tape. Once again, his careful manual sorting of his thoughts is writ plainly across his face. “Oh! …Actually. I’m gonna need some more deepslate, soon, for the pinball machine. If you’ve got any lying around that you don’t need for Decked Out, I don’t suppose you’d mind me pinchin’ a few stacks? If you just put it in those chests again, I’ll swing by in a bit and pick them up.”
Tango grins, and tosses Joe a casual salute. “Can do!” That’s the kind of thing he likes – easy, practical, no philosophy. Not that he minds the philosophy. It just gives him a headache. Ties all the little wet bits in his brain into knots. “Might do that right now, actually, if you’re all good here.” He snaps his elytra open, pulls a stack of rockets from his inventory.
“Oh, yeah,” says Joe, easily, fondly. “I’m all good here.”
“Good.” Tango’s grin widens, and he jumps, launching a rocket as he does so to hurl himself skyward. “Love you, buddy! Take care!”
“Bye, Tango! Have a great day!” Joe waves at him, enthusiastically, as Tango shoots up into the sky. His voice fades as Tango rises, but it’s still loud enough for him to catch the second sentence. “And, hey– keep an eye out. You never know. Maybe you’ll have a Face Day of your own one day soon!”
From anyone else, that would sound like a threat. But, from Joe? Though Tango’s brain feels significantly more knotted-up than it did a few minutes prior, his heart feels soft and warm. From Joe, it’s just another weird way to say I love you too.