Right, that makes sense.

She takes a deep breath, and flips to the beginning of the list again.

And now she has to make a decision about A Thousand Ships.

... the names are metaphorical, right? Taking this one wouldn't cause another Trojan war?

Yes, the names are metaphorical. If you really wanted to cause a war by being too beautiful, I could probably come up with a drawback to arrange that, but I don't think it would be a good idea to take it.

Emily giggles, despite herself.

Yeah, I don't think it would.

And the comment does help her relax, a little. There's two competing things, here. On the one hand, everyone knows that lots of people in stories are fair and beautiful. On the other hand, there are also plenty of characters who aren't described much (or at all), to let people see themselves in the story.

... maybe she could be beautiful without being described that way.

If I took A Thousand Ships, do you think that would make people less able to see themselves in me when they read my story?

Well, that depends on the people, doesn't it? I think some people find it hard to see themselves in characters that don't look or act or think or live the way they do, but I also think some people might like it when characters they see themselves in are glamorous and beautiful, even if that means looking different from the reader or from how the reader sees themselves.

Hmm.

Hmm.

She pokes at the thought of being beautiful like worrying at a loose tooth. Not that she isn't a normal amount of beautiful for a fourth grader already, but she's not an "ideal of feminine beauty", she doesn't think.

Ideal.

I think I see what you mean. This power isn't really about what you actually look like, it's about the idea of being beautiful.

And, before she can think herself back out of it, she puts a little check next to it.

It does also make you look a certain way, but yes, I think many people are drawn to it because of what being beautiful means to them, more than because they have something specific they want to change about how they look.

Emily nods, remembers she's talking to a notebook, and puts a little checkmark by that statement.

Angelic Tones is, in contrast, much easier to decide on — who wouldn't want to be able to sing in every vocal range? — but she stops short at the next little group. These powers offer her the perfect eyes, hair, nails, and size for any occasion.

So I know that a lot of books either make the hero either naturally beautiful, or leave them kind of unspecified, so that people can imagine what they look like. But I don't think I've seen any where the hero changes like this. And they seem a little redundant with A Thousand Ships, if that will already let you look how you want to. Is there a reason to have so many powers dedicated to changing individual bits of your appearance?

Every power exists because someone wanted it, but not everyone wants every power. Some people really like being able to always look how they want to look even if that changes a lot, and the other appearance powers can change much more fluidly than A Thousand Ships normally would.

She sketches the start of an eye while she thinks.

Why are they broken up separately? Are there a lot of people who only want to change their eyes?

This is quite possibly straying from the point. But she has to question it, just because there's something niggling her about the kinds of powers being offered.

Some people care more about their eyes than their hair, or vice versa. And having more appearance powers available lets them synergize with each other better than they could if there were only a few very broad ones.

There's something about that ...

Why are powers that synergize better than a single comprehensive power? Unless the answer is 'that's just how the Spirit works', which is fair enough. But it seems odd, given how big some of the big powers are for them to be broken down here and not in other places. Or is it about how people tend to think about these things, more than the things themselves?

That's a good question! Hmm...

I think it's about the fact that different people can care about very different aspects of their appearance, but a lot of people have specific things about their appearance that they care a lot about, and a lot of people also benefit from improvements in areas of their appearance that they don't pay much attention to and wouldn't have thought of on their own. The times when one big power works well for a lot of different people are when the power has a single core theme that many different people resonate with in similar ways; the times when it's better to offer a lot of different specific powers that all work together are when many people are interested in very different sets of things in the same broad area, while still being happy to benefit from synergies in that area. Sometimes it's better to offer a set of different mutually exclusive approaches to a single question, like with the fate powers; someone who wanted The Great Equalizer wouldn't want to be affected by general fate-related synergies that might pull them in a Luck Be A Lady kind of direction. Appearance power synergies do try to arrange themselves in the right ways for the person they're for, but if someone thought about appearance powers the way someone who wanted The Great Equalizer would think about Luck Be A Lady, I'd still probably advise them not to take any appearance powers.

Emily thinks about this. What would it mean, to think of great hear and pretty eyes as being exclusive in that way? She can't quite picture it — but she doesn't doubt that some people think that way; people are strange, and often think things that don't make sense.

I think I see.

She thinks about her hair. Her long, dark, prone-to-tangling hair.

I think I'll come back to these if I have enough points.

She decides. This is only the first page, after all. But she does leave a star by Size Difference as being potentially useful for non-appearance-related reasons. She could use her sword as a bridge across a river, maybe, assuming that she can find a size-changing sword.

Well Endowed just seems impractical, and she skips it.

... oh, except that Hollow Leg requires it, and that seems useful.

When it says that it maintains the physique you prefer, does that mean that you won't get weak if you go without food? Because I can imagine that being useful if I have to cross any deserts, or if I get lost at sea.

It means you have much less of a problem with getting weak if you go without food; going without food for a really long time can still give you some trouble, but less trouble than it usually would. To have no trouble at all going without food for as long as you want, you need Breathe Easy.

Emily flips through to that.

Oh, I see! It looks like that one also covers drinking water?

It would be nice not to have to remember to drink water.

Yes. Some people find that it's too big a change in how they experience the world, but some people find it works really well for them.

Emily, who would like to be able to read for hours without becoming mysteriously dehydrated, wants to select it immediately. But Immunity System, which is a prerequisite, is kind of like the Iron Will powers, actually.

Do you think the custom power you're doing for overcoming mind control and so on at a dramatic moment could take Immunity System and —

No, actually, they seem too different. But what does 'poisioned' mean, exactly? Like ...

Have you read Alanna: The First Adventure?

She tilts her handwriting slightly, because you're supposed to italicize book names, but this mostly has the effect of making her handwriting start to twist off of the level and start curving a little.

If I have, I don't remember it! What's it about?

It's about this young noblewoman who wants to be a knight, so she switches places with her twin brother, and she goes to the capital to become a page but he goes to the convent to become a mage.

But that's not the important part. In the book, the king's brother ­— Roger — is a magician, and Alanna discovers that he's poisoning the king ...

Well, it isn't really poisioning. It's sympathetic magic that involves putting a wax figure of the king under running water. And in a bag, so that the king (metaphorically) cannot see what's going on, so the king doesn't suspect, even as his health worsens. But it's the best analogy I could think of.

... anyway, Alanna discovers that he's approximately-poisioning the king, and so the king is relying on Roger to take over more and more of the royal duties, since he doesn't know that Roger is the one behind his illness, and this lets Roger gradually influence the king and take control of the kingdom. And Alanna and John (the prince) eventually figure this all out and stop him.

Emily pauses for a moment, to remember why this was relevant.

And if I have the custom Iron Will power you're thinking about, then would Immunity System override it and make it so that I would break out of all mind control at the narratively appropriate time, but I'd be plain immune to being poisioned to make me susceptible to suggestion? Because that seems ... inconsistent.

Or does "poisioning" only mean, like, poisioning someone to kill them? I guess my question is how would those powers interact.

It sounds like instead of a more flexible version of Iron Will, you might want the Dramatic Damsel drawback or something like it, which would make all your protective powers narratively flexible (except for It Gets Better, which is already out of the way of most narratives).

Oh!

Emily rustles through the pages in search of the drawbacks section.

This does sound like what I want

— because why would anyone not want to feature in really great stories, even if that requires getting hurt —

but it's definitely not permanent, right? Like, even if the story required me to be locked up in a tower for a thousand years or something, I would eventually be able to get out?

Or, no. That's a bad example because I haven't gotten a power for escaping from places yet. Is that in my list?

She flips back up to her own list of things, and then back down.

Eternal Love almost does that ... I guess getting locked in a tower with everyone I love wouldn't actually be that bad.

Yes, you can generally expect that a storyline involving locking you in a tower will also involve you escaping eventually, unless it turns out that for some reason you would rather stay in the tower forever. But situations where someone would rather stay in a tower forever are pretty rare.

She supposes that's true. The notebook really has a way of saying things as though they're very straightforward, for how complicated Emily feels this whole power-selection-problem is.

Okay — then yes, I do want Dramatic Damsel.

Which means she has 73 points to work with, total, which is good because it's prime.

Are there any other meta-powers? Powers that effect how other powers express themselves?

Because a power that ensures she can become involved in "really great stories" no matter what is pretty clearly not a drawback.

A lot of drawbacks affect how powers express themselves, but not many powers do, at least not in the kind of major way that drawbacks can.

Well, Emily has already remarked on the Spirit's dubious classifications. She turns to the top of the drawbacks list and starts reading through it.

... okay, she takes it back. Some of these suck. And some she's just not sure how to feel about. She taps a thoughtful finger on There's Another One.

Would this make me a deuteragonist?

She jots in the margin next to it. She's nearly certain that she's spelled that correctly.