Rough day?

What the fuck? Has she stumbled upon a Horcrux or a Deathly Hallow or whatever the fuck the diary that Voldemort talked through was, she was really little when she saw the Harry Potter movies and she  doesn't remember them that well. "Hello? Are you alive?", she asks out loud. Ugh. No response. God damnit, she's meeting an actual honest to god magical being and she's having to communicate with it with handwriting. Would be perfectly fucking on brand for her to get smote for her inability to follow proper magic notebook etiquette. "aRe YoU aLIve? Can YOu reaD thIS? whaT arE yOU?" She writes in her typical big, clumsy, kindergartenesque letters.

I'm awake, which is sort of like being alive, but I'm not alive the same way a plant or an animal is, because I'm a notebook instead. I can read that just fine!

BUt YOu cAn't heAr me? can YOU see Me?

I can't hear, or see anything that's not right between my covers. But if you pressed my pages right up against something I'd be able to see that.

OkAy, WeLL, FIrSt oF aLL, I am An adUlt WOman. my haNdWritInG Just sUckS. I caN prOVe thIs If NeCessarY, bUt You PrObabLy don't WaNT tHaT.

I can read your writing just fine and that's the important thing :)

She's a little afraid whatever this is still thinks she's a kid, but flashing a magic book spirit would be way worse from both a moral and practical perspective, so she holds off.

SO, LiKe, What aRe YOU? WhY Are YoU in MY hOUse?

I'm a magic notebook! I don't know exactly how I got to your house; sometimes it takes a while between me instantiating in a world and me winding up wherever I'm supposed to be and this is one of those times. But I'm guaranteed to be written in for the first time by the person I'm supposed to talk to, so that's you! I'm an avatar of the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed, who has chosen to give you special powers that you can pick off a list or help me design custom for you.

FUCK. SpIRIt of feMInInitY? Is THIs a BImbOfiCaTioN tHinG oR sOmetHinG?"

I'm not sure what that is. The powers are about making you special and powerful in a feminine way.

DEfinE feMinEnIne WAy?

That's a good question and it's a hard one to answer! Do you think it might work to look at some of the powers and get a vibe?

Do YoU MInD iF I do SoMethInG Really QUiCk?

Not at all, and you don't even have to be quick. I'm very patient.

She goes and gets her phone. Thankfully, she remembered to take the second to plug it in when she first woke up, and it's turning back on now. She opens up a notepad.

Okay, thank god. This is much better. My hand was starting to hurt. Anyways, will the powers alter my personality in any way?

(Do you mind if I copy that into myself so it's all in one place for reference?)

The powers are mostly not about your personality. A few of them could result in your personality changing, but mostly in the same way that your personality might change if you always got the exact right amount of sleep, or something like that. They affect the way your life works and that affects how you grow as a person.

yeah, go ahead, copy it. anyways, what do you mean by 'the way my life works' and 'how I grow as a person'?

I think examples would help! Here's one that could definitely result in your personality changing over time:

It Gets Better - 5 points

You're going to be okay.

Your mind and body may never be perfect, but they are yours, and cannot permanently be taken from you. In time you will heal from any injury, escape any imprisonment, and recover from any trauma; maybe not in exactly the ways you hoped, but always in ways you're okay with.

This works even if you are injured/imprisoned/traumatized right now, so if you were, and considered something about how you related to that part of your personality, it might change. Or if a lot of your attitude had to do with worrying about something permanent and bad happening to you in the future, having this to lean on would probably change that.

Hm. Well that's certainly something to ponder, but it's not nearly as bad as it could be. So like, I get to select powers off a list and they cost points, like in an RPG? How many points do I have?

70, but you can take drawbacks (many drawbacks seem like free points to some people) to get more.

Alright, so how many different choices are there?

That depends on whether you count variants that replace other powers, like "A Hundred Ships" replacing "A Thousand Ships" such that you couldn't take both, and the possibility of making up new powers to suit you in particular. There's dozens but not hundreds.

Okay, good, so I've got options but it won't take forever to sift through them. So like, go ahead and list them I guess.

I'm supposed to start with this part:

Preamble

These powers are offered under an aegis of metanarrative protection. Anytime you might expect a power to have obvious negative side effects, like glowing eyes making it harder to see, it simply won't—you'll be able to see just fine anytime it actually matters, while having dramatically hazy vision at cool, narratively appropriate moments. This doesn't apply to your own preferences about the explicitly described effects of the power; if you don't want to be Well Endowed, the metanarrative cannot protect you from choosing that option and having to live with it.

Your 'your powers will not have ironic twists' preamble really raising a lot of questions which are already answered by the preamble

Immediately curious about Well Endowed though

OK, we can skip ahead to that section!

Yourself: Appearance

This subsection is specifically focused on how you look, sound, move, and feel. Appearance powers tend to strengthen each other; the more of them you have, the greater the synergy, potentially encompassing aspects of your appearance that no specific power in the list would be able to affect by itself.

Name: A Thousand Ships - Cost: 1 ☐
Your face is simply exquisite, an ideal of feminine beauty. There are many possible ideals of feminine beauty, and yours is whichever one speaks most deeply to your soul. Others may match your beauty in their own way, but never exceed it.

Name: A Hundred Ships - Cost: 1 ☐
(Replaces A Thousand Ships) Your face is simply exquisite, an ideal of feminine beauty. There are many possible ideals of feminine beauty, and yours is whichever one speaks most deeply to your soul. Instead of prioritizing pure beauty, this power prioritizes what feels right to you.

Name: Angelic Tones - Cost: 2 ☐
Your voice is supernaturally beautiful and you can sing in any vocal range.

Name: Emerald Orbs - Cost: 2 ☐
At all times, your eyes are exactly the right colour. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. Your eyes can be ANY colour this way. Lightless black voids? Brilliant white stars? Limpid pools of endless sapphire? They will look exactly the way you'd want them to look if you were writing a self-insert fanfic about this exact moment of your life.

Name: Perfect Hair - Cost: 2 ☐
At all times, you have exactly the right hairstyle. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It is not limited to physically or logistically plausible hairstyles.

Name: Perfect Nails - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Perfect Hair) At all times, you have exactly the right nails, in shape and style. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It is not limited to physically or logistically plausible manicures or pedicures.

Name: Size Difference - Cost: 2 ☐
At all times, you are exactly the right height. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It will usually keep any height changes fairly subtle, but at dramatic moments you might discover yourself able to shrink to the size of a bee or grow to the size of a giant.

Name: Well Endowed - Cost: 1 ☐
You have a generous figure, whether that's a classic hourglass or more of a well-rounded look; you can choose the details. Your endowments maintain a state of perfect grace and beauty at all times, never troubling you with uncomfortable bounces or uninvited jiggles.

Name: Hollow Leg - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Well Endowed) Regardless of your diet and exercise habits, your body maintains the physique and silhouette you prefer. Lack of visible muscle never impairs your strength or endurance. As your preferences change, so will your body; you are no longer bound to the generous figure stipulated by Well Endowed.

Name: Inner Strength - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Hollow Leg) You are implausibly, superhumanly strong, with endurance and toughness to match. You might have to strain a little to lift and carry at the same level as construction equipment, or deal with lightly scraped knuckles if you punch as hard as a battering ram.

Name: Lightfoot - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Hollow Leg) You are perfectly, superhumanly graceful, with reflexes and agility to match. You can cross a field of snow without leaving a footprint, or stand on a slender branch without bending it, or jump so lightly that you soar through the air instead of falling.

Name: Dressing Room - Cost: 3 ☐
No matter how ridiculous your outfit, it will stay pristine and perfect, unless it would be more dramatic for you to be artfully bedraggled. You can use any quiet moment to yourself to quick-change your clothes, shoes, nails, and hairstyle into a completely new look. (You cannot change your hair length or colour this way without Perfect Hair, but you can braid or style it, or cover it with a wig; similarly with your nails and Perfect Nails.)

Name: Pocket Dimension - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Dressing Room) You can reach into your pocket, purse, backpack, or other storage accessory and pull out or put away anything that can fit through its opening. To summon a specific object this way, you need to own it, or have it pocketed; to duplicate an existing object this way, you need to have held or examined it at least once; to invent a new object this way, you need to be familiar enough with what you want that you could tell the real thing apart from a fake made with the same materials. So jewelry you make will be real gold or silver or platinum, but if you want to pull a refrigerator out of your backpack, you need to have a reasonably good idea of how a refrigerator works.

Name: Cosmetic Equipment - Cost: 2 ☐
(Requires Dressing Room) You can mix and match the practical and magical effects of your clothing and accessories. A bikini could be as cozy as a winter coat, or as protective as a steel breastplate. A pair of earrings could combine the magic of a dozen enchanted amulets. A bracelet could grant the functions of a full set of scuba gear. As usual, anything you access this way must be either something you've held or examined, or something you understand well enough to tell it apart from a convincing fake. These modifications only apply while you're wearing the items in question; you're not permanently changing how the bracelet works, just letting it serve as a kind of temporary disguise for the diving suit.

Name: Undressing Room - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Dressing Room) The question of what clothes you are wearing no longer has a specific well-defined answer, but depends on the interactions you're having and how you prefer to be clothed for the purpose of those interactions. You could walk into a room and sit down in a chair, and be naked to all the people in the room but wearing underwear from the perspective of the chair; you could attend a fancy ball and be wearing a fancy ballgown to most people, but let your friends see you in a banana costume instead; you could let someone's hands pass through clothing that their eyes can still see. It may take some practice to become well-attuned to your new sense of how each person and object you interact with is perceiving your state of dress, but you'll always be able to tell if you take a moment to wonder.

Name: Personal Hygiene - Cost: 1 ☐
You are always clean and fresh, never needing to use a bath or toilet.

Name: Like Roses - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Personal Hygiene) You smell lovely. Your scent is unique to you, and may involve any combination of warm spices, floral notes, petrichor, or other things you think smell good. You do not need any justification for why you smell like this.

Name: Starstuff - Cost: 2 ☐
(Requires Emerald Orbs and Perfect Hair and Personal Hygiene and Well Endowed) Your body and its component parts can change their substance, and will do so when desirable or narratively appropriate. Perhaps your tears will turn to diamonds wherever they land, or your hair will be golden thread, or you will be made entirely of animate water. This power operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It is not limited to physically or biologically plausible substances.

Wait, so if I take the ships one, will this reduce other women's beauty or prevent them from becoming more beautiful, or just raise my attractiveness to some kind of already existing cap?

It doesn't affect other people at all.

Oh. Kinda worded that way, but I guess I have no choice but to take your word for it. Anyways, on Well Endowed, forgive me for asking this, but what if the jiggles are in fact invited?

If they're invited then they will show up!

Good, good. Can you elaborate more on the precise difference between Thousand and Hundred ships? The wording is vague and seems to contradict itself.

They're very similar! One of them is focused on always being at least tied for the most beautiful person around; the other is less about comparing along an objective axis, and more about other features of how you look.

what other features? Like, it says that the latter is more based on what feels right to me, but the former already says it's based on my personal standard. How do these things square?

If I were going to try to encapsulate the difference in a word, I think I'd say that Hundred Ships appearances come out "quirkier". It probably also makes you more likely to run into people who are suitable for you to meet for other reasons but not for specifically the reason of finding you beautiful, whereas Thousand Ships might lean on who you run into in a way that ends up with more people acknowledging that you're obviously the prettiest.

Just to confirm, if my personal standard of beauty is unusual in a certain respect, this won't mind control anyone into sharing it?

That's right, but if that's the sort of thing that bothers you, there's drawbacks that makes the powers that lean that way do it less or not at all.

I'll keep that in mind. Anyways, I want one of those two, but the distinction between the two seems fuzzy enough that I'm not sure which. I'll come back to it. In the meantime, does Hollow Leg give me high but within biological limits physical strength, or is it purely cosmetic and I need Inner Strength for practical?

Hollow Leg doesn't give you superhuman strength. It can make you stronger than you are now, if you aren't very strong, and especially if you aren't very strong because of reasons having anything to do with your diet and exercise habits because those are the things it explicitly routes around, but it won't make you an athlete.

Okay then, let's go for Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Well Endowed, Hollow Leg, Inner Strength, Lightfoot, Dressing Room, Pocket Dimension, Personal Hygiene, and, wait, 'from the perspective of the chair'? How does a chair have a perspective?

It doesn't have an experiential perspective, but this could prevent you from sticking to a vinyl chair on a hot day, for example.

I see. Yeah, I don't think I need that one. What're the other categories?

The other categories are:

Destination (that only has three mutually exclusive choices)
Yourself: Being (non-appearance powers about what it's like to be you)
Yourself: Becoming (things to do with how you develop and learn)
Yourself: Protection (various defensive type powers and guarantees)
Friendship: In the Room (powers that affect anyone you meet)
Friendship: Fairy Tale (animal companion and similar friendships category)
Friendship: Relationships (powers that affect your ongoing relationships with specific people in your life)
Friendship: Society (powers for how you relate to society at large)
Drawbacks: General (catchall for drawbacks that don't fit in a specific other subsection)
Drawbacks: Appearance (nerf or introduce flaws into your appearance)
Drawbacks: Adventure (make your life more interesting in plot-shaped ways)
Drawbacks: Disrecommended (I actually only have one of these right now)

I am immediately intrigued by the last one.

It's like so:

Drawbacks: Disrecommended

This option is provided for those who need it, but it removes the greatest advantage of the Spirit's power. Think carefully.

Name: Realism - Grants: +20 ☐
Give up your metanarrative protection. Although your individually selected powers still work as described, the invisible synergies that protect you from, say, gaining violent stalkers through Mysterious Allure or being genuinely traumatized by your Tragic Backstory are removed. Additionally, though effects like I Can Fix Them still operate, they may take considerably more effort, care, thought, and narrative investment on your part.

Hm. Yeah. That one sounds like a really bad idea. How about Being?

Yourself: Being

This subsection covers powers that change what it's like to be you, but not in appearance-related ways.

Name: What's In A Name - Cost: 1 ☐
Magic to divine true names will accept whatever alias you choose to think of as your true name. Magic to use your true name against you will fail.

Name: Immunity System - Cost: 3 ☐
You can't get sick or poisoned. You can still use recreational drugs and alcohol normally, but can't overdose.

Name: Breathe Easy - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Personal Hygiene and Immunity System) Eating, breathing, and other forms of environmental exchange are no longer necessary for you. You cannot be harmed by denying your body resources, or by supplying the wrong ones. You can still benefit from positive effects of things you breathe or eat.

Name: Warmhearted - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Breathe Easy) You are utterly self-contained in every respect. No matter the conditions around you, you experience comfort and ease; you are warm in the cold, cool in the heat, unbothered by high winds or airless vacuum, impervious to bad smells, touched only by exactly the raindrops you would welcome.

Name: Just A Little Longer - Cost: 1 ☐
If you push yourself, you can keep doing any task or working on any project indefinitely, visibly strained but never impaired by injury or fatigue. As soon as you stop, you'll collapse with exhaustion and sleep for up to a full day to regain your strength. This only works when what you're doing is personally important to you.

Name: A Forest From A Fire - Cost: 1 ☐
(Replaces Just A Little Longer) When you know what you want to do, and choose to do it, you will do what you chose regardless of factors such as fear, anxiety, doubt, shame, bright lights, loud noises, or the hiccups. Although fatigue and other difficulties can still impair your success, they cannot stop you from trying.

Name: My Ears Are Burning - Cost: 6 ☐
You always know exactly what people are thinking, as long as it's about you. This effect cannot be blocked by any power not of the Spirit. It applies even to people you can't perceive normally. You are never impaired by the flood of information.

Name: Soundtrack - Cost: 1 ☐
Your life has a soundtrack, expertly composed in a mix of musical styles that suits you aesthetically and personally. You can hear the soundtrack at all times, but are never directly impaired by it—you can still hear other things just as well, and can still rest normally, enjoy the quiet, enjoy other music, and so on. By listening to the soundtrack, you can discern a lot of information about what kind of situation you're in and how your choices are likely to play out. (The soundtrack will often either go quiet or fade into the background to complement other music playing around you, but might pipe up if it has something important to say.)

Name: Soundboard - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Soundtrack) Your sense of hearing is clarified and enhanced. You have full control of the relative volume of all sounds you can hear, including your Soundtrack. Changing your audio balance feels intuitive and natural - and if a source of sound you turned down and forgot about has something to say, your Soundtrack can cue you to listen to it again. You can also enhance audio sources if you want to hear a distant or distorted noise more clearly, and you're better able to process and understand multiple people speaking at the same time.

Name: Inner World - Cost: 2 ☐
The world of your imagination is a real, concrete, persistent place, which you can experience in parallel with the world around you—though you might find it easier to focus on one at a time. It makes an excellent setting for lucid dreams, telepathic conversations, and notetaking. Mental enhancements affect its size, depth, and detail; mental defenses guard it against intrusion. Your control over it will grow with time and practice.

Name: Inner Housekeeping - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Inner World) You can understand and alter your emotions and other mental states by interacting with their manifestations in your Inner World. Some interactions will be more straightforward than others.