She isn't sure she wants to be nudged toward being more friendly and cooperative with herself, even though she also hardly thinks it's possible for her to need it. Well, onwards.

...Self-Reflection is cool. Pricey, especially next to Like A Mirror which it obviously synergizes with, but very cool. It's another one like The Rescuer, though, where she suspects that taking it is going to make her whole life about having it, and she isn't sure that's what she wants.

Oh, fuck, Chaser Six When.

She is divinely(?) commanded to be self-indulgent. She checks both of them and moves on.

Severance! Very useful for someone who isn't her.

Popular! Very cool but pretty redundant with the thing that was cool about Five Star Daydream.

Famous! Even more redundant and relatedly even less cool.

Undiplomatic Immunity: another solution for someone else's problem.

Friends in Assorted Places: neat, but oof, so pricey.

Vending Machine: wh...at? What?? Why?? Twelve points??? No???

Ah, Drawbacks.

She settles in to give this section her full attention.

If I finalize my list without having decided which powers I'm choosing for Selective Memory, what happens?

If you do that, then the powers you forget will be whichever powers you were most likely to choose if you'd thought about it, and/or whichever powers you will most benefit from having chosen, depending which of those approaches you'd prefer and how different the answers to those questions turn out to be.

Wow, that's really leaving her fate in the hands of a strange and terrible yet undeniably friend-shaped power.

...is that the sort of thing her best life is made of, though?

She thinks it might be.

She leaves Selective Memory checked.

The Veil, by contrast, is much less enticing on that score and also much more drawback-shaped. She doesn't think she'll go for it.

Dramatic Damsel is an unequivocal yes.

Green With Envy, You Ruin Them, and Jilted Lovers all sound terrifying.

The Crazy Train gets a tentative check on "leaving her fate in the hands of a strange and terrible power" grounds.

They'll Know seems solidly worth the eight points it grants her.

And now she has 101/104 points spent and can go back to the top of the list, having glanced at Realism and immediately decided it was a horrible trap!

She checks Isekai Roulette for her Destination, because she might as well go all-in on leaving her fate in the hands of a strange and terrible power.

She takes A Hundred Ships and 'glances', insofar as she meaningfully has a gaze, down at Very Distinctive to find that the warning has cleared. Excellent. A Hundred Ships is a steal at a cost of "grants two points by enabling a neat drawback".

So, does she want any of these other appearance powers?

...yeah. Yeah, she wants them all.

Okay, it is time to prioritize.

She invents a little scheme of priority markers and scribbles a quick legend in the margins, then starts going down the list. Checkmarks stay checkmarks, but a heart is for a power she wants with less than certainty, a slash is for a power she wants even less than that but still some, and a question mark is for a power she thinks she wants but isn't entirely sure about.

A Hundred Ships: ✓
What's In A Name: ?
Angelic Tones: /
Emerald Orbs: /
Perfect Hair: ♡
Size Difference: ♡
Dressing Room: ✓
Pocket Dimension: ✓
Undressing Room:
Personal Hygiene: ✓
Like Roses: ?
Just A Little Longer: ✓
Immunity System: ✓
Breathe Easy: /
My Ears Are Burning:
Well Endowed: ✓
Hollow Leg: ✓
Inner Strength: ?
Lightfoot: ✓
Battle Angel: ♡
Battle Demon: ♡
Battle Maiden: ♡
Gloryseeker:
Pacifist:
Making Ends Meet: ✓
Motherlode: ✓
Five Star Daydream: ✓
Omniglot: ✓
Anything You Can Do: ✓
Dragon Fairy Elf Witch: ✓
Snowglobe: ♡
Unleash The Magic: ♡
Soulbound: ✓
Personal Space:
Closed Book:
Indelible:
Iron Will:
It Gets Better: ✓
The Great Equalizer:
Star-Straightened:

...and that's her second pass on all the Yourself powers done. Whew. She pauses to check her point total.

The point total is now tiered! ✓ has 89/104, ♡ has 105/104, / has 110/104, and ? has 115/104.

Thanks, that's really helpful!

Is it rude to ask how you're doing on that power I asked about?

It isn't rude at all! I'm still thinking about it. Sometimes these powers take a while to come to me and then click all of a sudden once I've spent enough time thinking about them.

Relatable.

What if I want more drawbacks kind of along the lines of Dramatic Damsel?

Can you tell me what you're thinking of a little more specifically than that?

I'm thinking about something like... a more comprehensive version of Dramatic Damsel, that requires Fated Lovers, and only applies to people Fated to be my Lovers. Does that make sense?

I think I can see what you're getting at, and that absolutely makes perfect sense! I'll add it to my list.

Do you have any other questions for me in the meantime?

I'm not sure.

Would it be too distracting if I asked you what life as a cosmic notebook is like?

Not at all! ♡

I promise I'm usually much less cosmic than this, though. Part of the reason why I chose to be a notebook is actually because notebooks are very nonthreatening! But it's hard to be nonthreatening to someone you saved from the brink of nonexistence, so things are a little different here between us. I hope you're still all right.

I'm... managing. It helps to have something to focus on. Also to be offered immense cosmic power, that's a pretty big upside right there.

So you're saying you're usually just an ordinary notebook? That can write in itself, I guess? And you, what, appear mysteriously on people's desks?

In some worlds I go so far as to be manufactured by ordinary processes and purchased legitimately! But in every world, I'm guaranteed by the Spirit that the first person who ends up writing in me will be the person I'm meant to talk to.

It was actually pretty weird, being the first one to write to you. I know intellectually that this instance of me can't possibly interact with anyone other than you, but my instincts are still saying, 'But how can you be sure you've got the right person?!'

Oh, wow, that must be so weird! Do you ever get tempted to write in yourself before you meet the right person?

Not with these instincts yelling about it I don't!

Actually, I don't even get to the point of thinking about it most of the time. I don't really get bored, so I can be just as happy to wait for the Spirit's chosen vessel for two seconds or two decades. But I bet even if I did think of it, I would still never do it, because I'd be so worried that it would mess things up.

I can imagine being tempted to construct an entire fictional conversation between yourself and a different person... but I guess it's probably for the best that you don't do things like that.

Oh, wow, definitely! I couldn't possibly mislead the Spirit's chosen like that. It would be... abandoning some really important principles about this job and how I do it.

I think I see what you mean about it maybe being fun, though, if it was just like a story I was telling them, and not me really trying to make them think they were reading a real conversation I'd had.

I bet being a talking notebook opens up all kinds of storytelling possibilities! Do you have a page limit? I managed pink highlighter earlier, do you have any ink limitations?