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someday my prince will come
Effie finds a notebook and has genre opinions at it
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The Campus Activities Council is probably Effie's favorite student organization. 

She isn't, like, a member or anything. but that's the beauty of the whole thing; you don't have to be a member to reap the benefits of their existence. When Effie's queer romance novel book club throws a party, non-members aren't forbidden from showing up, or anything, but they generally don't, because that isn't the point; the event is for the book club. When the CAC throws an event, it's for the whole college, because that's what the CAC does, is organizes public events. 

Today is one of the monthly de-stressing craft days. Effie doesn't always show up to those; she skipped the one where you make stress balls out of balloons and flour, because she doesn't really use stress balls, and she skipped the one where you make wallets out of duct tape, because she already owns multiple wallets. But today, they're doing bookbinding, which is even more deeply cool than the time they did fabric painting. 

The process isn't actually that difficult. You line your pages up, you drive a nail through the paper, you stitch through the nail holes, you glue your cover on. There are blank covers for people who want to design their own, but Effie just picks out a nice purple one with the word "Journal" on it. 

A few hours later, in the evening, she flips open the pretty cover to scrawl some no doubt thoroughly amateurish poetry. 

The evening's light is glory 
The morning's light is sun
The evening is for story
The morning is for fun

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That's really pretty!
says the notebook, in sparkly purple ink and pretty yet readable handwriting.
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Uh. 

 

What. 

 

Thanks???

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Sorry, I know I can be startling but it's hard to know how to introduce myself when all I've seen is one lovely poem and I think it would be very rude of me to wait until you've written more things before I say hello.
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I don't think it would be less startling if you said something else!

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I see what you mean. I think I could probably still think of something more calming to say if I knew you better, but there is only so calming that a talking notebook can be.
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I don't think being startled is that big a deal? I'm less interested in being calmed than in learning everything about what's going on!

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I was sent by the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed to offer you its power!
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And what, pray tell, is the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed?

(She is capable of handwriting italics. Look, some things are important.)

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Oh my goodness, you wrote in italics! That's so fancy! Even I can hardly do it unless I'm formatting text instead of handwriting it, and you're definitely handwriting.
A brief pause.
Sorry, I got excited and forgot about your question.

The Spirit is a different kind of being than people like you or me. It doesn't exist in any specific time or place, and it doesn't really experience the world the same way we do, which means it has a hard time interacting directly with anyone. But it can see when people would like to become powerful and beautiful and special in a feminine way, and it wants to help those people, so it sends notebooks like me to talk to them and offer them part of its power.
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I'd better be able to handwrite italics if I'm going to do longhand poetry! So the Spirit is sort of a god?

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The Spirit prefers not to relate to people the way people usually relate to gods, but gods are a useful concept for understanding the Spirit in some ways, except that gods are usually confined to a particular world or set of worlds and the Spirit isn't.
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Specific world or set of worlds?

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Yes. There are a lot of worlds and most things only interact with a few of them.
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How does that work?

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What do you mean?
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Well...like, what kinds of worlds, are the lots of worlds that there are, and why is it that most things only interact with a few of them?

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If you can think of a way that a world might be, there's probably a world like it out there somewhere, though it might be very far away and hard to get to.

If you can think of a way that different worlds might relate to each other, there's probably some worlds out there that do relate to each other like that, though they might be very far away and hard to get to.

All of the different ways that worlds can relate to each other can also connect to each other in lots of different ways, and each of the ways of getting between worlds only works across some of them.

Most things only start out in one world, or one set of worlds that all relate to each other in a certain way or set of ways.

Even the Spirit can't get to every world, but the Spirit can get to many many more worlds than most other things, because the Spirit sees across the boundaries between different kinds of world and different relationships between worlds very easily.
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...Wow. That's a lot bigger than I was imagining. 

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The multiverse is very, very big.
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And full of stuff, it sounds like! The universe is also very big but, to the best of my knowledge, not full of stuff. Like, there's galaxies and planets and stuff, but it's all sooooo far away and also none of it looks anything like the fun scifi. 

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It's very likely that there are lots of worlds out there that look very much like the fun scifi!
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Mmmwell personally I am more aesthetically drawn to the fun fantasy. When it comes to sff. Like don't get me wrong I will happily sit down with a cup of hot cocoa and a Douglas Adams on a cold winter's day but I'd rather live in a castle or a wizard's tower than a space station, you feel me?

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There are also lots of castles and wizard's towers. I'm not actually sure which there's more of; it would be really difficult to count for a lot of reasons.
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I encourage there to be spaceships for other people to enjoy, I just wanna be magic. 

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Then I think you should get to be magic!

Do you want to see my list of all the powers the Spirit offers? I can also come up with new ones on request, but the list is generally a good starting point.
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Ooh! Yes!

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One moment please! ⏳

Tiny dots of ink trickle through the hourglass, and more ink swirls across the subsequent pages, pulling together into a neatly formatted list. When the ink settles and the hourglass shows a tidy pile of doodled sand, the notebook writes,

All done!

Please let me know if you have any questions, and especially any requests! If you check a box and then change your mind, you can scribble out the checkmark and I'll erase it for you. I can only give you all your powers once you've told me clearly that you want to finalize your choices.

The list begins with a short preamble, then dives right in to lists of options under tidy headers, each with its own checkbox. A point counter in the outer top corner of every page reads (0/70).

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.
Destinations

You must choose exactly one Destination.

Name: Stay Put - Cost: 0
You're just going to take these powers and keep on keeping on right where you are.

Name: Somewhere In Mind - Cost: 0
You have a specific destination you want to go to. You can choose any place, real, historical, fictional, or made up in your own head right now, and the Spirit will take you there. After that, you're on your own as far as further interdimensional travel.

Name: Isekai Roulette - Cost: 0
Trust to the will of the Spirit and let it take you where you need to go. It will look at far more options than you could ever know about, and pick something that's likely to be even better for you than whatever you would have chosen on your own.


Yourself

These powers affect your own self and nature, without direct effects on other people. Some of them are prerequisites for powers in the later Power of Friendship section.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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.)

Name: Pocket Dimension - Cost: 1
(Requires Dressing Room) You can reach into your pocket, purse, backpack, or other storage accessory and pull out anything that can fit through its opening, even if it obviously could not fit in the pocket and even if you've never carried that object in that pocket before. In order to summon a specific object this way, it needs to belong to you; in order to duplicate an existing object this way, you need to have held or examined it at least once; in order 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: 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: 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: 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: My Ears Are Burning - Cost: 6
You always know exactly what people are thinking, as long as it's about you. This effect is not telepathy and is not blocked by effects that block telepathy. It applies even to people you can't perceive normally. You are never impaired by the flood of information.

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: Battle Angel - Cost: 1
Somehow, you never get significantly injured in a fight, unless it's a very dramatic and plot-relevant fight in which case you might be glamorously wounded and pick up a cool new scar.

Name: Battle Demon - Cost: 1
You have an unerring intuition for gaps in an opponent's defenses, though it may be beyond your power to exploit them.

Name: Battle Maiden - Cost: 3
(Requires Battle Angel and Battle Demon) No matter what kind of fight you're getting in, you're always a match for even the most skilled opponent.

Name: Gloryseeker - Cost: 1
Somehow, you never get significantly injured when doing cool stunts like skydiving or parkour. At especially dramatic moments, you might pick up a cool new scar.

Name: Pacifist - Cost: 6
Fights don't happen to you. Any violent conflict you might otherwise get into is either avoided by coincidence, or replaced with a yelling match, game, contest, race, or dance battle, whichever is most appropriate to the situation. Powers you have that give you advantages in fights also apply to fight replacements.

Name: Making Ends Meet - Cost: 1
You have enough money to sustain a comfortable lifestyle. It comes from a source you don't have to pay much attention to, like a job with almost no responsibilities, a large inheritance, or a noble title.

Name: Motherlode - Cost: 2
(Requires Making Ends Meet) You have enough money to sustain a fairly extravagant lifestyle. It doesn't come from anywhere, you just have it.

Name: Four Star Daydream - Cost: 4
(Requires Motherlode) The answer to 'can I afford that' is 'yes'.

Name: Five Star Daydream - Cost: 4
(Replaces Four Star Daydream) In any world you visit, you will quickly find opportunities to generate enough value to effectively afford anything that's up for sale anywhere in the local economy.

Name: Omniglot - Cost: 3
You learn languages insanely, ludicrously fast. You know exactly what any word said to you means, and you make strangely accurate guesses about how to phrase things you're trying to say. You never forget any grammar or vocabulary you learn.

Name: Anything You Can Do - Cost: 6
You learn implausibly quickly from friends, rivals, and love interests. If you have a personal connection to someone with a certain skill, talent, or expertise, you'll learn it five times faster than they did, or twenty times faster if they're actively trying to teach you. This applies even to forms of magic that you ordinarily shouldn't be able to learn.

Name: Dragon Fairy Elf Witch - Cost: 5
You can at any time discover previously unknown heritage from any type of being you encounter, even if this makes no sense or contradicts previously established descriptions of your family tree. You always get their powers without their drawbacks, unless the drawbacks are cool and dramatic. Any visible features of this heritage will appear at narratively appropriate moments and be cute, pretty, beautiful, or striking rather than awkward, weird, gross, or scary. This ability works even if the beings in question cannot reproduce with humans, or at all.

Name: Snowglobe - Cost: 4
In worlds where people can have individual special powers, such as powered superheroes or personality-based magic, you find that you can pick up a power of your own even if you don't meet the local requirements. Drawbacks of these powers, such as uncontrollable power manifestations or a tendency to attract unwanted supernatural attention, will only apply if they are cool and dramatic.

Name: Unleash The Magic - Cost: 3
(Requires Anything You Can Do, Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, and Snowglobe) Any form of magic or other special ability you encounter can be yours, regardless of prerequisites, as long as you see it in action at least once. Your various powers and attributes will never conflict with each other or come with annoying drawbacks, and will often synergize in cool and interesting ways.

Name: Soulbound - Cost: 8
If something feels instinctively like a part of you, then it is. A necklace you always wear will be impossible to lose. A vehicle you care for deeply will be impossible to steal. A tool or power you rely on like part of your body will become as hard to misplace as your own hands. Tools, devices, and powers that you absorb this way will be translated into the form of Spirit-granted powers, granting them the flexibility to Just Work despite pesky details like network protocols, service providers, and laws of physics, and will be fully as well protected as your own mind and body are by all of your potentially applicable powers.

Name: Personal Space - Cost: 3
No one can touch you intimately if you don't want them to. You can still be struck in a fight or bumped into in crowds, but things like hugs and kisses and sex only happen if you're okay with them.

Name: Closed Book - Cost: 1
You're immune to any supernatural, pharmaceutical, or other effect that would let people directly read your thoughts or feelings.

Name: Indelible - Cost: 1
You're immune to any supernatural, pharmaceutical, or other effect that would let people directly alter your thoughts or feelings.

Name: Iron Will - Cost: 2
(Requires Closed Book and Indelible) You are immune to all forms of mental illusion, alteration, interference, or control. Even extreme torture, extended solitary confinement, advanced brainwashing techniques, and so on cannot touch you. You can be lonely but not cripplingly lonely. You can be upset but not traumatized. (You can choose to allow specific effects like communicative telepathy on a case-by-case basis.)

Name: It Gets Better - Cost: 5
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.

Name: The Great Equalizer - Cost: 8
Where you go, Fate shatters. Forms of prophecy that were once perfectly reliable stop working, or show a broad array of possibilities instead of a single coherent future. Imbalances of magical luck wash out, leaving everyone lucky and no one able to leverage their luck against an opponent. If you stay in the same world for a year and a day, this effect will be permanent even after you leave and even if someone tries to constrain the future anew in your absence.

Name: Star-Straightened - Cost: 8
(Replaces The Great Equalizer) By default you are invisible to all forms of future-sight and invincible to all forms of fate- or luck-related curse, prophecy, or doom, including indirect effects such as your enemies' luckiness making your plans go awry. However, whenever such a divination or manipulation is something you would choose to allow if you had full information about its nature, intent, and likely effects, then it works fine. In ambiguous cases, the default holds.


Power of Friendship

These powers affect how others see you and how you interact with them.

In general, effects that describe others' reactions (like their attention being drawn to you by Mysterious Allure, or their sympathy being provoked by Tragic Backstory) operate on a metanarrative rather than a causal level. They are not mind control, and are not blocked by effects that block mind control.

Your true love is anyone you're pursuing a serious romantic relationship with. You can have as many of these as you like, but your feelings for all of them must be genuine.

Name: Mysterious Allure - Cost: 5
There's just something about you. People are drawn to you, fascinated by you. You tend to be the most interesting person in the room unless something really unusual is going on.

Name: Captive Audience - Cost: 3
As long as you have genuine interest in what you're talking about, no one will ever get bored of listening to you talk about it.

Name: Blackout Binge - Cost: 2
(Requires Immunity System) Heavy use of recreational intoxicants puts you in a carefree, uninhibited state in which it will be universally agreed afterward that you were not responsible for your actions.

Name: Disney Princess - Cost: 2
Animals are always friendly to you, especially the small cute ones. You can effectively tame any animal by feeding it and speaking gently to it.

Name: Where The Heart Is - Cost: 1
(Requires Disney Princess) When you make a place your home for long enough, it will begin to respond by animating itself, including furniture and loose articles, for your convenience. Over time it may develop a personality; if so, that personality will be tailored to complement yours.

Name: Cotton Candy - Cost: 3
(Requires Disney Princess) The sharp edges of the world are blunted around you. That's not to say that nothing bad can happen, but that the worst things happen a lot less often, and happy endings large and small are much easier to come by. This effect can ripple outward to improve the lives of people you've never met.

Name: Musical Number - Cost: 5
(Requires Disney Princess) At dramatic moments, you and those around you may spontaneously burst into song. The lyrics and choreography will be flawlessly coordinated.

Name: Best Friend - Cost: 3
You have an animal companion, like a horse or a cat or a raven. They have a cool name and maybe a few nifty cosmetic quirks, like glowing purple eyes. Their loyalty is infinite and they often hold the key to solving whatever situation you're up against. You can understand them perfectly even though they can't speak, and they always know exactly what you mean even if all you do is glance at them meaningfully.

Name: Bestest Friend - Cost: 5
(Requires Best Friend) Your animal companion is a fully magical creature, like a dragon or unicorn. They have magnificent supernatural powers ready to be used at your command. They can speak every language you can, but can still communicate with you on a deeper level of mutual love and understanding.

Name: Ascended Friend - Cost: 5
(Requires Bestest Friend) Your animal companion is now a minor deity. If you encounter any magic system in your travels that involves gods or other beings empowering their followers, your Friend will discover the ability to empower you the same way.

Name: Transformer - Cost: 1
(Requires Best Friend) Instead of (or in addition to) being an animal companion, your Friend takes the form of a tool, weapon, or vehicle.

Name: Generosity - Cost: 3
Your friends love to get you presents. They'll try to pick out things you'll like, but their success depends on how well they know you.

Name: Helpfulness - Cost: 4
Your friends love to do you favours. They'll volunteer eagerly whenever you need help with small tasks.

Name: Cuddle Buddies - Cost: 2
Your friends love to hug and cuddle you. Even someone who ordinarily isn't into that sort of thing will make an exception for you.

Name: Flattery - Cost: 1
Your friends love to compliment you and tell you all about how much they like you and why.

Name: Quality Time - Cost: 2
Your friends love to hang out with you and spend time together, even if you're not doing anything interesting or important.

Name: Agree to Agree - Cost: 4
You can always convince your friends to see your point of view about things like politics and philosophy. They might have a few quibbles here and there, but they'll see how right you are once you explain where you're coming from in enough detail.

Name: Backchannel - Cost: 4
When you're talking to someone and you think you might not be getting through to each other, you can take a step back, look deep into your heart, and really try to understand where they're coming from, and it will just work and you'll know what they're trying to say and how sincere they are about it and have a good idea of what you should say if you want them to understand you right back.

Name: You Can Teach Better - Cost: 8
(Requires Anything You Can Do) If you have a personal connection to someone, you can teach them anything you know; depending how motivated and engaged they are, they could learn it up to 110% as fast as you could have learned it using Anything You Can Do. If you consider them a good friend or otherwise especially close, this applies even to forms of magic that they ordinarily shouldn't be able to learn.

Name: Not Like Other Girls - Cost: 2
People will understand that you're different. They won't make assumptions about you based on prejudice or stereotype, they won't apply legal or societal limitations to you based on what kind of person you are, and they won't take you as a representative of your demographics.

Name: Love Interest - Cost: 1
(Requires A Thousand Ships and Mysterious Allure) Anyone you fall for will inevitably like you back. They may not necessarily act on their feelings, but the potential will be there.

Name: Love Triangle - Cost: 2
(Requires Love Interest) People you fall for will be open to dating you even if they already have another serious relationship, or other circumstances that would ordinarily interfere, like a demanding career or a vow of chastity. This may cause drama, but it'll blow over quickly and there won't be any serious problems.

Name: Love Dodecahedron - Cost: 5
(Requires Love Triangle) When you fall for someone who is already seriously dating or even married, your romantic rival will be open to allowing their partner to date you, and may even want to date you themselves.

Name: Time Enough For Love - Cost: 5
No matter how many people you want to date or be close friends with, you will somehow find the time to hang out with all of them and express your love and care. This power can only be used for relationship activities and not for anything else you might want to use the ability to be in two places at once for.

Name: Safe at Home - Cost: 4
No one will hurt your loved ones to get at you, or vice versa.

Name: Opting In - Cost: 4
(replaces Safe at Home) When you make yourself vulnerable to dangerous people, they will focus their danger on you and whoever else has chosen to involve themselves, leaving innocent bystanders and your uninvolved loved ones alone.

Name: I Can Fix Them - Cost: 5
Regardless of how morally despicable someone is, your love can and will reform them into a genuinely good, kind, upstanding person who regrets their evil deeds.

Name: I Can Help Them - Cost: 5
(Replaces I Can Fix Them) Regardless of how lost to darkness someone is, your love can save them, if they're willing to accept it. This power will not directly alter someone's mind except to allow them to believe a true thing they couldn't have believed otherwise, or to change something that their pre-alteration and post-alteration selves would hypothetically be able to agree was good if they talked it over honestly with full access to each other's perspectives. In cases where the outcome of the hypothetical is uncertain, it will default to not making the change.

Name: Inspirational - Cost: 5
Just meeting you makes people want to be better. Those who hurt you, or hurt someone you care about, will always come to understand your point of view and regret what they've done. In trade, you might sometimes come to understand more of their point of view than you'd like.

Name: True Love's Kiss - Cost: 1
By kissing your true love, you can break any curse, heal any injury, and cure any illness. The same works in reverse.

Name: Eternal Love - Cost: 2
(Requires True Love's Kiss) Those you love cannot be parted from you by anything short of their own uncoerced decision to leave. Anything else—war, politics, death, interdimensional travel—you will find a way to overcome and be reunited.

Name: The Rescuer - Cost: 5
(Requires Eternal Love) If someone is dead who would want to be alive again, and you set your heart on returning them, you will find a way. It may have costs or difficulties or take a long time, but you will find it, and it will work.

Name: Planned Parenthood - Cost: 1
You can only have children if you actively and specifically want to. Your partners will instinctively believe you about this, and won't be concerned that you might be wrong or fibbing.

Name: Providential Parenthood - Cost: 1
(Replaces Planned Parenthood) You can only have children when you're really ready for it, or if you actively and specifically decide to.

Name: Two Become One - Cost: 1
(Requires Planned Parenthood) When you have sex, it is always special and wonderful and beautiful. No one ever elbows anyone in the face or makes undignified noises.

Name: Laugh Together - Cost: 1
(Replaces Two Become One) When you have sex, you find it easy to free yourself from expectations and anxieties and immerse yourself in the experience of the moment. Your partners get the same benefits.

Name: Here For A Good Time - Cost: 1
(Replaces Two Become One) When you have sex, the world gets out of your way. Pillows don't fall off the bed; blankets don't end up scrunched in uncomfortable places. You are exactly as graceful as you want to be, and have excellent luck evading misaimed elbows.

Name: Bop It - Cost: 1
(Requires Two Become One) The mysteries of another's body are an open book to you, and you always know exactly how to move and touch in order to please someone in bed.

Name: The Princess And The Dragon - Cost: 3
No matter who or what you're trying to sleep with, the logistics will all work out, somehow. Arbitrary differences in size, biology, temperature, substrate, and underlying physics can be gotten around with sufficient creativity and determination.

Name: GGG - Cost: 4
Your true love will be willing to try just about anything you suggest in bed, and if you really enjoy it, they'll really enjoy it too.

Name: Opening Up - Cost: 4
(Replaces GGG) Being with you gives your true love more capacity to be adventurous, in or out of the bedroom. Although these adventures might have consequences, those consequences will never be devastating, and it will always turn out that finding out what these things are like is worth the consequences of trying them.

Name: Before Your Eyes - Cost: 4
In your presence, people become willing to experiment sexually in ways they normally wouldn't. For some reason this applies especially well to boys kissing each other.

Name: Reaching Out - Cost: 4
(Replaces Before Your Eyes) Your presence is a catalyst that encourages people to let go of preconceptions and constraints and have the courage to try things that they might like even if they're new or unfamiliar or scary. However that turns out, it will ultimately help those people understand themselves and their desires, and won't do lasting damage physically, emotionally, or socially to anyone involved.

Name: Fated Lovers - Cost: 3
You will meet someone who will go on to become your true love. If you enter a specific universe with a specific target in mind, you'll meet that person under favourable circumstances, and if it doesn't work out with them, this power will keep introducing you to new possibilities until you find someone who's right for you. If you're the sort of person who can have multiple true loves, you'll keep meeting new ones until you have enough.

Name: Fated Friends - Cost: 4
Wherever you go, you will be steered into meeting people you'd do well to befriend. It's up to you to recognize and appreciate them.

Name: Sorry About That - Cost: 3
Your true love will be extremely forgiving. Even if you make mistakes or act thoughtlessly toward them, a simple apology will mend things between you. They may expect you to try to improve, but they'll be infinitely patient about how fast that improvement takes place.

Name: Excuse Me - Cost: 5
(Requires Sorry About That) All your friends will be just as forgiving as your true love.

Name: Tragic Backstory - Cost: 8
(Requires Excuse Me) Something terrible happened to you in your past. Anyone who hears about it immediately forgives you for any and all bad behaviour in the present. They will not expect you to grow or change, and will continue sympathetically excusing whatever you do indefinitely.

Name: Sense of Style - Cost: 4
People who are romantically interested in you will start dressing more to your taste. The more romantically compatible they are, the better they'll be able to guess exactly what to wear to catch your eye.

Name: Bonus Style Points - Cost: 3
(Requires Sense of Style) Luck will shine on anyone trying to dress up for you. They'll get their hands on outfits they couldn't normally afford, their clothes will fit better, and in extreme cases they might even find themselves able to change shape, sex, or species—though only in ways that make them more, not less, comfortable in their own skin.

Name: Like a Mirror - Cost: 3
An underlying fact of the multiverse is that the same person can exist in multiple places, either as an alternate timeline where something went differently, or as the same essence of identity expressed under different circumstances. This power will steer you toward the local version of you, if they exist, in each world you visit. Your alternate selves will be happy to meet you, get along with you smoothly, and be inclined to cooperate with you.

Name: Self-Reflection - Cost: 5
Whenever you meet someone who is you, or was you, or could have been you, or will be you, a special bond is formed, allowing you to keep in touch with them no matter how far you travel. You can speak out loud to someone who is you, and they'll hear you as though you were standing right next to them; you can write notes to someone who is you, and the note will appear near them; you can send messages to someone who is you, and they'll receive them even if there's more than a world between you. The person on the other end of the bond can contact you in just the same way. This lasts as long as each of you considers the other a reflection of themselves and each of you wants to stay in touch with the other.

Name: Chaser Six When - Cost: 4
(Requires Time Enough For Love and Self-Reflection) Two of you who are near each other can decide to merge, becoming a conjoined double consciousness sharing two bodies. One of you can decide to fragment, adding a body and a conjoined consciousness to drive it. You can share with yourselves not only messages but direct mind-to-mind transmission of thoughts and memories across any distance. Your fragments can narrow themselves down to focus on embodying specific mental states or orienting themselves to specific tasks, in a way that's fully reversible and doesn't make them any less you; they can also split off into discrete forks just as easily as discrete forks can conjoin themselves with each other. Fully merging conjoined selves into a completely unified being with only one you's worth of mind is also possible, but takes more time and effort and can't be done as fluidly.

Name: Severance - Cost: 2
Identities that you gravely and deliberately cast aside no longer describe you or refer to you. You cannot be traced by them or identified with them. No one will ever know that you are the same person you were once known as, unless you choose to personally tell them.

Name: Popular - Cost: 3
Wherever you go, you develop a reputation fast. The sort of people who you'd like to have as fans tend to hear about you and be impressed. You may not make an impression on mainstream society at large, but you'll develop a following among the people who best resonate with your style.

Name: Famous - Cost: 3
(Requires Popular) Wherever you go, people really take to you. You're the subject of constant gossip and most people have heard of you before you meet them. People you've never met will get crushes on you.

Name: Undiplomatic Immunity - Cost: 6
You are above the law. Any crimes you commit will be overlooked by the authorities. Note that, if you do enough crime that you start looking more like an invading army, local governments will still feel free to declare war.

Name: Friends In Low Places - Cost: 3
You make friends easily among the lowest echelons of society, the underdogs and underworlders. Moving and acting in these circles is intuitive and natural for you.

Name: Friends In High Places - Cost: 3
You make friends easily at the highest echelons of society, among the rich and powerful. Moving and acting in these circles is intuitive and natural for you.

Name: Friends in Strange Places - Cost: 3
You make friends easily in small isolated communities, among those who may be scorned by mainstream society for their differences or may just be so obscure that mainstream society mostly hasn't heard of them. Moving and acting in these circles is intuitive and natural for you.

Name: Vending Machine - Cost: 12
You can instantiate any person (real, fictional, or made up in your head) in any world you're in. Instantiating a real person will not pull them from their original world; it will create either a copy with their memories or the version of that person who would exist had they been born in that world. Instantiation can be retroactive: that is, you can use the power, and then meet the person you instantiated and find that they were already here and have lived in this world all their life.


Drawbacks

These options grant points rather than costing them. They represent inconveniences or mitigations of existing advantages.

Name: Decorative - Grants: +1
You are unfailingly cute and pretty and feminine at all times, in all circumstances. You cannot wear insufficiently pretty clothes. You cannot make insufficiently pretty noises. You cannot ugly cry.

Name: Beauty Is A Curse - Grants: +1
(Requires A Thousand Ships) No, you don't understand. Beauty IS a curse. People will NOT stop bringing it up. Everyone you meet just has to point out how pretty you are. This will never stop happening. Even the most tactful people find it slipping out subtly, as remarks about the luster of your hair or the depth of your eyes.

Name: Plain Jane - Grants: +2
No matter what you look like, nor how many times people tell you you're beautiful, when you look in the mirror all you see is imperfections. You will never be fully satisfied with your appearance on an instinctive level.

Name: Style of Sisyphus - Grants: +1
Anytime you settle on a personal style that works well for you, soon afterward you'll encounter inspiration for another style that you like even better. You might end up cycling between different fashions, or trying to incorporate them all into a single outfit (and then finding another inspiration and having to start all over again).

Name: There's Another One - Grants: +3
You are not the only vessel of the Spirit. You might meet someone else with similar powers to yours; you might even meet more than one. Your susceptibility to one another's powers will be governed by the narrative.

Name: Incomplete - Grants: +5
About half of people you encounter will be immune to all mind-affecting aspects of your powers, and about half of those who remain will see reduced effects. You can do nothing to change this.

Name: Nullified - Grants: +1
(Requires Incomplete) Any aspects of your powers that would affect the minds of others in ways they might not like will instead not do that. This can make many of your powers less effective.

Name: Grimm's Fairy Tales - Grants: +1
(Requires Cotton Candy) Bad things can and will still happen to you in particular.

Name: Funhouse - Grants: +2
(Requires Like a Mirror) This removes the restriction that all your alternate selves must get along with you. Now they can relate to you in all the ways you might potentially relate to another version of yourself. If you get along well with yourself, this might not be so bad.

Name: Great Responsibility - Grants: +4
When someone calls out to you for help, you can hear it no matter how far away you are, and you know exactly how they feel.

Name: Helpline - Grants: +3
(Requires Great Responsibility) People whose problems you could potentially solve will sometimes instinctively know to pray to you about them. They won't necessarily know anything else about you, or recognize you as the same being they prayed to. You won't necessarily know what their problem is or how to solve it.

Name: Divine Mantle - Grants: +6
(Requires Helpline and at least one of: Very Distinctive, They'll Know) For every prayer you answer, it becomes permanently more apparent to everyone who perceives you that you are a power beyond reckoning, limitless in potential, greater than any god whose domain is bounded by a single knot of worlds. You cannot turn this off. At higher levels, this ability begins to broadcast more and more detail regarding how you feel about answering prayers and how the attributes of the prayer and the petitioner affect those feelings.

Name: Mood Ring - Grants: +2
(Requires at least two of: A Thousand Ships, Angelic Tones, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room, Like Roses, Well Endowed) Your appearance powers will advertise your feelings and reactions. You might shrink in fear; your eyes might glow red with anger; your laughter might be literally musical. You cannot turn this off or adjust it.

Name: Very Distinctive - Grants: +3
(Requires at least three of: A Thousand Ships, Angelic Tones, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room, Like Roses, Well Endowed) You cannot successfully disguise yourself to anyone who has met you in your normal identity. Even someone who has only seen you at a distance or heard about your style might notice similarities.

Name: Flashy - Grants: +2
(Requires Very Distinctive and at least five of: A Thousand Ships, Angelic Tones, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room, Like Roses, Well Endowed, Mysterious Allure) Stealth just doesn't work for you. If someone has any opportunity to notice your presence, they will.

Name: Moodier Ring - Grants: +2
(Requires Mood Ring, A Thousand Ships, Angelic Tones, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room, Like Roses, and Hollow Leg) Your appearance powers will work together to advertise your feelings and reactions. Some of these effects might be subtle; many will be the opposite. Anime sweatdrops are not out of the question.

Name: Secret Identity - Grants: +2
When you're at home, in your world of origin, your powers are fully concealed. Unfair advantages are withdrawn and inhuman features are hidden. Powers of safety and convenience still work, as long as they can remain plausibly deniable, but to all outward appearances you're back to being your ordinary self with no magic to speak of. (If you take this with They'll Know, the standards for plausible deniability will be much more restrictive and fewer powers will be able to work with them, but safety powers will still work and still conceal themselves.)

Name: Selective Memory - Grants: +3
Pick between three and ten of your chosen powers and drawbacks. You forget that they were ever offered to you, and all evidence that you took them is erased. You still have them, but you no longer remember what they are. It is possible to rediscover them later by observing them in action, but it might take a while to pin down exactly what they were. It's up to you whether or not to list this drawback among them.

Name: The Veil - Grants: +5
(Requires Selective Memory) You forget that these powers were ever offered to you, and all evidence that you chose them is erased. You still proceed to your Destination as normal, but without any explanation for why you were suddenly transported to another world, if you chose to travel to one. It is still possible to discover your powers by observation, but pinning down the details could turn out to be quite the project.

Name: Dramatic Damsel - Grants: +3
When (and only when) an opportunity for a really great story arises, powers that ordinarily protect you from things like getting hurt, being drugged, or losing fights will slip just enough to facilitate someone getting the better of you. The power may reassert itself right away for a dramatic escape, or keep a loophole open or a handicap in place long enough to make your escape more difficult and elaborate. (Combining this with Realism is not recommended.)

Name: Love Is A Battlefield - Grants: +5
(Requires Dramatic Damsel) You can never have a perfect defense against your love interests. Though your defensive powers may hinder them, they can always find a way through. This applies to anyone you're romantically interested in, and to anyone chosen for you by Fated Lovers. As your relationship with them intensifies, your defenses lower further where they're concerned. Breaking up with them has no effect on your vulnerability.

Name: Seen With The Heart - Grants: +3
(Requires Love Is A Battlefield and Selective Memory) To the extent that you're vulnerable to someone through Love Is A Battlefield, they also have unusual insight into powers you possess that you may not be aware of. Taking They'll Know strengthens this effect.

Name: Green With Envy - Grants: +6
People are so eager to be your friend that they become bitter and vindictive when denied the opportunity. You can tear apart long-established friend groups if you aren't careful to give everyone equal attention, and sometimes even then. This effect is particularly harsh around people you're dating.

Name: You Ruin Them - Grants: +3
Once someone has dated, slept with, or even shared a deep and longing glance across a room with you, their heart is never fully satisfied with anyone else. Other relationships pale in comparison to what they could have, or imagine they could have, with you.

Name: Jilted Lovers - Grants: +4
When you break up with someone, they become monomaniacally obsessed with getting back together. If you take Realism, this will absolutely escalate to violent stalking.

Name: The Crazy Train - Grants: +6
Powers that you should be able to control directly or influence by your mood and preferences (like Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, Emerald Orbs, or What's In A Name) instead answer only to the narrative, which is still using your aesthetics but might not necessarily have your best interests in mind. Combines... interestingly... with Realism.

Name: That's How It Goes - Grants: +3
(Requires Secret Identity and The Crazy Train) Rather than being confined to when you're in a specific universe, the power suppression from Secret Identity operates on the same narrative sensibility that drives your voluntary powers: some or all of your powers may be suppressed whenever the story demands it, and return later at an appropriate time. This can synergize with Dramatic Damsel to make your interludes as a damsel significantly more dramatic.

Name: Live The Role - Grants: +4
(Requires That's How It Goes and Selective Memory) Your memories, including but not limited to memories of your own powers, may be altered or suppressed at the discretion of the narrative. In general, the story will usually let you have your memories back eventually; if you take It Gets Better, you can be sure that you will someday recover anything you've lost that you would want to regain.

Name: Marionette - Grants: +3
(Requires The Crazy Train and Love Is A Battlefield) To the extent that you're vulnerable to someone through Love Is A Battlefield, they also gain direct influence over the use of your powers.

Name: They'll Know - Grants: +8
This drawback lifts the veil that discourages people from realizing how your powers affect the world around them and their own minds. Warning: this knowledge can cause a lot of trouble.

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.

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Okay, I can see the appeal of Stay Put--I'd never take it, but some people are real homebodies. But why would anyone ever pick Somewhere in Mind over Isekai Roulette?

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Some people have a specific world they want to be sure they end up in, either because it's somewhere they previously were that they miss, or because it's sentimentally valuable to them for other reasons. Some people value having control over their destination and being able to plan with that in mind. There are a lot of different people and they want a lot of different things!
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That makes sense! I think I know some people who are plausibly that much of a control freak. ...I can't think of a more neutral word than control freak, but I'm not actually judging them.

She emphatically checks Isekai Roulette. 

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The notebook draws a tiny heart next to "not actually judging them".

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I feel like there has got to be a story behind both A Thousand Ships and A Hundred ships existing

she writes after a bit of a pause. 

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It's sort of difficult to talk about things the Spirit does in terms of linear time, but you could say that A Thousand Ships came first, and A Hundred Ships was added to the list after lots of people asked for something like it as a custom option.
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I'm not sure what the downside of a Thousand Ships is supposed to be unless there's some way for more than one person with it to meet and have a very pretty but entirely unnecessary arms race. But maybe that's just because Thousand Ships is, you know, the idiom, and Hundred Ships looks sort of small next to that, if I pretend they were named A Million Ships and A Thousand Ships instead, part of me goes, "well a million is just unnecessary."

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Some people care more about looking exactly the way they want to look than about being pretty. But some people feel the opposite way, and it's important to give both kinds of people what they want!
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...Oh. You know what, when you put it that way, I had better take a Hundred Ships, because there are cultures where people think, like, black teeth, are pretty, or bound feet, and I definitely don't want either of those. 

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A Thousand Ships does still act according to your preferences; all your powers do. But yes, A Thousand Ships will sometimes make people look different from how they most want to look, if how they most want to look is different from the prettiest way they could look that's still a way to look like themselves and not someone else.

...I might have gotten a little tangled up in that sentence; do you see what I mean or should I try to rephrase?
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No, I think I get it! 

She firmly checks A Hundred Ships. 

Does What's In A Name come up a lot?

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It depends on where you end up in the multiverse. I think the question you should ask yourself is whether you think the idea of name magic is interesting and compelling and sparkly, or boring and weird and not your kind of thing. The more interesting it is to you personally, the more likely it is to come up.
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I think it's pretty annoying, honestly. But--okay, I'm assuming one or more of these options is going to give me some form of immortality--I'd like to live a very long time! And I find the concept annoying enough that if it's going to come up, like, once, in the first thousand years of my life, then I would like to opt out. 

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That seems very reasonable!
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Does Angelic Tones only do, like, human voice stuff?

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What do you mean?
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Well, it says "any vocal range." Is that only human vocal ranges or could I also do birdsongs and whalecalls and stuff.

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It will help a little with using your voice for things an ordinary human voice couldn't do, and if you want to expand what kinds of things your voice can do, there are other powers that can help with that, and Angelic Tones will synergize with them!
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Hm. Okay. Thanks. 

She checks Angelic Tones. 

How much control do I have over Emerald Orbs?

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I would say that you can't always decide exactly what Emerald Orbs is doing, but you usually can, as long as what you want it to do isn't too far from what you feel in your heart is right for you.
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Hmm. 

She'll skip it for now, then. 

Does Perfect Hair work the same way?

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Yes.
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She'd rather more precise control, but...the difference between a median eye and an ideal eye, in terms of prettiness, isn't that much. The difference between median hair and ideal hair, on the other hand, is considerable. 

She checks perfect hair.

Size difference is...okay, she wouldn't turn down any free superpower, but she seriously doubts that she'll have so few things to spend points on that Size Difference has zero opportunity cost, and being tiny or gigantic doesn't especially call to her. 

Dressing Room, on the other hand...

Does anyone not take Dressing Room? Because wow. 

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It's pretty useful, but I think some people prefer to relate to their clothes in a more grounded and ordinary way.
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I guess that makes sense. I sure wouldn't take Undressing Room. 

She checks Dressing Room and Pocket Dimension. She doesn't have a lot of commentary on Pocket Dimension, it seems just straightforwardly very good. 

Likewise Personal Hygiene! She ticks that one with an exclamation mark instead of a check. 

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Do you want to start tracking separate symbols in your point counter, or are you just very excited about Personal Hygiene?
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--Well I was sort of intending the latter, but mostly because the former hadn't occurred to me! I would like to track separate symbols.

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Okay!


The point counters in the corner of every page of the list gain little sub-listings for ! and ✓ with their own little subtotals.
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She draws some little hearts in response. 

Hmm, Like Roses...

Do I have to design the scent for Like Roses comprehensively? I have, like, some thoughts, but I'm not a perfumer, I don't actually know how to go about designing a good smell.

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You don't have to design it comprehensively! The power will work according to what you prefer; you could think of it as though it's giving you the scent that you would design if you knew a lot about designing scents, while also taking notes from the preferences you have right now without that knowledge.
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Perfect. 

She was going to comment on how she'd like to smell something like that one bar of fancy soap she had as a kid and could never find again after it was used up, but there might be something even better, and Pocket Dimension means: she will be able to replace that one bar of soap. Or get close enough for all meaningful purposes! 

Checkmark. She definitely wants this but not with the same all-encompassing fervor that she wants to eliminate certain horrible biological functions. 

Just a Little Longer...hm. It's a nice-to-have, but she wouldn't feel reluctant to not have it, the way she would feel reluctant to not smell pretty. She draws a little spiral in its check box. 

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The notebook adds a spiral tier below the checkmark tier.

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Immunity System gets a check. Breathe Easy gets a check. My Ears Are Burning--

What. What the fuck. 

My Ears Are Burning gets crossed out

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(Many people feel strongly about that one.)
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I'm not surprised! Why is it even an option?

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Some people really benefit from being able to know for sure what other people think of them, and for hard-to-explain reasons, this power is hard to provide in anything other than that specific form. But I try to warn people that it can be a lot of trouble before they take it. It's one of those powers that has a big impact on how you experience the whole rest of your life.
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Yeah it's terrifying. 

She puts a few more pen-strokes through it, firmly. 

Well-Endowed...doesn't really appeal, honestly; she likes the figure she has, which is quite reasonable. It's not that there are no possible figures describable as "well endowed" that would appeal, but she... doesn't especially feel the need to pursue them...

Hollow Leg, on the other hand. Hollow Leg does appeal, and...Inner Strength and Lightfoot...ooh.

Why does Hollow Leg require Well-Endowed?

It's not that she's opposed to taking Well-Endowed, when Hollow Leg approximately negates it, or at least her problems with it, but, like, separately, it's a good question. 

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You could think of it as... Well-Endowed is laying a foundation, and Hollow Leg is building on that foundation. Sometimes the easiest way to make a power work is to use another power as a starting point, and Well-Endowed makes a good starting point for Hollow Leg. It's not that Hollow Leg couldn't work without Well-Endowed at all, but that it's easier to make them work together than separately. It's hard to put into words exactly what Hollow Leg is building on that Well-Endowed is so unusually good at providing... it has to do with Well-Endowed being about idealization of the body, and being an especially tidy way to express that idealization even though it doesn't go all the way to making it exactly how you want, and then Hollow Leg can easily fill in the missing pieces.
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Okay...I do have to wonder if some archetype would, like, work, but I suppose given how Hollow Leg works it doesn't really matter what bodily archetype is underlying it. 

She draws an arrow up from Hollow Leg to Well Endowed, to indicate that the latter shouldn't be taken without the former, then checks both. She looks at Lightfoot and Inner Strength for a moment, then puts a check next to Lightfoot and a star next to Inner Strength. 

Star goes between check and spiral,

she mentions, so that the notebook will tally things correctly. 

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The points totals adjust accordingly.

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The Battle trio get stars. Gloryseeker gets a check; Effie once had a dream where she went skydiving without a parachute and bounced harmlessly when she hit the ground. Probably even with Gloryseeker she's more liable to leave a crater than to bounce, but--yes. Anyway. 

Pacifist is...interesting. 

Is there some way to take a partial version of Pacifist? I don't necessarily want to never get in a real fight, or anything, but resolving some conflicts with dance battles or bardic duels or collectible card games sounds really fun and cool. 

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I'm not sure! I'll think about it.
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Thanks! 

She puts an arrow pointing towards Pacifist. 

The arrow isn't a ranking symbol, it means "come back to later." 

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Okay! That's a neat way to organize things.
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I’m definitely more the sort of person who does her thinking in free-form doodling than in meticulously organized charts.

She skims the next set of choices. 

I guess it’s not specifically relevant as long as I take Five Star Daydream but I…am slightly concerned by what it implies about the other options? I guess the other options could involve value being generated in the background somewhere without directly involving me.

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None of the options cause problems with economies unless you're trying to do that on purpose, but some people like to have a clearer sense of where their money is coming from.
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Right, like, stealing from evil rich people wouldn’t hurt the economy, and I don’t even know that I find it objectionable in principle, but it is definitely a lifestyle choice that I would like to have made on purpose if I was going to do it.

She dithers about the set for a moment before giving its relevant components—Five Star Daydream and all prerequisites—a star apiece. She’s pretty sure that with all her other cool powers she could support herself pretty well without. 

She dithers about omniglot for a bit before putting a check next to it instead of an exclamation mark. Clobbering the language barrier like a pinata sounds very appealing, but not quite exclamation-mark-tier. 

Anything You Can Do...

...How does Anything You Can Do tend to work out for people?

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What do you mean?
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Well it seems like it would piss off, like, everyone.

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I think that depends on what kind of people you meet and how you relate to them! I agree that a lot of people have trouble with teaching someone who learns much faster than they did, but some people really like it, and even when they don't, being careful with their feelings can still help a lot.
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…Okay.

She gives Anything You Can Do a star, after a moment’s thought. 

Then she looks at the next option.

She re-reads it. 

She marks it with an exclamation point.

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I'm glad you're finding things on the list that excite you!
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Is there anyone who doesn't take this one???

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Different people want different things! Some people prefer to have a very stable and familiar experience of the world.
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But...but...being things...

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Being things can be fun for some people! Personally I prefer being a notebook.
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Okay that's fair but wouldn't it be cool to be, like, a notebook AND a note-taking scroll AND a day planner AND a cookbook and...

I am like...65% joking there. 

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Sometimes I'm scroll-shaped! And sometimes I manifest as an intangible cosmic abstraction. But I'm always a notebook.
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Well, I can't be intangibly cosmic without...well I guess there could easily be other powers for it. Anyway, you're right, I shouldn't be judging other people's choices. 

She moves on. Checks Snowglobe.

...

She moves Anything You Can Do up from a star to a checkmark, and checks Unleash the Magic. Quite emphatically. 

You have? So may cool powers?

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I'm so happy you think so! ♡
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...I feel like an object lesson to myself because part of me is like "Why would anyone NOT take Soulbound?" and part of me is like "Actually gluing things to my soul sounds like a huge commitment that I should think about."

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It does only glue things to your soul (what an evocative phrasing!) if they really truly feel like they should be part of yourself. But I do see what you mean.
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I totally get that! And yet, I am asking myself, "Do I want to be a person who has physical objects glued to her soul at all?" And I think I am coming down on the side of yes, but the fact that I have to think about it at all gives me perspective on why someone would choose not to take Dragon Fairy Elf Witch.

She gives Soulbound a star, because even if she is willing to be a person who glues stuff to her soul, it's still not as appealing as, like, Snowglobe. 

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That makes a lot of sense!
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Personal Space...wow, Personal Space totally gets an exclamation mark. 

Closed Book gets a check mark. Indelible gets a check mark. She oohs over Iron Will a bit, but ultimately gives it only a check mark. 

...It Gets Better gets several exclamation marks. 

I'm not making a new tier I'm just enthusiastic. 

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Understood! ♡
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Soooo, do Star-Straightened and/or The Great Equalizer have a story behind them, or...? They smell like they have a story behind them. 

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I think The Great Equalizer sounds like it has a story behind it, but I don't have any specific memories of people I've talked to before because of nonlinear time and privacy reasons, so I don't know for sure.
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That's fair. I figured you might remember if there was a story or not without remembering the story but valid to not. 

On to the Power of Friendship section. 

...

When it says "not mind control, and not blocked by effects that block mind control," does that make them actually not mind control other than in the sense of getting around such defenses???

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It means that they when they affect people's minds, they don't do it using any specific mechanism, so effects that are supposed to stop people's minds from being affected don't work on them. They do still affect people's minds, although there are options to change that later on, and even by default your powers will always prefer to do things in ways that don't make you uncomfortable.
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Mind controlling my friends sounds pretty uncomfortable!

Ookay. Is this section going to have anything worthwhile in it, let's go. 

Mysterious Allure: No. 

Captive Audience: ...Sort of tempting, actually, but still no. 

Blackout Binge: Heeeellll no. 

Disney Princess: Oh hey this one's fine actually! She is okay with mind-controlling animals. She almost gives it a check just for being a good thing in this section but stops herself and gives it a star instead. 

...Ooh, Where The Heart Is and Cotton Candy seem. Really good actually. Effie is in favor of people having happy endings! Unhappy endings are so overrated. Effie bumps Disney Princess up to a check just for Cotton Candy's sake. Where The Heart Is only gets a star but Cotton Candy gets a check. 

Musical Number...

Do Musical Number and Angelic Tones go together as well as it seems like they would?

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They go together really well!
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She wavers and then gives it a spiral. It would be cool, but it would also be mind control. 

Best Friend. 

Bestest Friend. 

Ascended Friend.

...

So it turns out I have some questions about the Best Friend family of powers. 

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Yes?
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...Can my Ascended Friend be a hot humanoid deity who wants to gently religiously dom me. 

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That's definitely the sort of thing that can happen! Best(est) Friends don't start out humanoid, but especially at higher levels, they often find ways to assume humanoid forms. And if you want, I could try to work out a power for having them start out humanoid. As for the rest of it, the details of your relationship with your Best(est) Friend depend on what you want and what's right for you personally!
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Noooo my kinks I'm being Seen.

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I just want to check since it can be hard to tell how people are feeling from their handwriting, is this the good kind of uncomfortable or the bad kind? ♡
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Good kind 

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I'm glad. ♡ I don't really have the right kind of drives to understand kinks, but it makes me happy to see people being happy.
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Man, kinks are complicated. You don't just have to have drives, you also have to, like, be enmeshed in a cultural background that contains tropes and informs your vision of what exists and what's desirable and so on. Like, I'm pansexual, but I find the idea of specifically being dommed by a hot guy, specifically, to be a particular kind of hot, because I read waaaaaaay too much bad heterosexual erotica before I learned that there was good erotica.

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It's true that I'm not really enmeshed in a cultural background the way most people are. But it's neat how people can be shaped by their experiences and circumstances! I am too, they're just very different experiences and circumstances.

It sounds like you like being the way you are, is that right?
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Oh, definitely! I can laugh about how the experiences that formed my preferences were objectively low-quality, but now that I have them my preferences are fun! ✧

She checks Best Friend, Bestest Friend, and Ascended Friend. She leaves Transformer alone: it's not really her style. 

Generosity through Quality Time she just skips over. Waaaay too mind controlly. 

Agree to Agree, on the other hand, gets crossed out, albeit significantly less firmly than My Ears Are Burning. 

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I'm so glad! It's good when people are at home in themselves.
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Oh, Backchannel is deeply cool. Effie would apologize to The Power of Friendship for doubting that it had cool powers except that, actually, that disclaimer was extremely obvious and she regrets nothing. Backchannel gets a check. 

...You Can Teach Better. Wow, that's--that actually? Removes most of her qualms about Anything You Can Do? She gives it an emphatic check. 

Not Like Other Girls. 

Well, she hates the name, first of all. 

I'm leaning towards not taking Not Like Other Girls at all but I sort of wonder if there's...a one-sided version of it? Like, one where I won't be subject to higher expectations as a result of--whatever, but that doesn't have, uh, creepy "a credit to your race" vibes?

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I'm not sure what you mean by that?
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...So, there's this thing that happens, both in real life and in stories, where someone will be prejudiced against X group, and then meet a member of X group, and that person is cool, and instead of updating their prejudices like "well maybe X aren't bad actually" they go "well, X are bad, but not you, you're better than them" and in some situations the person will be like "wow thanks" because they have way too much internalized X-ism and sometimes they get offended actually and the person with the prejudice will be like "but why are you offended, I specifically said you were different!" 

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I think I'm not familiar with those kinds of stories, but from what you're saying, it doesn't sound like they're quite what Not Like Other Girls is getting at? Someone with Not Like Other Girls wouldn't hear "X are bad, but you're better than them" because people wouldn't be comparing them to other X in the first place.
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Well, the name didn't really suggest that, because "not like other girls" is in fact one of the ways specifically that the thing I'm talking about gets expressed, but like, also, if I wind up someplace with a prejudice against redheads, I don't want people to not have it occur to them that I would have reason to punch them for making derogatory comments about redheads in front of me, and I wouldn't want other redheads to not have it occur to them that obviously I would stick up for them. 

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Which of the effects of the power do you want?
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...Well, if I DFEW an elf, and I get pointy ears, and everyone parses me as an elf, I would like it to not be the case that everyone expects the fact that I'm an adult to mean I've had a hundred years to get good at stuff. 

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That makes sense! I think that would be a somewhat different power from Not Like Other Girls, but I can consider how to implement it. It seems hard to make it not primarily mind-affecting, though, if that's a concern for you.
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It kinda is. I think I've mostly just talked myself out of any part of this power, honestly. 

She crosses out Not Like Other Girls. 

...And also Love Interest, because, no. Just. No. 

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Okay!
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Ooh, Time Enough For Love gets a check. Safe at Home...oh look there's an alternative. 

...

I know you don't know anything about any stories, but Opting In is just so evocative of whoever wanted it. 

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It is, isn't it? I hope they're happy, wherever they are.
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So do I ♡

There's something she finds tempting about Opting In, and she can sort of see the edges of it, or at least one edge of it, but she can't actually see the whole picture. This is objectionable on a number of levels; firstly, she strongly prefers to know how she, herself, ticks; fully understanding her values and preferences is, fundamentally, the thing that separates her from the heroine of a very specific kind of story, who constantly undermines herself because she has no idea how she and her desires fit into the world around her, and thinks about what she's supposed to want instead of what she does want. On a much more immediate level, if she doesn't understand what she finds tempting about it, then she can't make an informed decision about whether to take it or not. 

Could you maybe explain in a little more detail how Opting In works, and how it's different from Safe At Home? I'm feeling sort of drawn to Opting In, and I'm trying to figure out, like, how, and why. 

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Safe At Home means that as you're going about your business, which may incidentally involve dangerous people being upset with you, the dangerous people won't ever succeed at threatening the people you care about.

Opting In means that if you choose to provoke or intrigue a dangerous person on purpose, either for practical purposes or for fun, the resulting danger will all fall on you specifically and not anyone else (unless those people also choose to involve themselves). It doesn't stop them from hurting other people on their own time, if that's a thing that they do, but it means that when you draw their attention you draw it only to you and not to the people you care about or the people who happen to be standing next to you.

Both of them can be more or less mind-affecting depending on your preferences, but both of them can get pretty weird if they're constrained to not be mind-affecting at all.
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Thanks, that's very helpful. 

So, the reason she likes Opting In, is that Safe at Home feels, to her, like it's not letting her loved ones be protagonists. Like...it's putting her in a separate world from them, where her problems aren't their problems...which is a sort of selfish way to phrase it, but taking opting in instead means they don't have to make her problems their problems, but they can, which feels to her like an important part of human connection...

She checks Opting In and moves on. 

I Can Fix Them. Uhhhh...

Oh! I Can Help Them! That's so much better!!! Check!

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The notebook patiently awaits her next question.

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...I'm so torn about Inspirational. On the one hand I'm a little leery of things that are so heavily mind-affecting, but on the other hand, it looks so cool.

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Hmm, if you tell me what you like about it exactly, I could try to find something that isn't as heavily mind-affecting that does the same things? It's one of those powers that's hard to make variants of, though, it's bent into a really specific shape around making sure that people who hurt you end up regretting it.
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I don't know that it's possible to have a non-mind-affecting version of the things I like about it! It's--as a notebook, I'm sure you've never had the visceral urge to physically strike someone with a reality check, but--

She stops for a moment to sort through her somewhat disordered thoughts. 

The bad guys realizing that they were wrong the whole time is a better ending than you generally actually get. And, like, the uncomfortable realizations part sounds sort of uncomfortable, but if that wasn't there, then the whole thing wouldn't actually be a truth-seeking process, it'd just be me getting my opinions all over everything, and that's bad if my opinions aren't right!

But, anyway, it seems like all of the things that this power does are happening in people's heads. 

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I think there can still be a difference, in powers whose effects happen mostly in people's heads, between pushing someone's mind into the right shape and leading them into the right situation for their mind to change. But it's up to you and what you want and what you're comfortable with! I'm just here to try to give you the best set of powers for you.
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--Well I definitely want to do that second thing, if that second thing can be done! Even if the result is correct, it's--less of a truth-seeking process to push them there than to lead them there. And I do care about actually being right

And when I say right I mean...not just factually correct but also, hm, epistemically correct? Like, it's not that I object, say, to having magical truths beamed into my head, but I would want to understand why and how the truths were being beamed and have a reason to believe that it was in fact truths and not just random beliefs that could easily be wrong. I want to use processes that, in aggregate, will lead to being right more often than wrong. Like, if I roll a die, and if it comes up a six I will learn a true thing, and if it comes up one through five I will learn a false thing, it's not good enough to roll a six, it's important to not roll the die at all unless you know it's loaded. 

And so, like, likewise, handing everyone a bunch of loaded dice is probably better than doing nothing, if those people are running around being egregiously, problematically, wrong, but unless they know the dice are loaded, you're still teaching them bad habits, which may be justified but is still in and of itself bad. 

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I think I understand what you mean, and, hmm, this is complicated...

Leading someone into the right situation for their mind to change is still a way of loading their dice, just a less direct, less intrusive one. And directness and intrusiveness do matter, I think, because the more direct and intrusive a way of changing someone's mind is, the less natural the result can be. If someone has a spontaneous epiphany that leads them in the right direction, well, like you're suggesting, people can have spontaneous epiphanies that lead them all sorts of ways. If someone experiences things that prompt them to reevaluate their feelings and ideas, then they can look fairly at the experience they had and the thoughts that resulted and decide for themselves how reasonable it was to think that way for those reasons... but there's still an invisible weight in the dice, in that case, because they wouldn't have had exactly that experience if not for your power. Do you see what I mean?
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I think so! I think we are on the same page...so to speak.

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♡ ♡ ♡
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She gives Inspirational a check. 

...And then she gives True Love's Kiss an exclamation point, because holy shit. 

...Then she gives Eternal Love and The Rescuer exclamation points, circles the whole trio, and adds some more exclamation points and also hearts around the outside of the circle. 

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I should warn you, The Rescuer is the kind of power where taking it affects your life a lot. But that's not to say you shouldn't, especially if you're so excited about it! It's just, having The Rescuer tends to make things be about having The Rescuer when they otherwise wouldn't have been, and I think that's important to know so you can decide fairly.
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People die more if I take it? Or do you mean I'm more likely to get roped into solving situations where people are already dead.

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No, people don't die more. But nearly every world has people who died before you got there.
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Well, yeah! I mean, my life is going to end up significant and important somehow either way, right? Might as well be a kind of way where I get to meet Basho and Sappho.

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That makes sense!
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Hmm...Planned Parenthood versus Providential Parenthood...on the one hand, she would prefer to have fully volitional control over her fertility...on the other hand, Planned Parenthood has a mind-affecting component and Providential Parenthood doesn't...on the other other hand, it's not like her build so far has been totally scrupulous about avoiding mind-affecting stuff...

She checks Planned Parenthood before she can overthink it too much more. Probably it won't have to do much mind affecting! Once she has displayed a staggering array of superpowers--and she really doesn't intend to sleep with anyone she isn't close enough to for them to know about her superpowers--"I also have a superpower for birth control, don't worry about it" isn't going to take a lot of mind control to enforce. 

Here For A Good Time seems neat but it isn't, like, specifically grabbing her. She gives it a spiral. 

Bop It is...she likes the name more than the power itself, honestly; and, uh, there's a reason she picked Here For A Good Time out of the preceding trio. She skips it. 

The Princess And The Dragon gets an exclamation point, because yes, please

GGG and Before Your Eyes are both just kind of eyaugh, and while their replacements remove most of the ick factor they don't bring them up to a level where she actually, like, wants them. Pass. 

Fated Lovers--

Does Fated Lovers plug as well into my Ascended Friend-related aspirations as it seems like it would?

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I'm not sure what you mean, could you say more about that?
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Effie's first impulse is to gesture helplessly at her own words in the hopes that this would somehow magically make what they meant as self-evident to the notebook as they were to her, but that... would be kind of stupid? That is not how understanding things works. But she's having trouble coming up with an expansion or paraphrase. 

...Wait. Is she having trouble with words because it's actually difficult to find the right words, or because she feels embarrassed to say the thing she means more explicitly. 

Iiiit might be the latter, in which case, uh, she can suck it up. 

So the idea I had was that Best/Bestest/Ascended Friend and Fated Lovers could just sort of plug into the same entity, and this would be more efficient than just taking the ✧Friend✧ options and sort of hoping it worked out. 

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Oh, I see what you mean now! Yes, given your hopes for the Friend powers, I think Fated Lovers would very much apply to your Friend... but also, given your hopes for the Friend powers, I'm not sure you would need it to? A romantic relationship with one's Friend is not that unusual, and is definitely the kind of preference that your powers tend to fulfill.
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Okay, cool, I will save the point.

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There's a pause, and then the notebook writes with uncharacteristic slowness,
My goodness... I think the list just updated! I don't think that happens very often while I'm speaking to someone. Will you hold on a moment, please, while I rearrange things a little? There are a lot of new options and I think you might be interested in some of them.
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Ooh, sure. I'll probably start over from the beginning, then...will you be able to hold onto the choices I've already made?

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Yes, of course! ♡


The list shuffles itself in place, new entries nudging apart old ones. Pacifist moves to the Power of Friendship section, with its 'come back to this' arrow still attached. It doesn't take long, all in all - not much more than half a minute.
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Hmmmm...

Warmhearted is new. That gets a star. Soundtrack is--oh wow. 

Can I make my Soundtrack audible to other people, too?

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Not by default, but I could make a followup power for it? Or you could find some other way of making the music you hear audible outside yourself, if you'd rather save the points.
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If you'd make a followup power so I can decide how much I want it, I'd appreciate it.

She gives Soundtrack an exclamation point.

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I'll give it some thought! ♡
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Hm hm...oh, there are alternatives to Personal Space now. On reflection she totally still prefers Personal Space, but she can totally imagine the kind of person who'd want Personal Bubble or Slipstream instead. 

Inner World is...interesting...

Can I get a version of Inner World that I can bring other people into? If they consent?

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You can use any telepathic or dream-sharing or other mind-connecting powers you acquire in worlds you visit to show people your Inner World and interact with them there; does that suit you or do you want something more certain?
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No, that's fine! 

...But if it doesn't have built-in sharing, she's going to give it a check and not an exclamation mark. 

And she's back down to the Power of Friendship. Ooh, Puppies Everywhere, that's very cool. Check. Pocket Monsters is cute, but she thinks she's only going to give it a spiral. 

Oh, do I need A Friend Like You for my sexy god-Friend to be humanoid, now?

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A Friend Like You is approximately what I might have come up with when I said I'd try to give you a power for letting them be humanoid from the start. It's still possible for them to eventually gain a humanoid form without it.
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Gotcha. 

Check. And a check for Transformer, of course. 

Friend From Within and Circle of Friends sound like a story. Like I am not expecting you to comment on that, just, wow.

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They do sound that way, don't they! I wonder what the story was. I hope whoever has those powers is having a good time with them!
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Yeah!

Aaaand she's reached Pacifist, again. She'll ask if the notebook has made any progress on her suggested modification when she's done with everything else, if it hasn't said anything by then. 

And now she is back to where she was before she started over!

And now we have reached the point where where I don't know what's new and what's not!

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The notebook draws a little heart next to that sentence.

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Fated Friends looks, like, convenient, but she expects to be able to make friends regardless; she gives it a spiral. 

Sorry About That, Excuse Me, and Tragic Backstory are all horrifying. No. 

Sense of Style is--tempting, but dubious--oh, Bonus Style Points seems to fix that. Cool. Check. 

Like a Mirror seems...awkward? But interesting. But. Hmmmmmmm. Spiral. 

Self-Reflection is sorta neat. Star. 

Chaser Six When. 

Well, firstly, she doesn't understand the name, but whatever. Secondly: 

Does Chaser Six When only let me fork if I've already met another me and merged with them?

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No, those options are equally available.
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Cool. 

Check. And she moves Self-Reflection up to a check too, since it's a prerequisite. 

Severance sounds...potentially deeply valuable, to someone who is not her. Popular is sort of tempting but also sort of looks like the kind of thing someone wishes for in a fairy tale about how that's a bad idea. Famous sounds...less appealing and more fairy-tale-dangerous. But not quite bad enough to get crossed out. She decides to go back and give Popular a spiral just for not being Famous. 

...

I'm not going to take Undiplomatic Immunity but the description is very funny.

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It is kind of funny, isn't it? I wonder if I had to add that clarification for a reason, at some point...
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That would be even funnier!

Friends in X Places...hm. Interesting. 

Out of curiosity, are there any echelons of society that the three Friends in Places perks specifically don't cover?

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There are a lot of ways a society can be structured, and some of them might turn out to have unusually shaped echelons. But complementary powers tend to bolster each other, and someone who took all three Friends In Places powers would be covered in almost any possible situation, maybe except for ones that didn't involve a society at all.
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Oh good. 

Check, check, check. 

Vending Machine: Pass. Does not seem to imply a responsible attitude towards creating people. 

Aaaand they have hit drawbacks! Which is good, because her current checked point value is 148/70, and while she's sure she's going to have to downgrade some stuff, she does not want to give up over half of the stuff she has checked if she doesn't have to. 

...Decorative doesn't sound so bad. She gives it a star. Beauty is a Curse just sounds obnoxious--until she gets to "Even Worse" and has to cross her legs. 

So...does "Even Worse" basically just replace the effects of Beauty is a Curse, or just tone them down, or what?

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You'll still get more comments than you would otherwise, but not to the point of being forever haunted by them.
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Okay then Beauty is a Curse and Even Worse get definite checkmarks. 

Getting kidnapped by hot villains who don't succeed in having their way with me because I took Personal Space definitely sounds like part of my best life. 

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I hope you have fun, then! ♡
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Plain Jane is a definite no. Style of Sisyphus sounds--maybe not the worst, but still pretty bad. ...Considering how many points over she is, she decides to deign to give it a spiral. 

There's Another One...hm. 

Is There's Another One worse than it sounds somehow?

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A lot of concerning things can be done with the Spirit's power, and there are people out there doing them... but there are people out there doing nice things, too. If it's not important to you to be the most special person you ever meet, and you think you could reach out with I Can Help Them to someone who was doing a lot of concerning things, I think There's Another One is all right.
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It is really not important to me to be the most special person I will ever meet!

She'll help herself to that, then, and the points that come with it. It's delightful that even the Spirit's drawback section has things she actively likes, and not just things she'll hold her nose about for the points. 

...Hm...

Would Nullified make I Can Help Them less effective?

Incomplete and Nullified sound good, but she doesn't want to deprecate I Can Help Them specifically...

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No, not really. I Can Help Them is already a lot like a Nullified version of I Can Fix Them. There are cases where it could have a little more trouble, but mostly it will just end up using slightly different methods sometimes.
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Okay, good. 

Grimm's Fairy Tales...isn't that bad, it sounds like it still makes the world in general a better place, but...it's only one point. She gives it a spiral. 

Funhouse, meh. She doesn't have Like A Mirror and it'd still cost another point even if she also took Funhouse. Not that interesting. 

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Great Responsibility is HORRIFYING. Maybe if it came with some guarantee that she'd be able to help all such persons. Maybe. As it is, that sounds like hell. Helpline and Divine Mantle only make it worse!!!

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Mood Ring...hm. 

If I took Mood Ring, would I still mostly have volitional control over the powers in question, like, as long as the volitional changes I was making don't conflict with my emotions? Or would the powers only work in mood-appropriate ways.

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The powers would definitely still follow your preferences and choices; the Mood Ring effects are extra.
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HmmMmm. She's not the repressing-things sort, but she is the performative sort, sometimes...

Does Mood Ring always display all my emotions, or do they sometimes display, like, only a narratively relevant subset.

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Definitely more the latter.
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So if I was about to have, like, a big dramatic confrontation, or a sweeping romantic moment, it would only display the big dramatic or sweeping emotions, and not, like, also my incidental anxiety about an unrelated friend?

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Probably, unless the anxiety was distracting you from the rest of it at a dramatic moment, or otherwise taking part in the scene.
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Hhhhhhh losing the ability to usefully compartmentalize her life like that sounds. Not ideal. 

She gives it a spiral, because it's not that bad, all things considered. 

Very Distinctive...she doesn't like it. 

Flashy. Well. It's not that bad, in the grand scheme of things, but there are so many cool stories she can't participate in if she categorically can't sneak places. Spiral. --Wait no it requires Very Distinctive, never mind. 

Moodier Ring would require her to take Emerald Orbs and Size difference, and wouldn't pay for them all by itself. Pass. 

Secret Identity is...enh? It'd be fine as long as she never comes home, but she's not sure she wants to rule that out forever...but she really doesn't like the idea of becoming someone flashy-special-amazing and then having to go back to real life

A Single Perfect Flaw...

I don't suppose there's any way to know ahead of time what A Single Perfect Flaw would do to me specifically, is there?

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You can choose your Perfect Flaw ahead of time and I'll be able to tell whether the suggestion you're making would work.
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Oh! Really! Okay, that's neat. 

Hm...a significant drawback, that resonates with her narratively...

She catches her brain trying to munchkin the drawback by coming up with a Flaw that wouldn't be too inconvenient and then trying to justify it narratively, which, no. She needs to come at it from the narrative side first, and if she can't think of a narratively-sourced Flaw that she imagines she'll be able to stand for the long haul, she needs to skip the flaw. 

Her first mental image is that tendon thing you see in CYOAs occasionally, that means you have to wear high heels. But that's a bit of a cheese, really not a significant enough drawback, and also, conversely, she has no idea whether it would interfere with assuming non-human shapes, which she's pretty sure she's going to want to do at some point in the next ever. 

...She's really blanking on this one. 

I assume you don't have specific examples of things people have picked before. 

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Not besides the examples listed in the description, no. I can come up with examples that are things people could pick, though, if you want.
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That would be helpful!

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The examples listed in the description are muteness, blindness, winglessness, clumsiness, and a magical curse that makes frogs fall from your mouth when you speak. Flightlessness is different from winglessness but would still work - a wingless person can fly without wings, and a flightless person can have wings that don't fly. You could also be unable to have arms, or to have legs - but you could have a snake or mermaid tail instead of legs if you wanted, or tentacles instead of arms. There are lots of possible magical curses, so it's hard to think of specific ones, but you could have a compulsion to never enter a house uninvited, or never drink from an artificial vessel, or be unable to wear clothing, or be followed by stormclouds wherever you go.
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None of those examples really appeal to me...I'm going to give this drawback a spiral for now, and then upgrade it later if I have a brilliant idea for a flaw and you think it works.

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That sounds very reasonable.
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Selective Memory...eh, skip it. The Veil--wow that's much worse. Dramatic Damsel--

Oh. 

Oh, do want. 

--Okay, she sort of understands the appeal of Selective Memory now! She'll go back and pick up Selective Memory if she can think of at least two other perks or drawbacks it'd be good to forget--actually Even Worse probably qualifies--oh, and Beauty Is A Curse is a separate drawback--

She checks Dramatic Damsel, then Selective Memory. 

For what I'd like to forget for Selective Memory, so far I have Dramatic Damsel, Beauty is a Curse, and Even Worse. I haven't decided yet if I also want to forget Selective Memory itself.

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Okay! What are your thoughts on why you might want to forget or remember Selective Memory?
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Well...if I forget Selective Memory, then I'm covering the tracks better of the things it appeals to me to forget. But if I remember Selective Memory, then anytime something happens that seems sort of weird, I can construct fun imaginary scenarios where it's happening because of a power or drawback I forgot. 

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I see what you mean! ♡
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I wonder if there's some way to get messages back to you and/or the Spirit about fun powers or drawbacks I think of!

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I can't receive messages directly, but I bet I can still be inspired by the things you think of even without knowing that's where my ideas are coming from.

And speaking of being inspired, I've figured out a variant of Pacifist! I'm not sure it's exactly what you're looking for, but I think it's interesting.

The variant appears in the list right after the perk it replaces.
Name: A Gentler Way - Cost: 6 ☐
(Replaces Pacifist)
Games, contests, races, dance battles, and so on are likely to be accepted as alternatives to violence, if you propose them when a fight is breaking out. This effect works better the more well-tailored your suggestion is to the specific combatants and their personalities and cultural expectations. Doing this often enough can cause your alternatives to spread, potentially replacing most violence in an area. Powers you have that give you advantages in fights also apply to fight replacements.
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Oh, very nice. 

Check. 

She's supposed to be removing powers from the check tier, but oh well. 

 

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Love Is A Battlefield is...better than some of the other options, but it doesn't call out to her the way Distressed Damsel does. Spiral. Seen With The Heart, eeeeenh she's having a distinctly "no" emotional response. Skip it. Keys to Your Heart--oh hell no. Like she can see the appeal? But absolutely not, that's something to write sexy fanfiction with, not something to actually have to deal with in real life. 

Green With Envy, Jilted Lovers, You Ruin Them--uh, yeah, she's going to firmly but gently cross those out. 

The Crazy Train--oh that's actually much less bad than she was bracing herself for based on the name. Also this is the second time a drawback has referenced "Realism," which is presumably a drawback she hasn't seen yet. Anyway, skipping the Crazy Train, much less bad doesn't mean actually something she's willing to subject herself to forever. 

That's How It Goes has two prerequisites she definitely isn't taking, so it's no surprise that, separately, she really isn't interested in taking it!

...Live The Role is actually kind of tempting but she doesn't like the fact that That's How It Goes is a prerequisite. She...hm...okay she's going to spiral it and all the other stuff it requires that she definitely wasn't going to take. 

Man, it's not that I distrust the Spirit, but whoever Live The Role and prerequisites were designed for must have decided to go ALL IN on trusting the Spirit.

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Yes, I see what you mean.
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And I respect that ♡

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I hope they're living their best life, wherever they are! ♡
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I bet they are. 

 

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Marionette--oh absolutely not. 

They'll know...

Can you explain how They'll Know tends to cause problems?

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That warning mostly applies to people who are carelessly using a lot of mind-affecting or otherwise troublesome powers without considering that their friends might have mixed feelings about, say, Agree to Agree. But it's also generally true that, when you have a lot of power, whether it tends to express itself more subtly or more openly can change a lot about how people see you. I would say that if you don't mean for your power to affect people you're friendly with in ways that they'd object to, They'll Know is probably not going to cause you much trouble.
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Excellent!

Check for They'll Know, then. 

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Then she finally gets to Realism. 

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She crosses it out, and then she scribbles over the crossed-out words, then she gets out a black marker and marks over the words to make them completely illegible, and then she goes and gets a bottle of wite-out and paints over the entire entry. 

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I see you have strong feelings about Realism. ♡

I think it's the Spirit's least favourite drawback, too, but there are people who feel like they need it.
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I have very strong feelings about Realism! I am willing to believe that there are people who need or want it, but like, there are people who dislike chocolate, too, that doesn't mean losing access to chocolate wouldn't in the median case be catastrophic!!!

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Yes, I see what you mean and I agree. I would warn most people away from Realism if they took it and I didn't think they'd thought it through.
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Okay. That horrible possibility having been thoroughly excluded, she checks her point totals--154/96 points for the check tier. Obviously, that's not gonna fly. She goes back to the top of the list and starts going over her checked options to see what she can move. 

A Hundred Ships--firstly she doesn't want to give that up and secondly she's pretty sure it's a prerequisite for several drawbacks she took. She bumps it up to exclamation mark. What's In A Name...the notebook suggested that if she didn't want to interact with magic name bullshit then magic name bullshit would not be part of this complete breakfast. If she has to deal with it once or twice in a thousand years, whatever, it'll be fine, she took It Gets Better. It Gets Better covers for a multitude of sins. She bumps it down to star rank. 

Angelic Tones is not an absolute must-have, but she didn't take anything else that will do its job and she really quit likes it. She'll leave it as a check mark for now, if she still has unbalanced numbers when she finishes this go-through she can do another one. Perfect Hair is in the same boat as Angelic Tones. Dressing Room and Pocket Dimension get bumped up to an exclamation mark. Like Roses goes in the same boat as Angelic Tones and Perfect Hair. Immunity System...it might be narratively appropriate for her to drink a goblet of wine that, unbeknownst to her, contains a poison which causes her to dramatically fall unconscious, dropping the rest of the wine to the floor and collapsing into an unrealistically elegant position and yeah bumping that one down to a spiral, It Gets Better does most of the work she wanted it for. 

Breathe Easy stays a check because not being able to fuck herself up by eating the wrong food means she can eat nothing but cookies for a week if she likes and not get sick. Actually when she puts it that way she's going to bump it up to an exclamation mark. Except, wait, no, it requires Immunity System, never mind. 

She desperately wants Lightfoot so it and its prerequisites can get bumped up to an exclamation mark. 

Gloryseeker gets bumped down to a star, she's pretty sure you can normally do parkour without getting hurt if you're good at it and she can probably pick up separate magic later for jumping from high places and bouncing. 

She waffles about Omniglot and then leaves it a check. Anything You Can Do is a prerequisite for a number of really excellent things, so, exclamation point. Snowglobe and Unleash The Magic also get exclamation points. Inner World is nice, but seems like the kind of thing she might be able to pick up with other magic later. Star. 

...Iron Will seems really important; even with It Gets Better she would really like to avoid being horribly traumatized. She checks her exclamation mark point total and then bumps it up, along with Indelible and Closed Book. 

And we have reached the Power of Friendship! Disney Princess and its dependents can get bumped down to a star. --Except Cotton Candy required Disney Princess, dang. Okay, Disney Princess goes back up to a check but Puppies Everywhere stays at the star level.

Her Best Friend related selections go up to an exclamation point, of course. Mmmmm.

Backchannel stays at a check for now. You Can Teach Better gets an exclamation point. Time Enough For Love--oh hey she seems to have missed something earlier. Work-Life Balance, she counts as her own friend for the purposes of Time Enough For Love--yes, please. Okay those both get exclamation points. How many times has she wished that tucking herself into a corner with a good book didn't actually cost real time??? Huh, she seems to be drawing hearts around the two options. 

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The notebook draws hearts next to her hearts.

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What a good notebook!!!

She now has more exclamation-mark points than she can technically afford on the exclamation-mark tier, because she took all her drawbacks on the checkmark tier. When she's done with the Power of Friendship, she'll bump enough drawbacks up to exclamation mark tier to cover her current choices, then make a separate list of all the things that are currently checkmark tier, and their point values, and compare that to the remaining checkmark-tier drawbacks and see what's worth what. Unless she ends up with as many exclamation mark choices as she currently has checkmark drawbacks and she just has to promote all of them immediately, which wouldn't be the end of the world. 

...Opting In, I Can Help Them, and Inspirational are a little expensive. Which makes sense, considering how good they are. Sheeee'll tentatively bump up Opting In and I Can Help Them and leave Inspirational at checkmark. She might in fact end up having to give up something she's put at exclamation mark tier, or take more drawbacks...she might have to spend some serious time contemplating a tolerable Perfect Flaw. 

It would be deeply irresponsible to give up Planned Parenthood and it's only one point. Although...probably whatever setting she lands in will have magic birth control...sheeeee'll leave that one at a check for now, then. But she adds an arrow to come back to it later. 

Sense of Style and Bonus Style Points can both go down to stars. They're nice-to-haves, not really important. 

Self-Reflection goes down to a star. Chaser Six When goes up to an exclamation point. 

Her exclamation point total is now affordable if and only if she takes all designated drawbacks. 

Friends in Places...she'll bump those down to a star. They sound nice, for sure, but she does expect to be able to make friends regardless, and sometimes being a little out of place can add to an exotic appeal. 

And she's down to drawbacks! And her point totals match! She goes down and bumps all her checkmark drawbacks up a tier. 

Now...hmmmm.

She doesn't, quite, want to just leave it at this. For one thing, she still might think of a Perfect Flaw to take. But more importantly, she hasn't, actually, been thinking about this for long enough to commit to such a life-altering decision as her exact powerset. 

Hm, hm, hm. 

--And, of course, she shouldn't forget that the notebook can create new drawbacks, too. That's--very sexy and important. Also...

Are there any things about any of the powers or drawbacks that might not be obvious just from their descriptions, that it seems to you like I might want to consider?

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That's a very good question, but kind of a broad one! I think it's usually easier for me to come up with these things as we're discussing each option, and especially if you're asking me questions whenever something is confusing or you're not sure how to interpret it, or making suggestions when you would like something more if it worked differently. But I can try! Let me see...


The pages shuffle, and after a few seconds, notes start appearing by various powers in the list, on the pages facing them.

Next to the previous discussion of Emerald Orbs et al:
I'm curious what you were looking for from these powers that they weren't offering you. It's possible I could come up with a more controllable version, similar to the difference between A Thousand Ships and A Hundred Ships.

Next to Soundtrack:
The audible variant is turning out trickier than I expected.

Next to It Gets Better:
This is one of the most overridingly reliable powers the Spirit offers. A lot of things can be weakened or circumvented by drawbacks, or opposed by the power of another vessel of the Spirit with hostile intent. This one can't.

Next to the Best Friend tree:
Do you have any more questions about these, or requests for more variants?

Next to I Can Help Them:
This is another power that works very reliably even in difficult conditions.

Next to Inspirational:
Oh, I wonder... I think you've chosen powers that make it pretty difficult, though not impossible, for people to hurt you or your loved ones and end up moved by Inspirational to regret their decisions. What are your thoughts on how Inspirational fits into your life? With Personal Space and Iron Will, it becomes pretty hard for someone to hurt you directly, and Opting In shelters your loved ones too unless they decide to involve themselves or someone decides to go after them independently of your decisions.

Next to Chaser Six When:
I'm noticing that sometimes you rate a choice higher than its prerequisites, which means my automatic totals are a little misleading because in order to take everything at one level you'd have to take some things that you've marked at a lower level. Do you want me to try to calculate the 'real' totals? It's a little trickier than adding things up automatically, and I might get it partly wrong...

Next to Decorative:
This one can be deceptively troubling. What are your thoughts on it? How do you expect to feel about it?
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The thing about Emerald Orbs that doesn't appeal to me, is...in real life, people don't look at each other's eyes in a noticing-things kind of way nearly as often as they do in fiction? I could not tell you the color of any of my friends' eyes, or my roommate's. I could tell you my parents' eye color, because we've lived together long enough that it's occurred to me to explicitly check, but I couldn't tell you my grandparents' or aunts and uncles or my cousins' eye colors. So it seems like a perk that would have a lower value, because people wouldn't actually notice it the way they would hair or face or voice.

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That makes sense!
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She scrawls an arrow next to the Best Friend tree comment, and on a clean section of page, writes

Man, I totally feel like I should, but I'm blanking right no...I will totally spend a while getting ready to go before hitting the isekai button, like, several days at least, though, so I'll have time to think about it--oh, something that occurred to me is, will Dressing Room let me, say, make clothing with text on it from works I'm aware of but haven't memorized or even actually read? Like, assuming the "held or examined" caveat for Pocket Dimension applies to things I've held before I take the Spirit's powers, I'm planning to go through a whole bunch of stores and pick up and put back down as many things as I can, but there's some books I haven't read that I don't necessarily expect to find in a local bookstore on short notice.

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Dressing Room might not be perfectly accurate all the time about quoting things you don't have access to, but it'll usually do an okay job with a short phrase... I'm not sure it can give you a dress with an entire book on it, at least not reliably when you don't have the book to copy from.
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I was thinking, like, a cape with pages printed on it such that by taking it off and replacing it with another one, I could cut them apart and stitch together a fabric book. But valid to not be able to do that.

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I think if you tried that you couldn't be sure that you were getting the real book and not a partly made-up version.
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What about if I tried, like, an instruction sheet for inventing penicillin? Would it still get me accurate instructions for making penicillin, just not phrased the same way, or would it not reliably do that.

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It would probably not get you something that looked like usable instructions and wasn't, but it might not get you usable instructions. And instructions for making penicillin written in one world might not apply well in another.
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I...think...probably if, as I in fact intend, I download as many cheat-sheets for nifty technological uplift stuff as I can to my laptop before I go, the Spirit won't send me someplace the important stuff like penicillin won't work. Or, like, it could send me someplace disease is approximately not a factor for some reason, but I would be really upset if people were dying of syphilis and I thought I could save them and I couldn't.

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That makes sense! Being the sort of person who would do that makes it likelier that you'll end up somewhere that it will work. But something else might end up being more important and constraining your choice of destination, or you might end up travelling between worlds and find yourself even farther from home.
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Fair. But the cheatsheets shouldn't take up too much memory, so it would still be a waste not to bring them...

With regard to Inspirational, I was hoping that I would be able to inspire people to regret hurting people who are not me, but also...there are things that I've been leaving openings to have happen, that I don't expect to hurt me, but that would hurt someone else, like, you know, all the sexy kidnapping, and, frankly, Personal Space says it prevents intimate contact you don't want, not intimate contact you didn't externally consent to. Getting people to understand that even if I'm fine, the decisions they made weren't okay...

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Unfortunately, Inspirational is pretty limited in that respect. I wouldn't count on it in any situation where you or someone you personally care about isn't in trouble. Getting it to work when you're okay but someone is trying to hurt you or being careless about potentially hurting you sounds more plausible.
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If it won't do anything about hurting people who aren't me then I don't care as much about it. I really do appreciate that clarification. As for Chaser Six When, I had not intended to do that, whoops. I will go through things to try to see where I did that and fix it.

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The notebook draws a little heart just above the word 'appreciate'.

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She goes over her choices and moves anything where the prerequisites are lower than the postrequisites, and also bumps down Inspirational. 

So with Decorative I was mostly thinking that I like being pretty, tell me more about how it can suck?

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If you like being pretty and you're sure that you will want to stay pretty forever, then maybe Decorative is right for you! But I think some people think that they like being pretty, and don't think about all the possible situations they could be in where being pretty might feel stifling or incongruous or alienating, and then they take Decorative and have a difficult time. Decorative is best for people who aren't attached to any ways of not being beautiful.
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...I...don't think I know myself well enough, now, at age nineteen, to make that kind of commitment for forever, no.

She erases the star next to Decorative. 

I am very glad that I Can Help Them and It Gets Better are so inviolate! I was pretty sure that that was the case but it's really important.

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One of the Spirit's favourite things is stories about people being redeemed by the power of love. And the kind of person who really needs It Gets Better usually needs to be really sure of getting better.
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She draws little stars around this last line. 

I'm thinking about custom drawbacks some more...would it be possible to do something, maybe riffing off of Beauty Is A Curse and Even Worse, that makes it more likely for people who are inclined towards Sexy Kidnapping to hear about me and how pretty I am?

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Oh, I see what you mean! I can probably manage something like that. ♡
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Thank you! ...I'm thinking of variations on the Best Friend tree, but, like, mostly not things I feel like I need, because I think I don't fully understand what things-I-might-want are already covered by the perks I have?

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Well, can you talk about the things you want and I'll tell you if they're already covered?
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She taps her fingers thoughtfully. 

Okay, but fair warning, I am going to feel so extremely seen.

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Understood. ♡
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So...what I want...is an extremely hot god or godlike being, but like, in the way where they still have a real body that is themself, not where they actually are a concept or a nebulous magical space and just have an avatar for interfacing with mortals. And I want to be that god's high priestess or equivalent, in a way where, like, we're in a relationship, and the fact that he's a god and I'm a mortal--well, mortal-ish, I assume you get what I mean--introduces, like, d/s elements where he's dominant and I'm submissive, but not in a way where he's emotionally unavailable or doesn't respect me as a person. ...I don't require his real body that is himself to be, like, fundamentally humanoid or male, just for that to be a shape they can take for sexy purposes and for it to be present in enough relevant religious art that it'd be generally recognized, and for them to be fully present in it when we're together. Additional humanoid forms of any gender are fine, additional forms of arbitrary shape that are not present in religious iconography, either incidentally or for purposes of going deliberately incognito are fine, other lovers are fine but I want it firmly established that I'm his primary/favorite/etc. ...Also I didn't think of this until now but it would be very hot if he had a humanoid form several times the size of a human being that they used for things like sitting on extremely large thrones in temples being impressive and I could only have sex with them in that form on account of having taken the Princess and the Dragon. ...Also also, I think I do want kids someday but not anytime soon, so ideally they should be open to the idea of demigod babies but not, like, in a hurry about it, and it absolutely should not be baked into my role as High Priestess etc.

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That all sounds like something that your existing perks could definitely deliver, and like if it's something that's really centrally important to you, your powers will arrange it or something like it! ♡

Some Best(est) Friends are created directly by your powers and some are arranged for you by having you find them early on in your new life. It sounds like this is going to be the second sort of situation, given the amount of infrastructure implied by that description. Or would you be open to an arrangement where you're a new god's first follower?
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I would be open to that, but...I would rather be a very welcome present for someone who already exists and doesn't know yet that they have a me-shaped hole in their life, than create a new person who could have just as easily not needed me.

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That makes sense! And is very much the kind of thing that these powers take into account.
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I'm sure there's a kind of girl out there though who'll feel a lot safer if everyone around her was specifically created for her convenience, though.

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I think having everyone around you be created for your convenience is pretty unusual. Having the Best(est) Friend specifically turn out that way is more common. And I think there might be an element of some people being easier to matchmake than others, too. I don't have any direct experience with relationships, but the thing you want sounds like the sort of thing that someone else could very easily want to have with you.
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That is because I am a fan of healthy relationships.

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Can you only read stuff that I write in you, or if I wrote a list in another notebook and pressed your pages to its pages, could you read the list?

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Yes, I can read things that you press against my pages!
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Cool. I want to write an inventory of things I'm going out and picking up in stores so that I can pocket dimension them later, and I think I probably should do that in a different notebook because I would bet I can't pocket dimension you, but if you had opinions I would love to hear them.

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That makes perfect sense and I'm happy to comment on your list. Though I might not have very much useful commentary. You never know, though!
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I suspect that you're more likely to have opinions at, say, a bookstore, or a makeup place, than the grocery store, but I could be wrong. ...I assume you can't taste things even if I were to, say, rub a little bit of cinnamon on your page, but it occurs to me to check.

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It would probably be an interestingly novel pigment, but I could not taste it, no.
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If there are any weird pigments you've heard of but never gotten to try, and you'd like to, let me know!

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Actually, this might sound weird, but could you put a drop of that opaque stuff you covered up Realism with on a page somewhere? It looks neat but I can't see it very clearly through all the ink underneath.
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Oh, sure! 

She gets out the wite-out again and paints a little swipe of it onto the page. 

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Thanks! It has such an interesting texture...
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It's called liquid paper sometimes.

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Neat! ✨
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She puts the notebook and also a different, blank, non-magical notebook in a canvas tote bag, then adds her wallet because it would be weird to not have that on her to go shopping with, and then she goes to the grocery store.

In addition to writing down everything she picks up, she also adds a list of things she would like to pick up that she can't find at this particular grocery store. Some of them are unsurprising and she'll probably have to visit specialty groceries, but some she's probably going to end up trying walmart for or something. 

The grocery store has a small aisle of various school supplies, including wite-out. She draws a small heart next to that one as she writes it down. 

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She makes notes of dependencies--she was able to pick up a can opener and plenty of other kitchen utensils, but the grocery store did not have microwaves or modern ovens. 

...

How is "held" defined, do I need to be able to pick things up? 

she asks, circling "stove + oven"

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It will work less well the farther you are from having the object meaningfully in your inventory, so to speak.
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Do I need to worry about picking things up and putting them down without buying them working less well than it could?

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No, it's about the immediate kind of possession where you have hold of something, not the more abstract kind where you have ownership of it.
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Gotcha...would it work better if I managed to scoot an oven onto a dolly and pushed it around a bit?

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I think it might work better but still not necessarily reliably.
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Okay, I'll see what I can find about converting traditional oven cooking instructions into toaster oven, or even campfire cooking. Or...dutch ovens? Are those meaningfully different from regular ovens? I am not expecting you to answer that.

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I think a dutch oven isn't really an oven? I don't know why I know this.
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Checks out. 

She hits up a craft store after the grocery store, continuing to make inventory notes as she goes. She makes particularly sure to pick up bookbinding supplies. 

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It's neat hearing about all the different kinds of things there are that you want to have!
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It's not just things that I definitely want now; picking an object up is such a small investment of energy that it makes sense to try to get everything I might conceivably want at some point in the future!

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Very reasonable of you! ♡

If I have an idea for the power or drawback I'm trying to build for you, should I wait until you tell me you're home again to put it in the list?
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That would probably be the most convenient way of doing it, yeah.

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Okay, I'll do that then.
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Eventually she finishes at the craft store, has a late supper at a restaurant she likes and would like to be able to copy food from, and then goes back to her dorm room and flops into bed. 

Home.

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I think I have something for the kidnapping drawback!


Name: Hot Commodity - Grants: +3 ☐
(Requires Even Worse and Dramatic Damsel)
Stories that involve someone kidnapping you often feature your renowned beauty as a central motivation, and anyone who likes kidnapping beautiful people is likely to hear about you with particular emphasis on how beautiful you are.


As for the audible Soundtrack, I keep trying to put it together and it keeps drifting toward Musical Number...
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That's reasonable. Don't worry about the Soundtrack thing, I can probably pick up something for that with Snowglobe or Unleash the Magic. And I love that drawback.

She puts an exclamation mark next to Hot Commodity.

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Oh, I'm so glad you like it! ♡
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And now I have seven points to spend. I think I'm going to go to bed soon, sleep on it, see if I have any brilliant insights in the morning.

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Goodnight!
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Goodnight! ♡

 

 

And, in the morning: 

I had an idea for a power, and I'm not sure if it will work or not, but I think the idea is nifty! 

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Ooh, what's the idea?
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Some sort of indicator--I'm not attached to format--where, if there's something that's obviously a bad idea, and a sensible person would Just Say No, if it's actually likely to turn out well in this instance in particular there's some sort of signal for that.

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Oh, interesting! ...you know, Soundtrack might work for that already...
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--Oh, what a good point. Okay, cool, love that for me. 

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You might have to pay some attention to learn how it signals 'ominous for real' vs. 'ominous for fun' vs. 'looks ominous but is secretly just great', but it will definitely do a good job of distinguishing those things and giving you different cues to recognize them by.
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Yes, I see. I think I'm going to spend some time on Youtube watching videos about leitmotifs and stuff before I go, then.

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Good idea!
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She notes down some more things she might want and should therefore go pick up and put down in stores, then gets dressed and heads to class. She's currently planning to leave at the end of the semester, which gives her plenty of time to archive items for later pocket dimensioning, and download things like ebooks and cheatsheets and games onto her computer, and will raise fewer questions than dropping out of all her classes this far past the add/drop date. But, also, she doesn't have to care about grades or homework nearly as much! 

During class, she reviews her currently-checkmark-ranked options, since the exclamation mark tier currently has room for seven more points. A Gentler Way costs six points, but it was custom-made for her, and she does quite like it, so she promotes it--oh, and then Planned Parenthood only costs one point, perfect, she'd been feeling a little uneasy about leaving her birth control up to whatever was available at her destination, plus whatever she could manage to dimensionally pocket. 

 

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The notebook sometimes draws little hearts in out-of-the-way corners when she has it open to look over her build.

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Awwww!!! She draws it little hearts BACK, so there. 

Between classes, she goes to the school bookstore and picks up all the textbooks they currently have, because why not? Also she supposes she'll have pocket-dimensional access to a wide array of school-branded merch, which might end up interesting to explain, depending. 

On the way out of the school bookstore she happens to spot a bicycle that someone left leaning against a post. She isn't going to make off with it, obviously, that would be wrong, but if she grabs hold of it and physically hefts it into the air before carefully putting it back down and leaning it against the same spot it had been in previously, well, that's weird behavior, but not harmful. 

After classes let out she heads off to a REAL bookstore. Like, no shade to the school store, but you are for textbooks and not for quality literature. 

She does not pick literally every book off the shelves. There are as many as several spots with redundant copies. 

She writes this inventory list in sparkly ballpoint. 

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That's so many books...
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I am going to have a very long time to read them in. 

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Very true! I'm really glad you're looking forward to it. ♡
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But like, also, these aren't all necessarily for me? They'd need translating, presumably, but I want other people to have access to books from here too.

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Oh, that's very thoughtful of you!
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People should in general have access to more books!

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I think I agree, but I don't think I've ever thought of this particular solution before!
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Pocket Dimension is just such a way!!!

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It's a very useful ability, no two ways about it.
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If at any point it becomes convenient for you, or the Spirit, or whatever, to convey my gratitude to whoever it was originally made for, I would appreciate it.

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I usually don't remember individual people I've helped, and I usually don't get a chance to talk to someone again after we part ways, but there's always a chance!
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I'm not going to lie I'm imagining a much much smaller avatar showing up to her in the shape of a thank-you card.

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...that's really cute...
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It is very very cute!!!

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Tiny hearts.

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In my imagination the card-avatar also has a slightly babier personality than you.

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I suppose a thank-you card is a little bit like a baby notebook.
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Exactly!!!

She adds some miscellaneous swirls and zigzags for emotiveness.

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Soon they are festooned with tiny hearts.

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Awww. 

She doesn't actually finish the bookstore today; it's a big store, and she has a relatively limited amount of time. She goes back to campus, has dinner in the main dining hall, looks up local restaurants and starts making a list of things she might want to have for Pocket Dimension...it occurs to her that getting a part-time job as a waitress would let her pick up a lot of food items without actually buying them...but that would be a big time commitment, and only apply to one restaurant--actually what she should do is volunteer to pick up takeout for other people. 

She updates The Notebook on these plans. 

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I'm not entirely sure I understand about takeout, but if I'm imagining the situation right that sounds very clever!
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Sometimes it's hard to guess what you will or won't understand.

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I have an abstract understanding of a lot of things but there are things where I'm very uncertain about the details because they involve so many experiences I've never had.
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Okay, so you know how humans need to eat?

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Yes.
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Well, most human food involves taking ingredients and doing things to turn them into a finished food product, and this is work. There are a lot of ways to make it so that everyone doesn't have to do all this work themselves, and one of them is prepackaged foods from grocery stores, and one is cafeterias like the college dining hall, and one of them is restaurants, where you go to eat food that a professional made there. And when you get food from a restaurant but don't eat it on-site, that's takeout. ...Or catering, which is nuancedly different.

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Okay. And if you're volunteering to pick up the food for other people, then you get to pick up more different things than if you were only eating as much food as is reasonable for one person?
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Plus I don't have to pay for it. Restaurant food is more expensive than grocery store food.

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Oh, I see! Even cleverer.
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Thanks. 

She finishes with the bookstore she was working on, and goes to classes, and starts working on an asian grocery, and volunteers to pick up food for friends on the ostensible grounds that she needs exercise and has podcasts to listen to, and finishes at the asian grocery and moves on to an electronics store, and orders some things online that she can't find locally, and she comes back to the list of perks and drawbacks. 

It isn't, exactly, that she's unsatisfied with the loadout she has right now. But there are more things she would like, and she can't imagine she's completely plumbed the depths of drawbacks she would find enjoyable or even just tolerable. 

She goes over her list of checkmarks again, and bumps some more things down to stars, and doodles increasingly complex geometric designs on blank pages while contemplating possible drawbacks. 

 

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That's really pretty!
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Thanks! It's something to keep my hands occupied while I'm thinking about drawbacks--there's some more stuff I'd like, and there've got to be more custom drawbacks we could cook up that would suit me.

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Do you have any thoughts about what kinds of custom drawbacks you might like? Have you thought more about Perfect Flaws?
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I've thought more about Perfect Flaws and I haven't been able to think of something that's both actually debilitating and not something I'd mind too much; the closest I've come to it is being physically unable to eat certain classes of food. 

One drawback I thought of that isn't that and that I might enjoy is some kind of wardrobe malfunction thing where my clothes are more likely to tear if someone is doing Sexy Villainy to me. Maybe with Dressing Room as a prerequisite?

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Which classes of food?

That drawback sounds cute! I'll give it some thought.
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Celery, octopus, and anything with cilantro in it. ...Are the obvious ones off the top of my head. 

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Hmm, I think a food restriction would need a stronger theme than that in order to work... it's possible we could figure something out, though.

That was a great drawback idea, though! It came together really fast, look.


The new drawback appears at the end of the Dramatic Damsel area.
Name: Wardrobe Malfunction - Grants: +3 ☐
(Requires Dressing Room and Dramatic Damsel)
During stories for which your protections are lifted, you may suffer persistent clothing damage that can't be repaired using Dressing Room. Even after regaining your other powers, your clothes may remain torn or otherwise distressed until the story concludes, or you may be forced to wear whatever your captor chooses to dress you in.
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Yes, she will help herself to three more points, please and thank you. 

Well, the thing about octopus would also apply to, like, monkey, and crow--anything that's smart enough to go "Hang on, are you sure that's not a person?" about.

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I think that might work as a Perfect Flaw by itself, actually! Not being able to eat anything that was a person or ambiguously a person. It might have surprising results, though; different worlds can vary a lot in which kinds of things are closer to or farther from being people.
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I don't want to eat anything that was maybe a person! If I can have that for my Perfect Flaw then I will happily take it. 

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You can!
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Excellent, thank you. 

Between those two, she has six more points to play with. Let's see...hm. Cotton Candy requires Disney Princess, and together they cost five...but then she can take Grimm's Fairy Tales, which is still strictly better than not having Cotton Candy, and eh, into every life some rain must fall. "Bad things happen sometimes" is a whole different animal from "you must live with this annoying thing permanently." And then she'll have two points, with which she will take...Perfect Hair, because that one sounds fun on further inspection. And because she's vain, but really, if she's going to be in all these Sexy Predicaments, she'd better be pretty enough to stand up to them. 

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The notebook draws occasional encouraging hearts as she adjusts her build.

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Do you think it would be possible to build something, maybe off of Wardrobe Malfunction and Personal Hygiene, where I can get, like, artistic amounts of dirty, and then stay that way until it's no longer narratively appropriate? I'm trying to come up with enough appealing drawbacks that I don't have to compromise on anything I really want. And I'm pretty sure that's in line with how you and the Spirit vibe, but in a lot of situations it would be--inappropriate, unkind to the people I was interacting with--so I am sort of fighting a flinch response. 

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I will be so happy if you end up not having to compromise on anything you really want. ♡

Let me see...
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Effie doodles some more geometry while she waits.

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Name: Mudslinging - Grants: +1 ☐
(Requires Personal Hygiene and Wardrobe Malfunction)
During stories for which your protections are lifted, you may get dirty when narratively appropriate, including potentially needing to take a narratively appropriate bath or do narratively appropriate laundry.
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Hm! I hadn't thought of the laundry angle. Not that I object to it.

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The sense I had from creating the power involved something about washing oneself and one's clothes in a chilly mountain stream.
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That is such a legit and aesthetic sense ♡

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Speaking of, like, cleanliness, do any of the perks I have already at exclamation point or star level cover the case where I want to be glittery but I do not want to give the world glitter herpes?

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A tiny (that's so funny...) next to "glitter herpes", and,
Any glitter you apply to yourself with Dressing Room will behave itself, especially if you have Personal Hygiene. Personal Hygiene probably also lets you accept glitter from elsewhere without passing it on, especially if you have Dressing Room. Appearance powers support each other like that.
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Excellent, thank you! I didn't invent glitter herpes but I am glad to be able to share it with you. If the appearance powers support each other, does that mean Emerald Orbs would be more valuable than I thought?

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It might! The more appearance powers you have, the more all your appearance powers become better at handling things on the edges of their usual area, and the more your appearance generally acts like you have powers about it even in areas not specifically covered by an existing power.
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She flips back to the appearance powers section of the power list. 

Does Size Difference count as an appearance power?

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It does!
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Why?

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Well, it has to do with your appearance, just like Well Endowed and its descendants do.
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So the impression I got was that Well Endowed was about whether you are curvy, and Size Difference was about whether you are Ant Man.

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Is Ant Man by any chance very small?

Being curvy is an effect on your body type; being tall or short is also an effect on your body type. I think it makes sense.
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I see...Ant Man is a superhero who has the special power that he can shrink and grow a lot at will. But tiny Ant Man still looks the same as big Ant Man, just, against a differently-scaled backdrop.

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Size Difference can change your body type more than that; taller people and shorter people aren't differently-scaled versions of each other, they have different bodily proportions. I think Size Difference can also do the scaling version, but I think most people who want to be very short or very tall with it want their bodily proportions to achieve a certain look that's different from the scaling one.
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I see! I totally misinterpreted it, then. I guess I will just have to come up with more interesting drawbacks. 

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You've had some pretty great ideas so far; I bet you can come up with more!
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Thank you! --Oh, I just had an idea for a drawback that isn't related to Sexy Villainy at all. Not specifically, anyway.

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Oh? What is it?
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Remember how much I didn't like Not Like Other Girls?

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I do remember that.
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So the idea I had is--the opposite of that. If someone is prejudiced against a group I'm in, they can't except me from it; if they want to reevaluate their opinion of me, they'd have to shift their whole attitude towards the category.

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Hmm. I see what you mean, but... are you sure you want to have that effect on people?
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Can you describe the effect this would actually have better?

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The way you describe it, when I think about how to build the drawback... it would mean that someone who might otherwise like you, but who had trouble with something about who you are, would always see you through that lens the way they'd see a stranger. And I'm not sure, but I think... I think that might be backwards from what it sounds like you want? It sounds like you want people who get close to you, but have trouble with something about who you are, to need to reconcile the fact that they like you with the fact that they dislike something about you, and come to understand that they shouldn't really dislike that thing in other people. But if I built it that way around it would be a power, not a drawback. The drawback version I think mostly just makes it harder for people with that kind of problem to get close to you in the first place, unless they don't know that you're someone they dislike in that way.
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Sigh. 

No, you're right. I was hoping that because it was the opposite of a power that exists, I could make it work as a drawback. 

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That makes sense! I think it was the kind of idea that's good to have, and it just didn't work out in this case.
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Well, if the notebook thought it was a good idea...

She goes back over the list. What else was actively undesirable...My Ears Are Burning doesn't have an obvious opposite, neither does Agree to Agree--or, well, that one does, but the opposite isn't anything she'd want to touch either--no, no low hanging fruit there. Although, looking at the list again:

Does Like Roses count as an appearance power?

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It does, yes!
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...Appearance powers work better the more of them you have, right?

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Yes.
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Could I...invent...more appearance powers.

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I don't see why not! What kind of appearance powers are you thinking of?
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Nails! I like my nails long enough to be elegant and also to use as tiny little tools like 'screwdriver' and 'letter opener,' but also there are times when long nails are inconvenient and it would be nice if the inconvenience would just Not. Also sometimes nails or paint thereon chip or break and that would also be good to Just Not. Also, there could be a power for having animate tattoos. I assume non-head hair falls under Perfect Hair but it occurs to me to check. Something for dancing better, maybe, if that counts as an appearance power.

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Yes, Perfect Hair does cover all hair. When I think about it. I think Perfect Nails wants to require Perfect Hair, that's interesting... I'll try to persuade it otherwise, in case someone wants one without the other, but it should work okay for you even if I can't manage it. I can't see a good way to make a power for dancing better that doesn't just turn into Lightfoot... What would you want from a tattoo power?
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So one time I read a book and the main character had magic flower tattoos that grew and bloomed across his skin and blew in nonexistent breezes and used his scars as trellises. 

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That sounds really pretty! Hmmm... I'll see what I can come up with.
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She's already got more stuff she wants than she has points for and now she's inventing new powers as well as new drawbacks. 

Well. She's going to make this work. If it takes ten years to make the math work, they'll be ten years well spent against the rest of forever

She's not immediately thinking of more Sexy Villainy she wants done to her...what else would generally count as a drawback but is something that she personally likes...

...Not being able to eat people counted as a drawback. Can she get points just for committing to never doing more horrible things?

I've been thinking about how not being able to eat maybe-people counted for my Single Perfect Flaw; do you think I could do drawbacks about...not being able to torture people, or having to protect children if I come across children in danger, something like that?

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Hmm, I think you could do that but I'm not sure it's a good idea. I think if you try to give yourself a lot of drawbacks like that, you'll end up accidentally making one broader than you meant to, or open yourself up to the possibility of being unable to either do or not do something.
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Faaaaair.

She's ever seen CYOAs where there was a drawback where you always had to either wear heels or walk on the balls of your feet. She contemplates if she wishes to introduce this drawback into her life. She concludes that she does not. 

Maybe she should revisit Sexy Villainy. 

--Ooh.

Could there be a drawback where, like, my blood is extra delicious to vampires and stuff, or would that have to be a power.

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I could imagine extra deliciousness being a drawback. It would probably require Like Roses... Do you want it as part of the Dramatic Damsel line? I think I can get more points into it there.
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I would love it as part of the Dramatic Damsel line! And it's okay if it requires Like Roses, I was thinking of bumping that one up anyway just for the appearance power synergy.

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I'll see what I can do!
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She upgrades Like Roses to a check, which, again, does not solve her point issues but whatever. 

She goes over the list of drawbacks again, looking to see, not necessarily if she wants or even expects to be able to live with any of them, but if any of them inspire her to something a few degrees off from them that she would like or at least not mind. 

Decorative doesn't give her any ideas for drawbacks, but she does write down, 

tear-based decorative power?

before moving on. 

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(What does that mean?)
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Oh, and those powers and drawbacks came together really fast! I'm not sure they came together... quite how you wanted them... but they did it really fast!


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: Living Canvas - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Disney Princess)
Tattoos you have will animate themselves on your skin, and may adjust their details or art style. Over time your tattoos may develop individual or collective personalities; if so, those personalities will be tailored to complement yours. At suitably dramatic moments, you may spontaneously develop new tattoos.

Name: Shadow Puppet - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Disney Princess)
Your shadow can act independently of your movements, and may do so to entertain you, guide you, warn you of danger, or just for fun. The personality it develops will be tailored to complement yours.

Name: Another Kind Of Friend - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Transformer and at least one of: Where The Heart Is, Living Canvas, Shadow Puppet)
Your Friend may be the personality associated with one of the listed powers, instead of or in addition to their other form(s). This may include, for example, the ability for an animal tattoo to leap from your skin into a three-dimensional form and back.

Name: Delicious And Nutritious - Grants: +3 ☐
(Requires Like Roses and Dramatic Damsel)
Your signature scent advertises a truly decadent meal to vampires and other anthropophages. Stories that involve someone kidnapping you often feature your tempting aroma as a central motivation, and may lead to the kidnapper becoming temporarily or permanently empowered by a successful sip or nibble.
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Interesting! Do all of them (except the drawback, obviously) count as appearance powers? 

What I meant by "tear-based appearance power" is, like, sometimes in anime someone's tears sparkle, or are just replaced with sparkles basically, and I read a book where someone has a special heritage that makes them cry golden tears, and sometimes for spoopy reasons someone in fiction will cry blood or weird black ichor or something.

Also there was a book where dragons cry diamonds but that seems like maybe a separate thing. 

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I'd say that it's kind of ambiguous whether Living Canvas is an appearance power, and very ambiguous whether Shadow Puppet is, but both of them do participate in the mutual benefits of having lots of appearance powers, their benefits are just more attenuated. Perfect Nails is just straightforwardly an appearance power, though.

Having magical tears sounds very pretty! I wonder... I think I could figure out a power that gave you magical tears, but it might be tricky. It could potentially generate another drawback kind of like Delicious And Nutritious, though! It depends whether it ends up more appearance-focused or more focused on magical tears having useful benefits.
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Another drawback like Delicious and Nutritious sounds good!

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I'll try to get it leaning in that direction, then.
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I think it would be funny, but not actively desirable if my hair were edible, so there's that.

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You're right, that does sound funny... Actually, I think that gives me an idea.
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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.


Name: Golden Goose - Grants: +5 ☐
(Requires Starstuff and Delicious And Nutritious)
Your transformative nature makes you a valuable source of rare and magical materials. Stories that involve someone kidnapping you often feature this form of value as a central motivation, usually on a very personal level—though more commercial forms of exploitation are also available, if you're into that sort of thing. Either way, the empowerment your kidnapper extracts from you is likely to be both permanent and extensive.
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--Oh, those look fun.

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I'm glad you like them!
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Those are good, but she still needs more points...but she doesn't need to push herself to come up with more nifty drawbacks right away. She attends her classes and delivers takeout and goes to stores and has the brilliant idea to "lose" various small objects that she doesn't mind not having short-term access to since she'll be able to duplicate them later anyway, in various locations around campus, so she can show up later looking for them and then paw through various lost and founds. She goes through the school library, and also the nearby public library, because those are just as good book repositories as a bookstore. Better; she locates various books she'd like access to that none of the three locations have that she'd like, and requests them through the interlibrary loan system. 

And she lets concepts for drawbacks she might like percolate in the back of her head. 

So I had some more ideas for drawbacks, of varying levels of silliness.

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I'm all ears! Figuratively speaking. I am in fact zero percent ears.
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So one idea I had was for--a general category of thing, where you can assign mandatory traits to foods--like, any time I have coffee it will be really hot, even if it was supposed to be iced coffee; any burrito would be very spicy, etc.

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Interesting... I can sort of see it, but I'm not quite sure how to put it together.
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Yeah, and--I'd want to be able to pick and choose, like, I used those examples because I do in fact like hot coffee and spicy burritos.

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That makes sense! I think it would be pretty tricky, but it's possible I could make it work.
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Another thing I was thinking of was a limitation where I could never shapeshift into a 100% human form, like, if I want to pass for human and use a shapeshifting ability to do it, I'd have to have scales under my clothes or talons inside really sturdy boots or something like that.

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That has possibilities! I'll think about it.
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Thanks. 

She copies some more poetry into the notebook while it thinks.

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The poetry gets little hearts drawn near it, and then, eventually:
Name: Mark Of The Witch - Grants: +1 ☐
(Requires Dragon Fairy Elf Witch and at least three of: A Thousand Ships, Angelic Tones, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room, Like Roses, Well Endowed)
You can never appear fully normal for any species whose appearance you mimic. Some small detail will always seem out of place on close inspection - perhaps the wrong colour of hair or eyes or scales, perhaps moss growing from your skin or an ethereal glow haloing your horns, perhaps an extra eye or an iridescent birthmark. These marks can be hidden with clothing or illusions, but their concealment will never be flawlessly impenetrable.
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Oh, perfect!

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Do drawbacks like this go into the synergy pot with the appearance powers?

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Hmm, not exactly? I think they benefit from appearance powers a lot more than they benefit appearance powers, though they might benefit appearance powers a tiny bit.
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Oh, I see, that makes sense. Are there any drawbacks that do feed into the appearance power synergy? I suppose Decorative would be a good candidate...

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Yes, Decorative might do something like that.
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Don't worry, I haven't become so obsessed with the appearance power zeitgeist that I'm at risk of taking Decorative for that reason.

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If you did decide to take Decorative, I trust that you'd think about it carefully first. ♡