She's getting close. She can feel it. 

Sorry About That, Excuse Me, and Tragic Backstory sound deeply self-indulgent and she's not getting them even though she's tempted. Sense of Style is also self-indulgent but Bonus Style Points lets her love interests shapeshift, which is insane and bumps it up. Like A Mirror is -- okay Like A Mirror is mind-bending and she's so close how about we skip ahead and come back--

Okay Popular. It might be nice to be Popular, maybe give that a 2. He's kind of a wall flower but he used to have a SoundCloud. If he's reading this right it's less like being friends with everyone and more like having a SoundCloud with multidigit followers. (Famous is a little more ridiculous than that and correspondingly gets a lower ranking.)

Undiplomatic Immunity looks on its surface like something useful but she's going to have infinite money and a bag of conjuring anything she wants and, honestly, does she want to be a criminal fairy witch? That sounds like the wrong vibe. 

Friends In High Places is better than Friends In Strange Places is better than Friends In Low Places, though they're all pretty good...

Vending Machine is insane! Okay! So that means we skip back to Like A Mirror.

Please unpack essence of identity?

It's a lot simpler than it sounds, honestly! 

Sometimes, due to the narrative forces at work across reality, the same story -- or parts of the same story -- repeats in many different worlds. It's pretty common for specific people to re-appear in different contexts like time period or culture or species. Their circumstances may be different, but their personality is the same. It might help to imagine what you might be like if you lived five hundred years ago or five hundred years in the future, or to imagine a character from one of your favorite shows having a different life where they do something more mundane like work in a coffee shop.

Sure, I can do that.

They've hit up against dinnertime. He hides the notebook in his backpack and goes out and does his best to be normal and tries to communicate to his sister via gesture and facial expression. It is fully possible he won't get another moment to himself until morning.

"Don't leave in the night," she whispers to him, before they go to bed.

He doesn't. He gets the whole night to imagine himself in other worlds.

Will they think it's weird she's a girl? The notebook says they'll get along with her smoothly but he thought it was kind of weird at first himself, maybe being a girl...

She would like to meet them, she thinks. But maybe not to mind-meld with them.

He does not pay attention during a single class all morning. He didn't do any of his homework and he can't answer any questions and he cannot bring himself to care.

Does Severance make you no longer the same person as those people in other universes?

That's an interesting question! I think only under particularly dramatic circumstances. Having an alt doesn't necessarily mean being recognizable as that alt, in any case.

So this would be more useful for something like disassociating from a government name?

Yes, that sounds more like it.

That's still pretty good. It gets a 1.

The rest of first period can be spent reading Vending Machine over and over (you can just create people? really???) before deciding that while she does kind of want to play God she doesn't necessarily want to play that kind of God.

And then that's... it. She's done it. Everything except for the Drawbacks, and then picking which of the lower tier options she wants to go with, which for all she knows will take 7 months but it doesn't feel, in this moment, like it will. It feels like something she could knock out between now and lunch.

She wants as many of these as she can stand, so how about we just make several quick passes and see what pops out.

There's Another One is interesting. Incomplete is tolerable. Great Responsibility is -- perfect, but let's not process that until we're done. Or anything dependent on it. (Prayer? Divinity? What???) Funhouse is tolerable and maybe less uncanny valley. Mood Ring is good. Distinctive is good. They'll Know is a little nerve-wracking but probably the right thing to do. Going back. Style of Sisyphus is really good. Nullified might also be the right thing to do but she's suspicious of it, given the number of awful people in the world and the broadness of the mind-affecting description. Secret Identity is crazy but maybe in a way she likes? If she takes Severance then coming back here won't be horribly inconvenient anyways. Selective Memory, hm, could just be applied to three obvious things and then she discovers them again right away and that's 3 free points. Dramatic Damsel depends on level of slippage. The Crazy Train might be better or worse but is importantly worth 6 whole points...

Is that everything?

Decorative is innocuous but terrifies her on some level that won't explain itself. Plain Jane is just depressing. Grimm's Fairy Tales is appealing but really, really should not be. Flashy and Moodier Ring are reasonable but have prereqs, she'll mark those in case she collects all the prereqs... The Veil is objectionable. Love Is A Battlefield and Seen With The Heart are the exact things that scared her about Dramatic Damsel, but amplified and without any of the good parts. Green With Envy and You Ruin Them and Jilted Lovers are all the opposite of what she wants, to varying degrees. That's How It Goes is again the exact thing that scared her about The Crazy Train but without any of the benefits. Live The Role and Informed Consent and Marionette are all, to put it lightly, insane.

So now let's go back and process some things.

Great Responsibility lets anyone call out to her for help from any distance. Sure, that's useful. It would probably be bad for her right now, but she can see the shape of the person she's going to grow up into, as the number of people she can save through magic or effort or simple influence rapidly expands. That person will want this in her back pocket.

And then Helpline takes that and blows it up into something insane, immediately cemented by Divine Mantle.

Okay. Yes. This is the logical conclusion to everything. If you're the most powerful being in the world, pulling everyone toward your will, saving as many people as you can, that makes you some kind of god. Adding prayers into the equation isn't the part that makes that true. Divine Mantle just makes it obvious to everyone else.

At some point he forgot how to breathe.

No. This is -- Satan-type behavior. The Devil pulled this one on Jesus, maybe, or maybe it was on Eve and the Devil offered Jesus something else, but the point is this is the thing you're supposed to reject. If someone offers you godhood, just say no. Is that to avoid hubris? Or is it because it's a kind of denial of the one true God? Or is it just one of those things that's generically bad?

Why is this a Drawback?

A lot of people don't want that level of responsibility! You won't necessarily be able to solve any problem that someone comes to you with, and with Helpline you won't even have control over who can contact you.

Divine Mantle is a drawback for the same way that Very Distinctive and They'll Know are drawbacks -- it advertises things about you that you can't control and that you might not want the whole world to know.

That doesn't seem bad enough.

For every Drawback there's somebody out there who wouldn't mind it at all. That's the best way to choose which ones are right for you.

If I pick Divine Mantle am I going to go to Hell?

You are not going to Hell whether you choose Divine Mantle or not.

Well. If he's going to Hell this is not the decisive moment. That probably happened yesterday morning.

He also wanted to look at Dramatic Damsel and The Crazy Train again.

Dramatic Damsel makes her powers slip when and only when it would make for a really great story. The Crazy Train doesn't take any powers away but she doesn't get direct control over them anymore. Both of these are a little bit scary.

She has... good aesthetics, she thinks. She likes the narrative she's crafting for herself. She will admit to being a little bit neurotic.

Which powers does The Crazy Train affect?

Should I try to define the boundaries or just list them all?

List please.

A Hundred Ships, What's In A Name, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room to an extent, Like Roses, Well Endowed, Hollow Leg, Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, Snowglobe, Soulbound, Where The Heart Is, Musical Number, Best Friend and dependencies, Self-Reflection, Chaser Six When, and Severance.

So I wouldn't have any direct control over my appearance, my identity, or what superpowers I get?

That's right. 

Actually yeah maybe that's not worth it.

When Dramatic Damsel says my powers will slip "just enough" how much is that?

Only as much as is strictly required by the plot, and only for that amount of time.