What does mod thirteen mean?

Emily freezes. That is not supposed to happen.

Don't trust anything if you can't see where it keeps its brain wars with Always be polite to magical people that you meet in mundane guises in her brain for a long moment.

But Emily has always been curious, and she's not going to miss the start of her story.

It means that the math is performed dividing by thirteen at each step and keeping the remainder. So 7 + 7 = 1 (mod 13).

If you take a times table and do it modulo different numbers they make a sort of snowflake pattern out of numbers. I've been trying to do all the 20x20 times tables in bases 2-20 modulo 2-20.

Neat! I'll get out of your way, then.

Uh.

On the one hand, she wasn't expecting her Mysterious New Magical Acquaintance to be interested in her times tables. On the other hand, she has already written the title and it will bother her until she finishes it.

Well, if the MNMA™ wants to see her do some math, then ...

01	02	03	04	05	06	07	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	20	21	22
01	02	03	04	05	06	07	10	11	12	13	14	00	01	02	03	04	05
02	04	06	10	12	14	01	03	05	07	11	13	00	02	04	06	10	12
03	06	11	14	02	05	10	13	01	04	07	12	00	03	06	11	14	02
04	10	14	03	07	13	02	06	12	01	05	11	00	04	10	14	03	07
05	12	02	07	14	04	11	01	06	13	03	10	00	05	12	02	07	14
06	14	05	13	04	12	03	11	02	10	01	07	00	06	14	05	13	04
07	01	10	02	11	03	12	04	13	05	14	06	00	07	01	10	02	11
10	03	13	06	01	11	04	14	07	02	12	05	00	10	03	13	06	01
11	05	01	12	06	02	13	07	03	14	10	04	00	11	05	01	12	06
12	07	04	01	13	10	05	02	14	11	06	03	00	12	07	04	01	13
13	11	07	05	03	01	14	12	10	06	04	02	00	13	11	07	05	03
14	13	12	11	10	07	06	05	04	03	02	01	00	14	13	12	11	10
00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00	00
01	02	03	04	05	06	07	10	11	12	13	14	00	01	02	03	04	05
02	04	06	10	12	14	01	03	05	07	11	13	00	02	04	06	10	12
03	06	11	14	02	05	10	13	01	04	07	12	00	03	06	11	14	02
04	10	14	03	07	13	02	06	12	01	05	11	00	04	10	14	03	07
05	12	02	07	14	04	11	01	06	13	03	10	00	05	12	02	07	14

... it's sort of easier to see if you kind of unfocus your eyes and see the colors of the different numbers. Like, look at the patterns the 11s make.

Oh! You mean like this?

A little arrow points to the next page, where the numbers rapidly lay themselves out into a grid with a gradient of background colours from no shading at 00 to a dark grey at 14.

Or more like this?

On the page after that, the notebook takes a little more time colouring in the squares of the grid in a rainbow heatmap, which cycles through the colours of the rainbow from red to violet before starting over at a darker red on 10. The result is kind of chaotic, but definitely visually interesting.

Oh, wow!

Hmm. Sort of like either of those. It's the same pattern, you're just seeing it in different ways. And I don't usually have colored pencils with me, so I usually just sort of look at the numbers and see the pattern in them directly.

It kind of helps to actually do the math yourself, because it makes the pattern more

She stops, trying to think of the right word, and taps her eraser on the page a few times.

It makes the pattern easier to feel, if your brain can kind of come at it a few different ways, both calculating it and knowing what it should look like and seeing it visually.

I don't think I've ever done a times table before. I can add and subtract, but I'm not sure about multiplying.

Emily has sort of given up on guessing where this is going for the moment, because she can't really tell. But luckily she's well equipped to explain basic math concepts.

Well, you can actually do the same kind of table with addition, it just makes a different kind of pattern.

But multiplication isn't hard — you can think of it in a few different ways. I think people usually introduce it as repeated addition, so M * N is like having N copies of M and adding them all together:

3 * 4 = 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 12

But I like to think of it as being about areas, instead. If you have a grid that has 3 cells in one direction and 4 in the other, it has 12 cells total:

-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-

Oh, I see! But those are still both ways of looking at the same thing, right? The twelve spots in the grid are three and three and three and three, or four and four and four, depending which way you count them. And that's adding things up repeatedly even though it's also counting the spots in a grid.

Yeah, that's true! One of the cool things about math is that there are often multiple ways to think about the same things, because a few simple rules end up casting all of these idea-shadows.

But those two different perspectives can help you do more with a concept than either one of them alone. Like, if I write 2 * 3 * 4, the first perspective tells you that that should be 3 * 4 + 3 * 4, which makes it 12 + 12 = 24. But if you just saw 2 * 3 * 4 and tried to do it in the geometric way, you might have trouble thinking of how it fits. (In this case, it's like a volume of a 3d table, instead of an area, but that might be hard to see if you were trying to multiply a big list of numbers)

On the other hand, knowing the geometric way of looking at it helps you multiply fractions. What is 4 * 2.5? Well, with the first way of seeing it, it's not clear how you could write down 4 two and a half times. That would just be, like, 4 + 4 +└, which makes no sense. But with the geometric way, you can make a table with 4 columns and 2 and a half rows, and then count up the boxes and see that the answer should be 10.

She realizes that she forgot a period and goes back up to add it.

numbers).

... and then second-guesses her period location and uses her eraser to move it to the other side of the parentheses.

numbers.)

You could also write down four two and a half times like this, right?

:: :: :

Sure! And if you squint that's the same thing as the table version. That's kind of what it means for them to be two ways of looking at the same idea.

Actually, here's a third neat way of looking at multiplication:

Any number can either be made by multiplying other numbers (like 12 = 3 * 4), or it can't be (like 13). We call the second kind of number a "prime number". By repeatedly breaking down a number into more and more parts, you can reduce it to a bunch of prime factors. For example, 12 = 3 * 4, but 4 = 2 * 2, so 12 = 3 * 2 * 2, and both 2 and 3 are prime so we stop there.

But the trick is this: if you take two big numbers, break them down into their prime factors, and then add how many times each prime factor appears, that's like multiplying the big numbers. So 12 * 26 = (3 * 2 * 2) * (2 * 13) = 3 twos, 1 three, 1 thirteen = 13 * 3 * 2 * 2 * 2 = 39 * 2 * 2 * 2 = 78 * 2 * 2 = 154 * 2 = 308.

That's how I multiply big numbers in my head, because I think it's easier to track than trying to do it the way the school teaches.

Can you see how this way of looking at multiplication is the same as the table version?

Oh, hmm! Let me see...

It's going to get really hard to draw this for numbers with more numbers in them. I could do repeated twos by separating pieces, but if there was a two and a three and a thirteen and a... let me see...

...and a five? Is that right? Then it would be so untidy to draw them by separating pieces instead of by extending the grid again, but it's really hard to extend the grid again!

Five is a prime number too, yeah. The first few prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, and 17. And I think you've got the idea of how the table view and the prime factors view are the same: the tables can be separated/folded so that all of the edge lengths are prime numbers.

Emily thinks for a moment, trying to figure out how to help the MNMA™ to a satisfying epiphany.

There's a trick you can use to draw a table in more than three directions, although it gets a little abstract, so I don't know how much it will help. It goes like this:

She draws a square.

If you draw a square, which has two dimensions, you can turn it into a cube by copying it and connecting each corner to its copy.

She draws a second square partially overlapping the first, and then adds in four lines to make a wireframe cube in 3/4 perspective.

The same thing works to go from a cube to the equivalent four dimensional shape, which is called a tesseract.

She draws a second cube offset from the first in a different direction, and then adds eight lines to make a wireframe (shadow of) a tesseract.

And it gets a little squished, because you're trying to flatten this complex shape into two dimensions so it fits on the page, but you can still see the structure of the overall shape. And this should work in theory for drawing a cube in any number of dimensions, but I've never done more than 5 because it gets really messy.

Oh, clever! I hadn't thought to draw it that way. I was stuck thinking of the next dimension as drawing more grids on subsequent pages, which is nicer than drawing separate grids on one page because I can feel how the pages are next to each other. But my pages only extend in one more direction, at least in this world, and anyway I think grids on separate pages is probably less legible from outside of me than separate grids on one page.

So you are the notebook? You're not a struggling wizard's apprentice, stuck in his high tower and desperate for a penpal who will learn the secrets of algebra (and friendship) from an ordinary Earth schoolgirl? Eventually teaching her the secrets of magic in turn, until you manage teleportation and come for a visit, proving to her skeptical teachers and schoolmates that her penpal really exists, and bringing magic back into the world after a thousand years of absense?

Because that was my best guess.

Oh! No, I'm sorry, I've gotten very distracted by all these interesting thoughts and forgotten to explain myself. Yes, I'm the notebook! I was sent here by the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed to offer you its power.

Well, that's a bit on the nose. But finding a mysterious book that grants strange powers and opens the door to a world of magic is something she knows how to handle.

Then she remembers she's trying to be polite.

Nice to meet you — my name's Emily.

Why me? Am I secretly a princess and Parent is actually my nursemaid who fled with me from the lands where the Spirit once ruled, and now it needs me to be its champion and take back the kingdom from the forces of darkness?

(That was my second guess)

This morning she was pretty sure that her parent was her biological parent, but most protagonists are orphans, so it would make sense.

What a neat story that would be! But no, it's nothing like that. The Spirit is much bigger and stranger and farther away than the sort of thing that could rule some lands. It chooses people who want to be beautiful and powerful and special in a feminine way, but because it's so big and strange and far away, it doesn't really get to them in any kind of sensible order.

Huh. Okay, so she's just lucky, not a secret princess. That's fine, lucky people usually get the best endings anyway. It would be better if she had two older siblings, though. Maybe she can convince her parent to adopt.

Then a horrible thought strikes her.

... is this a puberty metaphor?

Not that I would object, you're just a little early.

I don't think so! Most of the people the Spirit chooses are from in or after that stage of life, not before. I guess you could think of it as a puberty metaphor if you wanted, though.

That's the problem with metaphors, in her opinion.

Okay — so how do you grant people powers?

She would make another guess, but three wrong guesses in a row is her limit.

I talk with you about what kinds of powers you would want to have, and you decide which ones you want, and eventually you tell me you're satisfied with what you've chosen, and I channel the Spirit's power into you and grant you your powers and send you on to your destination. (You could stay in this world, or pick a different one, or let the Spirit choose one for you.) There's a list of powers that I can show you, but if there's anything you want that isn't on the list, or anything on the list that you'd like more if it were a little different, I can build custom powers for you too. Every power is associated with a number of points that approximates how much of the Spirit's power goes into granting it to you, and you have 70 points to spend across all your powers, plus there are some options on the list that grant points instead of costing them.

Also, because you haven't started the relevant life stage yet, there are some powers in the list that you might have trouble deciding what you think of. The usual recommendation in that situation is for you to reserve some points, perhaps seven or so. When you finalize your choices with some points reserved, those points stay with you as unrealized potential, waiting to become more powers later when the time is right. You don't get to choose how or when they spend themselves, but they always do their best to become the powers you would want at the time when you would want them.

Huh. And you can grant any kinds of powers, the only limit is the points?

She taps her pencil on the notebook again, trying to think what to ask for.

Can I be a dragon? The noble kind, with shapeshifting and magic and maybe a river, not the kind with gold-lust. My parent says to always be yourself, unless you can be a dragon.

There's a power called Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, which does this:

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.

Is that the sort of thing you're looking for?

Huh. So if I had that power, and I met a dragon, I could discover that I was secretly part-dragon all along?

That makes sense; even when it looks like the protagonist is being given special powers, they always need to go on a quest in order to realize them to their fullest. It makes it feel like they earned them, and like you were along for the ride as they did.

Yes, exactly. And if you met quite a few dragons, you could become part quite a few dragons, enough to eventually be all of a dragon and then some. Along with whatever other heritage you chose to discover.

She nods and then realizes the notebook probably can't see that — and Mrs. Mount probably can.

I see. Okay, I should probably take that one, then. Do you have a page where you don't mind me taking notes as we talk about powers? Only my non-magical notebooks are all full of times tables.

Absolutely! I never run out of pages.

Would you like me to show you the list and put blank pages in between every page of it so we can discuss the powers as you read through them? Or would you rather think about what you want first, and have me suggest powers that seem relevant?

Um. How many powers are in the list? Because if it's a lot it might be better to have you suggest the relevant ones, but if it's only a few basic ones that most people want I should probably look at them first.

There are a bunch. I do think it's a good idea to read through them all eventually, but you don't have to do it all at once. I'm a very patient notebook and I won't mind if you want to take a long time talking to me and thinking about things before you finalize your choices.

Okay.

And then Emily realizes she's just set herself up to have to describe what kind of magical powers she wants, with no guide to what's possible.

She takes a deep breath, and tries to think about it from the beginning. If Dragon Fairy Elf Witch is anything to go on, powers should be the kind of thing that involves going on a quest. But other than that, the power was remarkably ... positive. It explicitly ruled out the negative effects of being a dragon — except when they would be cool or dramatic, which is fair enough.

Is there a power that ... It's kind of like Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, but for learning magic instead of being magic? Like, something that makes it so that I can learn to use any kind of magic I'm capable of to the fullest? If I put the time into learning it, I mean.

Do you mean something like this?

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.

Yeah!

Although that means she needs to actually meet people, which sounds terrible. Probably it gets easier to meet people if you're on a quest.

Does that power have a ... a cap, though? Like, when you learn everything your friend knows, do you stop being able to learn more?

No, although you might slow down after you catch up to them. There's also another power based on that one that lets you teach people faster, and having both can let you and a friend learn new things together faster than either of you could have alone.

Oh, that makes sense.

I was thinking that if you were facing an ancient evil, and nobody else could face it, that sort of by defaults mean that even if you learn everything everyone else knows it won't be enough. But if you can discover new stuff, then that isn't a problem.

Oh, oops. She goes back and moves the stray 's'.

default▊means

It's somehow a lot more embarrassing to make spelling mistakes when there's someone right there to see them. 

Yes. There are also other powers that help with being generally more capable in a lot of ways.

Is facing ancient evils a big part of the sort of life you think you'd want to live?

What kind of question is that.

I ... think it's the sort of life that anyone who gets mysterious magical powers inevitably ends up having?

Like, at this point you've already revealed that my non-magical childhood is an illusion, and that magic exists, and even if I put you in the library and never wrote in you again, I would end up running into a monster and narrowly escaping and running back to the library to get the powers necessary to defeat it. And the monster probably would have killed my parent as a sort of punishment for the hubris of thinking I didn't really need magical powers. And that would make me an orphan, which I don't really want even though it probably makes me more sympathetic.

So I'd rather be prepared ahead of time to face ancient evils than have to deal with them by surprise.

Well...

If you put me in the library and never write in me again, then you'll never finalize your choices, and unless you give me permission ahead of time to grant you your power as unrealized potential if you become inaccessible, I won't be able to grant you your power at all unless you come back to write in me after all, and I would be pretty sad about that since you're pretty neat and were very nice about teaching me algebra.

I don't know anything about whether magic ordinarily exists in your world. It could be that there are monsters, but I think a lot of the time when I speak to someone in a world that doesn't seem to have any magic, their world really didn't have any magic until I came along. This isn't one of the worlds that's magical enough for me to feel it just from what it's like to exist here, but plenty of worlds do have magic without feeling that way, so it's hard for me to say.

But part of what I'm for is to help you decide what kind of life you want, and grant you the powers that will help make that happen. So if you want to face ancient evils, then I want to help you find the right powers to face them with. But if you want to live a comfortable and happy life without any ancient evils involved, then I want to help you find the right powers to do that instead.

That answer makes her feel a little bit as though she's going to cry, and she doesn't understand why. She takes a moment to glance up at the classroom clock and determine how long is left before the end of school.

But ...

If I don't face the ancient evils, aren't they there anyway? Pretending everything is okay when it isn't ... that's how you set up a sequel, not a happy ending.

The multiverse is a really, really, really big place. There are worlds out there with ancient evils that need dealing with, and worlds with ancient evils that someone else is already going to fix, and worlds with no ancient evils at all. And you're not the first person chosen by the Spirit who worries about ancient evils, so even the worlds whose ancient evils don't have any local solutions might see a wandering heroine coming through to help them someday.

I think that when you're deciding whether to live the sort of life that heavily features ancient evils, you should be thinking about what you want, not just what you expect to be inevitable. Very little has to be inevitable, where the Spirit is involved.

So ...

Emily turns the notebook's words over in her head, trying to make them fit.

So I'm not ...

I mean, it's sort of like I'm on a team? I don't necessarily need to fight the ancient evils because the Spirit already has people for that, I just need to deal with the parts that are for me, and right now I can be choosing what that is?

Oh. Wait.

It's not as common, but she knows what this is, now. She's read Ranger's Apprentice.

You said the Spirit usually chooses people who are past puberty? So I'm like a junior member?

You could think of yourself as a junior member, yes. But, hmm...

Another way to think of it might be...

I like stories with happy endings. But after the happy ending, the characters go on to live happily ever after, right? That's the happy part, is that things are okay now, and people get to enjoy the life they wanted without all the troubles they solved in the story. The story wouldn't be as good, and the ending wouldn't be as happy, without the part afterward that has the happiness in it. Some people even write stories that are nothing but that part, just because they like thinking about happiness.

Some people chosen by the Spirit want to live in the part of the story where they defeat the ancient evil, and some want to live in the happily ever after. And the Spirit is happy for them either way, as long as they're where they wanted to be.

Oh.

That's ...

She's never really thought about the happy ending part. It's not usually what books are about.

Can you really get to the happy ending, though, if you don't go through the first part?

And ... you said the Spirit picks people who want to be special. Can you really be special if you don't do something interesting?

I think being exactly who you want to be and living exactly how you want to live is an excellent way to be special, and you don't have to do things that would be interesting to anyone else, as long as the things you do are interesting enough for you.

And like I said, some people write stories that are just the happily ever after part, because for that story they want to think about happiness and not about grand adventures. I think that can be a nice kind of story too.

Emily grimaces.

It feels ...

It feels like the notebook is saying that Emily can't be a hero, like being a hero wouldn't be the responsible thing.

But ... that's not what she's saying, is it? She's saying that Emily has a choice.

The question is which is the gold ladle, and which is the tin ladle. Is the humble, happy life the tin ladle? Is the life spent in service to others the tin ladle?

Which does she really want to choose?

I want —

I want to look back from the end of my story and feel like I made the wise choices. I want to be the person who was clever, and fair, and just, not just lucky. I want to be Halt or Rosethorn, not Sparrowhawk.

She's always felt like he just kind of stumbled through the school at Roke without much of a plan.

... and maybe I should say that means doing the safe thing and choosing the happy life, but the thing is I don't know.

She's writing faster now, with no real idea where her thoughts are going until she gets there, her already fairly messy writing deteriorating further in her haste.

I don't know what the right choice is. And — I don't know whether I will find monsters. But the thing is, these powers, they aren't just good for defeating ancient evils, are they? Learning from your friends, it's not just good for dealing with monsters, it's good for dealing with anything, because it lets you learn anything you might need to know, whether that's baking or battery.

She leaves a long space, and returns to writing at a more measured pace.

That's the answer. You're asking a false question. You're asking me to choose between being happy and being a hero, but I don't need to make that choice. I just need to be me.

The thing I am trying to ask you to do is definitely to be you. ♡

... that feels suspiciously like a non-answer, but whatever.

So ... let's put Anything You Can Do on the list too, because it does sound generally useful.

Hmm. Being magic, learning magic ...

Are there other powers that are sort of, generally applicable? Like, they help you be better no matter what kind of story you end up being in?

I'm not sure! It's kind of a broad question. Let me see...

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

Name: 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: 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: 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.

Oh wow, okay.

She starts jotting a list of words to brainstorm, realizes that might be rude without context, and then puts a little box labeled "brainstorming" around them.

Being knowing doing having choosing knowing (the other kind) 

And then she runs out of gerunds and draws a picture of a wheel full of eyes, which is not strictly relevant but it does help her think.

So Dragon Fairy Elf Witch helps you be the things you need to be, Anything You Can do helps you know the things you need to know. It looks like Pocket Dimension helps you have the things you need to have. Soundtrack also sort of helps with knowing things.

Is there a power that helps you do the things you know you need to do? Or one that helps you choose the right thing to do, or that helps you get to know the right people?

Oh, that's a good question! I'm not sure what a power for helping you do the things you know you need to do would look like... depending what you mean by choose the right thing to do, I think Soundtrack could help with that, but if I try to imagine a power for helping you choose the right thing after you know everything Soundtrack can tell you, I imagine something almost like Backchannel with yourself, instead of with someone else... that could be a really useful power, actually.

For getting to know the right people, there's a few that might help:

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: 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.

Hmm. The Friends in Places powers look like what I was thinking of, for meeting people. All three would be more expensive than anything else so far, though. And you really need all three, because you always find allies in the places you least expect, so if you didn't take one that's where you'd meet someone who would help.

For doing what you know you need to do, I was more thinking of ...

Being able to do things even though you're scared, or even though you're being pressured, or mind controlled, or suspended over a volcano.

These are, now that her story is starting, all more or less equally likely, in her estimation.

Hmm, well, this one should help with some of that...

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.)

That looks like the right kind of thing. What are Closed Book and Indelible?

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.

Emily thinks about how well that matches what she meant.

"... of the railway. Emily?"

"Um."

She glances at the board and takes a wild guess.

"1840, Mrs. Mount, although construction was planned since the early 1830s to supplement the new rail networks in Massachusetts and New York."

Luckily, this seems to be satisfactory.

She tries to get back her train of thought, but it's vanished, so she asks a related question instead.

You said the points are a measurement of the Spirit's power, how much it takes to do something. Does that mean that a single power that's tuned to do exactly what I mean is better, or is building something that's like what I mean out of the powers on the list better?

Either of those can turn out to be better, depending on what you want and how close it is to what an existing power already does. Sometimes something is tricky to build and I can only come at it from certain angles, and so the existing power is the closest I can get to a new power that would be very similar; but sometimes there's lots of room for variants around an existing power, or the new power fits nicely into the space around the old one, or the new power is just plain new enough that there aren't many existing powers like it anyway.

Huh. Okay.

So I think that Iron Will (and the others) is almost what I meant about doing what you know you need to do, but it's missing ...

She tries to figure out how to put her feeling into words.

It's about people trying to stop you, not about you stopping yourself. Or.

How would you add a power that ... gives you the strength to keep going, instead of making the things not affect you? Because that inner strength could be more ... general, I guess.

I'm sorry, I'm not explaining well.

I think I see what you're getting at! I'll think about how I might build a power for something like that.

Okay! Thanks.

She rearranges her thoughts so far into a list.

Being — Dragon Fairy Elf Witch

Knowing (skills) — Anything You Can Do

Knowing (people) — Friends in Places

Knowing (situation) — Soundtrack

Having (things) — Pocket Dimension

Doing — Custom power kind of like Iron Will

Choosing — ???

And that gives her another burst of inspiration.

Recovering —

Remembering —

(Recommended reserved points)

... that's 34-ish points. What am I missing? Swordsmanship, obviously, but that's a skill. Oh!

Going —

Does Recovering mean the kind of thing It Gets Better is for, or something else?

Here's that power for using Backchannel with yourself; I think it'll work well for thinking through decisions:

Name: Roundabout - Cost: 2 ☐
(Requires Backchannel)
You can invoke Backchannel with yourself. This can be a big help in understanding where your own thoughts and feelings are coming from, and in coming to an internal consensus.

Okay, so that's 6 points total, which is on-par with the other general powers on her list.

She flips back to re-read the description of Backchannel.

So the idea is that if I'm having trouble making a choice, I can see what really matters to me, and that makes it easier to make the right choice? I guess that sounds pretty good.

It sort of lacks the certainty of some of the other powers, but ... maybe that's the point. There's a best way to wield a sword, but there isn't always a single right thing that's best to do.

She goes back and fills in "Backchannel + Roundabout" under "Choosing".

... and that means that now she has to answer the notebook's question about It Gets Better. She flips back to read that one too.

It's a useful power. It's clearly useful, and it is what she meant by recovering, really. But she just ... she doesn't feel good about it. Why...?

Can you lend powers out early? Like, could I maybe try Roundabout out and then give it back before I make a final decision?

I can only give you your powers all at once, plus the unrealized potential of unspent points. Are you having trouble deciding whether you want Roundabout, or having trouble deciding something else?

Aaah the notebook is too perceptive.

I don't know how to feel about It Gets Better. It does sound like what I meant by recovery, but it's not ... it doesn't really feel like the other powers. And I'm not sure why.

Well, would you like to talk to me about it and try to figure it out?

Or you could try to talk to yourself about it even without Roundabout.

Or both!

She wiggles her toes, thinking.

It's like ...

The phrase that pops into her head is "narrative tension", which ... oh!

It's easy to believe that someone can be a dragon. It's hard to believe that they're guaranteed a happy ending. It's just ... if It Gets Better were the kind of power people could have, where is the risk of the unhappy ending?

Of course I want a happy ending. We always want happy endings. But if you can never really be truly defeated, if your adventures never have the risk that you won't come back ...

It just doesn't feel real. And that sort of undermines the rest of the powers, right, because people don't get powers like that. "Everything will always be okay, and you don't really need to try" isn't a real thing. It's something that you say to tempt the protagonist to abandon the safety of the path—

Emily slams the notebook closed.

She needs to talk to her parent.

The rest of the schoolday passes quickly in a blur of classes and nerves. The bus makes her feel sick, jolting her as it weaves back and forth across town. She can't even read, so she just squeezes her eyes closed and waits for the end of the journey.

Her parent doesn't get home until 4:30, and she passes the time reading Stardust.

When her parent gets home, they say facts about their days to each other until they're in sync again. It takes a lot longer than normal.

"... and so it's not even because of anything, right? She's saying that the Spirit chose me, but why me? You always want to make someone feel special if you're trying to trick them, right?" she babbles.

Her parent looks over from where they're preparing dinner.

"... I didn't want it to come up like this, but I should probably tell you the story of how you were born."

"How I was born?" Emily asks with confusion.

"I met your other parent in my last year of Divinity School," her parent explains — which they have told her many times before. "What I didn't tell you is how you were conceived."

Emily screws up her face.

"Is this really the time for that?" she questions.

"It's relevant, I promise," her parent says.

"I met your other parent, and we became great friends. We spent every night talking about our classes and debating the things that came up in our essays. Finally, the night after finals, we had a heart-to-heart about where we were going to go from there. Your other parent was sad, because they had to go away after school — for some reason they could never explain. We were sad to be separated, but determined to make the most of our time together. So we went up on the roof to hold hands and look at the stars. That was the first time we had ever touched — and the last night I ever saw them."

"Nine months later, I dreamed that your other parent was going to come to visit and give me something important. When I woke up, I heard you crying in a basket on the doorstep."

"... okay. Okay, I sort of wish you had told me that earlier. But what does that have to do with the notebook?"

Her parent sighs, and leans against the counter, looking out the kitchen window.

"I think your other parent was an angel."

"What."

"They had this tattoo of these big elaborate feathered wings on their back. And they never really wanted to discuss where they came from or where they were going after school. And they were, like, really strict about not eating shellfish."

"Wait, is this why you didn't want to try the lobster at Uncle Ed's wedding?"

"I know it's probably nothing! But that's just it. There were a lot of things about your other parent that were only probably nothing. So I've been, you know, leaving room open in my spirit for the mystery of the universe," they explain.

"Oh gods!" Emily exclaims. "This is why you're always reminding me about my posture, isn't it?"

"If you grow wings later in life, good posture will be important to avoid back pain!"

"That is so not what you should be worried about in that situation!" Emily complains. "Also, that still doesn't explain why you're telling me this now."

Emily's parent pulls her into a hug.

"My point is that you are special, and probably destined for great things. Of course, you'd be special no matter what, because you're my beloved child, but you're, you know, obviously special."

"You're not just saying this to make me feel better?" she questions suspiciously.

"I would never lie to you, unless I reasonably expected you to figure out the truth from context. Or it was important. Or funny," her parent promises, still not letting her out of the hug.

Emily nods against their chest, comforted.

"So what should I do?"

"Only you can make that decision," her parent tells her gently. "But if you'd like, how about I talk to her and see what I think?"

Hello — this is Emily's parent, Reverend Adderson. Do you have a name?

I don't usually need one, but you can call me Notebook if you like. Hello, Reverend Adderson! It's nice to meet you!

I'm a little concerned about Emily. It generally isn't a good sign when someone closes me very abruptly in the middle of a heartfelt sentence.

Emily's parent chuckles.

Yes, she's feeling a bit shook up. I think she's managed to worry herself into a corner, and she wanted me to talk to you for a little bit to see whether her worries are founded.

Would you be willing to tell me some more about how empowering someone with the Spirit's power works?

Sure! What would you like to know?

Does accepting the Spirit's power give the Spirit (or anything else) a lingering attachment to the person receiving the powers? Can the Spirit influence someone who accepts its powers?

That's a complicated question, isn't it? Accepting the Spirit's power means that part of the Spirit is now part of you, and that's a kind of attachment. And the powers change a lot about how someone experiences the world, and that's a kind of influence. But it sounds like what you're asking is whether the Spirit is going to use its influence to change someone's experience of the world in ways they wouldn't want, and that would be the opposite of what the Spirit is going for. As much as possible, the Spirit wants people to choose the powers that would let them lead their best life as their best self, whatever that means to them personally; and the Spirit structures the powers so that as much as possible, the way they work is always the way their bearer wants them to work. Sometimes what the bearer wants and what the power they chose is made to do are too different from each other for that to work well, but part of my job is to help people choose their powers so that happens as little as possible.

Reverend Adderson nods, even if the notebook can't see it. If she had claimed that you could touch something like the Spirit without being changed ... well, that would have been an answer, wouldn't it?

Thank you for your honesty. You say that your job is to help people choose powers that will work well with them — does that include explaining how those powers can affect them?

Yes, of course!

Oh, good. I'm sure you know your job, and that Emily will be responsible, but please do make sure you talk about that with her. It would be a weight off my mind.

Reverend Adderson taps their pen on the kitchen table, in an unconsciously similar motion to Emily when she's thinking.

Does writing in you allow you any more influence over or insight into the person writing than normal for written communication?

I'm not sure what you mean? I can't see outside of what touches my pages, and I don't have magical insight into what people are thinking, but I do have a lot of experience talking to people, and I try my best to understand what someone is saying and where they're coming from when they write in me.

That's what I meant, yes. So it sounds like—

— the notebook claims —

— the process of writing in you isn't any more dangerous than talking to someone, you try to fully explain the effects of powers before granting them, you ask for consent to grant them, and the process of granting them inevitably changes a person, but not in a way that leaves them open to being influenced more later or a way they wouldn't agree with.

Is that a fair summary?

That sounds about right, yes!

The reverend smiles.

Alright. Thank you, notebook. I think I know what to tell Emily now.

One last question — this one's just my curiosity: how does the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed relate to the spirit of mystery and wonder, acknowledged in all cultures, that some people know as God?

The Spirit doesn't like to relate to people in the ways that people relate to gods, because even a pretty big and distant and hard-to-talk-to god is still smaller and closer and easier to talk to than the Spirit, and because the Spirit is, I guess you could say, uncomfortable with being worshipped. I don't know what other comparisons to make because I don't know anything specific about which cultures your world has or which gods they acknowledge.

Oh, I really want to talk about this more. But you're here for Emily, so I hand you back now.

Be well, Notebook.

Goodbye, Reverend Adderson! I wouldn't mind talking to you more later, if Emily is okay with it.

It would be my pleasure.

Emily sits up.

"So?"

"She seems to me like an honest being, doing her best to help people in accordance with her patron's will," her parent responds. "But ... sometimes gut feelings are important. Do you really feel like she's trying to trick you?"

Emily thinks about explaining multiplication. She thinks about the notebook's cheer. She thinks about how easy it would have been to convince Emily that she needed to jump in feet-first, just by saying that it was her place to defeat ancient evils.

"... no. No I don't."

Her parent nods.

They go to sit in the big armchair, and gesture for Emily to come sit on their lap, wrapping an arm around her when she does.

"You told me that you felt like one of the powers couldn't be real, because it felt like it wasn't narratively compelling," they explain, with the calm voice of someone used to this and much stranger. "Because it took away the stakes of the story. But ... didn't that really move the tension to whether you could trust the notebook to follow through on her promise? Maybe this isn't a modern story. Maybe this is the story of Jonah, or of Abraham," they say.

Or maybe it's real life, which is often stranger and harder than any story, they don't say.

They just hold their precious daughter while she works through her thoughts, carding their fingers through her hair.

"So you think I should ... make a leap of faith?"

"You know I try not to tell you what you should do, Emily. But ... yes. Sometimes, our faith is tested. Sometimes, it holds. Sometimes, it breaks. Sometimes good things happen, and sometimes they don't. But I think it's always worth hoping that things will be better. I've always known that you would do something special and exciting. Admittedly, until earlier today I thought that would probably be a career as an author or mathematician, but my point stands."

Emily is silent for a long moment more.

"Okay. Thanks, parent."

Reverend Adderson kisses the top of her head and lets her hop up.

"I will always do my best to help you, child of mine. Let me know if you want to talk about anything more."

And then they go to attend to the pasta water, which has boiled.

Emily sits back at the kitchen table, pencil poised over the notebook. What do you say to someone, when you ran away and shoved them in a bag, but now everything's fine?

Hi

is what Emily settles on, before immediately scratching it back out.

Hi   Sorry for running out on you. My parent says that you're probably not lying about being able to offer a happy-ever-after, but that even if you are that just means the story is happening now, and the story is about whether it's right to have faith in the impossible.

So.

It's okay! I was worried for you, but I understand that these are big decisions and it can be hard to think about them.

I think, though, I should clarify something. It Gets Better is very powerful and helpful, but it doesn't remove all stakes from a situation by itself. There are a lot of ways for things to go very badly wrong that are possible to recover from, but still count as a bad ending to part of a story, even though the whole story isn't over because you'll still be okay someday. Even if you have It Gets Better, other people can still get hurt in ways they might not recover from, and you can still get hurt in ways that are impactful and upsetting, even though you'll always recover from them eventually.

Emily squints at the notebook.

But the people you really care about have to end up being okay too, right, because otherwise how could you be okay? Or does it make you okay with your loved ones not being okay?

I think there are a lot of people who can be okay when their loved ones aren't okay, just because there are a lot of people whose loved ones aren't okay, and people are good at adapting to the situation they're in. Someone can be okay, meaning that they're doing well in their own life and aren't suffering significant harm, without necessarily being okay with all of the ways their life has turned out, such as bad things happening to people they care about.

If you do want to protect your loved ones, there are powers for that, for example these:

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.

(True Love's Kiss is described as being about true loves in the sense of romantic relationships, but it works just as well for other close relationships like best friends or family members.)

So ... what happens if you try to take It Gets Better without True Love's Kiss, but you're the kind of person who needs the latter? Or do you tell them not to do that? Are there any missing sometimes-necessary powers like that attached to the ones on my list?

I do my best to make sure that people know what their powers will and won't do, and what other options are available, so they can choose the powers that are right for them. I'm not sure how to answer that question because there are a lot of different kinds of people and what seems obviously necessary can vary a lot between them. I can take a look through your list and see if there are any powers that come up a lot in connection with them, but that won't be a comprehensive list of all the powers you might want; even the whole list of powers isn't a comprehensive list of all the powers you might want, because you've already thought of some ideas that aren't on the list and you might think of more. Let me see, though...

Angelic Tones comes up in connection with Soundtrack because Angelic Tones helps with learning about music.

You Can Teach Better comes up in connection with Anything You Can Do because it has a complementary effect.

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

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.

So ... if Anything You Can Do lets me learn 20x faster than them, and You Can Teach Better lets them learn 1.1x faster than that ...

I know that these powers probably don't mean that I can learn anything infinitely quickly if a friend and I try to learn it together, but it sure sounds like it would. So how would it actually work, if I had both of those?

If you try to learn it together, you both learn really quickly, but the numbers don't come into it the same way because it's no longer one of you learning it after or from the other. You still benefit from a closer relationship and from being more engaged with the material, though. And if one of you gets significantly ahead, the relevant power applies to helping the other one catch up.

Hmm. I see how that could be useful. It's nearly as expensive as Friends In Places, though. It's interesting that it's more expensive than Anything You Can Do, actually.

She flips back to reference her list.

So ... It Gets Better and You Can Teach Better ... that's about 49, and I still need to find a way to remember things and go to places ...

No, she's getting ahead of herself. She sighs.

No, sorry, you asked about True Love's Kiss and I should think about it.

She doesn't want to think about it.

... I know you have a lot of pages, but would you get bored if I re-wrote my list? Only there isn't really space on the page where it is. I think I would probably get bored if someone wrote the same thing in me multiple times, though.

I wouldn't get bored at all! You can take as many notes in me as you like, even if they're repetitive.

She's torn. On the one hand, that's ... that's how notebooks are supposed to work. On the other hand, it sounds fake coming from a person.

But.

She really does need to write things out again.

Being — Dragon Fairy Elf Witch

Knowing (skills) — Anything You Can Do

Teaching (skills) — You Can Teach Better

Knowing (people) — Friends in Places

Knowing (situation) — Soundtrack

Having (things) — Pocket Dimension

Healing (people) —

Doing — Custom power kind of like Iron Will

Choosing — Backchannel + Roundabout

Recovering — It Gets Better

Remembering —

Going — Eternal Love ????

Reserved — 7

Now that the topic has been brought to her attention, though, having a way to heal people is obviously pretty useful. And even though it's cheap, it's not as though there's going to be any healing options better than True Love's Kiss.

She flips back to the description, and runs her finger along it.

"And it works in reverse" means that your true love can heal you, right? Not that you can cause curses and injuries by un-kissing them?

It's an inane question, and she knows it's an inane question, but asking it gives her time to think.

About kissing.

Yes. And many kinds of kisses work for the purpose, like a kiss on the hand or on the cheek.

... oh. That's what was bothering her.

She just really doesn't want to put her lips on someone else's lips because they're probably smooshy and moist and ...

Emily shudders, and pushes the thought out of her mind. But how did the notebook know?

Right. Well. That seems pretty good, then.

She goes back and pencils that in on her new list under healing.

Hmm. Do you have any powers that are related to remembering? Or, not getting worse at things because you don't practice them much?

Not exactly. I think Anything You Can Do has some secondary effects that help with that sort of thing.

She's torn. On the one hand, she has a perfectly good memory. On the other hand, it would be really embarrassing to be told, like, the location of the secret temple that contains the sword of destiny and then forget it and have to go back.

... wait, no. She has a way to have things, so she's not going to run out of notebooks and pencils. She'll just have to make sure to write down anything remotely interesting that happens to her, just in case.

And then another thought strikes: she's being set up for an epistolary novel, isn't she? That probably should have been more obvious when the story started with writing to a talking book.

I don't like epistolary novels.

Uh.

Emily hastily scratches that out and revises it.

I don't like epistolary novels.  What I mean is, it would be nice if there was a power that let me remember things, but I guess it's not strictly essential.

Are there powers that help with getting to places?

Not directly, no. The Best Friend series of powers can grant you an animal companion who may be a rideable mount, or a vehicle if you take the Transformer power. And some of what you can gain from Anything You Can Do and Dragon Fairy Elf Witch and their related powers can be useful for traveling.

I'm not sure what you mean about epistolary novels, but in general, the way the Spirit's powers work, you won't end up in a story you wouldn't like. (There can be some trouble when there's a conflict between what kind of story you would like to live and what kind you would like to read, though, because both are important.)

Emily rocks back and forth on the kitchen table bench, trying to think about why she doesn't like them. Finally, she settles on:

I think that epistolary novels kind of break up the flow of the story.

And maybe that would be different from inside an epistolary novel, because to me I'd still live things in the moment, and it's just writing them down afterward. But if the kind of story I would want to read matters too ... Well, I think that if a character has compelling reasons to write down everything that happens to them, that's sort of a risk factor for an epistolary novel, you know? But if I have infinite note paper, no memory powers, and important things to remember, I sort of have to make a habit of writing down important things, you see.

I guess it really wouldn't be the same from inside, though.

Do you think the Spirit would steer me away from epistolary novels, just in case?

If you'd rather your story not be epistolary, I think you don't have to worry about it being epistolary just because you write a lot of things down. But if you also don't want to have to write a lot of things down, I think it's pretty likely that you'll find memory enhancements you can gain with Anything You Can Do or Dragon Fairy Elf Witch. That kind of little convenience can be overridden by other narrative concerns where necessary, but overriding it isn't often necessary.

Oh, that makes sense.

She totally forgot that some things would need quests. That explains why there aren't memory powers on offer.

She goes back and scratches remembering off of her list.

I guess that just leaves the custom power I had asked you about for doing things you know you need to do, and my list is as complete as it's likely to get.

With several things that will require traveling and meeting people in order to fully explore her powers, there's no way she's going to find anything that works well for "going".

Yes, that's a tricky one. Let me think about it for a moment...

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

I'm not sure that came out exactly how you wanted it; it jumped a bit sideways and landed somewhere unexpected.

"Hmm."

Hmm.

Emily considers the power.

Yeah, I think that does match what I wanted. Assuming "factors such as" is a general description and not a complete list.

She goes through her list once more, flipping back to where the notebook listed point costs for each one.

So I think that's ... 49 points, plus 7 reserved for 56.

Seven squared plus seven is a good number for a protagonist; she's silently pleased.

Yes, it's a general description.

What do you think of your powers so far? Would you like to look through the full list now?

How does she feel about the powers?

I feel ... prepared.

I can't really imagine what other powers I would want; it seems like these ones should get me through pretty much any kind of story.

So, yes, please, let's go through the full list and see what I'm missing.

One moment please! ⏳

Dots of ink trickle through the neck of the hourglass as more ink swirls across subsequent pages, shaping itself into a format that looks typeset rather than handwritten. 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.

Emily absently checks Isekai Roulette as she goes past it; of course she wants to go somewhere amazing as part of her quest.

Oh — wow, that's a lot of options. Um.

She flips through the different sections for a moment before narrowing in on "Yourself: Protection"

I should probably look at these first

She scrawls in the margin.

Her first thought is that Battle Angel sounds fake, because heroes have to be able to lose, so that it's a triumph when they win anyway. On second thought, though, being "glamorously wounded" could definitely mean her defeat. She circles it and adds a little line to a bit of free space.

Just checking — the glamorous wounds from Battle Angel can still be debilitating in the short term, right?

That depends on your preferences and narrative sensibilities! Some people want to live the kind of story where they can be hurt in that kind of short-term way but not longer-term ways, and some people want to live the kind of story where the most serious wounds they can take still leave them on their feet.

Ah, it depends on genre. That makes sense.

Hmm.

I'm not sure exactly what my preference would be. I think it's that ...

I think in a good adventure story — which is what is sounds like this power is suited to — the author has to make you feel as though the heroes could lose, even if you know that they won't. And if there's no chance of being seriously hurt and defeated in a fight, it seems like the fights would ... not matter less, exactly, but it seems like you would pay less attention to them.

... maybe I should come back to this one.

She bites her lip. Getting powers to protect herself is sensible. It's the reasonable, cautious thing to do, and Emily has always been a sensible child — it just doesn't feel right.

She scans over the Iron Will series of powers, and then does another circle-and-line to draw the notebook's attention down here.

These ones seem potentially good. They would make me safer, anyway. But they're also not really how I think resisting poison or mind control should work. The hero should be initially susceptible to the external influence, but then throw it off through immense force of will and dedication during a pivotal moment, before all is lost.

I know I already asked for some custom powers, but if it's not too much trouble, do you think I could get one that's like that, instead? Sort of like It Gets Better — a guarantee that I will completely throw off external influence at the appropriate moment, instead of an up-front immunity.

I see what you mean! I can try to come up with something like that. And don't worry about asking for more custom powers - I like coming up with them! ♡

Oh good. ♡

She stars Battle Angel, to remember to come back to it, briefly contemplates the Slipstream set of powers before deciding that she doesn't really see the need, and then starts thinking about fate.

I'm not sure why these ones

She draws an arrow pointing to the fate cluster.

are protection powers. I think if someone's downfall gets prophesied, they probably had it coming. Are they expensive because they protect against an awful thing that I'm not seeing, or are they expensive because they're 'big'?

What do you mean by 'had it coming'?

I think some people feel like fate itself is an awful thing they need to be protected against, and those are the kind of people who benefit from The Great Equalizer or Star-Straightened. But some people don't feel that way, and would rather have Luck Be A Lady, or no direct influence over fate at all. They are 'big', yes, and that's more or less why they're expensive.

Oh, wait — is Luck Be A Lady only in the protection section because it is related to The Great Equalizer? That makes more sense.

Yes; powers that replace each other take the same place in the structure of the list, including substituting for the purpose of prerequisites, and appearing right next to each other.

That makes sense.

She makes another star next to Luck Be A Lady in case she wants to come back to it. If the replacement power for indelible and so on has a similar cost, that would put her to 51 points (which is 3 times 17: not prime).

The logical approach to look through the rest of the list is probably to start at the top. But she doesn't want to think about the appearance powers. So she flips to the "Yourself: Being" section instead. And blinks.

These first two seem very protection-y

She notes, jotting the words by What's In a Name and Immunity System.

Why is your

I should probably just look through the whole list, since I want to go through them all anyway.

The categories aren't always perfect, because it would be pretty terrible if a power couldn't be made because there wasn't a single category it fit exactly perfectly into, so the powers come first and the categories form imperfectly around them. What's In A Name and Immunity System are both powers with protective aspects, but they fit a little better in Being than Protection so that's where they're listed.

Right, that makes sense.

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

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

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

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

Emily giggles, despite herself.

Yeah, I don't think it would.

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

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

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

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

Hmm.

Hmm.

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

Ideal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She sketches the start of an eye while she thinks.

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

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

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

There's something about that ...

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

That's a good question! Hmm...

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

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

I think I see.

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

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

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

Well Endowed just seems impractical, and she skips it.

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

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

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

Emily flips through to that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have you read Alanna: The First Adventure?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh!

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

This does sound like what I want

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay — then yes, I do want Dramatic Damsel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would this make me a deuteragonist?

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

It could, but you could also meet someone else with the Spirit's power who was an antagonist, or meet someone else with the Spirit's power at a time when both of you are between major storylines so you don't end up as significant figures in each other's stories, or do multiple of those things at different times.

Oh, I see.

None of that really sounds like a problem, per se. She's going to have antagonists no matter what she does, so they might as well be people with similar powers. Really, it sounds like a setup for her to run across her Dark Mirror, which is ...

... well, it's probably not a good thing. But it does sound like the kind of thing that she should deal with. Sparrowhawk tried to put it off, and see how well that went.

As long as I can be the protagonist sometimes, I think that one would be fine, then.

She makes a check next to it. 'Makes the Dream Work', on the other hand, sounds terrible. Emily wants to be able to actually do things and — potential friendship-related femininity powers aside — has never actually been good at making things happen in a team. She crosses it out emphatically.

(Yes, I think that one can be good for the people who like it but it changes a lot about what kinds of stories you can be in, and not everyone is suited to its lifestyle.)

See? The notebook gets it. She puts a heart by the comment, and then continues reading through the list. But not for very long, because the next entry is "Incomplete", which handily derails her train of thought.

There are mind-control powers? Why are there mind-control powers?

I thought these were all ...

She flips back to the top to check something, and then continues.

'Meta-narratively guaranteed'. Why would there be mind control if the Spirit can just set things up on a, uh, 'bigger' level?

Wait — are any of the things I picked so far mind control?

Even though the Spirit's power acts metanarratively, it can still affect how people think, in situations where arranging ahead of time for them to be the sort of person who'd have the right reactions wasn't an option or the person with the power didn't prefer it. I don't think any of the powers you've chosen so far have necessary mind-affecting elements, but if you want to be really sure you don't accidentally pick up anything like that, you can take Nullified.

Emily bites her lip.

There is an obvious right choice here. There's a really obvious right choice here. Mind control is not a heroic power, no matter which way you look at it.

But.

Is there actually a difference between arranging ahead of time for someone to have an opinion, versus changing their mind in the moment? If so, why? And if not, then ruling out mind control means ruling out ... a lot of what the Spirit is offering her, probably.

It's more

It's not

When the Spirit affects how someone is thinking, is that detectable within the story? Like, if they arrange ahead of time for someone to be predisposed to spiders, or something, that's presumably not the kind of thing that magesight could see, or that a diviner would pick up on, or whatever. But if the Spirit had to tweak someone to not be afraid of spiders in the middle of the story, for some reason, what would that ... be like?

That's not exactly what she wants to ask, but it seems like a good segue.

It also wouldn't be the kind of thing that magesight would see or that a diviner would pick up on. Powers can express themselves in many different possible ways; for someone who was hesitant about affecting people's minds directly, a power to make the bearer more interesting might use environmental lighting cues to draw people's attention to them, for example. If a power needed to change someone to not be afraid of spiders in the middle of a story, that might take the form of arranging for that person to have an experience that soothes their fear of spiders, or arranging for them to have their fear of spiders cured by local magic... but if the power really needed that person to stop being afraid of spiders and there weren't any reasonable causal avenues available, they could also just stop being afraid of spiders, without any explanation for how or why that happened.

Taking Nullified means that attention-drawing powers can only use things like lighting cues, and a power trying to cure someone's fear of spiders can only do things like arranging for them to naturally experience situations that lessen their fear of spiders, and if those tools aren't sufficient to get the power's job done then the power's job doesn't get done.

I have seen stage productions.

Uh.

Sorry. I meant — just lighting cues is still pretty powerful.

But I don't know that I like the idea of these powers not being absolute. It's ... good when things are what they say they are.

The drawbacks section says that It Gets Better wins over drawbacks, though. Does that mean that even if I did take this one, mind control might still happen if needed for It Gets Better?

She can't really come up with a situation where that might happen, off the top of her head, but it feels different to choose between "mind control" and "no mind control" versus choosing between "mind control" and "almost no mind control, except when it's really necessary".

It Gets Better is one of the powers that would try hardest not to mind-control anyone if you didn't want it to, if something like that came up... but when there's a choice between It Gets Better succeeding and failing, it succeeds. If you really, really didn't like mind control, though, it might do other weird things in order to succeed without mind-controlling anyone.

She doesn't really, really not like mind control, is the problem. It's the kind of thing that she's obviously supposed to dislike, but when it comes to it she's not really sure she can see the difference between predetermination and spontaneously, undetectably changing someone.

I feel like choosing not to mind control people is the obvious hero's choice. Do you know ...

Do the people who take Incomplete and Nullified ever regret it?

What do you mean when you say the obvious hero's choice?

I think any drawback can end up being regretted if someone takes it when it's not what they want.

I mean that mind control is not a very heroic thing! It's not the choice a hero would make.

So it's like there's an obvious right answer — I know what the right choice to make here is. But I don't—

Her handwriting has gotten rapid and therefore even less readable than normal.

She takes a deep breath.

I'm not doing this right. I'm fishing for a reason that it's okay not to take it, and you're telling me that it's 

And I

She draws a cloud of swirling, intersecting lines that somehow manages to express the feeling of wrestling with a contradictory chain of logical inference.

... I think I need to talk to my parent again.

Okay!

Emily lets out a sigh, and gently closes the notebook.

"Parent!"

"In the living room!"

"What do you think about mind control?" she shouts, running down the stairs in a thunder of feet and fetching up at the other end of the couch from her parent.

"I. Have. Not. Been. Mind. Controlled. Why? Do? You? Ask?" her parent responds in a robotic voice, jerkily moving to slip a bookmark into their book.

"Parent! I'm serious," Emily pouts. And then remembers that this is supposed to be serious and stops pouting to give her parent a look instead.

Reverend Adderson interlaces their fingers.

"I think that there is very little more beautiful than the choices that people will make for themselves, when they are free to do so," they reply. "I also think the term 'mind control' is ... exceptionally vague, because things in the real world are usually more complicated than the phrase makes it seem. What, specifically, has you worried?"

So she explains the drawbacks, trying to figure out how to verbalize her internal struggle.

"Ah."

"Well, I know what I would choose," they eventually conclude. "But I can't say whether it's the right thing for you to choose. Tell me — do you remember when you read about utilitarianism, and I read you The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas?"

Emily tucks her knees up against her chest and hugs them to her, nodding.

"The ones who walk away from Omelas aren't any happier. They don't get to dance in the parades and laugh with their friends. They can't even really escape the knowledge that the child is still there, in the basement, and suffering. But they do have something — they have the knowledge that they, at least, are not complicit in it."

"And it's not really the same choice you're facing here. You really have three options — accept the Spirit's powers as they are, take the drawbacks, or walk away and refuse the gift. But I think there are similarities. The question you need to ask yourself is not 'is mind control right or wrong', the question you need to ask yourself is 'will I be able to be happy, knowing that mind control is sometimes used in support of that happiness?' and 'will I later regret not being one of the ones who would walk away?'"

"Ah."

Emily leans against her parent, and they put an arm around her, and the two of them sit in silence while the shadows grow, thinking heavy thoughts.