"I'm certainly considering it!"

"We should, regardless of perk trades, figure out something it's possible to save the world from that will not actually destroy the world if we fuck it up. Also, what happens if I also take There's Two? What if we all take There's Two, do we get a secret bonus fourth heroine?"

"I'd love to see how you plan to convince me to go along with this notion."

"I'm not necessarily planning on it, I'm just curious."

"My file says there is a secret fourth heroine option, but that I'm not supposed to tell you what it is unless all three of you do pick the flaw," she says. "It does not, however, say that I can only tell you after you've finalized your choices and can't say 'hm nope not gonna take that flaw after all.'"

"Then let us suppose I am taking There's Two."

"Yeah, I'll go for it."

"The secret fourth heroine is...'Defector from Decadence.' If anyone has taken the flaw 'Save the World,' this heroine will originally have been a member of whatever group the world needs saving from. Otherwise, if a Hero's Daughter is present, this heroine will be associated with the previous generation's peril. The trope of the innocent who turns on her people when she discovers their wickedness is a long and storied one. This heroine's competence relative to the basic three may vary wildly, but she is almost guaranteed to be weirder than they are." 

"Well sign me up!"

"I suppose there is a certain appeal. I do like how she ties in with Save the World. What do you suppose we should be saving the world from? Apparently it needs to be a faction with a population who can defect at will."

"And they're decadent, allegedly!"

"How about, like, an invading transdimensional army. Who will if they win conquer us and possibly be culturally imperialist at us but not, like, enslave us or anything."

"I could get behind that."

"It offers intriguing possibilities."

"If we're doing the Poor Princess I need to figure out something creative...what if, in the first generation, my parents were named the king and queen because of some trait they have, and a noble child has been born to an angel couple who has that same trait." 

"Like what kind of trait?"

"I dunno, special markings? No, that seems too shapeshiftable...maybe nobles have an eclectic collection of minor superpowers, like, everybody can do the standard things like shapeshifting and opening their pocket dimensions, but this family can glow and this family has supernaturally good singing voices, and there can be like. A royalty-marking minor superpower. What would be a good royalty-marking minor superpower. I'm tempted to go with like...a version of telekinesis where when you stop paying attention to a thing it stays where you last put it, relative to yourself, and the crowns are zero percent designed to like actually fit on someone's head."

"...I like it, and I would like to add that it should be the royal superpower partly because angels have the ability to shapeshift into forms where the different parts of their body aren't physically connected to each other, like in that weird art where they're just a bunch of interlocking rings of eyes with some wings hanging around nearby. Because I just think that would be really cool. And it makes a nice thematic association between telekinesis that lets you do that with stuff and shapeshifting that lets you do that with parts of yourself."

"Agreed, reluctantly, despite the further parallels to foreign myths."

"I love it. Are there any Thulic myths you want to reference?"

"It's not so much that I have references of my own I'd like to include as that I resent the unspoken implication that the shared cultural background of North America and Europe is the universal shared cultural background. I'm sure you'd also find it obnoxious if I declared that prospective angels should have to take the þainneið in order to join the ranks and then refused to explain what that meant and implied you were ignorant for not already knowing. Not that I am accusing any of you of doing that, particularly, just that—that is the experience I have, that is the context in which my perspective was formed."

Wince. "Sorry. Uh, I am happy to explain anything you want explained? What's the þainneið?"

She shakes her head. "I don't want explanations, I want to not need the explanations because no one is imposing their own mythology on our shared creation in the implicit assumption that it is everyone's mythology about which everyone feels equally positively and knows equally much."

A genteel sigh.

"The þainneið is an oath taken by prospective thanes of Thule and I have belatedly realized that I rather backed myself into a corner with that one because if I explain what it means you will both no doubt think that it is a fantastic basis for angelic membership, with a few minor edits."

"...come on, are you really going to say that and then not explain?"

A less genteel sigh.