What kinds of problems are you expecting?

Well, my main problem is I don't know what to expect!

She underlines the bit about glowing eyes and dramatically hazy vision.

I didn't know that glowing eyes might make it hard to see! And I don't know what times "dramatically hazy vision" is "cool" and "narratively appropriate"! What if I take a power that might make me have that, but I don't know when to expect it?

Oh, I see!

Does it help that the metanarrative protection is based on what you think makes for a good story? So if you don't think it's cool if you're reading something where a character's eyes start to glow and this gives them bad vision, that specific thing won't happen.

I still don't know a lot about stories, though. I haven't read very many so I don't know what kinds of things might happen in them. But…

She circles the whole preamble.

Is this saying that the powers have no downsides and they won't make bad things happen ever?

Not exactly, because different people count different things as downsides. That's what the Well Endowed example is for. I think that broadly what the metanarrative protection does is it makes sure the powers do exactly what they say they do—you asked about non-obvious side effects earlier and I think broadly the answer to that question is… there isn't really a way to promise you that nothing bad will ever happen after you take your powers. But what the Spirit can promise is that it isn't trying to trick you with the powers.

Okay.

Maybe this will make more sense when she looks at the powers. Then she can ask questions that aren't hypothetical!

She's immediately thrown for a loop by the Destination options. At first she's ready to check Stay Put, since she does not have Somewhere In Mind, but… that last one sounds so exciting. A little scary, to be sure, but she bets that the Spirit would send her somewhere with lots of interesting people…

Leaving the other one-like-her behind. And she doesn't think he would be able to learn how to fend for himself the way she had to.

How come all the Destinations are mutually exclusive? Why can't I Stay Put for a while and then go somewhere else, or have the Spirit send me somewhere and then come back?

I think there are a couple of different reasons.

One is that when the Spirit empowers you, it's giving you the power to shape the story of your life and self on your own, rather than shaping it for you. All of the choices you make, including where to go, are ways of helping you decide what you want that story to look like. So choosing a destination isn't locking you into one setting for your story, it's choosing how you want it to start!

Another is that when the Spirit empowers you and sends you to your destination, if you choose to go somewhere else, it's all one thing. This lets the Spirit be more effective with its power.

I do want to stress that choosing to have the Spirit send you somewhere doesn't keep you from coming back and that choosing to stay here doesn't keep you from going to different worlds in the future, especially if those options are important to you.

Well that just makes her feel even more indecisive!

She should back up and think about this logically. If choosing a destination is about choosing a beginning, then that means that if she knows she'll spend some time at home and some time in crazy weird places, she should choose which one she wants to happen first.

Can the Spirit mess with time so that if I go somewhere else I'll come back before anything bad happens here?

There are a lot of powers that do things with time! And there are a lot of ways of going to a different world that make it so when you come back, time has passed much slower here than it did while you were away.

So she could go somewhere totally unknown!

But… she thinks that she would feel bad, on the inside, if she left him behind without knowing how he was doing. She's willing to trust that the Spirit would help send her back before anything bad happened, but it still feels better to stick with him for now.

How do I tell you what choice I make? Do I just write it down? And can I change my mind about a choice after?

You can put a mark in the box next to a destination, power, or drawback! And if you want some options more than others, I can keep track of a bunch of different point totals at once. You can change your mind as many times as you want.

That's pretty convenient.

She puts a little X in the box next to Stay Put. And then she flips the page to look at the actual powers!

Why are the first powers the ones about how she looks. Is "how she looks" even a power? She can change that pretty easily already…

Are A Thousand Ships and A Hundred Ships like Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, and Perfect Nails? Do they make it so my face doesn't have to be "physically or logistically plausible"? Also, why are A Thousand Ships and A Hundred Ships different? Is there also a Five Hundred Ships power?

… That last question was frivolous and she doesn't even know what a Five Hundred Ships power would look like, nor does she particularly want it. But it's funny, so she leaves it be.

Yes, if there's a way of having a beautiful face that doesn't technically follow laws of physics, biology, or whatever else, A Thousand Ships and A Hundred Ships let it happen anyway!

There are some groups of powers that do basically the same thing, or accomplish basically the same goal, but there are still important differences in the exact things that the powers can do or how they work, usually because someone at some point wanted a power that was almost the same as an existing power. Right now there isn't any Five Hundred Ships power, but if you'd like I can think about it!

Oh, I don't really want that. I was just curious.

She looks at Perfect Hair and Perfect Nails a little more. She doesn't really have fingernails or toenails right now. She's not totally sure she needs them, or if they'd make her feel more connected to the people who lived a long time ago, the humans. She knows that the *teeth* did…

She puts a ~ in both boxes, to represent that she maybe wants them.

When she does this, the 0/70 in the page corner changes:

X 0/70
~ 3/70

Neat!

She immediately Xes Size Difference. Technically she can change her size the same way she can change other parts of her body, but it takes a lot longer and it would be super useful to be able to grow and shrink in a hurry.

Well Endowed and Hollow Leg don't particularly interest her. Inner Strength and Lightfoot are really cool, though. So… ~ for all four, she guesses?

… She is definitely not even close to a seventh of the way into the powers list.

What happens if the powers I choose add up to more than 70 points?

X 2/70
~11/70

If your powers add up to more points than you have access to, I won't be able to empower you. There aren't any other consequences.

Okay. Can you count the X powers in the ~ total?

The counts silently update to

X 2/70
~ 13/70

Okay, cool.

… she decides to add another wanting-level, to distinguish between the way she feels about Perfect Nails and the way she feels about the Well Endowed power group.

Once she has explained the updated categorization system to the notebook, her new totals are

X ‎2/70
! 10/70
~ 13/70

Okay, that feels correct.

The Dressing Room powers give her the same feeling that the Well Endowed powers did. Well, Undressing Room isn't super tempting.

How many of the cool powers like Inner Strength and Pocket Dimension have silly requirements like Hollow Leg and Dressing Room?

X 2/70
! 14/70
~19/70

I think what powers are cool and what powers are silly depends a lot on the person who's thinking about them and their personal priorities! And a lot of the time, when one power requires another power, it's usually because the required power is more central to the Spirit, or because it comes with guarantees that, if you didn't have them, might make using the second power cause a lot of problems for you. And, of course, you've got powers where the second power is more straightforwardly an upgrade to the first one.

So Well Endowed is a requirement for Hollow Leg because of the first thing, and Hollow Leg is a requirement for Inner Strength and Lightfoot because it provides a baseline of safety, by letting you have a body that can do things that aren't physically plausible. The same applies to Dressing Room and Pocket Dimension.

Does that help?

It makes sense, although it does make her worry a little about the Spirit's priorities.

If there's a power for something that I can already do, do I still have to take the power?