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On Monday, Bella arrives at school completely and stably human shaped, with everything she has learned about critters (except for her own species, which she isn't liable to forget) written down as margin notes on a page reminding her to ask Darren about D&D and filler decoy notes about that. She's probably going to have invent an actual cipher alphabet or something eventually but for the time being she thinks this will probably do for casual inspection.
She sits next to Darren in English.
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shesepankh
castmyown
"Where are you selfish? Not wanting to spend months doing nothing but looking for runes? That's sanity, not selfishness."
shesepankh
"I'm selfish in general. Everything is about what I want. It's just that I happen to want nice things for other people a lot of the time - the mental framing is still very self-centered."
castmyown
"... I'm not sure I understand? You want selfless things for selfish reasons? Is that what you mean?"
shesepankh
"Something like that. I want, like, world peace, in roughly the same way that I might want a sandwich. 'Selfish' is descriptive, here, not a value judgment."
castmyown
"That's... Quite different from how I think. But it's still rather nice," points out Darren.
castmyown
Darren shrugs. "That's fine? I like you as you are. I mean, I came to the same general conclusion, so it's like - different variables adding up to the same sum."
shesepankh
"The Dungeons and Dragons and the notetaking could not possibly do by itself." She turns a page. "Gimme a rune."
castmyown
"I like to be thorough."
He gives her a rune! This is like the first one in that it doesn't have the percentages of strength in separate effects - though he does give the rune itself a strength percentage.
"The percentages are kind of arbitrarily measured, because there isn't a truly 'basic' rune to measure by. I use the first one I showed you as a base since it's common and easy, and worked from there," he explains.
He gives her a rune! This is like the first one in that it doesn't have the percentages of strength in separate effects - though he does give the rune itself a strength percentage.
"The percentages are kind of arbitrarily measured, because there isn't a truly 'basic' rune to measure by. I use the first one I showed you as a base since it's common and easy, and worked from there," he explains.
shesepankh
"Makes sense." She takes diligent notes in the format she seems to be using. "I'm making a batch of flashcards when I get home. And when I have more of them down I'm making charts."
castmyown
"I've got some flashcards, but when I tried to make a chart I needed bigger paper and couldn't manage it. Maybe if we get something like the huge rolls of colored paper at school, like the ones we use in projects. Or a really big chalkboard or something."
shesepankh
"Excel spreadsheet. I told Charlie I wanted my own laptop for my birthday, I will tell him I need it early for magic reasons."
castmyown
"But then I can't draw the runes in Excel! I'd have to name them. Some of them I know the names of, but a lot of them I haven't bothered to name and just go with what they look like because I've been working solo. Also it would annoy me to meet another magic person and not have consistent names for them."
castmyown
"Probably, but then I have to have a scanner or try to draw in Paint or something. Which I can't do, because drawing with a mouse is annoying."
castmyown
"Maybe you can, but I'm a perfectionist and them being too squiggly would really bother me."
castmyown
"I'll have to see how squiggly your runes are. Which, by the way, I will make you draw them, later, and correct handwriting. So that'll be fun."
shesepankh
"What general class of problems results if a rune is drawn wrong? It's like it's not there, or you get an unpredictable subset of effects, or it just straight-up explodes, or what?"