He blushes a little more. "Maybe? It um, might be fun." It would be more power over her, and well, mind control often comes paired with mind reading in the stuff he reads. "It might also be too much. But well, um, if you can find out how it works?" 

"I would be very happy to." She kisses his cheek. "In the meantime, you can still ask me questions about my feelings."

"Okay," he says. Is he up for that now? (What would he even ask about?) He's not sure he's up for that now. The last bunch of conversations felt kinda harrowing for some reason. Possibly they were lower stakes than he felt (Rosy loves him, somehow, and he needn't be so worried) but they felt higher stakes. "Is... Is it ok if I want to snuggle and talk about other things right now instead? I can get back to the feelings later." It's probably okay, but also, he hopes it's okay. 

"Of course!"

"Okay, good." Unfortunately, that leaves him with figuring out the topic again this time. Disney movies again, maybe? Possibly this time he can pick one he actually remembers and isn't from far away in his (Aladdin) ...childhood, and also doesn't have um, sexy problems, since apparently that's a constraint his mind needs to be aware of. Also that one doesn't really fit the bill, he doesn't remember the middle of Aladdin at all. Just the um, sexy bits at the end. (Hush, penis, she can see you!) 

Okay, what's the one he's seen most recently then? "Tangled!" he says out loud, remembering. Right, he's actually seen that one a few times! His parents brought it home as a rental and he watched it with them and he was supposed to be too old for Disney movies then (still is, kinda) but he actually really enjoyed that one and ended up seeing it several times. The music was really good! But he's supposed to have an opinion on it. Crap. Um. Fuck. "Why don't people use frying pans instead of swords?" he asks, searching for something and grabbing the first thing that came to mind. "Maybe it was just the movie, but it seemed overall the superior weapon." (This is a dumb topic.) "Um, also, I guess, do you have any other thoughts on it?" 

"I think most of the reason why it seemed like a superior weapon was because of the movie. In real life a frying pan is going to be much more unwieldy than a sword, but in a Disney movie people are remarkably bad at using swords to kill each other and have no comparable reason to be any worse at using frying pans to smack each other comically in the face. Though, also, in real life hitting someone over the head with a frying pan kills them. In conclusion, Disney movies are bad sources of practical information about weapon utility. Anyway, I really liked Tangled! I would love to have a completely impractical amount of magic hair that I could spread throughout my house and climb around on. The healing song effect also sounds very nice. And I think it was really interesting how it explored the way parents like Gothel can really mess up their kids!"

It takes John a moment to remember the tune to the healing song when she mentions it, he hums a couple bars to make it more solid in his mind, remembering the under water scene, and the hand scene... and the scene at the very end with the teardrop.... 

Anyways. What was she talking about? Right. "Yeah they really do show just how affected poor Rapunzel was by her mother." Or wait. "Or well. The person who said she was her mother. Who acted like one. Kind of. The scene where she first leaves the tower has a lot of that, and the hold her mother had on her when they meet... it's a lot. And awful. I really wish parents couldn't do that to their kids. Like, could be stopped and prevented." 

(She gazes adoringly at him when he hums.)

"Yeah," she says, when he's done talking. "I wish that too. It's a complicated problem, though. Like, I think kids who get taken away from their parents and put in foster care also usually have a really bad time? So it's a matter of... is the time they're having with their parents bad enough that something else would probably be better even if it was also bad?"

"The foster system shouldn't be allowed to mess kids up either!" he says, a little more emphatically than intended. "I mean, I guess taking them away from their parents is part of the problem, but I've heard bad things about the foster system too. It's... too important to be allowed to get it wrong, and obviously it's not Mother Gothel levels of wrong most of the time, a lot of problems seem due to upbringing. It would be so much better of things could just be... better, for kids. I don't get why it goes wrong so much." Possibly a little bit more emphatic than he intended but he sees plenty of evidence of this all the time first hand (well second hand, mostly, but he sees first hand the results) and there's nothing he can do about it. And not all of it is because of being brought up in magical families at odds with each other, though that's probably part of it for some. (And that shouldn't be allowed to cause problems either!) 

"Sorry, what's too important to be allowed to get it wrong? Raising children? Who's going to decide what the right way to raise children is and make everybody else get in line? What if they're also wrong? How would you tell?"

"Raising children, yeah, exactly. I don't necessarily know what the right way to do it is, admittedly, but there are plenty of obviously wrong ones. You can tell because..." he doesn't know how to put this into words. "You can see them hurting, I guess? All kinds of hurt but like. Flinching, or reacting, or taking it out on other kids, or... I don't know. But you should be able to tell when someone is hurting, at least, and realize the cause, or figure it out anyways" okay easier said than done but still "and do something about it? I don't know how to make everyone do it, obviously, or even what the right way even is, but it doesn't mean I don't want to." 

"I think it's a lot harder than it looks, to understand what's hurting someone and how to avoid it. And you can't just decide on one way to treat everyone that's the right way, because different people are different and need different things. It's complicated. Even though there are a lot of times where it seems like someone should obviously not be doing what they're doing. I think it's always hard to make a rule that stops people from doing things they shouldn't, without also stopping them from doing things they should."

"I know it's a lot harder than it looks," he says, "and I very much know it's not one size fits all. You need care and personal attention to do it." Also power. His own care isn't enough to do things without anything to back it up, sadly. "It just seems like there really isn't enough of that, you know? There should be a whole bunch of people matching up needs of kids and teens" and adults probably too "with the right person or set of people or circumstance to give them what they need. And they don't. Only in really bad situations. It's just..." he can see in his head what he wants, but there's just no way to make it a reality. "It's just frustrating, seeing it happen, you know? I just wish we cared more." He flops on her, feeling a bit foolish. 

She snuggles him.

"We could make that our project," she suggests. "Figuring out how to fix the systems that are supposed to protect people. It'll be hard, but most things worth doing are hard."

He blinks a bunch of times in surprise. "Our... project? Is that... a thing we're allowed to do? Supposed to do?" He's had no actual leverage to do anything, but with her, and possibly with magic? "Like, I thought you weren't supposed to use magic for anything obvious. I mean I guess this doesn't have to be obvious, but still. Or did you mean without magic, somehow?" He does not like the prospect of him doing this sort of thing without magic. He'd already given up on that, more or less. 

"By 'our project' I mean... what we're trying to do with our lives, I guess. As long as no one finds out that magic was involved, we get a pretty free hand. And I don't necessarily think we'd need to do anything big and showy, I think a lot of the ways I'd use magic for something like this would be... to find things out? To get a sense of what the systems really look like, and where they're failing, and how to help, and who to talk to and what to say to them?"

That makes sense. Unfortunately. He's had thoughts about trying something like that before, but the problem seems just so... exhausting, really. And not in his skill set. Without magic, or mind control... "I would like to do that," he says, "but I just, I don't even know where to start. Or what to do. I guess that's what you're suggesting we use magic for, but... I don't know." He's tired just thinking about it. 

"You don't have to." She snuggles him. "It's pretty early to be thinking about what we want to do with our lives anyway. But... if everything goes well, and I'm starting to suspect it might, you'll have me. And I bet that'll help a lot."

"I hope that helps a lot," he says. "I don't think I'm much help on my own, I've thought about it. But maybe together, we can do something?" He sighs. "When you said 'project' I thought you meant like, some kind of coming of age thing or something. For magic people. If this isn't anything like that it's probably a good idea to do one thing at a time, and think about it later." 

"No, there's no special coming of age for magic people where you fix a big societal problem. If there was I think the world would look very different."

She hesitates.

"...I should probably also mention, since it came up... if we do try to fix any big societal problems, there are people who might object. The kind of people who make the Veil Laws. We should not mess with them. It would end badly. The Blakes are big news in Lakeview; we're not big news globally. That's not to say that someone would definitely stop us, just that, if they warn us off something, we should listen, even if... even if we're doing good in the world and they want us to stop because the good we're doing is interfering with the bad they're doing."

It didn't have to be a societal problem, but he doesn't want to quibble about the details at the moment. Especially with the other things she's mentioned. 

"These are the people who will do some bad thing to you if I talk too much, and it's so bad that you don't want to tell me about it, yes? I'm still concerned about that, by the way. I think that may be what you want but it's still very concerning."

"I'm not keeping it from you so that you'll be more concerned. It's more that... I'm not sure where to start if I was going to try to explain? Like, mundane society has this shared concept of what happens if you do crimes. You'll probably get arrested, there'll probably be a trial, you might get fined or go to jail, sometimes people get sentenced to rehab or community service or put in a mental hospital because they weren't responsible for their actions. Magical society has... different shared concepts from that. They're less clear and more complicated and a lot of what I know about it is hard-to-pin-down vibes and I actually do think that you'd end up way more concerned than you needed to be if I tried to explain it all, the same way that if you were trying to explain the mundane legal system to somebody and got sidetracked into prison conditions and mental hospitals, they'd probably get really freaked out and might not listen when you said that most of the time most people who don't do anything really attention-getting can avoid that stuff just fine."

(Is there something wrong with prison conditions and mental hospitals? The people who are there are supposed to be there, right? Well, most of the time, anyways. It's not somewhere he'd want to be.) 

"I guess if you're worried that I'll be more concerned than I need to be, then sure? Like, I don't know, no one goes to jail for jaywalking even though it's technically illegal," right? "but if you tell people who don't understand that they might get worried? That sort of thing? I guess that makes sense. Though the fact that we should stop if they warn us off is still concerning." It is. And also the unclear consequences have left him still worried. He's going to keep being extra careful about this, he doesn't want Rosy to be hurt (or taken away from him). But her explanation has left him a little less concerned about terrible consequences. 

"Yes, I think you have approximately the right idea." Snuggle. "...sorry I seem to be totally incapable of staying away from difficult subjects."

He snuggles her back. "I think that's probably okay," he says. "Unless you'd rather talk about easier things? I can try and dredge up more Disney movies if you want?" He's pretty sure she's saying that worried about him and not about her, and so his voice has a note of humour in it.