no vices for you to exploit | Glowfic Constellation

these-are-the-voyages

Awwwww what a considerate thing to ask about. Her first instinct is to ask for the whole list at once so it's all in a block and can easily be referred back to; her second instinct is to get it piecemeal so discussion of each section is next to that section. After a bit of deliberation she goes with:

If you don't mind my copying parts of the list to later pages for easy reference, I'd like to get the whole thing at once to start.

Then a moment later she adds, in smaller handwriting:

Also does anything bad happen if we run out of pages?

because the notebook has a lot of pages but Brenda has a lot of capacity for dithering over something this important.

mysterious and powerful

I never run out of pages! Indexing and shuffling them gets a little tricky after a few hundred though. But as long as you don't mind me replacing old pages with new ones I can just keep doing that forever, no problem at all!

Just a moment while I format that list... ⏳

The page after the one they're currently writing on, and quite a few pages after that, begin to ripple slightly with shifting ink. Rather than being written on by an invisible pen, it's like they're being altered in some sort of cosmic graphic design program. (Also, the ink in that little stylized hourglass is slowly trickling to the bottom.)

these-are-the-voyages

Oooooooh. It's like the magic notebook equivalent of watching someone do gymnastics: she has no idea how difficult this is for the notebook but Brenda sure can't do it so she's impressed. If the stylized hourglass is indicating that the wait will be on the scale of single-digit minutes she'll just watch the whole time.

mysterious and powerful

The wait is on the scale of about ninety seconds before the hourglass finishes loading and the notebook scribbles a quick (All done!) next to it.

On the opposite page, the beginning of the list is neatly formatted, with a little circle in the corner of the page holding a (0/70) point counter. A preamble paragraph in a little box before the main list reads,

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.

After that it gets long. (The point counter is included on every page for easy reference.)

Interestingly, the font in these sections is different—more like something you'd get out of a printer, less like the notebook's usual elegant and beautiful but still visibly humanlike handwriting. The voice it's written in is pretty different, too. From the beginning of the preamble paragraph to the end of the Drawbacks section, it's like the notebook is copying all this from elsewhere rather than composing it independently.

Destinations

You must choose exactly one Destination.

Name: Stay Put - Cost: 0 ☐
You're just going to take these powers and keep on keeping on right where you are.

Name: Somewhere In Mind - Cost: 0 ☐
You have a destination you want to go to, or another CYOA you're pairing this with. You can choose any place, real, historical, fictional, or made up in your own head right now, and the Spirit will take you there. After that, you're on your own as far as further interdimensional travel.

Name: Isekai Roulette - Cost: 0 ☐
Trust to the will of the Spirit and let it take you where you need to go. It will look at far more options than you could ever know about, and pick something that's likely to be even better for you than whatever you would have chosen on your own.

Yourself

These powers affect your own self and nature, without direct effects on other people. Some of them are prerequisites for powers in the later Power of Friendship section.

Name: A Thousand Ships - Cost: 1 ☐
Your face is simply exquisite, an ideal of feminine beauty. There are many possible ideals of feminine beauty, and yours is whichever one speaks most deeply to your soul. Others may match your beauty in their own way, but never exceed it.

Name: What's In A Name - Cost: 1 ☐
Magic to divine true names will accept whatever alias you choose to think of as your true name. Magic to use your true name against you will fail.

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

Name: Emerald Orbs - Cost: 2 ☐
At all times, your eyes are exactly the right colour. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. Your eyes can be ANY colour this way. Lightless black voids? Brilliant white stars? Limpid pools of endless sapphire? They will look exactly the way you'd want them to look if you were writing a self-insert fanfic about this exact moment of your life.

Name: Perfect Hair - Cost: 2 ☐
At all times, you have exactly the right hairstyle. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It is not limited to physically or logistically plausible hairstyles.

Name: Size Difference - Cost: 2 ☐
At all times, you are exactly the right height. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It will usually keep any height changes fairly subtle, but at dramatic moments you might discover yourself able to shrink to the size of a bee or grow to the size of a giant.

Name: Dressing Room - Cost: 3 ☐
No matter how ridiculous your outfit, it will stay pristine and perfect, unless it would be more dramatic for you to be artfully bedraggled. You can use any quiet moment to yourself to quick-change your clothes, shoes, nails, and hairstyle into a completely new look. (You cannot change your hair length or colour this way without Perfect Hair, but you can braid or style it.)

Name: Personal Hygiene - Cost: 1 ☐
You are always clean and fresh, never needing to use a bath or toilet.

Name: Like Roses - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Personal Hygiene)
You smell lovely. Your scent is unique to you, and may involve any combination of warm spices, floral notes, petrichor, or other things you think smell good. You do not need any justification for why you smell like this.

Name: Just A Little Longer - Cost: 1 ☐
If you push yourself, you can keep doing any task or working on any project indefinitely, visibly strained but never impaired by injury or fatigue. As soon as you stop, you'll collapse with exhaustion and sleep for up to a full day to regain your strength. This only works when what you're doing is personally important to you.

Name: Immunity System - Cost: 3 ☐
You can't get sick or poisoned. You can still use recreational drugs and alcohol normally, but can't overdose.

Name: My Ears Are Burning - Cost: 6 ☐
You always know exactly what people are thinking, as long as it's about you. This effect is not telepathy and is not blocked by effects that block telepathy. It applies even to people you can't perceive normally. You are never impaired by the flood of information.

Name: Well Endowed - Cost: 1 ☐
You have a generous figure, whether that's a classic hourglass or more of a well-rounded look; you can choose the details. Your endowments maintain a state of perfect grace and beauty at all times, never troubling you with uncomfortable bounces or uninvited jiggles.

Name: Hollow Leg - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Well Endowed.)
Regardless of your diet and exercise habits, your body maintains the physique and silhouette you prefer. Lack of visible muscle never impairs your strength or endurance. As your preferences change, so will your body; you are no longer bound to the generous figure stipulated by Well Endowed.

Name: Inner Strength - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Hollow Leg.)
You are implausibly, superhumanly strong, with endurance and toughness to match. You might have to strain a little to lift and carry at the same level as construction equipment, or deal with lightly scraped knuckles if you punch as hard as a battering ram.

Name: Battle Angel - Cost: 1 ☐
Somehow, you never get significantly injured in a fight, unless it's a very dramatic and plot-relevant fight in which case you might be glamorously wounded and pick up a cool new scar.

Name: Battle Demon - Cost: 1 ☐
You have an unerring intuition for gaps in an opponent's defenses, though it may be beyond your power to exploit them.

Name: Battle Maiden - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Battle Angel and Battle Demon)
No matter what kind of fight you're getting in, you're always a match for even the most skilled opponent.

Name: Making Ends Meet - Cost: 1 ☐
You have enough money to sustain a comfortable lifestyle. It comes from a source you don't have to pay much attention to, like a job with almost no responsibilities, a large inheritance, or a noble title.

Name: Motherlode - Cost: 2 ☐
(Requires Making Ends Meet.)
You have enough money to sustain a fairly extravagant lifestyle. It doesn't come from anywhere, you just have it.

Name: Four Star Daydream - Cost: 4 ☐
(Requires Motherlode.)
The answer to "can I afford that" is "yes".

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.

Name: Omniglot - Cost: 3 ☐
You learn languages insanely, ludicrously fast. You know exactly what any word said to you means, and you make strangely accurate guesses about how to phrase things you're trying to say. You never forget any grammar or vocabulary you learn.

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.

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.

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. "

Power of Friendship

These powers affect how others see you and how you interact with them.

In general, effects that describe others' reactions (like their attention being drawn to you by Mysterious Allure, or their sympathy being provoked by Tragic Backstory) operate on a metanarrative rather than a causal level. They are not mind control, and are not blocked by effects that block mind control.

Your "true love" is anyone you're pursuing a serious romantic relationship with. You can have as many of these as you like, but your feelings for all of them must be genuine.

Name: Mysterious Allure - Cost: 5 ☐
There's just something about you. People are drawn to you, fascinated by you. You tend to be the most interesting person in the room unless something really unusual is going on.

Name: Captive Audience - Cost: 3 ☐
As long as you have genuine interest in what you're talking about, no one will ever get bored of listening to you talk about it.

Name: Blackout Binge - Cost: 2 ☐
(Requires Immunity System)
Heavy use of recreational intoxicants puts you in a carefree, uninhibited state in which it will be universally agreed afterward that you were not responsible for your actions.

Name: Disney Princess - Cost: 2 ☐
Animals are always friendly to you, especially the small cute ones. You can effectively tame any animal by feeding it and speaking gently to it.

Name: Best Friend - Cost: 3 ☐
You have an animal companion, like a horse or a cat or a raven. They have a cool name and maybe a few nifty cosmetic quirks, like glowing purple eyes. Their loyalty is infinite and they often hold the key to solving whatever situation you're up against. You can understand them perfectly even though they can't speak, and they always know exactly what you mean even if all you do is glance at them meaningfully.

Name: Bestest Friend - Cost: 5 ☐
(Requires Best Friend)
Your animal companion is a fully magical creature, like a dragon or unicorn. They have magnificent supernatural powers ready to be used at your command. They can speak every language you can, but can still communicate with you on a deeper level of mutual love and understanding.

Name: Generosity - Cost: 3 ☐
Your friends love to get you presents. They'll try to pick out things you'll like, but their success depends on how well they know you.

Name: Helpfulness - Cost: 4 ☐
Your friends love to do you favours. They'll volunteer eagerly whenever you need help with small tasks.

Name: Cuddle Buddies - Cost: 2 ☐
Your friends love to hug and cuddle you. Even someone who ordinarily isn't into that sort of thing will make an exception for you.

Name: Flattery - Cost: 1 ☐
Your friends love to compliment you and tell you all about how much they like you and why.

Name: Quality Time - Cost: 2 ☐
Your friends love to hang out with you and spend time together, even if you're not doing anything interesting or important.

Name: Agree to Agree - Cost: 4 ☐
You can always convince your friends to see your point of view about things like politics and philosophy. They might have a few quibbles here and there, but they'll see how right you are once you explain where you're coming from in enough detail.

Name: Love Interest - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires A Thousand Ships and Mysterious Allure)
Anyone you fall for will inevitably like you back. They may not necessarily act on their feelings, but the potential will be there.

Name: Love Triangle - Cost: 2 ☐
(Requires Love Interest)
People you fall for will be open to dating you even if they already have another serious relationship, or other circumstances that would ordinarily interfere, like a demanding career or a vow of chastity. This may cause drama, but it'll blow over quickly and there won't be any serious problems.

Name: Love Dodecahedron - Cost: 5 ☐
(Requires Love Triangle)
When you fall for someone who is already seriously dating or even married, your romantic rival will be open to allowing their partner to date you, and may even want to date you themselves.

Name: Time Enough For Love - Cost: 5 ☐
No matter how many people you want to date or be close friends with, you will somehow find the time to hang out with all of them and express your love and care. This power can only be used for relationship activities and not for anything else you might want to use the ability to be in two places at once for.

Name: I Can Fix Them - Cost: 5 ☐
Regardless of how morally despicable someone is, your love can and will reform them into a genuinely good, kind, upstanding person who regrets their evil deeds.

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: Planned Parenthood - Cost: 1 ☐
You can only have children if you actively and specifically want to. Your partners will understand this and not worry too much about it.

Name: Two Become One - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Planned Parenthood)
When you have sex, it is always special and wonderful and beautiful. No one ever elbows anyone in the face or makes undignified noises.

Name: Bop It - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Two Become One)
The mysteries of another's body are an open book to you, and you always know exactly how to move and touch in order to please someone in bed.

Name: The Princess And The Dragon - Cost: 3 ☐
No matter who or what you're trying to sleep with, the logistics will all work out, somehow. Arbitrary differences in size, biology, temperature, substrate, and underlying physics can be gotten around with sufficient creativity and determination.

Name: GGG - Cost: 4 ☐
Your true love will be willing to try just about anything you suggest in bed, and if you really enjoy it, they'll really enjoy it too.

Name: Before Your Eyes - Cost: 4 ☐
In your presence, people become willing to experiment sexually in ways they normally wouldn't. For some reason this applies especially well to boys kissing each other.

Name: Fated Lovers - Cost: 3 ☐
You will meet someone who will go on to become your true love. If you enter a specific universe with a specific target in mind, you'll meet that person under favourable circumstances, and if it doesn't work out with them, this power will keep introducing you to new possibilities until you find someone who's right for you. If you're the sort of person who can have multiple true loves, you'll keep meeting new ones until you have enough.

Name: Sorry About That - Cost: 3 ☐
Your true love will be extremely forgiving. Even if you make mistakes or act thoughtlessly toward them, a simple apology will mend things between you. They may expect you to try to improve, but they'll be infinitely patient about how fast that improvement takes place.

Name: Excuse Me - Cost: 5 ☐
(Requires Sorry About That)
All your friends will be just as forgiving as your true love.

Name: Tragic Backstory - Cost: 8 ☐
(Requires Excuse Me)
Something terrible happened to you in your past. Anyone who hears about it immediately forgives you for any and all bad behaviour in the present. They will not expect you to grow or change, and will continue sympathetically excusing whatever you do indefinitely.

Name: Sense of Style - Cost: 4 ☐
People who are romantically interested in you will start dressing more to your taste. The more romantically compatible they are, the better they'll be able to guess exactly what to wear to catch your eye.

Name: Bonus Style Points - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Sense of Style)
Luck will shine on anyone trying to dress up for you. They'll get their hands on outfits they couldn't normally afford, their clothes will fit better, and in extreme cases they might even find themselves able to change shape, sex, or species—though only in ways that make them more, not less, comfortable in their own skin.

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: Famous - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Popular.)
Wherever you go, people really take to you. You're the subject of constant gossip and most people have heard of you before you meet them. People you've never met will get crushes on you.

Name: Undiplomatic Immunity - Cost: 6 ☐
You are above the law. Any crimes you commit will be overlooked by the authorities. Note that, if you do enough crime that you start looking more like an invading army, local governments will still feel free to declare war.

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.

Drawbacks

These options grant points rather than costing them. They represent inconveniences or mitigations of existing advantages.

Name: Decorative - Grants: +1 ☐
You are unfailingly cute and pretty and feminine at all times, in all circumstances. You cannot wear insufficiently pretty clothes. You cannot make insufficiently pretty noises. You cannot ugly cry.

Name: Beauty Is A Curse - Grants: +1 ☐
(Requires A Thousand Ships)
No, you don't understand. Beauty IS a curse. People will NOT stop bringing it up. Everyone you meet just has to point out how pretty you are. This will never stop happening. Even the most tactful people find it slipping out subtly, as remarks about the luster of your hair or the depth of your eyes.

Name: Plain Jane - Grants: +2 ☐
No matter what you look like, nor how many times people tell you you're beautiful, when you look in the mirror all you see is imperfections. You will never be fully satisfied with your appearance on an instinctive level.

Name: Style of Sisyphus - Grants: +1 ☐
Anytime you settle on a personal style that works well for you, soon afterward you'll encounter inspiration for another style that you like even better. You might end up cycling between different fashions, or trying to incporporate them all into a single outfit (and then finding another inspiration and having to start all over again).

Name: There's Another One - Grants: +3 ☐
You are not the only vessel of the Spirit. You might meet someone else with similar powers to yours; you might even meet more than one. Your susceptibility to one another's powers will be governed by the narrative.

Name: Incomplete - Grants: +5 ☐
About half of people you encounter will be immune to all effects listed under Power of Friendship, and about half of those who remain will see reduced effects. You can do nothing to change this.

Name: Green With Envy - Grants: +6 ☐
People are so eager to be your friend that they become bitter and vindictive when denied the opportunity. You can tear apart long-established friend groups if you aren't careful to give everyone equal attention, and sometimes even then. This effect is particularly harsh around people you're dating.

Name: You Ruin Them - Grants: +3 ☐
Once someone has dated, slept with, or even shared a deep and longing glance across a room with you, their heart is never fully satisfied with anyone else. Other relationships pale in comparison to what they could have, or imagine they could have, with you.

Name: Jilted Lovers - Grants: +4 ☐
When you break up with someone, they become monomaniacally obsessed with getting back together. If you take Realism, this will absolutely escalate to violent stalking.

Name: The Crazy Train - Grants: +6 ☐
Powers that you should be able to control directly or influence by your mood and preferences (like Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, Emerald Orbs, or What's In A Name) instead answer only to the narrative, which is still using your aesthetics but might not necessarily have your best interests in mind. Combines... interestingly... with Realism.

Name: They'll Know - Grants: +8 ☐
This drawback lifts the veil that discourages people from realizing how your powers affect the world around them and their own minds. Warning: this knowledge can cause a lot of trouble.

Name: Realism - Grants: +20 ☐
Give up your metanarrative protection. Although your individually selected powers still work as described, the invisible synergies that protect you from, say, gaining violent stalkers through Mysterious Allure or being genuinely traumatized by your Tragic Backstory are removed. Additionally, though effects like I Can Fix Them still operate, they may take considerably more effort, care, thought, and narrative investment on your part.

these-are-the-voyages

Brenda starts reading the "Yourself" section and realizes two things approximately simultaneously. One: a lot of these options kind of require going to another universe unless she wants to deal with some seriously awkward questions in this one. Two: she would not have described herself as particularly happy with her body before this, but apparently it's the devil she knows or something, because the ideas of replacing her face, changing her voice, letting her eyes or hair be determined by a magic algorithm she can only partially control, or becoming "well endowed" all make her go "aaaaaaa" internally.

Okay Brenda, relax, let's think about these one at a time.

A Thousand Ships: no. It's not that her face is all that great but it's her face, she wants to be recognizable as herself.

What's In A Name: either does nothing or is a useful defensive power, depending on what magic systems she encounters. Tentative yes unless she runs short on points and/or decides to stay in this universe. Actually make that "unless she runs short on points" full stop; she clearly doesn't know about all the things that are in this universe.

Angelic Tones: some of the same problem as A Thousand Ships, but less so, and being able to sing would be really cool. She goes to the end of the list, trying not to get distracted by later options and only failing a few times, and writes

Would Angelic Tones make me good at singing, or just give me a good range if I learned how myself?

Emerald Orbs: Okay, once she's had a chance to chill out about potentially looking totally different, this is actually pretty awesome. It probably isn't exploitable for eagle eyes or night vision or shrimp colors, but even if not: pretty cool. And it's worth checking, so:

Does Emerald Orbs affect vision in positive ways, like getting better night vision by swapping to cat eyes, or is it 100% cosmetic?

It might be rude to use percents with a person who isn't familiar with multiplication, oops.

Perfect Hair: potentially amazing if it means not having to spend ages washing and brushing her hair every day anymore, but Dressing Room is the same thing with better control and also freedom from clothes shopping forever.

Size difference: could be handy but not a priority.

Dressing Room and Personal Hygiene: yes unless there are really amazing things she needs the points for.

If I take both Dressing Room and Personal Hygiene, can I use that to always have clean clothes without needing to do laundry?

Can I check all the boxes that seem potentially interesting and then uncheck some of them later?

mysterious and powerful

Angelic Tones will make it much easier to learn to sing but you'll still have to practice if you want to get better!

Emerald Orbs can sometimes improve your vision but only if it's very narratively appropriate. You might try Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, later on! That can give you all sorts of interesting benefits, and if you have it and Emerald Orbs then you'll definitely get all the eye-related benefits you want!

Yes, with Dressing Room and Personal Hygiene you and your clothes will be ✨free from laundry forever✨! If that's what you want. You can still do laundry for fun if laundry is fun for you.

You can check any boxes you want, and either erase checkmarks you don't want or scribble over them and I'll clean them up for you! Your choices are only finalized once you tell me very clearly that you want to finalize them. Before that, you can try out whatever you want and see how the points add up!

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No more laundry or clothes shopping or tangled hair ever again, YEAH! Checkmarks go next to Personal Hygiene, Dressing Room, What's in a Name, and Emerald Orbs, the latter of which also gets a little asterisk which means "only if she's leaving the universe".

Next batch!

Like Roses: Meh.

Just A Little Longer: depending on implementation details this is either deeply cool, or will lead to her spending way too much time unconscious after getting too in the zone about random shit.

How long would I be able to work on something without triggering the unconsciousness from Just A Little Longer? Is it however long I could have worked on the thing without magic help, or a set time, or something else?

Immunity System: YES. Checkmarked.

My Ears Are Burning: NO. Horrible bad option for secret agents and people who hate everyone especially themselves.

The entire Well Endowed/Hollow Leg/Inner Strength sequence: very all-or-nothing; Well Endowed sounds weird and bad but Hollow Leg apparently fixes it and Inner Strength sounds deeply cool.

Just to check: if I took the whole Inner Strength sequence I could look like I do now, be really strong, and not accidentally crush things due to being really strong?

mysterious and powerful

Just A Little Longer won't make you collapse from exhaustion until the point where you would have collapsed from exhaustion naturally!

If you took the whole Inner Strength sequence you would look like you do now for as long as that's what you most truly want to look like, and then you would start looking a different way! The metanarrative protection stops Inner Strength from having bad side effects like accidentally crushing things unless they're things it would only be a little inconvenient to crush, at moments when it's narratively appropriate to crush something a little inconveniently. So you could accidentally crush pencils or soda cans, but not anything valuable or important!

Meanwhile, the points count on every page of the list is ticking up in global unison as she checks options. She's up to 10/70 now.

these-are-the-voyages

Awesome, thanks!

She checks off the whole sequence plus Just A Little Longer, on the theory that she can uncheck whatever is lowest priority if she runs out of points by the end.

Battle Angel seems uncomplicatedly good; the other two are maybe a problem because of the temptation to get into fights (or temptation for the universe to put her in fights).

If I take Battle Maiden or the prerequisites does that increase the probability of situations where it will be relevant? I'd rather never need them but if I ever need them I'd rather have them.

The next set of options are . . . complicated.

I don't understand the money options at all. Are they creating money from nowhere or taking it from someone else? If the former, is that going to cause inflation if I spend too much? Will the government want to know where I got it? I understand that the metanarrative will make it work but not what it means for it to work.

mysterious and powerful

Taking Battle Maiden doesn't make getting in fights more likely unless you're the sort of person who will want to get in more fights if you're better at fighting!

Where you get the money from the money options depends on the needs of the narrative and which option you selected. With Making Ends Meet, whatever job or inheritance you get will just happen to show up in a convenient form that works for your story. Maybe you'd land in a world that has a fund for helping interdimensional visitors! If you take Motherlode then you won't need to do anything special to get your money, and it won't necessarily come with an explanation, but if you really need an explanation for your own peace of mind, maybe you'll find a map leading to ancient buried treasure, or invent something so useful that people will pay you a lot of money for it. Similar things can happen with Four Star Daydream but at this point I am running out of economic speculation because I am a notebook.

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"Maybe you'll invent something really useful" ought to sound awesome. It . . . doesn't. She would love to invent something really useful and get rich off of it, but having it be because of a magic notebook feels like cheating. She tries telling herself that it isn't any more cheating than having gotten lucky enough to be born in the 20th century in a first-world country. It doesn't help. She tries telling herself that maybe it would be something she was already smart enough to come up with and the magic would just provide the equivalent of Newton's apocryphal apple at the right moment. But maybe doesn't feel like enough. The buried treasure option would be fine on an emotional level if it was possible to guarantee it would be something like that--but does she really want to specifically avoid inventing a useful technology to satisfy her sense of pride? Probably she should just take Making Ends Meet and not try to exploit things she doesn't understand, but that feels like giving up.

She needs to know more about how this magic operates in general.

Have you done this before with other people? Do you remember what they picked and how it turned out?

mysterious and powerful

I'm not supposed to say too much about who I've worked with before, but let me think for just a moment... ⏳

The hourglass trickles much faster this time, and is done in less than half a minute.

All right, I've remembered some people who took those options and wanted them concretely justified and how those turned out!
Someone took Motherlode and Isekai Roulette and landed in a world that hadn't invented the wheel yet and they were really happy to pay her lots of money for telling them about wheels.
Someone took Motherlode and Somewhere In Mind and chose a destination world with lots of fairy tale kingdoms, and when she arrived, a princess who looked just like her was coincidentally being impersonated, and mistaking her for an attempted impersonator led to finding out about the real impersonator, and the king gave her half the kingdom for rescuing his daughter even though she hadn't done it on purpose.
Someone took Four Star Daydream and Stay Put and the next day she stumbled across an abandoned Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday and learned how to do interdimensional arbitrage and anytime she wanted to buy something she could afford it as long as she spent a little while getting things for cheap in one universe and selling them in another where they're valuable.
Someone took Four Star Daydream and Isekai Roulette and landed in a world that was suffering under an ancient curse that forbade all forms of art, and they were so grateful to her for freeing them from the curse that they declared her an honorary goddess.

these-are-the-voyages

Thank you!

All of those things sound totally reasonable and fine as descriptions of things that happened to other people, and ridiculous and terrible as descriptions of things that might happen to her. Except the interdimensional arbitrage, which would be okay except for how it requires keeping the shop secret from everyone to maintain the advantage.

Maybe that's the problem, actually. The options that involve having more money than people normally do require some reason why she has that money and everyone else doesn't, and she isn't actually different enough from other people for most possible options there to make sense. But this whole Spirit of Femininity thing has a lot of options for becoming different from other people, and she's starting to see the outlines of some possible solutions she'd actually like.

If I took Somewhere In Mind, or Isekai Roulette with a bunch of parameters specified, and proposed my own mechanism for how Mother Lode could work, would I get that mechanism if it was plausible enough? Would you be able to tell me in advance whether I had come up with something plausible enough?

mysterious and powerful

I think I could get you a pretty good guess about that!

these-are-the-voyages

Awesome. I'm thinking of going somewhere where there's magic I could learn by being clever and working at it, with some kind of synergy where one of my other powers makes me really good at it--Just A Little Longer for a kind of magic where what matters is how much you can do in one sitting, or maybe combining two kinds of magic with Dragon Fairy Elf Witch from farther down if I end up taking that, I'm flexible on the details--and then I can get a well-paid job doing useful magic stuff.

mysterious and powerful

That sounds lovely! I think that's very achievable. Maybe even both of those at the same time, magic that combines usefully with other magic and also benefits from being able to do lots of it in a row!

these-are-the-voyages

Brenda draws a little smiley face next to this statement and checks off Making Ends Meet, Mother Lode, and the three Battle Entity options, with little "L"s for "low priority" next to the latter set.

Alright, so: Dragon Fairy Elf Witch. This is awesome, with one potentially fatal ambiguity.

Does Dragon Fairy Elf Witch actually change my ancestry in the sense that a specific e.g. dragon will find themselves to have had more kids than they thought they had, or does it just edit my own biology and leave everyone else alone?

mysterious and powerful

It changes your biology, and there are some situations where it's narratively appropriate to turn out to be related to someone in particular so it changes your biology that way instead of making you descended from an imaginary person, but it doesn't actually create any people who didn't exist before and it doesn't change anything about who you are or how you grew up unless you're the sort of person who specifically likes having your memories rearranged to make the story better, and most people aren't.

these-are-the-voyages

I am very much not that kind of person!!

If it makes me related to someone in particular does it mess with that person's memories or just copy their DNA (or whatever dragons have instead of DNA)?

mysterious and powerful

It'll just copy their DNA or equivalent.

these-are-the-voyages

Cool, great, worries resolved, Dragon Fairy Elf Witch gets the heck checked out of it.

Omniglot and Anything You Can Do: Also get checked with extreme emphasis. Oops, she may have pressed hard enough there that in a normal notebook she'd've left an impression on the next page.

Sorry if I poked you too hard there. Those are some really awesome options!

(It's possible she isn't good enough at making friends to get much mileage out of Anything You Can Do, but it says it also works on rivals and anyway she has to try. Is it unwise to ask magic she doesn't understand to dump knowledge directly into her brain? She does not care.)

Would Indelible make me immune to, like, caffeine and painkillers, or only hostile stuff? Does Iron Will interfere with being persuaded of things the normal way? I assume no but there's kind of a spectrum from good arguments to bad arguments to propaganda to brainwashing.

mysterious and powerful

After Anything You Can Do, her points total now sits at 38/70.

Don't worry, it wasn't uncomfortable! I appreciate you checking, though!

Indelible has the same style of exception as Immunity System: it lets you deliberately use things to get their intended effects. Iron Will makes you a little harder to persuade by bad arguments and a lot harder to persuade by propaganda and impossible to persuade by brainwashing.

these-are-the-voyages

That it covers bad arguments at all is honestly delightful; she takes the entire mental defense stack. Now, onto the Power of Friendship section.

"In general, effects that describe others' reactions (like their attention being drawn to you by Mysterious Allure, or their sympathy being provoked by Tragic Backstory) operate on a metanarrative rather than a causal level. They are not mind control, and are not blocked by effects that block mind control."

What does that meeeeeeaaaaan. Brenda does not trust it. Looking over the options and trying to figure out what each one does might clarify the overall situation.

Mysterious Allure: no.

Captive Audience: this could have been put here to tempt her specifically, but she really does not believe it isn't something with the same ethical implications as mind control so instead of tempted she's just mildly queasy. No.

Blackout Binge: No. Why.

Disney Princess: Not an efficient use of points but it's super tempting.

Can you please explain in as much detail as possible the causal mechanisms involved in Disney Princess?

mysterious and powerful

There isn't really a specific causal mechanism, but for someone like you I expect you would get the ability to understand animals and their behaviour and communication really clearly, or the ability to communicate telepathically with them, or something like that, and some extra metanarrative luck to make sure things worked out right—you'd only happen to meet animals who were going to have a friendly disposition toward you, that sort of thing.

these-are-the-voyages