His sister is definitely joining in the hug, too.

"I'm not a girl!" he protests, but he leans into the hug anyway. "I just... may not be... as much of a boy as I'd thought.

"The notebook says she was sent by the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed, and that she was metanarratively guaranteed to arrive to the right person. Or, it was metanarratively guaranteed that the first person to write on her would be the right person. As for the actual powers, they're formatted like a CYOA to give people the powers of becoming a Mary Sue."

"'CYOA'?"

"'Choose Your Own Adventure', it's a sort of character creation, uh, framework? You have a list of powers and limited budget to choose from the list and then you make a character with those powers."

"Often made by closeted trans girls who want something beyond their control to turn them into a beautiful woman without it being 'their fault'," Vivian notes. "- uh, not calling you an egg, just. Context."

"'Egg'?"

"Closeted trans girls. Because they hatch into a chick, see."

...she starts giggling.

"So, we're a story because...?"

"...well because this doesn't happen in real life. People aren't visited by notebook-shaped avatars of the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed offering them CYOA-shaped Mary Sue flavoured super powers saying that they want you to be powerful and beautiful and special in a feminine way. While being metanarratively guaranteed to succeed."

Marcus starts giggling too, partway through that.

"I mean, I'm operating under similar principles, witness me saying we're YA not SCP, I just... don't give a shit? Or as much of one, at least."

"Okay but I, I give a shit—"

"No no no please don't have a panic attack we're here to figure this out and we don't need two of us panicking."

"Dudes. Chill."

"Seriously. I know this is a hot take, but being real is a fake concept and doesn't matter in basically any way."

"...what does that mean."

"It... means that we're here and now and whether we're fictional or not doesn't affect anything we should do or, or something? Is my guess of what she means?"

"You're all blowing things up out of proportion, you're getting magic."

"Yeah. The butterfly dreaming that he's whoever that poet was doesn't matter any more than the poet. If the poet's having fun, drinking plum wine and fucking imperial concubines and whatever else they did for fun in ancient China, why should he care that there's some butterfly out there who's 'more real' than him? If we're all a simulation, I hope whoever's monitoring it is having a good time. If we're a book, I hope my character arc is cool. Who was gonna get more than that in the first place?"

"...that's. A very healthy and sensible attitude."

"I didn't catch any of the references but I think that made sense."

"Don't even try, with her. I tried once. It was a mistake."

Gabe's anxiety does seem to be calming down, too, though he still looks kind of troubled.

"Are you gonna show us the powers, then? I'm starting to feel blue balled."