"Lol," Vivian intones.

i want it, i wouldn't be in such conflict if i didn't want it

i'm just really embarrassed about wanting it, and i have a ton of cached thoughts about how that's bad

i am also a sucker for stories where love conquers all and conquers especially people's vices and dark sides, but in addition to that i'm a bleeding heart and i want to help people and sometimes i look at someone and i go "i bet if someone loved you enough and supported you enough you could do better. i'm someone."

and i'm not sure there's anything wrong with that if i have superpowers on my side that help alleviate the consent problems and ethical problems and all of that, like

that's what i want, i want to this is so embarrassing to say write

i want to love people and for them to be better because of it, and i want to know what to do to make that happen, and i want it to not drag the both of us down a black hole which i can only escape if i fully cut contact with them forever, and i want them to not stake their lives on their continued relationship with me because it's awful if someone only wants to be alive because of someone else, and i guess if i project that a bit further it's probably also awful if someone is only not evil while with someone else and not on their own

awful for both people, it feels horrible to have someone lean on me for their will to live like that, it feels crushing and smothering and painful and claustrophobic and

it's not good for them either because then they haven't really gotten any stronger or better, not really, they just found a crutch in someone else

that's not a very structured explanation of everything i guess, i don't have a perfect 1 2 3 recipe, i could try to come up with one but it's hard enough to open my heart like this, especially when i kind of expect that there's probably an audience reading this as i write it and it feels even more embarrassing than just confessing to you, who's been nothing short of lovely and nice and good and kind and supportive, but those are some of the thoughts and experiences i've had

I find myself wanting to hug you again. Not being able to hug people is definitely the most troubling limitation of being a notebook.

I think the kinds of things you want from helping people with your love are very much like the kinds of things the Spirit wants! Of course I don't know exactly what the Spirit wants because it has a hard time communicating, but my understanding is that it wants people to be made stronger and happier by their relationships in ways that can last even outside them... though it also likes when relationships can last forever. But the kind of forever that's because it's nice to go on, not the kind that's because it's scary to stop. Relationships shouldn't be scary! That's my own opinion but as far as I can tell the Spirit agrees. Romance should be about people supporting and caring for each other and helping each other grow, and not about being scared that the person you love needs you more than you're okay with being needed.

yeah

so uh i guess the bottom line is i want that power and i want a version of it that's appropriate to my ethical sensitivities but if i get one i want it

i also probably want incomplete to not apply to this one? it'd really, really, really suck if i were trying to use it on someone that this should work on and then it turns out that they're randomly immune to it because of that drawback

i also also have some thoughts about how there probably exist villains who are doing sufficiently sketchy things that i'd probably be okay mind-controlling them but i think on inspection i would not in fact want to date someone that bad most of the time, especially if they're the kind of bad that can't work with a version of this power that doesn't have the mind control component so never mind i guess

Incomplete only stops mind-affecting aspects of powers from working on people, so you should be fine there. Unless you want the mind-affecting version of I Can Fix Them, but it sounds like you don't? Though I'm a little confused about what your expectations are about that.

I think we can definitely find you a version of this power that works the way you want, but it might take some time to figure out exactly what that looks like and then see how to make it work.

I think on the whole i don't want a version that affects others' minds yeah

and no rush! we can workshop it and you can take as long as you want

I think I'm still confused about what you were saying about why you don't want the mind-affecting version. Is it okay if I ask some questions about that? I really don't want to push you to make decisions you're not comfortable with! But it seems like you're imagining different things from the things that I'm imagining, and I want to be sure I understand what you want and how you're thinking about things.

yeah absolutely, i'm a very

How does he even put this...

"detail-oriented person" is not the right term for it

i like going down rabbit holes of edge cases and weird boundary stuff, and if i'm going to have these powers forever then i definitely want to understand them very well

Oh, okay! ♡

So it seems like when you imagine someone who needs the mind-affecting version of I Can Fix Them, you're imagining someone who is just a very bad person and very determined to be a bad person and doesn't want to stop and so needs their mind changed for them or they won't, is that right?

that's the central case, in a way, yeah

there are others i can think of if i try but it seems like you've already thought of some? so it might be useful to talk about those before i try to push my own intuitions in weird directions

When I think about someone who needs the mind-affecting version of I Can Fix Them, I think about things like:

• someone who is so scared of who they are and what they've done and what that might mean for them that they won't believe you really love them and really want to help unless something makes them accept it


• someone who doesn't understand what it means to be loved and thinks anyone trying to be kind to them must really be planning to hurt them, and will just keep interpreting affection as scheming without outside help


• someone who was hurt a long time ago and built a lot of who they are around that hurt, and doesn't want to change because they're attached to being this way, but if you could really show them that it's possible to have something better than what they have, they would want that


• someone who grew up in a place where people are supposed to hurt each other, and learned bad habits and learned to be attached to their bad habits, but they would be happier if they could have love and trust and companionship, they just can't accept that because they think love and trust and companionship are for people who are wrong

...wow those are some edge cases huh

give me a bit, i need to think

Okay, take your time! ♡

He thinks, for a bit, nervously tapping his pen against the corner of the notebook.

okay so I don't yet have an answer to all of those but i have a better handle on what exactly i'm trying to preserve here

people's minds are who they are. if you change the way someone's mind works, you're just killing them and replacing them with someone else. if you directly control someone's limbs and actions so they can do something you want, you are effectively replacing them with someone else, and if you directly edit their minds to be a certain way, then they're no longer that original person.

but that logic proves too much. there's some leeway for the small amounts of changing that occur over someone's normal life, your concept of "identity" has to be robust to that

i bite a handful of bullets related to this, personally, i think it's not a stretch of the definition to say that the person i was when i was ten is not at all the same person i am right now, even if every intervening step would agree that the previous step was also themselves. so this concept of "identity" isn't a binary, it's a continuum, a fuzzy line that people transit along

i think... i'm not entirely sure how i would feel about having skipped the last eight years of my life and turning ten-year-old me into present-me overnight. it feels sketchy? my intuitions are uncomfortable with it? though given that a set of physically lawful, psychologically regular steps was in fact used to achieve this transition between 10yo!peter and 18yo!peter my intuitions are flexible on this matter

and people who are depressed and take antidepressants might take reach psychological states that they couldn't have reached merely by taking other, non-chemical actions. in a certain sense, the antidepressant is directly editing their minds and turning them into a version of themselves that couldn't be reached otherwise.

Some more tapping while he hums thoughtfully to himself.

and yet i feel like if someone were like "no, i don't want to take antidepressants" and then took them anyway, by force maybe to make the hypothetical easier, and afterwards went "actually that was a good idea and i'm thankful it happened", i still feel really uncomfortable? it feels like we were disrespecting the preferences of depressed!them and effectively forcibly replaced them with a version of themselves that we like more

i'm not sure how seriously i take this intuition, though, 'cause then the action "take an antidepressant" is identity-preserving if and only if it was taken voluntarily, so the intent of the action matters now? and that's bizarre, it's the same action, it has the same effects, whether someone is "the same person" as someone else shouldn't change depending on the intentions of the people taking the action that changes them

this may just be pointing at a different intuition, though, that compounds: in addition to preservation of identity i also care about, mm, "consent" is not exactly the best way to encapsulate it but i think it's a reasonable neighboring concept

that was a lot, does all of that make sense? do you have any questions about it? honestly i might have questions about it, i've never really had reason to go this deep into my thoughts about the ethics of mind-alteration and identity

That all makes sense, and I think I understand what you mean! It's important to you that people get to decide for themselves who to be?

What if the version of a person from before they changed and the version from after they changed could compare notes, understanding everything there is to know about each other, and decide together which one they would prefer to be? What if the power can tell what would happen in that hypothetical, and only makes the change if they would both agree that it's good?

...that sounds like a terrifying superpower for the Spirit to have but it's not, i mean, that might, entirely solve my issues? hmm

i mean i guess maybe the union of that with "via regular lawful psychologically realistic" wait sorry lemme start that sentence again

there are, you know, ways that someone can change over time such that the person they were at time X and the person they are now at time Y don't agree on which of them should exist, but if there was no mind control involved and everything was consensual every step of the way and stuff then i have no problems with that, that's normal and how things work and i'm fine with this kind of "I Can Fix Them"

and if there were some way to ensure that the thing you just described happened, i'd be okay with that, too

so i'd be okay with a power that could do both things, but didn't do the "X and Y disagree on who should take preference" thing in any non-strictly-causal unlawful psychologically out of character way

i think. but now that you've given that suggestion i feel like i should think a little bit harder about other possible additions to this, because it hadn't occurred to me that the Spirit had that much hypothetical power and that kind of really widens the possibility-space for how this power could work

I think it might not be able to tell every single time under all circumstances, but it could just not do the thing when it can't tell if it's okay.

I think thinking harder about it sounds like a great idea! I want to help you figure out exactly the powers that are right for you. ♡

so looking back on your list, it seems like the first and third ones are probably addressed by your suggestion, the second one is unclear whether your suggestion would work since they might interpret even the attempts to handshake their future and past selves as a manipulation attempt (and they would then be right, just not to hurt them), the fourth one seems like it really should be amenable to non-mind control options

the second one might benefit from something like "they will be made to believe a thing if and only if it is true and they wouldn't be able to change their mind normally because of various brain things"?

"Why are you taking so loooooong," Marcus whines.

"You can feel free to leave if you want, this will probably take a very long time because responsible protagonists are very thorough in specifying their superpowers when they can be."

"Ughhhhhh."

Oh, I see what you mean! Yes, only making people believe things that are true and only if they wouldn't be able to change their mind by themselves sounds like a good way to make sure you're treating people well.

what kinds of actual effects would this all entail? like subjectively, from the perspective of whoever's mind is being changed, what kinds of things would happen here? sudden strikes of inspiration, epiphanies, being shown a weirdly convincing argument...?

I'm not sure! I don't often hear about details like that. I can imagine that probably it would be strikes of inspiration and epiphanies sometimes, but sometimes it might also just be an ability and willingness to understand and believe things that they wouldn't have been able to otherwise?

hmm

I think something that respected people's autonomy and self-determination like that, which only acted in their (current and future, not just future) self's interest, which only pulled out the big guns in situations where people are unresponsive to evidence even though if they were ideal reasoners they would update and which didn't actually change their priorities and goals and personality and such...

would be okay, probably

that seems sufficiently broad that it might cover everything i'm interested in but i'm definitely gonna go over everything again before finalizing my choices so i'll think about this some more later, i think this might be enough to get going for now