I think I understand you about what you want!

I might have a few ideas, but I want to hear your thoughts on the powers you didn't take first, to understand whether it makes sense to suggest them and what you might want tweaked about them. (I'm still thinking about how to tweak Four Star Daydream and Two Become One!)

Weeping Cherry smiles, and refers back to her list.

Okay! Thanks for talking through this with me. So, powers I didn't take. I'll start with the Yourself powers:

 

My Ears Are Burning -- For this one, my main objection is that it's not privacy-respecting. I think a lot of people would be justifiably upset if I were always aware of what they thought of me, because their privacy is important to them. And also, I have a lot of power which I could use to make people's lives worse. Even if I wouldn't do that, people would be scared that I might if I heard them thinking bad things about me, and that would twist their thinking up. My secondary objection is that I'm not sure how useful it is compared to other powers with similar costs.

I would love if there a version of this which were privacy-respecting that could, like, let me know if someone was in trouble and thought I could save them, or that let people send me untraceable anonymous feedback about how I was doing, or that let me get aggregate summary statistics of how people thought I was doing.

And knowing what everybody thinks about me sounds really nice for quashing my occasional social anxiety, but that's not worth invading people's privacy over, or really worth the point cost compared to how nice some of the other options are.

And I know you mentioned that this was one of the harder ones to tweak, and also getting assessments of how well I'm doing is probably more important in situations where I am throwing lots of power around, where I will have other options for collecting feedback, as opposed to worlds where my normal powers don't work and I'm relying more on the Spirit's powers.

 

As for the money powers -- I'm feeling a lot better about these after our talk, but I'm also not sure that they're actually very useful compared to Dressing Room. I'm still considering taking Making Ends Meet for the metanarrative guarantee that I'll always be able to get enough to support myself, even if I end up somewhere really weird. Now that I have more points, I think that Making Ends Meet is probably at the top of my list for things to grab next.

But Dressing Room actually creates wealth all the time, as part of its basic operation, whereas the money powers only sometimes create wealth incidentally while fulfilling their guarantees, so it seems like Dressing Room gets more at the heart of what I would want from a power of this general kind, if that makes sense?

 

Any thoughts so far, or should I go through the Power of Friendship powers?

I think the tweaked version of Four Star Daydream would also end up creating quite a lot of wealth, by making sure to put you in a position to create enough wealth to afford anything being sold in the whole world every time you visit a new world. Dressing Room does create a lot of wealth as part of its basic operation but I think it usually wouldn't double the size of every economy you meet.

Huh! Okay, that's good to know. You haven't seen me cheat with Dressing Room.

In that case, I might end up swapping Angelic Tones and Like Roses for the money powers, since I think they are the current powers on my list that I'm least attached to. Although that wouldn't leave me with any points left over ...

Let me know when you finish thinking about tweaks to Four Star Daydream, please. I may or may not want it depending on the specific wording, I think. I bet I will want it, though. I get the impression that you're pretty good at tailoring powers to people because Self-Reflection is so good.

She hums to herself for a moment.

Any thoughts on My Ears Are Burning?

I think you're pretty much right about My Ears Are Burning! The closest I could get to the kind of alternate version you're describing where people can call on you for help would be a power that makes you something like a god who can hear prayers, and I think it would be really expensive. So I think you can move on to Powers of Friendship now!

Okay, cool!

Let me see ...

Mysterious Allure -- This one sounds potentially nice for like, a dinner party or something. But I don't especially like being the most interesting person in a room? Lots of people are interesting, and I want to spend time learning about them. So it feels like I'd be working against the power a lot.

And I have no sense of shame -- if I want people to pay attention to me, I'll wear a four-foot tall singing artichoke for a hat, which will probably get their attention pretty quickly.

More seriously, I'm a little worried that if I knew there were a power that made me interesting to people, I would stop considering someone being interested in me a positive sign. Like, right now if someone is interested in me and spends time with me, that's a sign that I'm doing something well, and I can enjoy it. But if I thought it might be power-derived instead of effort-derived, it no longer feels like a sign that I'm doing well.

And I'm also not sure how this would work without mind-control. It seems like it would be pretty hard to make me mysteriously alluring by altering only environmental factors.

It's surprisingly easy to get people's attention using environmental factors, actually! Things like lighting and sound management can really do a lot. But that makes sense, and I think you're right that Mysterious Allure isn't the power for you!

I guess that makes sense. It would be nice to have, like, dynamic ambient background music that could do things like that on command. But that also sounds like something that it would be a lot of fun to try and build by hand.

 

Captive Audience has very nearly the same problem as Mysterious Allure. I could see using it to, like, make people listen to monetary policy lectures. Monetary policy is really interesting! And also has a lot of impact on people's day-to-day lives and they should be informed about it. But it's also not the kind of thing that people tend to voluntarily listen to the end of my lectures about unless they also find it interesting.

But I do have friends who find things like that interesting; I think it's just a matter of trying to find the right people.

And it still has the problem of making people listen to me because of a magical power, and not because I learn enough about their interests and so on to speak in a way that engages with them. It feels like this power would cheapen the moments of shared excitement over some cool new thing that I do get, by undercutting my sense that this is another person who is experiencing delight over the same niche interest.

That makes perfect sense and I think you're right again!

Oh good! Honestly, I think I have the same objection to a lot of Power of Friendship powers. Let me see what's next ...

Blackout Binge is just ... I really don't see the appeal. I don't drink. The quippy line I give to people who ask is 'just being in my brain is enough of a trip', but a more genuine way to put it is ...

I like me. I think about becoming more the sort of person I want to be, and I try to do that deliberately. It's not that I'm against chemical nudges -- I'm in the experiment for something like four different forb-based metabolism and neurotransmitter balance tweaks, although I have no idea whether I'm in the control group for any of them or not. But those are all tweaks aimed at making me more like I want to be, not at escapism or anything like that.

And on top of that, while people not blaming me for what I do would be useful, I guess, it also would make it hard to learn from what I did wrong.

So I guess I feel like this power would make me worse, both at being myself and at being good for people.

 

Disney Princess -- I like animals fine, but not that much. I don't really interact with them or seek them out, and I find caring for pets super stressful. So I wouldn't really want to tame an animal either.

I think Blackout Binge only works for certain kinds of people and you're not any of those kinds. And it makes sense to avoid Disney Princess if you don't want to tame or be friendly with animals!

Okay, cool.

Best Friend and Bestest Friend were really tempting. But they were tempting because of the potential access to more magical powers. If I had a choice between Bestest Friend and the ability to make a mindless projection under my control with the same powers, I would take the mindless projection.

So taking either of those doesn't feel like it would be fair to the companion in question -- they would essentially be an innocent creature that I was using for their powers. And it would also be a little like taking care of a pet, even if they were sentient, because they would depend on me for support and protection in the same way, even if it would be less bad than having a normal pet because they could tell me if anything were wrong.

And Dragon Fairy Elf Witch promises to let me get more magical powers anyways, so Best Friend and Bestest Friend aren't actually necessary for that.

 

It's still really tempting, to be guaranteed to have someone who will love me and stay with me forever. But if I'm to be worthy of that love, I don't think I can get it via the Spirit's interference.

 

... also I'm not sure how this interacts with forking. I don't intend to stop forking myself, but I also don't feel like I can make a decision like that for someone else, which means either loosing my companion, forking them against their will, or getting a series of ever-changing companions. And all of those feel bad.

Maybe the power would give me a companion that wants to fork whenever I do. That sounds like the least-drawbacky way to do it. But I'm not really sure I like that either -- forking is easy to get wrong by not taking it seriously, and I don't think I'd want a companion who was cavalier about it. Part of the reason my self-tree gets along so well is because we are all very careful to be fair to our forks -- we have forked in the past to get more people working on a problem, but nobody is 'the real one' or anything like that.

 

Do you have any idea how Bestest Friend would handle forking?

I think Bestest Friend would probably handle forking by giving you a companion who could also fork, but where the companion relationship exists primarily between all of you and all of them, and secondarily between individual instances. So individual ones of you and them who were thinking of forking would make that decision based on what made sense for each of you at the time, which might sometimes mean you forked together, and sometimes that you forked without them, and sometimes that they forked without you!

I'm also confused about you saying that your Bestest Friend would depend on you for support and protection... Do you just mean because you would be so much more powerful than them because of the Spirit?

... huh!

That would be a neat solution. I might have to think about how I'd feel about that, but I think it would eliminate most of my fork-related worries.

 

As for the depending on me -- maybe I'm reading too much into 'animal companion'? I was thinking of that as describing a relationship between non-equals. Because if they were my equal, I would describe them as a 'friend' or a 'partner' or something like that, not as an 'animal companion'. And most relationships between humans and animals that I've seen involve the human providing some amount of care to the animal.

 

If that's not what this would be like, could you maybe try describing what the relationship between someone and their Bestest Friend might be like in different words? And maybe say more about whether the ... entities that they end up bonded to are people, or how much they're people?

I think Best Friend relationships tend to be more like what you're describing, and Bestest Friend relationships tend to be more like close, committed cross-species friendships. Bestest Friends are nearly always just as much of a person as the person they're bonded to, and sometimes are older or smarter or have stronger personalities. Best Friend relationships are usually unequal partnerships that favour the Spirit's vessel over their bondmate, but Bestest Friend relationships are often equal, and when they're unequal it's sometimes the other way around! (But your Bestest Friend is always chosen to be someone you'll get along with in the very very long term, and who will be good for you and who you will be good for, so when the relationship does turn out unequal it's because that's what was best for both people.)

Oh, I see.

Hmm. Having a friend is a very different prospect from having a pet.

She flips to look at the exact wording of the power.

Do Bestest Friends already exist, and the power just makes sure you find them and grants you a special bond? Or does it create people?

... assuming that you could come up with a non-mind-control version, I might be interested in theory. But with Time Enough for Love, I'll have plenty of time to seek out and maintain cross-species friendships. So the question is whether having a metanarrative guarantee is worth it.

For eight points, I don't think it is. I'd have to give up some of my beauty powers to afford it, and I think I like the idea of being beautiful more than I like the idea of having one guaranteed friend when I already have several friends and expect to make more.

I think I'm still a no on this one, but I'm glad that we talked about it, because it's a no for different reasons than I had been thinking.

I think some people find it really important to have someone who is absolutely guaranteed to be on their side, but it makes sense that that's not worth eight points to you!

(Whether it creates someone or finds someone who already existed depends on what's best for you and your partner, I think.)

Alright, next are Generosity and Helpfulness -- I think these both share a flaw in that once again I think it feels better to get something from a friend if it's their free choice to give it to you. And often I feel like gifts or favors come with an implicit premise that you should return them. If the balance of gifts and favors got too far in my favor (as it were), I think I would feel awkward and obligated to repay them.

... I'm not sure if I should endorse that feeling, though, because I also like getting people presents, and people often give presents without expecting a return.

Also, I can summon arbitrary material objects. Giving me objects just means giving me more to keep track of. Non-material gifts like original compositions could be nice, though.

I may be getting too hung up on the mechanism again, but I'm also not sure what a version of this that worked without mind control and without filtering who I can become friends with would do.

 

I think unless there are hidden parts to these that I'm missing, I'd rather not have the Spirit meddling in the nature and balance of my friendships like that. I'd almost like a reverse version of this, where I give presents and do favors for my friends, but I don't actually need a power to do that.

That makes sense! I think some people take a lot of comfort in knowing that they'll be able to have friends who show care for them in ways they want, but if you don't need that kind of assurance then I think this group of powers is not for you.

I can see why people would like that! I might be tempted by a version of Flattery that was less about flattery and more about just ensuring that your friends tell you how they feel about you regularly. But also I can usually get that by just asking them.

Actually, I think Cuddle Buddies, Flattery, and Quality Time are all the same kind of thing, right? These are all about different love languages.

Unlike Generosity and Helpfulness, I think I would probably enjoy all three of those. But by the same token, I feel like they're more meaningful if I get them without interference. My self-tree and polycule both have regularly scheduled cuddle piles, and Time Enough for Love means that the big downside of spending time with people -- it takes time away from other priorities -- doesn't apply. So I feel like I get enough of these already, and I think I'll pretty much always have the resources to continue getting enough of them even if circumstances change.

Time Enough for Love and Self-Reflection get me spending time with people and being told how much they love me, and being able to fork will get me cuddles if I need them even if I were completely isolated from everybody else for some reason. I know I might not always be able to do that, but I don't think I need a metanarrative guarantee about it.

Yes, those five powers are all in a group together because they represent different ways that people express their love for each other. I'm really glad for you that you feel secure in those things and aren't worried about where you'll get them in the future! It's so good when people get to live the life they want and reliably meet their emotional needs.

She smiles again.

I couldn't agree more.

Speaking of which, I think that brings us to Agree to Agree. The problem I have with this one is that it's not truth-seeking. If I'm actually wrong about something, I would rather be able to eventually figure that out and change my mind than to surround myself with people who would just believe it because I say it. I guess one way the power could try to work that way is to make me right about everything which ... feels like it's going to run into thorny epistemological problems but might still be worth it.

I'm trying to imagine what a version of this that I wouldn't object to would be like ...

A version of this that did something like require me to speak the truth as I understood it and made the fact that I believed I was telling the truth obvious to people who heard me would be really valuable, and I feel like it would cut through a lot of arguments. But that also seems ... like a different thing?

Like, that feels more like a personal power to me, rather than being a Friendship power.

 

Maybe I should have been asking, for all of these, whether they're ones with wiggle room or not. Do you have a sense of how easy it would be to tweak this one in the direction of something that can help ... I'm not sure how to phrase this. Something that can resolve problems of communication without affecting how the people involved think about an issue? I also wouldn't want to have a power that made it easy for me to steamroller over people's objections though, even if they're wrong, because that would make it harder for people to talk to me.

Hmm, I think I might have done something like that recently, let me see if I can figure out what I made...

Name: Backchannel - Cost: 4 ☐
When you're talking to someone and you think you might not be getting through to each other, you can take a step back, look deep into your heart, and really try to understand where they're coming from, and it will just work and you'll know what they're trying to say and how sincere they are about it and have a good idea of what you should say if you want them to understand you right back.

Ooh! That would have been really useful to have when I was trying to get everything set up the first time.

She looks at her selected list and her four remaining points with a mildly pained expression.

In the background, some of her self-tree starts arguing about what 'recently' means to someone who made a big deal out of experiencing non-linear time.

So I definitely want to take Backchannel, because that sounds like it's going to be really useful. That leaves me tight on points, though. After we finish going over the rest of the Friendship powers again, I'll take some time to consider what I want to swap out.

 

That does make me wonder though -- can you tell me about other modified powers that you made recently? I'm not expecting them to fit me necessarily, but I am curious.

It's hard for me to directly access the memories of my other selves for privacy reasons. I can't exactly come up with a list, but if you ask about variants of specific powers I can sometimes remember relevant ones, and if I think about it I might be able to remember something that seems generally relevant to your situation even without specific prompting.

As well as removing other powers, you could also potentially add custom drawbacks! Those can be tricky to come up with because it's hard to know ahead of time what will be worth points without being too inconvenient, but sometimes they work really well.