Plenty of people have kept diaries in me, but I'm not sure anyone has asked me to fictionalize them! I'm a little poorly placed to be a biographer, without senses of my own to see the story with. I think it's a neat idea, though! But I would be so bad at writing about the scary parts...

That makes sense! I guess real scary things are usually a lot more upsetting to experience and write about than they usually are in stories. Especially if you can't see them directly, only hearing about them afterwards, but still have to go through them.

She briefly has a moment of experiential vertigo, thinking about what the notebook said about how many people write stories about worlds that exist.

... do most of the people who you help get happy endings, at least? It seems like with the Spirit's power they probably should, but maybe the multiverse is scarier than I'm imagining. (That's not going to stop me, even if it is. But I should probably check.)

I think nearly everyone I've ever helped has found a happy ending eventually. Some of them take longer than others.

That's good, at least.

She stares at the paper for a moment, and then shakes her head to clear it.

I'm sorry, we circled around to your work again. I didn't mean to.

What other stories have you read and liked? I'm not sure exactly how fiction works across the multiverse -- if multiple people often write about the same fictional worlds, maybe we have an overlapping set of books that we might have read? -- but if you have books from other worlds that you can share I'm sure the librarians would love that.

(I don't mind talking about my work!)

Hmm, I might have to take a while to think before I can come up with a book from another world... I'm sure I've read some, but I usually only remember general impressions and not specific text from my experiences in other worlds while I'm in a particular one. If there's a book I've read that wouldn't intrude on anyone's privacy to reproduce, though, I can probably come up with it in a little bit!

I suppose that makes sense! It's interesting that your memories are able to work like that. I'm hoping that eventually we'll figure out how to encode and decode memories so that I can share memories with the rest of my self-tree, but that is expected to take a long time to do safely, if we can do it at all.

Hmm ... I suppose that if you only remember impressions, asking about favorite authors probably isn't easy either.

She pauses for a moment, conjuring some lemonade and having a sip.

I'm happy to keep talking about stories, but it feels a little awkward to just tell you about a bunch of mine without being able to get thoughts on your favorites too, so I'm inclined to try to find things where we can both contribute. It occurs to me that there are games you might be good at, though. Have you ever played Scrabble?

I don't think I ever have! It's a game about words and letters, though, right?

Yeah! We both get a set of seven random letters (I can have my forb put yours on a later page so I can't see them), and then we take turns placing them into a grid to make words (getting replacement letters after we do so). Different letters are worth different amounts of points, and you try to get the most points by the time the letters run out.

It's a cool game because it tests both your knowledge of obscure words, your strategic ability to place words in the right place to build on them for longer words, and your ability to manipulate letters/spellings in your head to find valid plays.

Would you like to play a game to see if you like it?

I would love to! ✨

She puts another smiley face next to that, and then flips to a new page to put down a Scrabble board.

There are also some squares that multiply how many points you get for a word or letter on them -- see this pattern? If that makes sense, great, but if that seems like it makes things too complicated we don't need to worry about it for your first game.

She pulls seven scrabble tiles out of the air, and her forb puts seven tiles on the next page where she can't see them.

Words can either go horizontally or vertically. The first word is played in the center of the board where that star is, and then future words need to connect up to the already-played words somehow.

Does that all make sense? If so, do you want to go first or shall I?

I think I understand... I'm not sure how good I am at multiplying, but let's try it and see! You can go first. ♡

Weeping Cherry thinks for a moment, and then opens with "DRONE".

The multiplying in this game isn't too bad -- you can just add the points from a letter multiple times.

That's how multiplying works in theory, I'm just not sure I've ever tried it!

Weeping Cherry grins, and adds a little heart of her own.

And they play Scrabble! She has the advantage of having played the game before, but the notebook has a wide-ranging vocabulary and a knack for fitting words across multiple intersections.

Finally, she manages to put a final 'O' next to the 'X' to make OX, and they're both out of tiles. She checks the scoresheet, unsurprised to see that she's still lagging the notebook's score by about 100 points.

Good game! I had to look up 'rudistid'. What did you think of it?

That was ✨really fun✨!!

I'm glad you liked it! There are a few other word-grid-games like that, but I think Scrabble is probably my favorite.

She leans back in her chair and covers a yawn.

I notice that I'm getting a bit tired, though -- it's been a long day. Do you mind if I say goodnight here and come back in the morning? Do you want anything to read while I do?

Go ahead! I think I'll reread the books you already gave me, and think more about what books I could show you, and think about the power tweaks I'm working on for you.

Okay! See you tomorrow. ♡

So she'll teleport down to place the notebook in a very small bookshelf with an opaque door that someone set up, because even if the notebook doesn't have privacy needs per se, and seems very friendly, it's still preemptively banned from Earth orbit.

And then she'll teleport home, and sleepily pull herself into Pine's pillow fort, and dream about being special and powerful and feminine.

When she wakes up, she takes her time over breakfast catching up on all the discussion that her self-tree generated overnight. She loves herself, but gosh can she argue about things at length. When she is sufficiently informed and sated, she pops back into the station where the notebook is.

The party decorations have been cleared out, and nobody is around. She giggles a bit at the thought of having an entire space-station as a glorified writing desk, before fetching the notebook and settling down under a tree.

Good morning! How was your night?

My night was lovely! I have a book for you, and a tweak to Four Star Daydream, and I think I figured out a solution for Two Become One.

Name: Five Star Daydream - Cost: 4 ☐
(Replaces Four Star Daydream.)
In any world you visit, you will quickly find opportunities to generate enough value to effectively afford anything that's up for sale anywhere in the local economy.

Name: Here For A Good Time - Cost: 1 ☐
(Replaces Two Become One.)
When you have sex, the world gets out of your way. Pillows don't fall off the bed; blankets don't end up scrunched in uncomfortable places. You are exactly as graceful as you want to be, and have excellent luck evading misaimed elbows.

Oh, those both look great! Let me see what taking them does to my point total ...

She pulls up a copy of her list and amends it.

If I'm counting correctly, I think that puts me at negative five points.

 

We were going through the Power of Friendship powers when I got us off on that tangent with The Rescuer and then I got distracted by the party, though. Maybe we should finish going through that before I circle back to trying to balance points.

 

... I feel like I'm going through this in such a disorganized way. I keep getting distracted by things. Let me know if you think we should be tackling things in a different order.

Next up was Love Interest through Love Dodecahedron, I think? Those sound to me like another case of powers where I feel like having the Spirit guarantee someone would become interested in me is less fulfilling than winning their love through my own efforts.

I think it's fine to go through things in a disorganized way at first. You can always look back over your choices later and see what you think of them and whether anything needs changing.

Yes, I think it's very reasonable to skip the Love Interest powers for that reason!

Oh -- I'm definitely going to look things over before we finalize anything, for sure. And I'm sure someone will prompt me if I lose track of something, but I still like being at least a little organized.

 

Time Enough For Love is excellent, 10/10.

I Can Fix Them -- this one seems really mind-control-y? Like, it's totally possible for someone to do evil things that they don't regret and still not need to be 'fixed' to deserve good things. People don't have to 'redeem' themselves to still be ends-in-themselves. And it sounds like this power pretty intrinsically takes away their autonomy.

I could imagine a softer version of this power that just encouraged people to grow into better people without forcing them, but I think you can probably get a lot of mileage out of just giving people enough space, resources, community, and time.

Also, I'm not sure I can have the right kind of love for someone like that? I can have the same love for every sentient creature that I try to cultivate in my heart, but I don't think I can have romantic love for someone who would do bad things and not regret them. Is there a particular kind of love or relationship required?

I think I've tweaked I Can Fix Them to be less mind-affecting before; would you like me to find you the alternate version?

I Can Fix Them does need a personal kind of love, but it doesn't have to be used exclusively on people who did bad things they don't regret. It can apply to a lot of different situations. If you don't think it's the right power for you, though, then it makes sense not to take it!

If it's not too much trouble, I'd at least like to see the less mind-affecting version. I think it makes sense to look at as many options as I can.

 

I think I see what you mean about not having to use I Can Fix Them on unrepentant people, but that seems as though it's the group of people it would be most useful with? If someone is already repentant, then redeeming them is much easier, because you just need to get them into a healthy environment and give them time to work towards being better.