▼ 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.

Rebecca doesn't think much about romance. She has too many responsibilities and keeps too many secrets for a partner, and most sexual activities involving her would seriously injure anyone not a high-tier Brute, so she only had a few casual trysts with capes she met on other Earths when she was young, and practically none since.

Rebecca doesn't suffer from loneliness. She doesn't register the lack of close personal connections as an active source of distress in her life. The loss of such relationships, the estrangement or death of friends—that does hurt. But the lack itself? There's no burning void in her waiting to be filled. She doesn't shy away from bonding where it comes to pass, but neither does she seek it out.

Most of these powers, on her first read, didn't really ping anything in her.

But she's studied human psychology. She knows that indifference is learned, and she knows it's likely to wear away once she's away from the stressors of her current environment.

She had crushes when she was a kid, and she's been physically and romantically attracted to people since she got her powers, so it's not something she's incapable of doing. She likes human connections. When one of her Wards scrounges up the courage to invite her to joint board game night, and she checks with her secretary and she still hasn't met her quota for team-building socials that month, then half the team ends up playing Mario Kart squeezed up on the rec room couch after a disastrous game of Monopoly, and Arbiter's babbling on about Halcyon tripping over his own cape on ground patrol, and the kids end up wrestling on the floor while Rebecca and Usher share an exasperated look—

She wants that. She wants to want that.

She knows she does, but she doesn't know how. She doesn't have a good model of the Rebecca living her best life as her best self she can interrogate for preferences. She doesn't know what types of connection she'll find fulfilling and what she wants out of them. She knows politics and mentorship and working with colleagues; she doesn't know what she feels about polyamory or children or relationship conflicts. This section gives her extraordinary power over how she'll lead life from here on out, and she...

She doesn't trust the Rebecca of now to decide for the Rebecca of tomorrow.

But she has time to think now, and she has the notebook for advice, and she's not going to Doctor Mother or Contessa or, God forbid, Number Man for help, and everyone else either is avoiding her, despises her, or would have her carted off to Master-Stranger containment if she tried to explain all of this, so—she'll just have to take it one step at the time.

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.

At least they're starting easy. This just seems bad. It doesn't appeal to her now and she doesn't expect it to appeal to her ever. Rebecca already has plenty of skill to capture the attention of a room the non-metanarratively enforced way. This is a detriment to the expanded range of stealth work that Size Difference opens up to her, and just in general constrains the range of ways she can execute in social situations. Maybe she can ask for an off switch, again, but—she's not sure what the point is.

She writes "0" opposite it.

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.

This one actually seems situationally useful.

Is "bored of listening" a figurative way of saying that people will keep listening no matter what, or can someone leave the conversation because they're sincerely interested but have something more pressing to do? And can I selectively control the strength of the effect?

Captive Audience doesn't force people to listen to you if there's something else important that they need to be doing, or if something else unusually interesting or urgent catches their attention, but it does mean that they will be genuinely interested in what you're talking about for as long as you're genuinely interested in talking about it, and sustained genuine interest is often the kind of experience that people can get caught up in and find rewarding and want to keep having, so it does help a lot with holding the attention of crowds. The strength of the effect is mostly based on how directly you're speaking to someone, so if you want to exclude someone from it you can move your conversational focus away from them, and the reverse if you want to concentrate on someone.

Less powerful than it could be, and also corresponding less ethically dubious.

Not that she's one to speak. But this is something she'll be using on her allies all the time, and though it'd be useful in a lot of meetings she can name, she's unsure she wants to constantly Master everyone around her as a matter of course. It says it's not mind control, but if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck...

When you say these powers work metanarratively and not by mind control, what does that mean? The They'll Know drawback implies that they would notice they're behaving unusually and could become uncomfortable, if not for the (presumably similarly metannarative) "veil".

Not being mind control means that any specific way people might have of blocking mind control won't work on them because they're not doing any of the things that those effects and powers block. Powers of Friendship still can and do affect people's minds, although to the extent that you're uncomfortable with that, your powers will try to find other ways to accomplish their goals and only use direct mind alteration as a last resort.

And yes, without They'll Know, it will be very difficult for people to realize that your powers are affecting them unless you're using them in an overt and openly acknowledged way, but if you take They'll Know and use mind-affecting Powers of Friendship, many people will likely be uncomfortable with that.

So—

She thinks one problem may be that Rebecca is emotionally comfortable with using direct mind alteration, does use it on a regular basis against people's would-be informed consent, but in theory recognizes that it's wrong, and that just because someone doesn't know you've Mastered them doesn't mean it's fine to do so. And while she strongly believes that her historical use of mind control has been justified by the context and stakes, she doesn't quite trust the Spirit to extrapolate Rebecca's preferences in a way that Rebecca not only emotionally endorses, but intellectually would endorse on reflection, and importantly would endorse retrospectively going forward into to future.

(Quietly, in a tangle of anxiety at the back of her mind, she's wondering what happens if someone uses I Can Fix Them on her.)

Different approach: there's a purely practical argument to make here, which is that if she takes powers which distort the way people behave around her, it prevents her from developing models of social dynamics which hold up outside her immediate vicinity, which is important if she ever wants to do anything more complicated than killing things and seducing people.

And now that she's framed it that way, she realizes what's really bugging her: if she does take They'll Know, taking this power is obviously an awful idea; the notebook has said as much; then if she doesn't take They'll Know, she's in a sense living in a manufactured bubble that's—unreal. A world of dolls, catering to her every whim. If she takes every power in Power of Friendship, she may as well be talking to thralls whenever she opens her mouth. And every mind-affecting power she takes from the list, she's moving herself away from material reality and towards that.

She doesn't want that.

(Her life is already an edifice of lies. When it still stood tall, it wasn't that bad; she didn't go home every day feeling sick to the stomach or anything. But now that everything is coming apart, every time she stops by the Wards' quarters, she wonders if today will be the day she finds young faces who once looked up to her now only staring in horror.)

(It's not regret that's tugging at her. She achieved outcomes she couldn't have otherwise. But the idea of crowning herself queen of another house of cards, even one enforced by metannarrative fiat—)

(—it's soured to her.)

Though.

She flips to the Drawbacks section.

Name: Incomplete - Grants: +5 ☐
About half of people you encounter will be immune to all mind-affecting aspects of your powers, and about half of those who remain will see reduced effects. You can do nothing to change this.

Name: Nullified - Grants: +1 ☐
(Requires Incomplete)
Any aspects of your powers that would affect the minds of others in ways they might not like will instead not do that.

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.

Skipping ahead a bit again, but: if she doesn't take any mind-affecting powers, these drawbacks are essentially free. They'll Know has additional impacts, but those impacts simplify to nullifying her default Stranger effect that she's not sure was actually mentioned anywhere but in They'll Know's description, which she doesn't not endorse.

And if it's the case that only people who want to be affected will be affected, there's no reason not to take Captive Audience. It becomes a voluntary focus aid, essentially. Though she wants to clarify:

If I take Incomplete and Nullified, do people who are thus affected by my mind-affecting powers automatically know that that they're being affected and by what, or does it just check if they would have agreed if they knew all the details, without actually notifying them?

Are you talking about the 'ways they might not like' part of Nullified? That tends to draw broader lines than just what each person would agree to in the moment; it'll definitely stop you from affecting people's minds in ways they wouldn't like, but it'll also stop you from affecting people's minds in ways that most people in their position wouldn't like, or ways that would make a lot of people nervous if you were open about doing them, even if the specific people in a specific situation might be okay with it. Taking They'll Know can help with that, because, yes, by default Nullified won't notify people about things, but with They'll Know there's an opportunity for people to notice what a power would do and choose to opt in to it, if you're in favour of them having that opportunity. (If you would rather just keep the broader effect from Nullified, that's what you'll get.)

That's not how she was interpreting Nullified, but that reading makes more sense than hers once she rereads.

I'm specifically thinking about Captive Audience here. It sounds like that would turn into not working by default, but I would be able to tell people about it so they can opt in?

If I'm understanding Nullified correctly that sounds like a very useful way for it to work. Rephrasing to make sure I'm not confused: for every power or effect,

• If most people wouldn't mind/be nervous about it, the effect will work on everyone, except people who personally mind will get automatically opted out.
• If most people would mind/be nervous about it, the effect won't work on anyone, and people who personally wouldn't mind don't get automatically opted in.
• With They'll Know, if a person notices or is told about the power, then they can choose to personally opt in or opt out regardless of the default from above.

Almost, yes!

Even without They'll Know, people can opt in to powers individually if you tell them about the power before using it, in an individual one-on-one interaction. The advantage of They'll Know is that, if you want, when you use a power like Captive Audience everyone in the audience can tell that you're using a power and tell what it's supposed to do and opt in if they want to participate, without you having to tell them all beforehand. It's much more convenient that way, because the opportunity to opt in is automatic and at scale, instead of you having to negotiate it separately for every person and power.

That sounds excellent and would probably be my central use case for the power if I do get it.

Despite all that, she doesn't actually need this power all that much, so she just scores it at 5. And she's remembering again that it costs 3 points, so actually she almost certainly isn't going to get this. Still, that's powerful information about Nullified and They Know. Next to it she puts a note: "Only if taking Nullified and They Know".

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.

No.

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.

Solid power, especially if she'll be encountering magic animals.

How is "animals" defined? Is, for example, a dog that's been technologically uplifted to sapience an animal? A species with dog morphology which has natural human-level intelligence?

Does this neutralize e.g. attack animals sent by an enemy, or guard animals?

Beings with human-level and human-style thinking won't count as animals for the purposes of Disney Princess. You can definitely tame attack and guard animals with it, though.

✔

She writes down "30" opposite Disney Princess.

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.

Her first instinct is that she's a little tempted, but then her mind starts coming up with questions like:

• Can my Best(est) Friend die irretrievably, including of old age?
• Does my Best(est) Friend excrete, eat, sleep and have other maintenance requirements?
• Is my Best(est) Friend likely to match my durability and speed so to not hinder me in combat or travel?
• What exactly does "their loyalty is infinite" mean?

And as she ponders the last, the question creeps up on her: Does she like the idea of having an animal companion, or does she just want a friend permanently grafted onto her by metanarrative fiat?

She closes her eyes for a moment.

When opens them again, she writes,

Is it typical to have trouble keeping alive, keeping relevant or managing one's relationship with a Best or Bestest Friend? What type of person would you recommend take them, and what are some personal traits that would indicate or contraindicate taking them?

Do the chosen of the Spirit tend to have trouble finding close, permanent companions due to e.g. disparities in power and context (when companions are something they want)? Are the powers in Power of Friendship such as Best Friend, Fated Lovers and Fated Friends meant to help mitigate that, or am I likely to be able to build a fulfilling and stable social network even without?

Best Friends can be easy to overshadow, but Bestest Friends will grow with you as necessary. Neither of them can die before you do, since they're a part of your power. Managing your relationship with them is usually very easy because their personality is selected to be compatible with yours in the longest term.

I usually recommend these powers to people who want the security of knowing they'll always have someone in their corner, and people who have been lonely for a long time and really want to meet a new friend right away that they know they'll get along with, and people whose dreams of an ideal life specifically involve an animal companion. I recommend against these powers when someone isn't sure they're ready for the commitment of a lifelong companion, or doesn't seem like they'll enjoy the intimacy of that kind of close relationship, and um, sometimes I also recommend against it if someone looks like they will mistreat their Friend in ways they'll regret later, but from what I can tell it doesn't seem like that's a problem you'll have.

I think whether someone chosen by the Spirit will have trouble forming personal relationships has to do with their personality and their approach to intimacy. Someone who finds it hard to form meaningful social relationships across a power disparity, or someone who has a lot of insecurities about whether their friends really like them or just want to be around them because they're rich and pretty and famous, can sometimes find it really helpful to have guaranteed opportunities for genuine relationships, and of course some people are just starting out lonely and benefit from being able to find friends sooner and more certainly. I would say that someone who makes it a priority to develop their social life will almost certainly be able to do it even without help, but even so, a lot of people really appreciate the help.

So she's either taking neither or both. The described characteristics are... promising. The main question here, she thinks, is back to whether she actually wants this. She runs down the checklist of traits:

• Indicators
  
  
• Want the security of knowing they'll always have someone in their corner:
  Maybe. She's finding it a little hard to introspect on that right now.
  
  
• People who have been lonely for a long time and really want to meet a new friend right away:
  No. If anything, she'd ask for a time delay on meeting her Bestest Friend. She doesn't feel like she's in the right headspace right now to start her relationship with a long-term companion on the right foot, though she can't trace exactly where that's coming from.
  
  
• Whose dreams of an ideal life specifically involve an animal companion:
  No. And maybe this is the actual damning part. If it hadn't been offered, she wouldn't have given it a thought at all.
  
  
• Contraindicators:
  
  
• Isn't sure they're ready for the commitment:
  Maybe... which means yes, definitionally.
  
  
• Doesn't seem like they'll enjoy the intimacy of that kind of close relationship:
  She doesn't know what level of intimacy she prefers in her relationships, which is as good as yes, considering the level of commitment involved.
  
  
• Will mistreat their Friend in ways they'll regret later:
  She's not as confident as the notebook that she doesn't satisfy this criterion. She doesn't see herself physically abusing her Friend, but—emotional neglect, sending mixed signals about how she wants to conduct their relationship, wielding them as a tool instead of a friend and confidant—she doesn't know.

She tries to imagine herself travelling universes with a dragon at her side, an unbreakable bond linking them, fighting every battle with it at her back, synchronized to her every move—

—and she thinks of doing the same but with just with a normal team, laughing around a restaurant table, shouting maneuvers over the comms, enemy fire raining down around them—

She writes down "0" next to Best Friend and Bestest Friend.

Maybe it's familiarity bias. If she doesn't want a mythical soulbound animal enough to overcome familiarity bias, then she doesn't want one enough to have it.

Explaining why I'm opting not for Best Friend and Bestest Friend: I feel like I'm not enough in touch with my best life and best self to commit to a permanent companion of that level of intimacy right now. I also think that I don't want specifically an animal companion that much, which further biases me against taking that risk.

And for the second part.

She doesn't know if she's comfortable forming relationships across significant power disparities, because she's never tried. She doesn't feel instinctively averse to it, but it's not much information. She isn't concerned about whether her friends really like her, because she can tell. And she's not acutely suffering from loneliness at the moment, as she's already figured out.

And—

I would say that someone who makes it a priority to develop their social life will almost certainly be able to do it even without help

Rebecca makes a point of being good at achieving her goals. If she wants to build a social life, she will. If it turns out she's fine without or with little, then she won't. That frame speaks to her in a way that somehow immediately rids her of any desire to take the Fated powers, because—she thinks it ties back to what she determined earlier, that part of her best life and best self is excelling; if it's possible for her to achieve this without cheating with powers, then taking the easy way out is robbing her of the opportunity to excel.

She adds in the notebook,

And thank you for the explanation about networki building a social network. It clears up a lot for me about what I should be trying to get out of this section.

Powers which make her better at what she does, instead of arranging for the universe to bend over to please her.

That makes sense! If that's where you're coming from, I think it's responsible of you to decide against Best(est) Friend.

Can I ask what you learned about what you want from Powers of Friendship? It might help me give you better advice about which powers suit you.