I think I want powers which are less about arranging for things to happen for me, and more about improving my ability to achieve the things I want.

For the Yourself powers I wasn't making much of a distinction about that and I don't think I need to go back and change that, because I think only It Gets Better and maybe Battle Maiden might be doing that, and those are far too important to turn down over a preference of problem-solving approach. But I think that is my preferred problem-solving approach.

Okay, I think I see what you mean! I'll keep that in mind.

Thank you!

Name: Generosity - Cost: 3 ☐
Your friends love to get you presents. They'll try to pick out things you'll like, but their success depends on how well they know you.

Name: Helpfulness - Cost: 4 ☐
Your friends love to do you favours. They'll volunteer eagerly whenever you need help with small tasks.

Name: Cuddle Buddies - Cost: 2 ☐
Your friends love to hug and cuddle you. Even someone who ordinarily isn't into that sort of thing will make an exception for you.

Name: Flattery - Cost: 1 ☐
Your friends love to compliment you and tell you all about how much they like you and why.

Name: Quality Time - Cost: 2 ☐
Your friends love to hang out with you and spend time together, even if you're not doing anything interesting or important.

Name: Agree to Agree - Cost: 4 ☐
You can always convince your friends to see your point of view about things like politics and philosophy. They might have a few quibbles here and there, but they'll see how right you are once you explain where you're coming from in enough detail.

She puts "0" next to all of them. It's much easier to score these now that she knows what she's going for.

Declining these for the same reason I just mentioned. And also because I don't have a strong model of which of these I'd prefer or find grating if done excessively. Agree to Agree in particular also sounds fraught if get something wrong.

Helpfulness was slightly tempting because of the mundane utility alone, and Agree to Agree significantly tempting because of how many times it would have helped her out on the past, but she can curry favor and argue her way by herself. And if she's operating on incomplete information or reasoning, the latter might have unfortunate effects.

(She's assuming that in the presence of Nullified these either do nothing or arrange for her to meet the correct type of friends, but it doesn't affect her choice either way, so she won't ask.)

That makes sense!

Checkmark acknowledgment.

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.

This she had her eye on. It's such a fascinating and specific power compared to many of the others, and yet has such broad utility for how specific it is.

Wondering if this works for the following use cases:

• Understanding impersonal factual information someone is trying to convey, or choosing the exact wording to communicate impersonal factual information effectively.
• Verifying the sincerity of someone e.g. promising a change of heart, or swearing to obey the terms of an agreement.
• Verify my sincerity to someone else: from the text it sounds like "transmitting the intended message" goes both ways, but the sincerity mechanic only goes one?

Side questions: does this work with multiple people, and is "you think you might not be getting through to each other" flavor text, or is it a prerequisite to activating the power?

It works for understanding and communicating impersonal factual information, and for verifying sincerity, and it sort of works for verifying your own sincerity but not as well since the person you're talking to doesn't have a specific power for being able to definitely verify sincerity this way and so they might distrust the signs of your sincerity for reasons of their own. It won't help you lie to people more effectively, though; it'll only help you be better at sincere honest communication.

It works with multiple people but not as well (on the expressive side) because tailoring your communication for multiple people at the same time is harder than tailoring it for one. "You think you might not be getting through to each other" is a cue about when the power is most worthwhile, not a constraint on when you can use it. You do need to take a figurative step back and collect yourself and focus on trying to understand where they're coming from, though, that part is important to how the power works.

That makes sense—my next question would have been how the reverse sincerity verification would work without mind control, but you answered that.

Is there a bandwidth limit to understanding incoming communication? If someone shouts at me, "Go!" for example, can I take a step back and focus on understanding where and how they want me to go, even if there's no possible way to non-magically infer those details? And can they deliberately encode more information than is reasonable with the knowledge that I have this power, for example thinking of a complex attack plan and shouting at me with the intent to convey it, "Attack!"

Yes, both of those things would work! Although the second thing could turn out poorly if someone is trying to convey a lot of information to you very quickly and is mistaken about how good their plan is or how well they've thought it through and defined what they mean to communicate. And there will still be the delay of taking a moment to invoke the power, though that doesn't have to take very long at all if you think quickly and are good at directing your focus.

That's astonishingly useful in battlefield communications.

She gives the notebook's response a tick and scores Backchannel at 100.

She's slightly concerned it'll atrophy her ability to phrase things to communicate effectively by herself; though she'll in theory have Backchannel forever, it'll be correlated with other skills of communication and expression not in Backchannel's scope. But she can just be sensibly conservative about abusing the outgoing version.

Name: You Can Teach Better - Cost: 8 ☐
(Requires Anything You Can Do)
If you have a personal connection to someone, you can teach them anything you know; depending how motivated and engaged they are, they could learn it up to 110% as fast as you could have learned it using Anything You Can Do. If you consider them a good friend or otherwise especially close, this applies even to forms of magic that they ordinarily shouldn't be able to learn.

Useful. She'll give it a 200. This honestly depends on how much time she'll spend on allies and how long each stays by her, which she doesn't have good information on, both in terms of what it'll make sense to do and what her personal preferences will pan out as.

Name: Not Like Other Girls - Cost: 2 ☐
People will understand that you're different. They won't make assumptions about you based on prejudice or stereotype, they won't apply legal or societal limitations to you based on what kind of person you are, and they won't take you as a representative of your demographics.

This... is an odd power. She spends a while trying to understand the intended use case.

If she goes to a world with humans as a minority, this might be useful, but it also might be detrimental, depending on how humans are viewed. On Earth Bet it's probably detrimental as a superhero, unless she manages to curry favor with all sides, but that sounds difficult to pull off.

But she likes having a baseline to work off, having assumptions to exploit. Complexity in a system is levers to pull on. A blank slate isn't always a good idea.

What are reasons someone might want to take Not Like The Other Girls? If I'm not part of any poorly regarded demographic I know of, is there any significant benefit to this I'm not seeing?

If you don't expect to be part of a poorly-regarded demographic in most places, and don't expect to belong to any groups where you think you would make a misleading first impression of what they're usually like, then Not Like Other Girls is not the power for you.

✔

Name: Love Interest - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires A Thousand Ships and Mysterious Allure)
Anyone you fall for will inevitably like you back. They may not necessarily act on their feelings, but the potential will be there.

Name: Love Triangle - Cost: 2 ☐
(Requires Love Interest)
People you fall for will be open to dating you even if they already have another serious relationship, or other circumstances that would ordinarily interfere, like a demanding career or a vow of chastity. This may cause drama, but it'll blow over quickly and there won't be any serious problems.

Name: Love Dodecahedron - Cost: 5 ☐
(Requires Love Triangle)
When you fall for someone who is already seriously dating or even married, your romantic rival will be open to allowing their partner to date you, and may even want to date you themselves.

She is... slightly tempted. It is "arranging things to happen for her", but falling for people who don't like you back just sounds inconvenient and unpleasant, and mundane ways to remedy that have their limits.

The problem is it requires Mysterious Allure. Though if she's taking Nullified and They Know, Mysterious Allure should be mostly negated and then it's just reduces to an extra point cost.

If I take Nullified, does Mysterious Allure do anything?

And in that case, will Love Interest still work, just by arranging the type of people who cross my path and whom I fall for?

With Nullified, Mysterious Allure can still do plenty! It can arrange lighting and other environmental cues to draw attention your way, and manage coincidences so that people see you in a flattering light on more abstract levels as well. It doesn't work as well or as consistently that way, but it does work.

Love Interest, likewise, has fewer avenues of expression with Nullified and can't promise as consistent of a guarantee, but can still do a lot to arrange things for you.

Hm.

She looks back and rereads Mysterious Allure. It's slightly better if it's an... environmental Shaker effect... but the outcome still doesn't appeal to her. She's never been in any situation she thought would be improved by being more interesting to everyone in the room.

Is it enough to drop Love Interest?

Mysterious Allure is a dependency of Love Interest for a reason, she thinks. Love Interest is a stronger, more targeted version of Mysterious Allure. She feels averse to Mysterious Allure but less averse to Love Interest. Why? Is it because the outcomes of the former please her less than those of the latter? Or is it because she doesn't—model her romantic life and what Love Interest will be like well enough to develop the same field instinct that caused her to reject Mysterious Allure?

If I regret taking Love Interest later, or any power, is it impossible to remove or disable the power?

Conversely, if I don't take it, I'm guessing there are similar powers I can acquire in the multiverse if I sought them out, for example with Dragon Fairy Elf Witch or Anything You Can Do? Of course they won't work exactly the same or as well, as you've implied before.

So if I'm uncertain if I want something like that, would it make sense to not take it now, and only seek out a substitute later if I decide I want the effect?

Removing or disabling powers isn't strictly impossible but it's sort of a complicated subject. It's definitely true that once you've taken a power, that power can't be removed from you by any conventional outside force, and you can't voluntarily disable it at will. In extreme circumstances, though...

I should begin by explaining that, once you finalize your choices, if there are any points left over, that small portion of the Spirit's power will be available as unformed potential, and if you ever really, really need an extra power that you didn't choose or that wasn't available on the list and you didn't think to ask for, it can spontaneously come together out of that unformed potential to become part of your Spirit-granted powers. It's pretty rare for that to happen, because not everyone leaves points over, and vessels of the Spirit tend to live very long lives and the extra points only form new powers when it seems very likely that that's the best moment out of your whole life for them to be doing that and the best power for you they could've made.

Even more rarely than that—only when the Spirit is really sure that the person would agree that it was a good idea if they had full information, and really sure that the person will end up in a position to notice that they agree and notice that the Spirit only did it because it knew they would agree, and when it's important enough to be worth doing something scary and drastic that should almost never happen—someone can gain a drawback they didn't choose. I'm not supposed to bring that up casually, because most people wouldn't understand that I really, really mean it about it almost never happening and only when they'd definitely be okay with it, and then they would be scared of getting drawbacks they don't want and didn't choose, and it would be harder for them to live their best lives. But you come across as thoughtful and responsible enough that I think it's okay to tell you, and I think you would want to know.

So, when someone takes powers that they end up not wanting, and they try for a long time to find a way to live with their powers, and they can't manage it, and they really badly want those powers gone or at least different... sometimes, if they fulfill the other criteria, the Spirit can give them a custom drawback to mitigate the parts of their powers that are hurting them. But because it's really, really important that people should get to choose their own powers for themselves and be able to rely on having them without having to worry about something happening to them, the Spirit really wants to minimize the amount it has to do that sort of thing... it's just that it's so sad when someone is stuck with powers that hurt them to have.

I think it's a good idea to skip Love Interest if you're not sure whether you'll want it or be okay having it.

I guess I could have said that without saying the rest, but I wanted you to know.

Thats' very reassuring to know.

If she has points left over, they can spontaneously form a new power—

She shouldn't do that. It sounds like the base rate is low, and there's a reason the Spirit doesn't just do that for all of your points; there's value in taking ownership of your capabilities and over the decisions that shaped them; Cauldron does the same thing for the same reasons—

She can think about it if she has points left. It sounds like the cases where she'd need it the most are covered by the automatic drawbacks, which don't require action on her part. Still, she has to ask:

If I needed to in the future, would it be useful to, say, pray to the Spirit to spend any unspent points for a power, or pray for a drawback? I'm not certain if that's the right word, but the idea of expressing consent and intent to mitigate the part of the Spirit's bias for inaction related to predictability.

I'll do as you say and skip Love Interest. I appreciate the context.

She writes "0" opposite Love Interest, and then opposite Love Triangle and Love Dodecahedron as well.

The Spirit doesn't like to relate to people in the prayer way, but yes, hoping and expressing consent for a power or drawback could help tip the scales in that kind of situation. Just please try not to rely on it, because it might turn out that even with your active consent, that moment still isn't the right one, or there's still a good chance you could solve your problems a different way.

✔

(Alexandria also doesn't relate to things in the prayer way and didn't expect the Spirit to from its description; it was just the most compact way to express what she was trying to express.)

Name: Time Enough For Love - Cost: 5 ☐
No matter how many people you want to date or be close friends with, you will somehow find the time to hang out with all of them and express your love and care. This power can only be used for relationship activities and not for anything else you might want to use the ability to be in two places at once for.

This power solves one of the fundamental problems that are why Rebecca hasn't been doing any of... this.

(It explicitly declines to solve the other fundamental problem with her social availability, and she wonders if that's a subtle joke at her expense by the Spirit.)

"Hang out with all of them and express your love and care" is a phrasing that doesn't quite click with the way Rebecca relates to people and friends, but it's a connotational gap more than anything, and the basis of it she can endorse. Even if she weren't explicitly thinking of this as a—personal growth area—it's a time-saving power, and those are a force multiplier regardless of the implementation. She wouldn't get much use out of it today because of how few people even might qualify for it, but if she's going to be building a network like she did in the early days of the Protectorate, or something even more small-scale and tightly knit than that...

She writes down "250".

Does this work for engagements I consider the primary purpose of which to be social, but with a backdrop of an ostensibly functional activity? I'm thinking of something like a joint city patrol, where I and a friend go around the city waving the banner and stopping miscellaneous crimes we see, but with no specific strategic objective in mind. Or, for a more everyday example, repainting my apartment with a friend.

Time Enough For Love doesn't care how practically useful an activity is or isn't, only how much social bonding is involved. As long as, and to the extent that, you're doing something with someone in order to grow closer to them or enjoy your closeness, Time Enough For Love will make sure you have the time for it.

She and Hero would have had so much fun setting HQ on fire trying to get her to reproduce his tech

She ✔s the reply and replaces "250" with "400".

It takes her a bit of time to refocus and look at the next perk.

Name: Safe at Home - Cost: 4 ☐
No one will hurt your loved ones to get at you, or vice versa.

This is why secret identities exist. Except it doesn't work when your loved ones are also in the business, or if she lands somewhere where it's not a convention or where it's impossible to keep one.

Does this work reliably or at all with Nullified?

Taking Safe at Home with Nullified can lead to some... strange... results, but it won't break the guarantee. Attempts to hurt your loved ones to get at you will still fail.