good time for a sabbatical | Glowfic Constellation

when they're the sort of person who hears about being beautiful and powerful and special in a feminine way, and thinks that all the parts of that are good, that power is good and beauty is good and being special is good and being feminine is good, and they would rather have all those things than only some of them—

Rebecca has never thought of herself as—vain, or girly, or the other unflattering things that come to mind. If you asked her, she wouldn't say she had any particular relationship with femininity. She understands design as it pertains to women, and she's heard her branding people call her remarkably easy to work with, but dressing up is work. When she was a child, she liked dolls, as children do; when she became a teenager, she worried about her skin and her hair, as girls do. Then she had no hair to worry about. And then she had things far more important to concern herself with.

But... it's so long ago now, yet she does remember lying in her cot, turned on her side, staring out the window. She remembers imagining another world out there, one where she were free and powerful and glorious, not this nobody of skin and bones. She remembers that yearning, so powerful it would suck the breath from her lungs.

And when the miracle came—when she thought I would do anything for a chance, just a chance, and the devil came asking but a pittance in return—the Doctor told her, at the time, to try envisioning the powers she would want, and pin that image in her mind as she drank. The distillation was rudimentary back then, and they had yet not learned to factor out the different components of the base material, nor the calming techniques to coax the most stable possible result from a particular concoction. They never quite got enough data to know if the imagination exercises did much, and then the process progressed to the point where they could select on different axes directly, and it devolved into a simpler numbers game.

When Rebecca downed her vial, and tried to imagine, all she could see was herself as she was before everything, but more. Not super-strength, not flight, not lasers shooting from her eyes, and not beauty or health exactly, but—life.

From the crucible she emerged powerful and stunning and intelligent. The Perfect Woman, the press used to call her, before the incident that cost her an eye and a close friend. She grew her hair long after her mother and fought to keep it that way, even through the 90's when every other heroine cut theirs short for the practical utility. It meant something to her, then, the presentation, even if she's long stopped consciously thinking of her brand as anything but design strategy.

At forty years old, she still has to put on makeup to look a day over twenty-five.

Beautiful. Powerful. Special.

She writes,

Thank you for the explanation. I think I would like to see that list now.

mysterious and powerful

Okay! Just a moment while I set that up... ⏳

Ink swirls across quite a number of upcoming pages, arranging itself into a tidily designed list, much more print-like in style than the notebook's usual handwriting. In a matter of seconds, the hourglass doodle finishes trickling little dots of ink and the list is complete.

All done! Please let me know if you have any questions.

A tally in the outer top corner of each page of the list reads 0/70 in the same tidy font as the list itself. There's a preamble paragraph set apart from the main list, and then four headings each with its own description and set of options.

These powers are offered under an aegis of metanarrative protection. Anytime you might expect a power to have obvious negative side effects, like glowing eyes making it harder to see, it simply won't—you'll be able to see just fine anytime it actually matters, while having dramatically hazy vision at cool, narratively appropriate moments. This doesn't apply to your own preferences about the explicitly described effects of the power; if you don't want to be Well Endowed, the metanarrative cannot protect you from choosing that option and having to live with it.

Destinations

You must choose exactly one Destination.

Name: Stay Put - Cost: 0 ☐
You're just going to take these powers and keep on keeping on right where you are.

Name: Somewhere In Mind - Cost: 0 ☐
You have a destination you want to go to. You can choose any place, real, historical, fictional, or made up in your own head right now, and the Spirit will take you there. After that, you're on your own as far as further interdimensional travel.

Name: Isekai Roulette - Cost: 0 ☐
Trust to the will of the Spirit and let it take you where you need to go. It will look at far more options than you could ever know about, and pick something that's likely to be even better for you than whatever you would have chosen on your own.

Yourself

These powers affect your own self and nature, without direct effects on other people. Some of them are prerequisites for powers in the later Power of Friendship section.

Name: A Thousand Ships - Cost: 1 ☐
Your face is simply exquisite, an ideal of feminine beauty. There are many possible ideals of feminine beauty, and yours is whichever one speaks most deeply to your soul. Others may match your beauty in their own way, but never exceed it.

Name: A Hundred Ships - Cost: 1 ☐
(Replaces A Thousand Ships)
Your face is simply exquisite, an ideal of feminine beauty. There are many possible ideals of feminine beauty, and yours is whichever one speaks most deeply to your soul. Instead of prioritizing pure beauty, this power prioritizes what feels right to you.

Name: What's In A Name - Cost: 1 ☐
Magic to divine true names will accept whatever alias you choose to think of as your true name. Magic to use your true name against you will fail.

Name: Angelic Tones - Cost: 2 ☐
Your voice is supernaturally beautiful and you can sing in any vocal range.

Name: Emerald Orbs - Cost: 2 ☐
At all times, your eyes are exactly the right colour. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. Your eyes can be ANY colour this way. Lightless black voids? Brilliant white stars? Limpid pools of endless sapphire? They will look exactly the way you'd want them to look if you were writing a self-insert fanfic about this exact moment of your life.

Name: Perfect Hair - Cost: 2 ☐
At all times, you have exactly the right hairstyle. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It is not limited to physically or logistically plausible hairstyles.

Name: Size Difference - Cost: 2 ☐
At all times, you are exactly the right height. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It will usually keep any height changes fairly subtle, but at dramatic moments you might discover yourself able to shrink to the size of a bee or grow to the size of a giant.

Name: Dressing Room - Cost: 3 ☐
No matter how ridiculous your outfit, it will stay pristine and perfect, unless it would be more dramatic for you to be artfully bedraggled. You can use any quiet moment to yourself to quick-change your clothes, shoes, nails, and hairstyle into a completely new look. (You cannot change your hair length or colour this way without Perfect Hair, but you can braid or style it.)

Name: Personal Hygiene - Cost: 1 ☐
You are always clean and fresh, never needing to use a bath or toilet.

Name: Like Roses - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Personal Hygiene)
You smell lovely. Your scent is unique to you, and may involve any combination of warm spices, floral notes, petrichor, or other things you think smell good. You do not need any justification for why you smell like this.

Name: Just A Little Longer - Cost: 1 ☐
If you push yourself, you can keep doing any task or working on any project indefinitely, visibly strained but never impaired by injury or fatigue. As soon as you stop, you'll collapse with exhaustion and sleep for up to a full day to regain your strength. This only works when what you're doing is personally important to you.

Name: Immunity System - Cost: 3 ☐
You can't get sick or poisoned. You can still use recreational drugs and alcohol normally, but can't overdose.

Name: My Ears Are Burning - Cost: 6 ☐
You always know exactly what people are thinking, as long as it's about you. This effect is not telepathy and is not blocked by effects that block telepathy. It applies even to people you can't perceive normally. You are never impaired by the flood of information.

Name: Well Endowed - Cost: 1 ☐
You have a generous figure, whether that's a classic hourglass or more of a well-rounded look; you can choose the details. Your endowments maintain a state of perfect grace and beauty at all times, never troubling you with uncomfortable bounces or uninvited jiggles.

Name: Hollow Leg - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Well Endowed)
Regardless of your diet and exercise habits, your body maintains the physique and silhouette you prefer. Lack of visible muscle never impairs your strength or endurance. As your preferences change, so will your body; you are no longer bound to the generous figure stipulated by Well Endowed.

Name: Inner Strength - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Hollow Leg)
You are implausibly, superhumanly strong, with endurance and toughness to match. You might have to strain a little to lift and carry at the same level as construction equipment, or deal with lightly scraped knuckles if you punch as hard as a battering ram.

Name: Lightfoot - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Hollow Leg)
You are perfectly, superhumanly graceful, with reflexes and agility to match. You can cross a field of snow without leaving a footprint, or stand on a slender branch without bending it, or jump so lightly that you soar through the air instead of falling.

Name: Battle Angel - Cost: 1 ☐
Somehow, you never get significantly injured in a fight, unless it's a very dramatic and plot-relevant fight in which case you might be glamorously wounded and pick up a cool new scar.

Name: Battle Demon - Cost: 1 ☐
You have an unerring intuition for gaps in an opponent's defenses, though it may be beyond your power to exploit them.

Name: Battle Maiden - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Battle Angel and Battle Demon)
No matter what kind of fight you're getting in, you're always a match for even the most skilled opponent.

Name: Making Ends Meet - Cost: 1 ☐
You have enough money to sustain a comfortable lifestyle. It comes from a source you don't have to pay much attention to, like a job with almost no responsibilities, a large inheritance, or a noble title.

Name: Motherlode - Cost: 2 ☐
(Requires Making Ends Meet)
You have enough money to sustain a fairly extravagant lifestyle. It doesn't come from anywhere, you just have it.

Name: Four Star Daydream - Cost: 4 ☐
(Requires Motherlode)
The answer to 'can I afford that' is 'yes'.

Name: Dragon Fairy Elf Witch - Cost: 5 ☐
You can at any time discover previously unknown heritage from any type of being you encounter, even if this makes no sense or contradicts previously established descriptions of your family tree. You always get their powers without their drawbacks, unless the drawbacks are cool and dramatic. Any visible features of this heritage will appear at narratively appropriate moments and be cute, pretty, beautiful, or striking rather than awkward, weird, gross, or scary. This ability works even if the beings in question cannot reproduce with humans, or at all.

Name: Omniglot - Cost: 3 ☐
You learn languages insanely, ludicrously fast. You know exactly what any word said to you means, and you make strangely accurate guesses about how to phrase things you're trying to say. You never forget any grammar or vocabulary you learn.

Name: Anything You Can Do - Cost: 6 ☐
You learn implausibly quickly from friends, rivals, and love interests. If you have a personal connection to someone with a certain skill, talent, or expertise, you'll learn it five times faster than they did, or twenty times faster if they're actively trying to teach you. This applies even to forms of magic that you ordinarily shouldn't be able to learn.

Name: Personal Space - Cost: 3 ☐
No one can touch you intimately if you don't want them to. You can still be struck in a fight or bumped into in crowds, but things like hugs and kisses and sex only happen if you're okay with them.

Name: Closed Book - Cost: 1 ☐
You're immune to any supernatural, pharmaceutical, or other effect that would let people directly read your thoughts or feelings.

Name: Indelible - Cost: 1 ☐
You're immune to any supernatural, pharmaceutical, or other effect that would let people directly alter your thoughts or feelings.

Name: Iron Will - Cost: 2 ☐
(Requires Closed Book and Indelible)
You are immune to all forms of mental illusion, alteration, interference, or control. Even extreme torture, extended solitary confinement, advanced brainwashing techniques, and so on cannot touch you. You can be lonely but not cripplingly lonely. You can be upset but not traumatized. (You can choose to allow specific effects like communicative telepathy on a case-by-case basis.)

Name: It Gets Better - Cost: 5 ☐
You're going to be okay.
Your mind and body may never be perfect, but they are yours, and cannot permanently be taken from you. In time you will heal from any injury, escape any imprisonment, and recover from any trauma; maybe not in exactly the ways you hoped, but always in ways you're okay with.

Name: The Great Equalizer - Cost: 8 ☐
Where you go, Fate shatters. Forms of prophecy that were once perfectly reliable stop working, or show a broad array of possibilities instead of a single coherent future. Imbalances of magical luck wash out, leaving everyone lucky and no one able to leverage their luck against an opponent. If you stay in the same world for a year and a day, this effect will be permanent even after you leave and even if someone tries to constrain the future anew in your absence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Name: I Can Fix Them - Cost: 5 ☐
Regardless of how morally despicable someone is, your love can and will reform them into a genuinely good, kind, upstanding person who regrets their evil deeds.

Name: I Can Help Them - Cost: 5 ☐
(Replaces I Can Fix Them)
Regardless of how lost to darkness someone is, your love can save them, if they're willing to accept it.
This power will not directly alter someone's mind except to allow them to believe a true thing they couldn't have believed otherwise, or to change something that their pre-alteration and post-alteration selves would hypothetically be able to agree was good if they talked it over honestly with full access to each other's perspectives. In cases where the outcome of the hypothetical is uncertain, it will default to not making the change.

Name: Inspirational - Cost: 5 ☐
Just meeting you makes people want to be better. Those who hurt you, or hurt someone you care about, will always come to understand your point of view and regret what they've done. In trade, you might sometimes come to understand more of their point of view than you'd like.

Name: True Love's Kiss - Cost: 1 ☐
By kissing your true love, you can break any curse, heal any injury, and cure any illness. The same works in reverse.

Name: Eternal Love - Cost: 2 ☐
(Requires True Love's Kiss)
Those you love cannot be parted from you by anything short of their own uncoerced decision to leave. Anything else—war, politics, death, interdimensional travel—you will find a way to overcome and be reunited.

Name: The Rescuer - Cost: 5 ☐
(Requires Eternal Love)
If someone is dead who would want to be alive again, and you set your heart on returning them, you will find a way. It may have costs or difficulties or take a long time, but you will find it, and it will work.

Name: Planned Parenthood - Cost: 1 ☐
You can only have children if you actively and specifically want to. Your partners will instinctively believe you about this, and won't be concerned that you might be wrong or fibbing.

Name: Providential Parenthood - Cost: 1 ☐
(Replaces Planned Parenthood)
You can only have children when you're really ready for it, or if you actively and specifically decide to.

Name: Two Become One - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Planned Parenthood)
When you have sex, it is always special and wonderful and beautiful. No one ever elbows anyone in the face or makes undignified noises.

Name: Laugh Together - Cost: 1 ☐
(Replaces Two Become One)
When you have sex, you find it easy to free yourself from expectations and anxieties and immerse yourself in the experience of the moment. Your partners get the same benefits.

Name: Bop It - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Two Become One)
The mysteries of another's body are an open book to you, and you always know exactly how to move and touch in order to please someone in bed.

Name: The Princess And The Dragon - Cost: 3 ☐
No matter who or what you're trying to sleep with, the logistics will all work out, somehow. Arbitrary differences in size, biology, temperature, substrate, and underlying physics can be gotten around with sufficient creativity and determination.

Name: GGG - Cost: 4 ☐
Your true love will be willing to try just about anything you suggest in bed, and if you really enjoy it, they'll really enjoy it too.

Name: Before Your Eyes - Cost: 4 ☐
In your presence, people become willing to experiment sexually in ways they normally wouldn't. For some reason this applies especially well to boys kissing each other.

Name: Fated Lovers - Cost: 3 ☐
You will meet someone who will go on to become your true love. If you enter a specific universe with a specific target in mind, you'll meet that person under favourable circumstances, and if it doesn't work out with them, this power will keep introducing you to new possibilities until you find someone who's right for you. If you're the sort of person who can have multiple true loves, you'll keep meeting new ones until you have enough.

Name: Fated Friends - Cost: 4 ☐
Wherever you go, you will be steered into meeting people you'd do well to befriend. It's up to you to recognize and appreciate them.

Name: Sorry About That - Cost: 3 ☐
Your true love will be extremely forgiving. Even if you make mistakes or act thoughtlessly toward them, a simple apology will mend things between you. They may expect you to try to improve, but they'll be infinitely patient about how fast that improvement takes place.

Name: Excuse Me - Cost: 5 ☐
(Requires Sorry About That)
All your friends will be just as forgiving as your true love.

Name: Tragic Backstory - Cost: 8 ☐
(Requires Excuse Me)
Something terrible happened to you in your past. Anyone who hears about it immediately forgives you for any and all bad behaviour in the present. They will not expect you to grow or change, and will continue sympathetically excusing whatever you do indefinitely.

Name: Sense of Style - Cost: 4 ☐
People who are romantically interested in you will start dressing more to your taste. The more romantically compatible they are, the better they'll be able to guess exactly what to wear to catch your eye.

Name: Bonus Style Points - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Sense of Style)
Luck will shine on anyone trying to dress up for you. They'll get their hands on outfits they couldn't normally afford, their clothes will fit better, and in extreme cases they might even find themselves able to change shape, sex, or species—though only in ways that make them more, not less, comfortable in their own skin.

Name: Self-Reflection - Cost: 5 ☐
Whenever you meet someone who is you, or was you, or could have been you, or will be you, a special bond is formed, allowing you to keep in touch with them no matter how far you travel. You can speak out loud to someone who is you, and they'll hear you as though you were standing right next to them; you can write notes to someone who is you, and the note will appear near them; you can send messages to someone who is you, and they'll receive them even if there's more than a world between you. The person on the other end of the bond can contact you in just the same way. This lasts as long as each of you considers the other a reflection of themselves and each of you wants to stay in touch with the other.

Name: Popular - Cost: 3 ☐
Wherever you go, you develop a reputation fast. The sort of people who you'd like to have as fans tend to hear about you and be impressed. You may not make an impression on mainstream society at large, but you'll develop a following among the people who best resonate with your style.

Name: Famous - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Popular)
Wherever you go, people really take to you. You're the subject of constant gossip and most people have heard of you before you meet them. People you've never met will get crushes on you.

Name: Undiplomatic Immunity - Cost: 6 ☐
You are above the law. Any crimes you commit will be overlooked by the authorities. Note that, if you do enough crime that you start looking more like an invading army, local governments will still feel free to declare war.

Name: Friends In Low Places - Cost: 3 ☐
You make friends easily among the lowest echelons of society, the underdogs and underworlders. Moving and acting in these circles is intuitive and natural for you.

Name: Friends In High Places - Cost: 3 ☐
You make friends easily at the highest echelons of society, among the rich and powerful. Moving and acting in these circles is intuitive and natural for you.

Name: Friends in Strange Places - Cost: 3 ☐
You make friends easily in small isolated communities, among those who may be scorned by mainstream society for their differences or may just be so obscure that mainstream society mostly hasn't heard of them. Moving and acting in these circles is intuitive and natural for you.

Drawbacks

These options grant points rather than costing them. They represent inconveniences or mitigations of existing advantages.

Name: Decorative - Grants: +1 ☐
You are unfailingly cute and pretty and feminine at all times, in all circumstances. You cannot wear insufficiently pretty clothes. You cannot make insufficiently pretty noises. You cannot ugly cry.

Name: Beauty Is A Curse - Grants: +1 ☐
(Requires A Thousand Ships)
No, you don't understand. Beauty IS a curse. People will NOT stop bringing it up. Everyone you meet just has to point out how pretty you are. This will never stop happening. Even the most tactful people find it slipping out subtly, as remarks about the luster of your hair or the depth of your eyes.

Name: Plain Jane - Grants: +2 ☐
No matter what you look like, nor how many times people tell you you're beautiful, when you look in the mirror all you see is imperfections. You will never be fully satisfied with your appearance on an instinctive level.

Name: Style of Sisyphus - Grants: +1 ☐
Anytime you settle on a personal style that works well for you, soon afterward you'll encounter inspiration for another style that you like even better. You might end up cycling between different fashions, or trying to incporporate them all into a single outfit (and then finding another inspiration and having to start all over again).

Name: There's Another One - Grants: +3 ☐
You are not the only vessel of the Spirit. You might meet someone else with similar powers to yours; you might even meet more than one. Your susceptibility to one another's powers will be governed by the narrative.

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: Great Responsibility - Grants: +4 ☐
When someone calls out to you for help, you can hear it no matter how far away you are, and you know exactly how they feel.

Name: Very Distinctive - Grants: +3 ☐
(Requires at least three of: A Thousand Ships, Angelic Tones, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room, Like Roses, Well Endowed)
You cannot successfully disguise yourself to anyone who has met you in your normal identity. Even someone who has only seen you at a distance or heard about your style might notice similarities.

Name: Flashy - Grants: +2 ☐
(Requires Very Distinctive and at least five of: A Thousand Ships, Angelic Tones, Emerald Orbs, Perfect Hair, Size Difference, Dressing Room, Like Roses, Well Endowed, Mysterious Allure)
Stealth just doesn't work for you. If someone has any opportunity to notice your presence, they will.

Name: Secret Identity - Grants: +2 ☐
When you're at home, in your world of origin, your powers are fully concealed. Unfair advantages are withdrawn and inhuman features are hidden. Powers of safety and convenience still work, as long as they can remain plausibly deniable, but to all outward appearances you're back to being your ordinary self with no magic to speak of. (If you take this with They'll Know, thresholds for plausible deniability get much higher, but safety powers will still work and still conceal themselves.)

Name: Dramatic Damsel - Grants: +3 ☐
When (and only when) an opportunity for a really great story arises, powers that ordinarily protect you from things like getting hurt, being drugged, or losing fights will slip just enough to facilitate someone getting the better of you. The power may reassert itself right away for a dramatic escape, or keep a loophole open or a handicap in place long enough to make your escape more difficult and elaborate. (Combining this with Realism is not recommended.)

Name: Green With Envy - Grants: +6 ☐
People are so eager to be your friend that they become bitter and vindictive when denied the opportunity. You can tear apart long-established friend groups if you aren't careful to give everyone equal attention, and sometimes even then. This effect is particularly harsh around people you're dating.

Name: You Ruin Them - Grants: +3 ☐
Once someone has dated, slept with, or even shared a deep and longing glance across a room with you, their heart is never fully satisfied with anyone else. Other relationships pale in comparison to what they could have, or imagine they could have, with you.

Name: Jilted Lovers - Grants: +4 ☐
When you break up with someone, they become monomaniacally obsessed with getting back together. If you take Realism, this will absolutely escalate to violent stalking.

Name: The Crazy Train - Grants: +6 ☐
Powers that you should be able to control directly or influence by your mood and preferences (like Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, Emerald Orbs, or What's In A Name) instead answer only to the narrative, which is still using your aesthetics but might not necessarily have your best interests in mind. Combines... interestingly... with Realism.

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.

Name: Realism - Grants: +20 ☐
Give up your metanarrative protection. Although your individually selected powers still work as described, the invisible synergies that protect you from, say, gaining violent stalkers through Mysterious Allure or being genuinely traumatized by your Tragic Backstory are removed. Additionally, though effects like I Can Fix Them still operate, they may take considerably more effort, care, thought, and narrative investment on your part.

Loading screen. She feels like that choice of design trapping means something, but she doesn't have the first clue what.

Rebecca can read pages in a single glance. She has more than one question the moment the first two pages in front of her fill in. She holds them and flips through the rest of it.

She now has more questions.

And slowly, she feels her model of all the world and reality—

—turn on its axis.

Is there anywhere to write. If not, she'll go the the next fresh page after the list.

Is this the place to write if I have more questions?

mysterious and powerful

Yes, this is fine, though if it makes things easier for you I can also add more blank pages between each page of the list.

That would be appreciated.

mysterious and powerful

There's a slight shuffling noise but very little movement, and in particular almost no motion of the notebook's covers, as the pages rearrange themselves. Now each page of the list faces a blank page to write on.

On the page facing the preamble, Rebecca writes.

Before I dig into the options, there are a two big-picture questions I'd like to clear up first if possible.

You mention a few times "metanarrative" effects. I haven't noticed my life so far to particularly run along what I think of as narrative conventions or arcs. Is this the lens through which the Spirit sees the world, a sort of framing through which powers granted by it act upon the world; is it a selection effect on the types of people the Spirit chooses or worlds it acts in; or is it something else deeper than that? Should I expect the world to act from this moment onward in a narrative manner, separate from any specific effects of the Spirit? Should I expect to my past to be revealed to have had narrative characteristics all along?

In the "Destinations" section, you describe interdimensional travel up to and including travelling to fictional and made-up worlds. I'm interpreting this as not referring to the interdimensional travel I already know of, wherein people can visit Rovelli-coherent Everett branches of the universe via Hořava-Koyama tunnelling; if you are unfamiliar with those terms, it may be sufficient to say that those parallel worlds don't permit for alternate laws of physics and are finite in number and variation. I also take that it doesn't refer to space travel to other planets, which is even more limited. Please, of course, correct me if I am misinformed about the above. Can you clarify what precisely you mean and how I and the other people in this world would experience this dimensional travel?

mysterious and powerful

The narrative perspective is more like a way the Spirit sees things than a way your world always was, but it's a very powerful way to see things, or maybe it's more accurate to say the Spirit sees that way very powerfully. Metanarrative powers granted by the Spirit can override anything else, including basic laws of physics or causality.

I don't recognize those terms but it sounds like they refer to specific ways of traveling between worlds under specific assumptions about how worlds are structured and how traveling between them works. To put it simply, the multiverse is a lot bigger than that. There are many more kinds of worlds than yours, and many more ways to travel between them. If you took a Destination option that sent you to a different world, you would likely land somewhere very far out of range of the kind of travel you know about. I'm not sure what you mean about other people experiencing it? You might end up somewhere that will let you explore for a long time without any time passing at home, I guess that's a way people here could have a different experience depending on where you go... Is that what you meant?

That first part is—close enough to what she thought, or hoped.

it's more accurate to say the Spirit sees that way very powerfully

is giving her a feeling that's something like standing at the edge of a bottomless pit looking down, but she swallows it.

The second part is a confirmation of what she suspected, but though the phrasing of

and many more ways to travel between them

jars her and makes her rethink some of her assumptions. She tries to think of different ways to phrase the thing she's trying to ask, and writes and rewrites the question in her head until she finally settles on something which makes a modicum of sense. She picks up her pen and puts it to the page.

By other people experiencing it, I suppose—and this may sound like an absurd question to you, for which I apologize in advance—do they still exist and continue having experiences if I leave, and is that contingent on me coming back if I do? Does it appear to them that I've simply disappeared? Is there a version of the universe where I don't disappear and instead just nothing happens? Is there a version of the universe where you never appeared to me?

And I have a related question, which possibly answers the first: are the different worlds in the multiverse embedded in a common computational/mechanical/physical substrate with consistent interactive properties, or is the relationship between worlds more conceptual/informational/mathematical in nature? I hope that makes sense.

She's not sure why she expects the notebook to be able to answer. Or rather, she's not sure why there's any epistemically sound reason to believe what the notebook says. Each of those things she said can theoretically contain each other, after all, and perhaps there's some wondrous proof that conclusively proves one to be the root level and them within it, but she somehow doubts it's what will be offered.

She waits and sees anyway.

mysterious and powerful

Worlds like yours keep existing by themselves even when you or I or the Spirit aren't looking at them. Well, I guess I can't be completely sure of that, because I don't think I have a way to tell whether I'm in the kind of world that exists by itself or the kind that's being created by someone else and will stop if they stop, but I'm pretty sure that most of the worlds I visit are the kind that keep existing by themselves.

If you leave then it will appear like you've left, unless you go somewhere with a different flow of time so that there won't be time for it to look like you've left, which might happen. I think maybe then it's possible that you end up in a situation where the only way for time to pass here without you coming back is if it becomes the case that you would never come back without time passing here? But I'm really not an expert in that sort of thing so I might be confused about how it works.

There might be versions of this world where I never appeared to you, but I think they're all pretty far away in multiversal terms. There isn't a version of this world where I showed up just like this and talked to you just like this and offered you the Spirit's power just like this and then it didn't work. It's important to the Spirit not to let that sort of thing happen, because if that sort of thing could happen then people would be wrong to believe me about really being a representative of the Spirit, and that would be really sad.

The different worlds have different ways of relating to each other, and those ways of relating to each other also have different ways of relating to each other, and it's all sort of piled up into a big haphazard pile of lots of things that all work differently and aren't arranged in any sensible order. Vessels of the Spirit who want to do a lot of traveling between worlds usually get sent to worlds where they'll be able to find a method of travel that works across a lot of parts of the multiverse, but no single entity has ever had a method of travel that works across the whole multiverse, because that isn't possible. The multiverse is too big and all its different ways of being are too different from each other. Not even the Spirit can see it all, and the Spirit can see more than any other being I've ever heard of.

Worlds like yours keep existing by themselves even when you or I or the Spirit aren't looking at them

...That answer reassures her more than she expected. Even knowing that the belief isn't necessarily justified.

different worlds have different ways of relating to each other

no single entity has ever had a method of travel that works across the whole multiverse

Not even the Spirit can see it all, and the Spirit can see more than any other being I've ever heard of.

When put like that, it sounds obvious.

She's found the edges of what she's dealing with here; she's stopped being surprised by everything the notebook says. It's not the same thing as a handle on the situation, but it's enough information to work with. Part of her wants to keep forcing through until everything makes sense again like it used to, but there's too much to unpack right now, and—Second Rule of working with precogs. It's not exactly the same, but the core still holds together.

One last question before she puts this topic away. This one is actually relevant.

Thank you for the explanations. They're helpful.

I have one last question before I move on to the powers themselves. I'm seeing a lot of opportunities in this framework to "game the system", so to speak. The most obvious one is that I can imagine a world which instantly makes me a god (or, to choose a concrete example, just gives me all of the other powers in the list plus interdimensional travel back here) and pick "Somewhere In Mind".

Assuming that I'm not planning and intending this move to live my best life in a powerful, special, beautiful and feminine way. Assume I'm doing it to achieve the maximum probability of impersonally solving the immediate problems in this world. It seems against the intended spirit of what the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed is offering. Is that a sort of thing I should be trying to avoid? Will I be violating an implicit expe

She stalls mid-word.

What she was going to write was: Will I be violating an implicit trade between myself and the Spirit, potentially retroactively causing me to have never been chosen? Except she runs the line of reasoning again in her head and suddenly notices why it feels hollow.

Sorry for suddenly stopping. I was just remembering something you said.

You described the Spirit as wanting to "offer [me] a little bit of its power, enough to help [me] be beautiful and powerful and special the way [I] want". Does that mean I should be able to realize my goals without compromising on being beautiful, powerful, special and feminine? Does the Spirit metanarratively tip the scales such that living my best life as my best self is in expectation the best way to fix my problems?

mysterious and powerful

(Not every world you could imagine is reachable in exactly the way you could imagine it, and no world you could reach will give you powers on the same level the Spirit can give them—powers you pick up in a specific world can potentially be interfered with or taken away, and the Spirit's powers can't.)

I think that, rather than saying that the Spirit makes it so that living your best life as your best self is the best way to fix your problems, I'd say that the Spirit makes it so that living your best life as your best self is at least as good a way to fix your problems as the best way you could manage by not doing that. If you wanted to just go to a world that makes you a god and then come back, and not take any other powers, that would be a little sad but it would be your choice, and it's important to the Spirit that people get to choose how they want to use the Spirit's power, even if what they choose is not the best thing for them or not what the Spirit wanted. But if you want my advice on how best to fix your problems, I think you should talk to me about what your problems are and how these powers work and which ones will suit you best while also letting you solve your problems easily.

Does she want to become God. The caveat about the limitations of self-invoked powers isn't relevant; t's not about the Somewhere In Mind trick specifically so much as—taking Love Interest and Agree to Agree and asking for a version of Closed Book and Indelible and Iron Will with an off switch and asking Contessa to path her into falling in love with Scion. She doesn't know if that's how any of those powers work.

The responsible thing to do, naively, is run all of her selections by Alcott until they squeeze out the best possible odds. The Spirit is explicitly allowing that, it sounds like.

Except Alcott's power may not be modelling this phenomenon correctly. She has a parahuman power, and those operate on a lower level of reality than what the notebook purports the Sprit exists on. It's picking up something, clearly, since it advised her strongly to come, but it might be only sampling an incomplete cross-section of the futures that branch forward from this point.

Maybe it's an excuse. But

the Spirit makes it so that living your best life as your best self is at least as good a way to fix your problems as the best way you could manage by not doing that

sounds like it's essentially true that she can do whatever her heart desires—or approach her problems in ways which personally speak to her and actualize her self, rather—and have it work out.

She doesn't need to decide now.

She writes,

I think I understand what you said. I'm going to take a look at the

Rebecca pauses. She crosses out her last sentence in a clean stroke.

I think I understand what you said. I'm going to take a look at the

Actually, do you mind if I take you out of the vault and continue this conversation in a more comfortable location?

The vaults are constantly recorded. Not enough resolution to tell what she's writing, but she doesn't want to spend too much time here. This feels private, or it feels it will become private once they get into the thick of it, and the capabilities and enemies she'll be discussing are more confidential than anything she should be discussing outside...

She's not sure when she stopped thinking of the PRT campus as home ground.

mysterious and powerful

Of course, please do! I want you to be comfortable.

She files the form to reclassify the notebook as a Class III Asset, calls five people in order until she garners the signatures needed to stamp it, and argues with security until they verify that all the paperwork is cleared and she's good to check out the notebook. It's spending down political capital faster than she can usually afford, but separate from where the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed will take her, that political capital isn't going to be good for long before the word inevitably spreads.

She returns to her office, puts the notebook in her bag, and departs the building. She texts as she walks. Towards the subway, two left turns to find one of the bars operated by their people. She orders her usual from the bartender, heads into the restroom, locks the door, and calls for Doormaker.

The portal unfolds across the wall. Elena is on the other side, made up in a copy of her outfit. Rebecca gives her a nod. They brush past each other as they pass, and then the door closes.

Rebecca stares at the white-painted walls of her Côte d’Ivoire office as she sets down her bag. It's as bare and devoid of personality as when she was last here, as she meant it, but it feels—worse, today, more so than usual. She's only been back here once since Echidna, when Doctor Mother dragged them all in to debrief and she took a brief stop to fetch a pen and paper pad from her drawer. Rebecca strides to the window by the empty bookshelf and tugs it open, coughing at the blast of Himalayan air that comes through. There's snow in her eyelashes, and she can see the condensation in her breath as she exhales, but she doesn't feel the cold. She undoes her hair tie, runs her fingers through the hair, and lets it billow in the wind, uncaring of how it might tangle.

There's a gentle, chastising touch on her shoulder, and the window glides itself back shut.

No. Not here either.

"Door to my Los Angeles Bet residence," she says.

The wall beside the window splits apart to the wood-paneled interior of her apartment. She steps through.

It's not much more of a personal haven than the office, but it offers at least a pretence of privacy.

She feels better once she's changed out of Director Costa-Brown and sat down at her writing desk. She clears away the notes she was working on yesterday and opens the notebook.

I'm back. I hope it wasn't too much of a wait; I had to convince everyone to let me take you out on such short notice.

mysterious and powerful

It was no trouble at all! I'm very patient.

Rebecca wonders if any of the Spirit's chosen actually do die of old age before they take the powers.

She pages to the Destinations section.

Name: Stay Put - Cost: 0 ☐
You're just going to take these powers and keep on keeping on right where you are.

Name: Somewhere In Mind - Cost: 0 ☐
You have a destination you want to go to. You can choose any place, real, historical, fictional, or made up in your own head right now, and the Spirit will take you there. After that, you're on your own as far as further interdimensional travel.

Name: Isekai Roulette - Cost: 0 ☐
Trust to the will of the Spirit and let it take you where you need to go. It will look at far more options than you could ever know about, and pick something that's likely to be even better for you than whatever you would have chosen on your own.

And she's realizing now that Isekai Roulette specifically says it will "pick something that's likely to be even better for you than whatever you would have chosen on your own", which makes it—almost definitionally the correct choice?

She writes on the page opposite,

I'm going to hold off on deciding on this for now. I'll circle back when I have a better grasp of how the powers work.

For the Yourself section—

Name: A Thousand Ships - Cost: 1 ☐
Your face is simply exquisite, an ideal of feminine beauty. There are many possible ideals of feminine beauty, and yours is whichever one speaks most deeply to your soul. Others may match your beauty in their own way, but never exceed it.

Name: A Hundred Ships - Cost: 1 ☐
(Replaces A Thousand Ships)
Your face is simply exquisite, an ideal of feminine beauty. There are many possible ideals of feminine beauty, and yours is whichever one speaks most deeply to your soul. Instead of prioritizing pure beauty, this power prioritizes what feels right to you.

—so when she skimmed the whole thing the first time, what stood out to her was that a lot of the powers appear targeted towards an audience that is very much not her.

No, that's an uncharitable frame of it. Twenty-five years ago, she would have looked at these and been tempted, for the cheap cost, maybe slated them for the shortlist if she had points left over. The difference is that she's spent decades hale, hearty and physically perfect. She has entire teams of experts to craft her public image and a learned charisma to match any born manipulator. Even losing an eye struck her as mostly a functional disability; she never truly thought of herself as marred, merely permanently impaired.

Following that, of course, there is an obvious question she must ask.

I have a missing eye. Does A Thousand Ships fix that, and will that give me my eyesight back? It's been impossible to heal by any method known to us in the past, but I'm guessing that's not a problem for the spirit.

mysterious and powerful

If having your eyesight back is important to you, then A Thousand Ships would fix it; Emerald Orbs would definitely fix it unless you specifically don't want it fixed.

Just to clarify, does that mean important to me in the context of being beautiful, or important to me for any reason? I want to have my eye back because it inhibits my vision and makes me significantly less effective on the field, and being effective on the field is important for me to achieve my goals.

mysterious and powerful

It means important to you for any reason. The appearance powers care about what shape you want to be for any reason that matters to you, not just beauty-related ones. I guess if you both feel really strongly that being effective on the field is important to you for achieving your goals, and also feel really strongly that your missing eye is important to your identity, the importance to your identity might override the importance to your goals, and then you would have to find other ways to be effective besides having two eyes. But it doesn't sound like that's a problem you have.

I don't feel strongly that having a missing eye is important to my identity. Thank you for the clarification. Can I assume the same works for A Hundred Ships?

Opposite the header of A Thousand Ships, she writes "40 A", and opposite A Hundred Ships, "50 A". Underneath,

I'm planning to score each power with a number for how much it's worth to me. The letter is to mark mutually exclusive options. I'll order them by price-per-value at the end and tally cumulative cost to draw a cut line, which I'll use as a first draft for my build. If I write the scores down in you, would you be able to reformat and sort them into a table when I'm done? Otherwise I can use a spreadsheet on a computer.

A spreadsheet would be faster, to tell the truth, but it's better to engage the notebook as much as possible in her process; it can catch any incorrect assumptions she's making.

mysterious and powerful