"And why are you focusing on that? What are you looking for here in general?"

"I think you can guess from the shape of my questions but I want to change things. To show people a different way of being and make them maybe reexamine their assumptions about the world and become more comfortable in their own skins."

"That makes me want you to pick Stay Here just so I can see you doing it. I guess that even if you don't that would just mean you'd do it later whenever you can back."

"Yeah... I'm still putting off that decision. Nothing I've seen so far really works better if I leave."

She turns back to the notebook and checks Like Roses.

She checks Just A Little Longer and Immunity System without questions. And then she rethinks things for a moment.

With Immunity System do I have control over how much alcohol and such impacts me or is it just that it protects me at the point that it gets dangerous?

You're protected from being more affected by those things than you want to be, but you might not have direct control of exactly how affected you are; it mostly runs on your general preferences rather than in-the-moment desires.

Thanks.

She turns her attention to the next power and huh. Does she want this?

"Don't you dare."

"Would it really be that bad?"

"If you were just planning to be a mostly unremarkable person then no it wouldn't be but you've just said you're planning to be a public figure. That means constantly being bombarded by thousand or millions or maybe even billions of people's thoughts. Would you even be able to sleep? Would people's disapproval, and you know many people would disapprove, erode your confidence? Please don't do this to yourself."

"You're right... maybe there's some way to focus or control it but without that you're right it's too much."

She pauses to think about why she wants this. It's about being able to reach people and avoid making bad assumptions about their thoughts and feelings. Is there anything else in the power that appeals? Well there's the side benefit of being able to know who's trying to oppose her efforts and also the benefit of knowing when people are hiding near her. She can see a lot of ways it could be useful actually but only if its more flexible than it sounds like.

How controllable is My Ears Are Burning? I feel like a lot of parts of it could be useful but I think a lot of my plans end up with me being at least somewhat famous and if I can't ignore some of the impact of that this would probably make me really unhappy.

My Ears Are Burning is only really good for some specific kinds of person and if you think you aren't one of them I think you're probably right. You can't control it or turn it off; you can think your normal thoughts and pay normal amounts of attention to other things, but you can't go back to not knowing what people are thinking about you and you can't really not pay attention to it, not fully.

I think I'll skip this one then.

She quietly checks Well Endowed considering a more generous figure a price well worth paying for resolving one of the lingering issues she has with nudity.

She smiles widely upon reading Hollow Leg since it removes that cost. She checks that too and adds the note of Kid Mode remembering the Notebook's earlier comment.

Then she gets to Inner Strength.

How strong does Hollow Leg make me? Could I carry someone else like I could a kid or would I need Inner Strength to be able to do that?

Hollow Leg will let you get just about as strong as an ordinary person can get, if you try, but I'm not sure if that's strong enough to do what you're asking about.

Okay, I think I might have just asked wrong. I'm pretty sure firefighters can carry most people if they need to. Maybe they need help for unusually heavy people and it probably isn't as easy as doing that with a child but they can do it. I think that's enough strength for what I want.

Are there other reasons I might want Inner Strength beyond being really strong? I think it also talked about toughness and provided an example there but it didn't explain as well about endurance.

Inner Strength mostly makes it that endurance isn't an issue for you anymore. Since you have to go so far to strain yourself, and your endurance is enhanced on top of that, most people with Inner Strength don't feel fatigue from exertion ever again unless they're working long hours doing the kinds of things construction equipment is for.

Wow, that's pretty amazing. Does that just apply to physical fatigue or does it also help with mental fatigue?

It wouldn't help directly with mental fatigue, but it would help with the parts of mental fatigue that are more about the body than the mind.

That still sounds worth it. She checks the box. Lightfoot is interesting. She's sure there's a lot of people who would see this as their absolute favorite power it doesn't quite feel like her though.

She crinkles her nose in response to the battle powers. Those also really don't feel like her but she's not sure if she should be taking them anyway.

Is there any sort of power that would help me avoid fights instead of winning them? It feels like the battle powers would keep me safer and help me a lot if I was getting into fights but that doesn't really sound like something I would want to do.

Some of the Powers of Friendship later on make it less likely for people to try to fight you, and there are powers for being safe from certain kinds of things, but if you wanted to be safe from ever getting into fights at all I think I'd need to make you a custom power for that.

I think I'd really like to see a power like that. Maybe other powers would do what I want though. How hard is it for you to make new powers? Should I wait to ask until after I've seen everything else and I'm pretty sure I want it?

It's not that hard! Usually I just think about it in the back of my mind while talking about other things and it'll come to me eventually.

Alright then, please do that for a power about avoiding fights.

While we're talking about you, is there anything I could be doing to meet your needs better here or just make this a more enjoyable experience for you?

My brother and I have been talking with each other about powers for example would you like it if I copied those exchanges down for you? Or would you like to take breaks sometimes? I haven't met any talking notebooks before so I'm not sure what kinds of things you might want.

Okay, I will!

I don't need breaks, but I would like it if you copied down what you and your brother have been saying about the powers! That sounds like it would make it easier for me to help you.

If you want to do something nice for me personally, though, I always like it when someone copies a poem into me. Poetry is really pretty.

She flips back through the pages and thinks.

It looks like I mentioned a lot of what we talked about. I didn't really explain why I like "Like Roses" I think that might make people remember me better and if I'm doing things right relax more when I'm around just because of how important smell is to memory for a lot of people.

I also don't think I explained some things about how I'm choosing powers. I definitely said some of this to Tom but maybe not all of it.

I'm trying to choose powers that let me be more myself than I could be without them, that's why I asked so many questions about whether powers would force me to change things. At the same time I'm also picking powers that might be able to help me convince other people of some of the things I really believe in. Especially the way people think about sex and their bodies.

I'm also trying to err on the side of checking things I might want instead of leaving things unchecked.

I think the only other thought that I didn't tell you about is that Lightfoot sounds like something a lot of people would really like but it doesn't really sound like I want it. Maybe I'm getting hung up on the really extreme parts of it and I would like the more low-key parts though. Does Hollow Leg help at all with balance?