I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by that.

That's okay, I was trying to figure out what I meant myself.

I guess what I mean is… on its surface, the battle powers all sound handy? But I think I'd rather just not get in fights in the first place. And I suppose if I had Somewhere In Mind, I could tailor the world so that I wouldn't have to. But it's more important to me to go to the best world, and I don't know what that is or if it has fighting.

Oh! That makes a lot of sense; thank you.

A good rule to follow when picking powers is to prioritize what you want over what seems handy. Obviously those two considerations aren't completely separate, but if you ever find yourself thinking "that sounds really cool, but I don't know if it's practical" or "this is uninteresting, but it might be useful down the line" you should make the choice that aligns with your feelings.

There are a lot of things the Spirit thinks about when it's thinking about worlds to send you to and one of the most important things is how you'll feel about it when you're looking back later on, especially how you would feel about it if you were reading it in a story. If fight scenes don't make you like a story more, the Spirit won't send you to worlds that steer you towards getting in fights, even if you could in theory win them easily.

Sara huffs.

… Okay, no this is silly and she should stop. This isn't some hippy-dippy feelings and woo nonsense, it's a mysterious and incomprehensible Spirit from outside reality that sees everything as a story.

Which sounds a lot like hippy-dippy feelings and woo nonsense! But the important thing is that it's real and talking to her (sort of) and can give her magic powers. More specifically, it can give her magic powers that fit her personality. It isn't saying "wooo, trust your ~heart~ and everything will work out," it's saying "pick the powers you like and I'll make it work out for you." Still a trust fall, but when it comes to unknowable omnipotent beings that can play with time there's not much else to do.

Sara sighs wistfully. Some day she'll be an omnipotent being that people will have no choice other than to trust.

Maybe she'll snag one of the one-pointers if she has room later. Although…

I do like the idea of a defense power that doesn't imply I'll be getting into fights and doesn't leave an allowance for getting injured enough to scar. That would not be something I would find particularly cool.

I'll think about it for you!

Great, thanks.

Let's see… the next powers are the money powers, some skills, and the mental defense powers.

Motherlode doesn't seem particularly appealing on its own, though the description of Four Star Daydream definitely makes up for that. Still, she's not sure that she has a seven points desire for it. Maybe she can toss a point towards Making Ends Meet? Thinking about it, most of the appeal of the money powers is not having to think about how much something costs in order to obtain it, rather than a particular desire for luxury. She'll go ahead and check off the first of the money tree since it represents a lot of bang for her buck (heh), then puts a little star next to it on the regular notebook. If she needs a point later on, she can drop it.

Dragon Fairy Elf Witch and Anything You Can Do are up there with My Ears Are Burning as far as coolness factor goes. They're pretty expensive, but obviously worth it. Omniglot is a little less tantalizing… the part about understanding any word said to her has appeal, but she's pretty sure she could get most of the rest of it with a memory power. Maybe she'll take it if the memory power is too expensive.

Obviously all of the mental defense powers are required. She doesn't care that this may theoretically open her up to being put in worlds where people will try to read and/or alter her mind; they're too obviously important. Plus, put together they only cost as much as Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, another no-brainer. She checks them all.

She smiles to herself. The first section put her at half points, which seems to be right on target.

Out of curiosity, what does Iron Will do that Closed Book and Indelible don't do on their own? Does it just strengthen them? Cover up edge cases?

Broadly, yes. Iron Will also protects you from mental injury that can't be simply traced to a hostile actor deliberately trying to inflict it—events like natural disasters that would normally be traumatic, for instance.

So worth it, especially since at two points it's practically a steal. (Well, okay, four points, counting the prerequisites.) On to the power of friendship!

… She's not sure what to make of the introductory paragraph.

What does it mean for my powers to operate on a metanarrative rather than causal level? Also, probably relatedly, what does it mean that they aren't mind control?

Well…

Earlier you asked about the difference between powers offered by the Spirit and powers that you could give yourself by becoming skilled at magic. Do you remember what I said?

It seems nervous. Kind of cute, really.

Yeah, you said the Spirit operates on a different level of reality from me and can steer me towards better worlds and different kinds of people.

Right. So…

I'm sure you've noticed how a lot of the powers are based on the idea of making your life into a better story.

She rolls her eyes fondly and pats the notebook.

I don't know if you can feel it, but I just patted you. I can say "there, there" too, if you'd like.

That's sweet of you! I just know that this concept can be weird to some people.

So—it's not exactly true that the Spirit is the author of your story? That would be you. But the Spirit isn't not an author, sort of? And so…

If a power you have says that something will happen, then that thing will happen. There will almost always be reasons for that thing to happen, real reasons that are internally consistent and make sense and can be understood. But even if you end up in a situation where, by all reckoning, the thing that your power wants to happen can't happen? It will happen anyway.

And, yeah, that's related to the powers not being mind control. Sometimes they can operate through the same channels that mind control does, if that would be a good explanation! But usually it doesn't actually take that much force to cause the friendship effects. I can probably explain better if you ask about a specific power.

The Spirit sure is offering her some impressive powers!

This is all very interesting! I can see why you seemed worried about explaining it, though. Thank you for doing it anyway.

She loosely circles the paragraph about powers operating even in absence of reasons.

Would it be true to say that the Spirit can set things up backwards, relative to the way I experience time? I'm pretty sure I spotted the word "retroactive" in one of the power descriptions.

Sort of! The Spirit can do more with time than that. But yes, it can decide on an effect and then bring its causes to be, rather than the other way around.

On a somewhat lighter note, I've got a couple of mental boosts! Would you like to see them now?

Yes, please! :)

Eidetic ☐
Cost: 2
(Requires Indelible)
You have a flawless memory. Everything you have ever and will ever think, experience, or be told about can be called to mind in exact detail with ease, even if you weren't paying careful attention at the time.

Carry My Heart ☐
Cost: 3
(Requires Bestest Friend)
The natural conclusion of the bond between you and your animal companion. The two of you are inseparably joined on a soul level and have become extensions of each other. Naturally, what this means in practice is up to you.

She's definitely taking Eidetic, especially since she already has the prerequisite. Maybe she should try to get all custom options… nah, the ones she's picked are all solid even without having been customized. She's pretty sure that there's even more flexibility to the powers than appears on the surface, too.

The second one… is not what she was expecting. The point cost looks like a bargain, but skimming ahead she sees that bundled with the prerequisites it costs eleven points.

Do you know why Carry My Heart is an extension of the animal companion powers and not of the other more obviously mental powers? Eidetic is pretty much exactly what I had in mind, but I wasn't really thinking of an animal companion when I thought about being able to compartmentalize my mind…

I'm not sure! I just know that most of the other options I tried didn't properly coalesce into choosable powers for some reason. Let me think about it some more…

I think part of it is that, to gain the flexibility and usefulness you seem to be aiming for, there would need to be a mind directing the process. And that mind would need to be yours for the power to not be essentially mind controlling you by choosing which memories you have access to at what time. I'm not entirely sure why the power that "clicked" took the form it did but I do know that it will fulfill the spirit of your request.

Yeah, yeah, she can take a hint, Spirit. She still wants to think about it a little more. Soften the blow of spending more than ten points on a memory sorter.

She could continue to the Best Friend tree (and now she's glad that Disney Princess isn't yet another prerequisite for the power that she actually wants) but, again, she wants to think about the animal companion powers on their own merits. Rank them fairly.

She looks at Mysterious Allure some more. It is undeniably tempting, but…

Well, there's two things.

The first is that disclaimer up at the top of the powers list.

Any time you might expect a power to have obvious negative side effects, it simply won't. 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.

Sara's pretty sure that she does not want to be Mysteriously Alluring at all times and isn't sure that the power would let her toggle it, even at the high point value. Possibly it would make sure that "something really unusual" would be going on whenever she didn't want to be the most interesting person in the room, but she's not sure how much she wants to trust that, even though she would be guaranteed to not experience any negative consequences from it.

The other thing is that she can only afford six more five-point powers at this point. Four more, if she takes the animal companion tree. Maybe she'll decide, after having seen all the powers, that this one's worth it. But she doesn't want to just pick everything that's more than moderately appealing, she wants to optimize. And the thing she wants to optimize for… well, it isn't being the most interesting person in the room. Even if that would be fun.

She might as well ask about the first thing, though.

This might sound silly, but does Mysterious Allure have any allowances for toggling the power on and off? It seems pretty fun, but I don't know if I would want to be Mysteriously Alluring literally all the time.

I don't think you sound silly at all! Mysterious Allure doesn't mean that people will have their eyes on you literally all the time, but it does mean that you'll be fascinating most of the time. I can look into an upgrade to the power that would allow you to suppress the power or maybe pass unnoticed while you're in a disguise if you'd like.

She thinks about it for a moment.

I think I'll be okay for now. If you don't do that, I mean. I might ask later though.

Okay. Time to look at the animal companion options.

The important thing, she thinks, is to judge Best Friend and Bestest Friend on their own merits. To see how she would feel about them if Carry My Heart wasn't even on the table. Because that's what the notebook was saying earlier, right, that she shouldn't pick an option that she wouldn't enjoy because she thinks she has to.

Best Friend isn't really that interesting. It's not that she can't see the appeal—nah, that's underselling it, Blackout Binge is an "it's not that she can't see the appeal" option and Best Friend seems better than that—but she really isn't enough of a horse girl to feel drawn to it like she does to the powers she actively likes.

Bestest Friend, however… yeah, she's a fan of the concept. Maybe it's because a dragon or unicorn or whatever other magical creature she might meet sounds cooler than a raven with glowing purple eyes, maybe because the Bestest Friend is intelligent enough to speak. Makes it less like a pet and more like… well…

Okay, she'll be honest with herself. It makes it more like a minion. Like the difference between Iago the parrot and… whatever Maleficent's raven was named, which really just proves her point that the Bestest Friend is more interesting.