Thanks, that's very helpful. 

So, the reason she likes Opting In, is that Safe at Home feels, to her, like it's not letting her loved ones be protagonists. Like...it's putting her in a separate world from them, where her problems aren't their problems...which is a sort of selfish way to phrase it, but taking opting in instead means they don't have to make her problems their problems, but they can, which feels to her like an important part of human connection...

She checks Opting In and moves on. 

I Can Fix Them. Uhhhh...

Oh! I Can Help Them! That's so much better!!! Check!

The notebook patiently awaits her next question.

...I'm so torn about Inspirational. On the one hand I'm a little leery of things that are so heavily mind-affecting, but on the other hand, it looks so cool.

Hmm, if you tell me what you like about it exactly, I could try to find something that isn't as heavily mind-affecting that does the same things? It's one of those powers that's hard to make variants of, though, it's bent into a really specific shape around making sure that people who hurt you end up regretting it.

I don't know that it's possible to have a non-mind-affecting version of the things I like about it! It's--as a notebook, I'm sure you've never had the visceral urge to physically strike someone with a reality check, but--

She stops for a moment to sort through her somewhat disordered thoughts. 

The bad guys realizing that they were wrong the whole time is a better ending than you generally actually get. And, like, the uncomfortable realizations part sounds sort of uncomfortable, but if that wasn't there, then the whole thing wouldn't actually be a truth-seeking process, it'd just be me getting my opinions all over everything, and that's bad if my opinions aren't right!

But, anyway, it seems like all of the things that this power does are happening in people's heads. 

I think there can still be a difference, in powers whose effects happen mostly in people's heads, between pushing someone's mind into the right shape and leading them into the right situation for their mind to change. But it's up to you and what you want and what you're comfortable with! I'm just here to try to give you the best set of powers for you.

--Well I definitely want to do that second thing, if that second thing can be done! Even if the result is correct, it's--less of a truth-seeking process to push them there than to lead them there. And I do care about actually being right. 

And when I say right I mean...not just factually correct but also, hm, epistemically correct? Like, it's not that I object, say, to having magical truths beamed into my head, but I would want to understand why and how the truths were being beamed and have a reason to believe that it was in fact truths and not just random beliefs that could easily be wrong. I want to use processes that, in aggregate, will lead to being right more often than wrong. Like, if I roll a die, and if it comes up a six I will learn a true thing, and if it comes up one through five I will learn a false thing, it's not good enough to roll a six, it's important to not roll the die at all unless you know it's loaded. 

And so, like, likewise, handing everyone a bunch of loaded dice is probably better than doing nothing, if those people are running around being egregiously, problematically, wrong, but unless they know the dice are loaded, you're still teaching them bad habits, which may be justified but is still in and of itself bad. 

I think I understand what you mean, and, hmm, this is complicated...

Leading someone into the right situation for their mind to change is still a way of loading their dice, just a less direct, less intrusive one. And directness and intrusiveness do matter, I think, because the more direct and intrusive a way of changing someone's mind is, the less natural the result can be. If someone has a spontaneous epiphany that leads them in the right direction, well, like you're suggesting, people can have spontaneous epiphanies that lead them all sorts of ways. If someone experiences things that prompt them to reevaluate their feelings and ideas, then they can look fairly at the experience they had and the thoughts that resulted and decide for themselves how reasonable it was to think that way for those reasons... but there's still an invisible weight in the dice, in that case, because they wouldn't have had exactly that experience if not for your power. Do you see what I mean?

I think so! I think we are on the same page...so to speak.

♡ ♡ ♡

She gives Inspirational a check. 

...And then she gives True Love's Kiss an exclamation point, because holy shit. 

...Then she gives Eternal Love and The Rescuer exclamation points, circles the whole trio, and adds some more exclamation points and also hearts around the outside of the circle. 

I should warn you, The Rescuer is the kind of power where taking it affects your life a lot. But that's not to say you shouldn't, especially if you're so excited about it! It's just, having The Rescuer tends to make things be about having The Rescuer when they otherwise wouldn't have been, and I think that's important to know so you can decide fairly.

People die more if I take it? Or do you mean I'm more likely to get roped into solving situations where people are already dead.

No, people don't die more. But nearly every world has people who died before you got there.

Well, yeah! I mean, my life is going to end up significant and important somehow either way, right? Might as well be a kind of way where I get to meet Basho and Sappho.

That makes sense!

Hmm...Planned Parenthood versus Providential Parenthood...on the one hand, she would prefer to have fully volitional control over her fertility...on the other hand, Planned Parenthood has a mind-affecting component and Providential Parenthood doesn't...on the other other hand, it's not like her build so far has been totally scrupulous about avoiding mind-affecting stuff...

She checks Planned Parenthood before she can overthink it too much more. Probably it won't have to do much mind affecting! Once she has displayed a staggering array of superpowers--and she really doesn't intend to sleep with anyone she isn't close enough to for them to know about her superpowers--"I also have a superpower for birth control, don't worry about it" isn't going to take a lot of mind control to enforce. 

Here For A Good Time seems neat but it isn't, like, specifically grabbing her. She gives it a spiral. 

Bop It is...she likes the name more than the power itself, honestly; and, uh, there's a reason she picked Here For A Good Time out of the preceding trio. She skips it. 

The Princess And The Dragon gets an exclamation point, because yes, please. 

GGG and Before Your Eyes are both just kind of eyaugh, and while their replacements remove most of the ick factor they don't bring them up to a level where she actually, like, wants them. Pass. 

Fated Lovers--

Does Fated Lovers plug as well into my Ascended Friend-related aspirations as it seems like it would?

I'm not sure what you mean, could you say more about that?

Effie's first impulse is to gesture helplessly at her own words in the hopes that this would somehow magically make what they meant as self-evident to the notebook as they were to her, but that... would be kind of stupid? That is not how understanding things works. But she's having trouble coming up with an expansion or paraphrase. 

...Wait. Is she having trouble with words because it's actually difficult to find the right words, or because she feels embarrassed to say the thing she means more explicitly. 

Iiiit might be the latter, in which case, uh, she can suck it up. 

So the idea I had was that Best/Bestest/Ascended Friend and Fated Lovers could just sort of plug into the same entity, and this would be more efficient than just taking the ✧Friend✧ options and sort of hoping it worked out.