"I'm sorry, what?"

"Which part of that is tripping you up?"

"...yes."

"Well, to start with, you died. My condolences." 

"I... see..."

One of the other two girls says, "So, how cooperative a venture is this meant to be, exactly?"

"Some parts of this you're going to have to all three agree on. Some parts will only require a majority vote, which means it's a good thing there's an odd number of you. And some things can be decided individually." 

"I don't suppose we could go back. Do an otome or whatever on Earth where we'd have a chance of locating our loved ones and telling them we're okay." 

She gives her a sympathetic look. "No. I'm sorry." 

"--Is there some way I could send a message--"

"I don't think so. Let me look through some things and see if I can find a loophole." She looks off to the side as though reading something the other three can't see. Her eyes widen and then narrow. "--That's new." 

"What, pray tell, is new?"

"There are, uh, warnings. About you." She makes a variety of concerned, surprised, appalled, and doubtful faces, apparently absorbed in the list. "Really...daffodils? I didn't think you could do that," she mutters under her breath at one point. 

The girl who wants to contact her family gives Ghyslaine a wary look. 

"What did I do with daffodils...? Never mind, asking would spoil the fun."

"I want to know what you did with daffodils."

"Oh, it wasn't you, it was your alt," the angel says absently, then makes a face and mutters, "What would anyone even do with that much skin?"

"Should I be concerned for my safety when we all end up as romantic rivals? Should I be concerned for my safety right now?"

"Oh, you can't be hurt here," she assures her. "And you're not romantic rivals with each other; each of you has your own designated love interest over whom you may vie with the otome's designated heroine. But yes, you should probably be concerned about that." 

"I guess being killed because someone is just generally the kind of person who comes with obscure daffodil-related warnings is better than dying in a hazing accident at pray-the-gay-away camp," she mutters dubiously. 

"Oh, speaking of which! I will not be accepting any changes to my sexuality. If you want me to be attracted to boys, put a sufficiently attractive boy in front of me. I assure you it's been done, just not often."

"Don't worry, the designated fiances come with a guarantee to be hot enough to satisfy arbitrarily picky standards," the angel assures her. "I mean, not that you could stop the Will from changing your sexuality, but if you just have higher standards for boys than girls then there's no reason to." 

"Can I point out that 'not that you could stop the Will from changing your sexuality' is kind of a concerning statement even leaving aside Ms. Creative Uses For Skin?"

"You were abducted from your point of death by a being who could just as easily set you back home safe and sound and is instead setting you up as villains in a romantic video game, I assumed you were concerned already." 

"Well, gee, when you spell it out like that," she sighs, and smoothly sits down and then sprawls backwards in an "I can't deal with this" snow-angel position. 

"Anyway, I don't know what an alt is but I've never done anything threatening with daffodils in my life. I don't even know what creative uses for skin means. What am I, Cruella de Vil making a coat out of a hundred dogs? The thought has never crossed my mind."

"I admire how you manage to make such a passionate defense of your innocence while also definitely sounding like the sort of person who'd make a coat out of a hundred dogs if the whim struck."

"Alt is short for 'alternate version.' It's you but in different circumstances and/or a different universe. Usually both. Your relevant alt didn't actually use the skin for anything, as far as I can tell, just comprehensively skinned a person, healed them, and then did it again. Multiple times. It seems unnecessary." 

"Wow, I don't know if that's better or worse than the Cruella de Vil option. If you ever skin me please make a cool jacket out of it." 

"Well, if you insist."

"So much for your innocence. That was fast. Anyway, are we supposed to be designing a universe by committee here? I'm sure that's going to be tons of fun."

"You are supposed to be designing a universe by committee! Within certain bounds. I have the authority to veto anything egregiously stupid, although if something is a bad idea but would, strictly speaking, function, then you can have it." 

"You know, I considered the possibility of a loving god, and a shitty one, and none at all, but somehow this was entirely outside what I imagined death could possibly lead to." 

"I would apologize, but I have no control over the objectionable parts." 

"What do you have control over?"

"If you want to do something the rules I was given don't cover, I get to make judgment calls." 

"What sorts of things do the rules you were given cover? What sorts of things don't they?"

"There's a list of basic mechanical choices, and then you have more or less free-form control over various non-mechanical aesthetic details, but sometimes those details border on interacting with the mechanics, or someone wants to customize something nobody was expecting anyone to bother customizing." 

"Ooh, unexpected customization."

"What kinds of things have people wanted to customize?"

"--Well, there was one girl who wanted to have the same set of parents again." 

"You can do that?"

"If you want anyone in particular from your world reincarnated into the new one, your new world's start will have to wait until everyone thus selected has died on their own. And you can't delay your world's start without the consent of both of the other two." 

She turns beseeching eyes on her companions. 

"Fine by me."

"We'll see."

She purses her lips. "Well if she agrees I want my siblings and my half-siblings' mother. And not my parents, at all. Please." 

She makes a note of that. 

"So what else—actually, no, before I ask about the mechanical choices: when you say we'd be delaying our world's start, does that mean our world starts when we enter it? There's no history before that, or the history before that is all lies and false memories, or something? Normally it takes a pretty long time before a universe gets to the point where people are having romance plots in it, I'd think!"

"The history before that is all lies and false memories," she confirms. 

"I'm not sure if I like that. What happens if we want the universe to be—open about how recently created it is?"

"Oh, I don't know, lies and false memories can be interesting."

"See, when you say it like that, I'm on Not Daffodil Girl's side. What if we don't gaslight the universe."

"My friends call me Naomi," she says helpfully.

"And mine call me Ghys but if you want to stick with Daffodil Girl I suppose I can't stop you."

"My siblings call me Didyme. --Uh, not that I'm calling you my siblings, just, everyone else only knows my deadname."

"Pardon?"

"I'm trans. I know I pass super well but I haven't even gone on hormones or anything. Mom didn't send me to conversion therapy because she caught me looking at girls; she caught me with girls' stuff."

Ghys shrugs. "Unlucky for you, I suppose."

She claps her hands together and smiles.

"So! Shall we design our new world?"

"It doesn't matter very much anymore, I guess," she shrugs. "Yeah, we might as well get started." 

"The basic mechanical world elements are tech level and magic level, although other mechanical choices you make will also affect the world," the angel explains. "The tech levels are Faux Medieval, Actual Pre-Modern, Early Modern, Industrial, Marvelous, Steampunk, Contemporary, Cyberpunk, and Space Opera. The magic levels are None, Low, Medium and High." 

"What's Marvelous...?" 

"Shelley meets Verne. Essentially." 

"Hm. Alright." 

"I'm in favour of maximizing the general standard of living because I'm a sybarite," Naomi contributes. "So if it's up to me, we go for high-magic space opera, unless there are some details that mean one of the others would be better. ...admittedly a space opera setting where everyone is aware that this is the first generation of people ever to exist sounds wild, but not necessarily in a bad way."

"I'm with the sybarite on this one. Pending details. Do tell us the details."

"We seem to have managed unanimity, go us." 

"It's been done before," the angel says to Naomi. "Although in order to accommodate Didyme's maternal request I would slide in a single previous started-spontaneously-as-adults generation; it would be overwhelmingly more convenient to do that anyway, for reasons that haven't come up yet."

She clears her throat. "Tech level is slightly more complicated than just what machines there are; technology includes social technology. Villarosa is going to be a monarchy no matter what, where the royalty holds real power and the aristocracy holds real privilege, but that leaves a great deal of leeway." She nods at Ghyslaine. "Your own Thule is a good example of how that can work in a contemporary setting." 

"You're from Thule? Do you speak English or do we have some kind of TARDIS translation effect up." 

"I do speak English, yes, although it is not my first language." (She has a noticeable accent but her words are still very clear.)

"And I would like to note for the record that I am not only in favour of lies and false memories for the sake of my personal amusement. There is also the matter of culture—if we create a world that remembers no history, it can have no art, no architecture, no tradition of its own except what that first generation gives it. Doesn't that seem a little poor to you? Wouldn't it be better to live in a world with generations' worth of songs and stories, even if they have to be false?"

"Counterpoint, transparently calculated to appeal to you specifically: if there's only one generation behind us, and no songs or stories or history or false memories to guide them, literally everyone else in the world is going to be laughably naive in comparison to the three of us."

"You're right, that does appeal to me!"

"I'm still in favor of not gaslighting the universe but hot damn you are impressively concerning. Can we have any of that stuff without gaslighting the universe?" 

"One thing that's been done before," the angel offers, "is that in the putative scenario, humanity--or whatever species everyone is--was generated by the left-behind technology of a race that ascended to a higher plane of existence. So you could have their art and music and stories and so on. You could even have a subset of art and music and stories and so on that still leave everyone who doesn't have transdimensional preincarnation memories laughably naive." 

"That sounds like maybe a little bit gaslighting the universe but not much...can we have Earth music and so on? I'd be sad if I never got to hear Beethoven again." 

"I can include arbitrary Earth instrumental music but anything that requires cultural context to make any sense has more limitations." 

"Do please include Beethoven."

"I'm not sure I want everyone to be laughably naive but I'm not sure I don't, either. Depends how hard a time we're going to have if they aren't."

"And Bach. Chopin. Mozart. Um...Heinrich Schutz and Giacomo Carissimi...Handel and all the other less famous Bachs...let's just take all the Earth music as instrumentals and call it good." 

Pause. 

"I'm not necessarily in favor of everyone being laughably naive but, like, I am willing to have it be the case in exchange for concessions. Like pausing this until I can have my people."

"So let's assume for now we're going with a high-magic space opera where our parents' generation was created from nothing by the remnants of a fake ancient civilization, with exact levels of widespread naivete to be determined when we're farther along in negotiations. What else is there to decide?"

"What hairstyle, hair color, and race each of you will be; which of you will fulfill each of the three 'villainess' roles and have each of the three assigned arranged fiances for the heroine to potentially seduce; what your fictional counterpart's 'canonical' bad end will be, which of the three available roles your heroine will occupy, and what minions, perks and flaws each of you will select." 

"Why hair specifically...?"

"Because video game art is often less than ideal in terms of other identifying features."

"Can I not keep my current hair? I like my current hair." (It's long and dark and curly and, in fairness, very pretty.)

"It's not that you can't keep your current hair, it's that in order to keep your current hair you have to make mechanical choices compatible with your current hair. The hair color options are blonde, redhead, silver, brunette, and rainbow; the style options are drill hair, hime cut, and 'elaborate.' You can either tweak drill hair to be slightly less absurdly ringlet-y or make your hair be the same except about eight feet long and take elaborate. For color, you would have to take brunette. Drill hair gives you for free the perk 'Ohohoho!'" she does the anime noblewoman laugh hand gesture as she says the name, "Hime cut gives you the perk 'Silk Hiding Steel,' and Elaborate hair gives you a free maid minion."

"What, dare I ask, are the mechanical effects of," she mimics the hand gesture, "'Ohohoho!'?"

"You gain the ability to deliver the villainess laugh on command, and something about it is almost--or depending on the setting, maybe actually--supernaturally intimidating, striking dread into your foes and encouraging your minions. You will be a much more feared and imposing person, and even the heroine will hesitate to directly confront you."

"Ohohoho," Ghys says dryly. "How about Silk Hiding Steel, what does that do?"

"You gain a core of inner strength and determination beyond what you currently possess that will serve you well; setbacks won't faze you for long, and you'll always be able to keep your cool and act decisively in violent situations, even if you aren't trained for such things."

"See, I want that but—I have no idea what a hime cut is—if it involves straightening my hair, I'm not doing it. Can we trade our free haircut-related perks somehow? I have a feeling Ghys would enjoy the supernaturally intimidating laugh but her hair is already straight and it looks very nice that way."

"A hime cut is straight with bangs. You can't trade in your hair perks but you can purchase them the normal way."

"But what if I smile at you very charmingly, then can we trade our hair perks?"

"Alternately," says Naomi, "what if I make the case that my preferred hairstyle suits my preferred perk on an aesthetic level?"

"If you want to make an argument that your current hairstyle qualifies as a hime cut, I don't expect you to succeed but I welcome you to try. If you want to argue that Silk Hiding Steel is aesthetically suited to a non-hime cut hairstyle, I won't forbid you from doing so, but it won't do any good. I don't have the authority to make mechanical changes like that; if I try, one of my superiors will call shenanigans and change it back." 

"I still don't know what a hime cut is so I don't expect to have much luck convincing you I have one... hmm. What, if anything, prevents me from changing my hairstyle once I'm reincarnated?"

"First of all, good luck getting naturally straight hair to do that," she gestures at Naomi's glorious mess of curls. "Secondly...you know how sometimes you know that in theory you could do something, but that fact has no bearing whatsoever on what you actually end up doing?"

"...well when you put it like that it just sounds like a challenge."

"I'm not saying it's impossible to do, just unrealistically psychologically difficult."

"Anyway I was thinking of specifying that my, I don't know what to call it, backstory self I suppose, has naturally curly hair which she's in the habit of straightening. And then when I get control of myself I can stop."

"This is more thought than I was planning to put into my hairstyle, but—what's the phrase?—you do you."

"Would you straighten your hair? The you that lives through your backstory will still be you."

"I mean, no, I absolutely would not." She makes a thoughtful noise. "So what if something about the magic or technology of the setting made it very very easy to change hairstyles? Such that I could decide to turn naturally straight hair into naturally curly and have no trouble once I got past the mind control?"

"Personally I think I'll just take the eight feet of hair. It even comes with a maid!"

"I might also take eight feet of hair..."

"To be clear, it isn't literally just eight feet of hair, it's any hairstyle ridiculous enough that the maid is legitimately useful in maintaining it. You can be other forms of absurdly overelaborate." 

"Good to know, I suppose..." 

"If you are really absolutely determined to maintain your current hairstyle while also choosing the hime-cut style, that specific workaround could plausibly work. But. I only have so much leeway to bend the rules before my boss calls shenanigans, and that would spend a lot of it." 

"Wait, which workaround? The one where we make permanent hairstyle changes very easy for everyone?"

"With the explicit intention of completely divorcing your mechanical choices from any kind of hair-related reality." Sigh. "I'm sorry. Think of it as though there was a GM who cared about the map having a certain minimum resemblance to the territory. And I'm not the GM." 

"Now I'm offended on behalf of all the people who hypothetically can't have easy hairstyle changes just because I happen to be an unrepentant munchkin who's really attached to my curls."

She chews thoughtfully on her lip for a few seconds.

"...what if we make it so that hairstyle has an actual magical effect on personality within the universe, and make hairstyle easy to change, and then the hairstyle and the mechanical benefits come as a package and it's up to me whether I want to keep them?"

"What, and implicitly force me to have ringlets if I want an intimidating laugh?"

"I'm sure we can figure out a tidy compromise on the details."

"The Elaborate hairstyle comes with a maid minion," the angel points out. "I could give you the easy hair-changing magic if you hadn't brought it up specifically in order to munchkin with it."

"Are you really so offended by the idea of having to buy this perk that you want instead of getting it for free with your hairstyle? Because she hasn't even said anything about what effects hair color has that you'll have to wrangle in order to continue to be a brunette."

"The part that offends me isn't the cost of the perk, it's the fact that because I brought it up in order to munchkin with it, having easy hairstyle changes is more costly than it would otherwise be. I like my hair a lot! My hair is important to me! I want to have my hair without taking mechanical penalties for it! If that means I have to invent an entire hair-related magic system on the spot, then we are all damn well going to sit here talking about hair until I've worked it out! —do explain the hair colour effects, though, they'll probably be relevant to developing the hair-related magic system."

"It's not that--I'll explain after. The hair colors are, as I said earlier, blonde, redhead, silver, brunette, and rainbow. Blonde is the stereotypical rich girl alpha bitch 'blondes have more fun' hair color and has essentially negligible effects on anything. Redhead can mean orange or actually red, the trope of the fiery redhead means that choosing red hair will amplify your emotions, as well as boosting your physical prowess and martial aptitude a bit. Silver hair, by contrast, makes you a bit weaker relative to baseline and boosts your intelligence, artistic creativity and/or magical aptitude, due to something of a mystic association. 'Brunette' means brown or black, essentially, and is considered the 'everywoman' hair color just due to statistical plentifulness. Choosing brunette will give you a boost to relatableness, even to those of lower station, and mildly ding your 'assertiveness and proactivity,' although I have yet to squeeze an answer out of anyone as to what exactly that means or to see it meaningfully impede anyone. 'Rainbow' hair means any color or combination of colors not covered here, including multi-colored hair of various, pun intended, stripes. Rainbow hair will essentially inflict your world with anime tropes." 

"That's an obnoxious set of options but all right. What were you going to explain?"

"It's not that a magic system which lets you switch around hairstyles more easily will be more expensive because you want to munchkin with it, it's that if you announce your intention to have the hairstyle you have now, but you decide that you want to choose a silver hime-cut for the mechanical perks and have it for five minutes to pay lip service to it and have your regular hairstyle the rest of the time, my bosses will say 'hm, nope' and give you the mechanical attributes of the hairstyle you intend to actually have. And I can maybe sneak it past them if there's almost zero other munchkining in your build."

"I want my current hair. My current hair does not match any of the available options; out of all of them it's apparently the closest to 'drill hair', which offers me a free perk that I actively don't want. I would like to keep my current hair without being needlessly disadvantaged by losing out on the 'free perk or minion' benefit that everyone else is getting by not caring about their hair as much as I do. Silk Hiding Steel is, essentially, a mildly useful minor amplification of the personality I already have. If I invent a hair-based magic system that makes those effects concretely granted by the hairstyle itself, and assign my current hair a different mildly useful minor amplification of the personality I already have that does not appear in your perks list, then change my hair back as soon as I can and accept the loss of the perk along with it, I end up with everything I want and I don't actually even think I'm being that much of a munchkin."

"So passionate," Ghys murmurs, amused.

"I'm not saying you're being unreasonable! But it doesn't matter if I think you're being reasonable or not, because I am not the final authority! If I were, I wouldn't be sending you off to gratuitous romantic drama in a mandatory monarchy!"

"I think your hair would be even cooler if it were impractically long," Didyme offers helplessly. 

"What I want is not for you to tell me how reasonable I'm being and how helpless you are to work outside the rules you're given, what I want is for you to work with me on accomplishing my goals. Unless by the mere fact of having goals and wanting them accomplished I've already doomed myself to be seen as a munchkin who can't have nice things, in which case I guess I want something else. I would be fine with trying to find a compromise that works with the intended spirit of the mechanics if I had any idea how to do that."

Sigh. "I'm sorry. I'm trying to tell you what constraints I'm working under and therefore that you are working under. The thing I want to try to prevent is you coming up with a very clever solution that completely fails to work."

"So: what, concretely, is the problem?"

"The problem is that you are being set up to be a character in a story played out in real life and that character is supposed to have a hairstyle in one of these categories and there are beings who don't have nearly enough regard for human well-being who are willing to enforce that and I can't stop them." Deep breath. "If you wanted to have your hair but nine feet long and then chop off the excess once the 'plot' had concluded, that would work. Probably. As long as nothing else you do egregiously pisses someone off, but that level of egregiousness would also fail to work in its own right." 

"So when you said things earlier like 'give you the mechanical attributes of the hairstyle you intend to actually have', that made it sound like the problem was unearned mechanical benefits, not unauthorized personal grooming choices. Now you're making it sound like I won't actually get to have the hair that I want at all until the end of the story regardless of my mechanical choices. Which is a little at odds with what you said earlier about it being just unreasonably psychologically difficult to get a haircut. Do you see how this is confusing?"

"No, not really. Sorry."

"Help me out here, guys."

"Oh, but your quixotic hair quest is so entertaining to watch."

"I don't really understand either, mostly because I haven't been paying attention because I am bored of hair." 

"...You're talking like the personal grooming choices and the mechanical benefits are separate, which is--not really the case? If you are bound and determined to have a specific hairstyle during the course of the story, then that is the hairstyle your character will have, and if you don't make a case that is compelling to my bosses that the hairstyle qualifies as the one you picked, then they will go, 'oh, it looks like someone checked the wrong boxes, we'll just make sure the right boxes are checked instead' and then you will get the thing appropriate to the hairstyle in question. If you want to not have those boxes checked then you need to either alter the hairstyle so that it qualifies as the one you want, or convince me that you're going to do something other than the thing you actually intend to do, because I am magically incapable of lying to my bosses and they will ask. It is conceivable that you will come up with some other way around this but I don't have the faintest idea where to start helping you do that." 

"...so, in the world I come from, there exist... more... than three hairstyles. What I want is to have a hairstyle that does not appear on the list of checkable boxes. The hairstyle I want to end up with doesn't have an 'appropriate thing', because it's not one of the ones you're offering. I would be fine—well, no, I'll be honest, I would be grudgingly willing to put up with nine feet of my natural hair and a free maid, and then come hell or high water I will hack that shit off to a nice mid-back length the moment I remember what my hair is supposed to look like, because I'm just a stubborn little shit that way. I'd even, a little more grudgingly, take the elaborate hair and omit the free maid because I know I won't be following through with the justification for having her, if that's likely to go over any better. But the hair I want is not one of the boxes I can check, and I am not going to stop wanting the hair I want."

"If I say that you are going to have the hair you currently have without any further explanation, my bosses will say 'drill hair' and move on. If you want to try to frame it as elaborate to get the free maid I am willing to help you brainstorm. Offering to do without the maid will not solve any of the problems that exist." 

"But does drill hair mean I'm required to take the evil laugh perk, or only that I can if I want? I do not want the evil laugh perk. It would detract from my sweet and unthreatening nature."

"Sweet and unthreatening," Ghys repeats skeptically.

"If you have drill hair you would automatically have the Ohohoho! perk but that perk only gives you the option of doing an evil laugh, it does not trigger automatically whenever you laugh." Pause. "Unless you take the In Character flaw, I suppose, but I don't think you're likely to do that, and you would have bigger problems if you did."

"But didn't you say it makes us more intimidating in general? I would be so disappointed if it didn't make me more intimidating in general."

"You will be more intimidating in general if you regularly deploy the laugh. It is the laugh specifically that is intimidating and the general intimidation factor is a knock-on effect. If you never deploy the laugh the perk will not disrupt any plans you have to play the ingenue. If you deploy the laugh only in front of people you then proceed to murder or throw in a dark dungeon where they can't talk to other people the perk will not disrupt any plans you have to play the ingenue with whoever's left." 

"I promise, no matter whether or not you take the perk I'm still going to be more intimidated by the skin thing," Didyme assures Ghys. 

"Hmm. Acceptable."

"Hang on, does that mean I couldn't omit the maid even if I wanted to?"

"There are no particular obstacles in place against firing your maids, even extra-competent ones. My bosses will not go 'hm no' if you declare an intent to do so." 

"Right, but she'll exist, she'll have been put in place by the machinations of the universe construction crew, regardless. Yes?"

"That is true. That is also true of every other person in this new universe." 

"Nearly none of the other people in the universe will be specifically constructed to be loyal to me personally!"

"Body swap plot," Ghys says abruptly.

"Wait, what? Who's swapping with whom exactly?"

"I want the evil laugh but I look lovely with straight hair. Naomi wants neither the evil laugh nor the maid but can't countenance straight hair. We look fairly similar, hair aside. So suppose that I make my choices and she makes hers but she takes the hair and associated perk that I want, and I take the hair and associated perk that she wants, and then, as a nefarious villainess will do, I steal her body and leave her in mine. With a dramatic evil laugh. That sounds like the sort of thing that might happen in this sort of story, if I stood to benefit from it. And then she would have the hair she wants through no fault of her own and in a narratively satisfying fashion that explained the, what's the word, discrepancy between her choices and her outcomes."

"That works if the bosses buy it and if I trust you to hold up your end of the bargain, which, to be frank, I do not."

"You would also have to take brown hair," Didyme points out to Ghys.

"I am sure the hair colour can be negotiated."

"I wouldn't necessarily mind a different colour, depending. Not blonde."

"Definitely not blonde."

"You would make a striking redhead."

"Out of all the hair colour effects I think the one I'm most interested in is silver."

"How dark can a silver—or a red for that matter—get before it starts being questionable?"

"Grey is fine. Dark grey is questionable but I can definitely sell it as long as it's clearly dark grey and not dusty black. Reddish-brown is fine; brown that has reddish highlights in the sun is not."

"I wasn't thinking reddish brown, I was thinking dark red."

"Is this your hair or mine you're thinking of? I suppose that's a complicated question under the circumstances. I'd be happy to take a dark silver if you like; red would be a tougher sell."

"As long as it's clearly dark red and not black with red highlights like an anime character it's fine."

"I'm going with silver elaborate. Hair down to my ankles and more braids than strictly necessary. To be clear, I was teasing you and imagining you with fire truck red hair like a Raggedy Anne doll."

"I want the effects of red hair for myself and I think it would be funny for Ghys to end up with hair the colour of dried blood."

"If you insist."

"Or you could...no, right, she vetoed blonde. I was going to suggest the color of daffodils."

"No thank you."

"Okay. That still leaves finding a way to set up our bodyswap plot so that you actually do it and don't just leave me in the lurch, but it's at least enough to be going on with, I think."

"Um," says the angel, who has been paying more attention to her invisible screen than the three of them for the past few minutes, "I...don't think that's going to be necessary."

"...oh?"

"So generally I don't get any feedback from outside because we're extremely time-dilated in here but there are other time-dilated areas and I have just received instructions regarding your hair. Um. It's a concept now."

"You may have to... explain that... in slightly more detail."

"Your hair behaves, looks, feels, etcetera, the way you expect it to. If you can convince yourself that it ought to dry quickly because you're a video game character then you'll never have to towel it again. Random bad hair days, bedhead, unattractive strands clinging to sweat-soaked skin, all a thing of the past." She looks faintly perturbed as she explains.

"I see. Sorry Ghys, if you want to steal my body you'll have to do it on your own time. I will take that red hime cut and conceptualize myself to victory."

"Hmm. If you won't be needing my bodysnatching services, I think I will take a silver hime cut myself, and purchase the evil laugh separately."

"--This is happening instead of a conventional hair style choice, not on top of it," the angel clarifies. "Ignore the hime cut thing, you get something called 'To Thine Own Thee Be True,' and I'm not sure I understand what that does."

"Oh, fun!"

"Hm. I find myself questioning again whether this might be a hallucination brought on by the cranial trauma that I otherwise have to assume killed me. That is a bit dream logic."

"If it's a hallucination it's at least a very interesting one. Anyway! We have finally concluded our business with hair! What's next?"

"Next! Right. Next you get to decide if you want to be a human or an elf, which is to say, a member of the baseline population or a better and shinier version that you have to take a flaw for. What 'human' and 'elf' actually look like in practice is fully customizable, except that hair really is mandatory."

"Ooh. Elves have wings," Naomi says immediately.

"You make a compelling case. I mean, you don't make a case, but nevertheless I am compelled."

"What if everyone has wings and elves have better ones? ... I can see possible use cases for it being plausibly deniable whether one is an elf or not. Especially but not exclusively if everyone else is naive."

"I see what you mean but I want the wings to be a bonus, not something the whole society is designed around. Like, if most people don't have wings, then not having wings is fine, if most people do have wings, then anybody who breaks one is a lot worse off than somebody on Earth who breaks a leg. There's no such thing as a sky crutch."

"I guess...people should get to fly though. And it's high magic so maybe there is such a thing as a sky crutch actually. Or just really really really good healing so you don't need one. And maybe the ascended aliens didn't have wings and we're only two generations old so we haven't built much not that stuff yet."

"I'm definitely in favour of really really really good healing. But what would better wings even mean, anyway?"

"Prettier? Stronger?"

"If being an elf is going to cost an entire flaw they should have something other people don't."

"I was assuming being an elf also had other, non-wing-related advantages."

"I don't want to assume them, I want to list them in exhaustive detail and then invent more."

"Hear, hear."

"I didn't mean we should assume them and ignore them, just that the presupposition that they would exist was one of the background assumptions on which I built the proposal that everyone gets wings."

"By default, elves are prettier, smarter, stronger, longer-lived, more magical, and, where applicable, holier."

"--I'm fine with most of those but can we make longer-lived moot, just make everyone age to adulthood and then stop? I'd rather have winged elves and non-winged non-elves than immortal elves and mortal non-elves."

"I note that by default we are all already going to be prettier than most people," says Ghys. "But I don't object to making everyone immortal."

"Making everyone immortal will fuck politics," Naomi observes. "I guess you can be planning to assassinate your own parents or something but like, for the rest of us. We're all essentially supposed to be heiresses, this implies that eventually we inherit. I don't know if I'll go as far as objecting, but it's a downside."

"I don't want my parents to die! I mean, I guess I could just get lousy parents again, but I'm not going through another childhood with lousy parents just so I can kill them and take their stuff without feeling guilty about it."

"Right, yes, sorry, Ghys is the one who I assume is planning to assassinate her parents, you I expect just weren't thinking of it or don't care."

"I mean, I also don't want to kill my parents by letting them die of old age. Is my point. If I have reason to want them dead I don't actually see a lot of difference from my perspective whether they die of old age or I have to kill them! I would kill my old mother in a hearbeat given sufficient reassurance that I wouldn't get caught!"

"...huh, okay, I see what you mean. Sure, then. Immortality for everyone. And we'll be in the second generation of everyone so we're getting in on the ground floor, good for us."

"We're going to be living in a high-tech high-magic setting, I bet there'll be plenty for everybody for loads of generations. If you want to be queen of something you can create a splinter nation when the population gets too high for one polity to administer effectively."

"It's not that I want to be queen of something, it's that I want, like... so if there's plenty for everybody for loads of generations, what happens after that, if we're all immortal? I want to keep being comfortable indefinitely."

"I wouldn't mind being queen of something," Ghys puts in, cheerfully.

"That surprises none of us. Anyway, we're high magic, I don't see why there can't be enough for everybody forever. Even our original universe is constantly expanding, right? Just make it a rule that our new universe is expanding really fast and instead of becoming less dense there's new stuff popping up in the gaps and people have a reasonably lowish baby drive so we don't manage to outpace even that. And make there be spells for pocket dimensions and stuff and--there really isn't any reason a high magic setting can't have a ton of ways to make the resources scale with the population." 

"Sold. Okay, so that brings us back to elves. What makes elves special in a world where we are basically throwing every conceivable convenience we can think of at the entire population? Everyone is immortal and has wings and probably doesn't or barely ever gets sick and just generally lives comfortable lives, how do we improve on that? Prettier and smarter and stronger and more magical is, like, fine, but it doesn't feel like enough, you know?"

"Shapeshifting," Ghys suggests.

"You are definitely planning nefarious uses for that, but it's a thought, sure. I didn't even end up needing to munchkin on making hairstyle changes quick and easy for everyone, so we can totally have that, so probably lots of cosmetic stuff is quick and easy for everyone, but elves could still have it better than that."

"Elves don't have headaches or cramps--I mean like exercise cramps, there is no reason for people to menstruate in this world--or pain in childbirth--elves could be taller--we could do something with the 'holiness' thing if we wanted to," she suggests. "I don't normally go in much for religion but if we get to design the religion..."

"Wow, you're giving everyone wings but not giving everyone lack of headaches? And while I applaud abolishing menstruation, I can totally think of several reasons people might want to menstruate. Some people are into that. Anyway, though, I'm on board with the three of us designing a religion we get to be extra holy in. First question: should the religion, in general, be true."

"I'm not saying everyone shouldn't get lack of headaches but I'd rather have wings than no headaches! And I think the religion should be true, it makes us less special if it isn't."

"Will this religion have an afterlife? Because I won't countenance a god who judges my life when I'm done living it," says Ghys.

"I'm fine with no afterlife if and only if the magic system includes resurrection."

"If there's always been an afterlife then the fake ancient dead civilization gets out as a lie—and likewise if there's resurrection, somebody'd try for a fake ancient dead person—but if the afterlife is new then it doesn't so maybe the afterlife is recent, and elves are related somehow," Naomi suggests. "Maybe the whole religion is new."

"It would be moderately poetic if the ancient dead civilization had supposedly sacrificed themselves to create a new, better world in which one way or another everyone gets to live forever."

"Or they brought their dead with them when they ascended."

"I mean, either way they don't actually exist, so I'm fine with letting their story be a little tragic. What's the advantage of them bringing their dead with them?"

"Because there are absolutely people who will hear a tragic story and try to fix it. You can say that for tragic reasons they're beyond what the magic system is designed to do, but...we're already beyond what the system we're in now was designed to do. Someone will try to be a munchkin with our magic system, and, uh, when I say 'someone' I mean 'definitely my big brother but also other people I'm sure.'"

"Huh, funny, my first thought was that somebody's going to try to reverse-engineer ascension and join them wherever they went. Maybe we need to rethink the ancient dead civilization thing."

"Since we are, in a sense, creating the world, then its true gods are, in a sense, ourselves," says Ghys. "We could start there in building our religion."

"We could include an actual ascension mechanism," she points out. "And we could in fact start there but I don't think we have the option of actually being goddesses so if we want our religion to be true in the religious sense and not in the 'based on a true story' sense we're going to need to go a ways from there." 

"You do not have the option of being goddesses," the angel confirms. "In theory I could pull other instances of your templates and instantiate them as goddesses, but in this particular case, I am super not allowed to do that for Ghyslaine."

"If we include an ascension mechanism then when people use it they will go wherever ascended people go and notice there is no one else there," Naomi points out. "Like, not that I object to ascension, I just think that we should arrange to either not have the history of the universe be lies, or to have the history of the universe be lies that no one has a realistic chance of ever uncovering the truth about. And the more we play with the idea, the more it sounds like we can't actually stop people from uncovering the truth."

"Can't we just go 'the multiverse is a big place and they didn't leave breadcrumbs?' Like, if I sail away from Europe to America, and nobody has ever been to America before, and you decide to follow me, then if I landed in Florida and you landed in New York, and you completely failed to find me, that wouldn't be suspicious."

"I don't know, I think I'd get suspicious. I might just be a naturally suspicious person. But like, whole entire ancient civilization full of people, none of them wants to hang around to see how the rest of their world turned out? Suspicious."

"So suppose that our religion dictates that three goddesses designed the world together, set it to run its course, and entered it as ordinary people," says Ghyslaine. "This has the advantage from your perspective of already being true. It lets us personally dictate whatever divine messages we want to leave in the world. It even lets us include all our favourite art and music, as messages from the goddesses instead of ancient relics. It amuses me enormously. What isn't to like?"

"Well...if the goddesses aren't still around being goddesses...I guess that makes worshipping them makes less sense...but I could see it working anyway. How are we going to frame the goddesses, because I don't think omnibenevolence is on the table when one of them is you."

"I'm perfectly fine with telling everyone I'm omnibenevolent. But I take your point."

"We want everyone to have a very nice world because we, ourselves, are going to live there," Naomi suggests. "That's true enough."

"We established that we want a true religion," Didyme points out to Ges. "I'm not going to go around telling people true things and then lie about that. Although I guess as long as we don't try to say which mortals the goddesses became it wouldn't put people's guard down about you specifically...if I were writing a story about three goddesses, who were us, becoming mortal, I would say that Naomi and I sacrificed our own divinity to protect people from yours. But that is not, in fact, true. Hm." 

"Yeah, we're going to have to get creative if we want to spin the thing that's actually happening in an interestingly religious way... hmm. Can we make, like, angels? Something in between gods and regular people, so people have something to worship that's not us? And then I guess elves are between even-more-regular people and angels."

"We could...we'd want to be careful, though, this lady is an angel and she doesn't seem to have too high an opinion on her bosses." 

"My bosses made me for customer service and it didn't occur to them that liking people would cause me to develop ethics," the angel says dryly. 

"I definitely want our angels to have a positive opinion of us but I think that won't be that hard? At least collectively. Coming up with an angel who has a positive opinion of all three of us individually might be a bit much."

"You said earlier that you could make... other versions of us... into goddesses. But not me. I don't expect making other versions of us into angels to work any better, but what about other versions of other people...?"

"I can try, but before you ask, you cannot have Hitler or King Leopold."

"I really do not think either of those would work well as an angel for our purposes!"

"Some people make really questionable life choices."

"All right, is there anyone you do think would work well as an angel for our purposes? Cause I gotta say, I don't know anybody I'd angelize."

"I admit I don't have any flawless candidates in mind."

"I guess I would angelize my siblings if I couldn't have them as siblings if the reason I couldn't have them as siblings wasn't that I couldn't have them at all. But, uh, that's not how that works. Can you...recommend people?"

"I would need desirable criteria," she says, glancing at Ghys.

"Since I am, it seems, doomed to be the black sheep of this pantheon no matter what I do, it follows that I should probably ask for angels who are very forgiving."

"Angels should be in favour of people having nice things," Naomi contributes. "But, like, in a way where they have a sense of fun, not in a weird stuffy repressed way where people only get to have the correct nice things, you know?"

"Literally nothing you have said has suggested that your wool is paler than midnight," Didyme points out.

"I acknowledge that reality, but, supposing that I decided to have a change of heart and become a kinder, gentler version of myself, would either of you believe me? I think not."

"It's nothing personal, I'm just naturally paranoid. And we should maybe be thinking about angel criteria and not about your moral character."

"Yeah. Angels should...protect people."

"Hmm. I'll see who I can think of," she says thoughtfully. 

"To be clear, I totally can think of things you could do to convince me you'd had a heel face turn, I'm just not gonna tell you what they are because then you could fake 'em."

"So assuming for the moment that we get to have angels and that they will fulfill our criteria and stuff—"

"Not quite yet," Ghys interrupts. She looks at Didyme. "What precisely are you imagining angels will protect people from? Because if we are all intended to be villainesses, we should exist in a world that is capable of sustaining plots in which someone plays the villain."

"--I didn't have anything precisely in mind. But even if everyone is laughably naive, people are going to hurt each other. My parents weren't acting out of malice towards me, exactly. I want--someone who could have saved me, if they had been there."

"But will they be looking out for everyone, or only for some people, and if so how do they decide who to look after? In a truly benevolent world, in a world where angels protect people from harm, would it be possible for us to be villainesses?"

"We're expected to be villainesses of a romance story. Protecting people from romantic drama is all but an incoherent concept."

"And yet, without conflict and danger, how much of even a romance story is left?"

"I'm intensely torn between curiosity and wanting to know nothing about your love life. Romantic conflict is still conflict, and I'm not proposing that the angels be omniscient; you'd just have to gaslight your prospective lovers into not going to the angels for help."

"Not that I don't appreciate the suggestion, but there is so much more to life than gaslighting one's lovers."

"There is...a limit to what people can be protected from," the angel says, perturbed. "I've been given requirements for things that have to happen to each of the three of you."

"What manner of things, exactly?"

"You are supposed to fall in love."

"Poor bastard," she mutters under her breath. In a more audible tone: "What about me?" 

"You are supposed to have a satisfying moral victory over someone acting as an effigy of your current mother."

"I note," says Naomi, "that neither of those sounds like the sort of thing an angel might want to protect someone from."

"Your thing," she sound intensely disturbed, "is that you are supposed to get raped."

"Wow. Okay. Well, that sure does put some limits on what angels can protect people from."

"I think I am satisfied by the limits that implies."

"Ghys, are you flirting with me?"

She makes a face. "Angelic protection for children, then," she says firmly.

"That, I have no quarrel with."

"Agreed."

"I would prefer something more comprehensive but it'll do. What should angels look like? I'm imagining metallics."

"...metallic what?"

"Like, skin and feathers and hair and stuff? Mostly gold and silver and platinum, with some bismuth and so on thrown in for variety."

"Hmm." She contemplates this vision. "I'm not not into it..."

"A concept, if we wish to maintain a hierarchy between angels and elves and humans: humans have one pair of wings each. Elves, who as previously established can shapeshift, may have at most two. Angels have three and up," Ghys suggests.

"--Oh, I like that idea." 

"Yeah, that one's great," Naomi agrees. "...it does occur to me that we should maybe at least hear out the rest of the choices before we figure out the entire world, in case something on the list sets up constraints we'll need to work around or inspires ideas we'll need to rework things for. So maybe put a lid on designing elves and angels in detail for now?"

"Yeah, that's legit. So, what's next after human versus elf?"

"The next thing is which role each of you is going to play in the story. There are three roles, and each of you has to take one of them. There has to be consensus here, at least insofar as one's own role; you can't say 'I accept my role in the proposed arrangement, but in that case you two need to swap.' The three roles are the Royal Princess, the Duke's Daughter, and the Rich Heiress. The Royal Princess is the daughter of the King of Villarosa, the highest ranking and most desired bachelorette in the nation. This comes with all the obvious advantages, and will by default make whoever assumes the role the alpha female in any room. Yet abuse your royal privilege too much and it may prove less protection than you think. The Duke's Daughter is the only daughter of the highest ranking noble in the land - by default the Duke of Thorns, though the title will change based on the cultural influences you pick for Villarosa. This is a lot like being a princess, but less so. However, what you gain is that your engagement will be an important part of your father's political plans, so you can can call on his resources for aid in defending it. But that'll only last as long as the politics make sense... if things go wrong you will quickly find yourself disowned and left unprotected from your enemies. If you don't want to be nobility for some reason, the Rich Heiress is your pick. You'll be the daughter of the wealthiest merchant in the realm; not noble, but rich and prominent enough to freely move in those circles. You won't have the power of a noble title, but what you will have is money. All the money. And that's a power all of its own. But unless and until you marry the right boy, you're still technically a commoner, and your father's money won't be protection enough if you offend the wrong people."

"Calling 'not it' on Duke's Daughter, that sounds pretty incompatible with getting my sisters back."

"Man, I don't want parents," Naomi sighs. "Actually I maybe even more than that don't want you to have parents," with a glance at Ghys. "But if nobody dies then nobody can be conveniently deceased in backstory."

"I wouldn't mind being a duke's daughter."

"That poor duke."

"It would be most...felicitous with various mechanical choices...if it were sometimes the case that it was inconvenient to bring someone back for a while. You could be a Rich Heiress whose parents had died when you were a baby and were not slated to come back until you had finished growing up. You'd still have to be raised by someone, though. For obvious reasons this is less compatible with the Royal Princess option." 

"Felicitous? I guess we'll find out when we get there. And sure, I'll take Rich Heiress. Heck, maybe we'll have to wait for my parents to come back until somebody actually invents resurrection, that'd be neat."

"That would work."

"I guess that makes me the princess, huh? I can live with that." 

"The next item is 'Your Fiancee.' These are the love interest options to be potentially stolen from you by the heroine of the game. By default the relationship between the two of you is amicable and mutually attracted but not passionate. He is guaranteed to be hot enough to satisfy whatever standards you may possess. The three options are the Prince Charming, the Dark Rival, and the Noble Prodigy. The Prince Charming is the eldest son of the King, the heir to the throne, and all around nice, heroic guy. The same age or slightly older than you, talented in everything he does, and romantic enough to make all the girls swoon - including you. He's also the most likely to take strong offense to any bullying or nefarious tactics on your part. The Dark Rival is the dark mirror frenemy of the Prince Charming, usually close to the same age as him, and therefore you. At the start of the story, he's even more talented than Charming, but ultimately the good guy surpasses and befriends him. You know how the story goes. He can be mean, but never quite evil, and he's got a heart of gold deep inside just waiting for the right girl to unlock it. The oldest of your choices, the Noble Prodigy has already graduated from the academy and made a name for himself. He is of lesser nobility, but by merit has ascended the heights of society. Your setting choices may alter his exact deeds, but by default he will have made a name for himself both as a warrior and a commander. To you he will be cold and formal at first - not cruel, not unwilling to be wed, but certainly the least emotional of your potential fiances. A tragedy in his past drives him and hardened his soul, but love has the potential to melt the armor of ice around his heart." 

"--Naomi, would you be willing to take the Prince Charming option? He'll be my brother and I don't want Ghys getting her claws in my brother."

"Sure, I'd be happy to."

"I think I would like the Dark Rival. He seems to have potential."

"Fine by me, I'm alright with the Noble Prodigy."

"That was pleasingly drama-free," the angel observes. "I had honestly expected more argument in these two selections, you three are above-average good at cooperating, which is a little surprising, given the skin thing, but one never knows. Oh, you might find this amusing," she tells Ghys, "one of the recommendations I've put in for an angel seems to be an alt of the person your alt did the skin thing to. And she will have no idea about it, of course."

"You're right, that is amusing."

"The next thing to choose is the heroine. The heroine also has three different possibilities, but unlike with the previous choices, there's only one heroine, not one apiece, so you all have to agree on one instead of choosing your own. The three heroine choices are the Poor Princess, the Hero's Daughter, and the Extraordinary Commoner." 

Despite being royalty, the Poor Princess is for some reason neglected and powerless. The most popular reason is for her to be the King's daughter with a previous, politically inconvenient Queen. She might instead be a legitimized bastard daughter, or a refugee from a destroyed kingdom. Regardless of the reason, she lacks most of the advantages of her station that the Royal Princess enjoys, and, while far from incompetent, is the least personally formidable of the potential heroines. What she does have is the a kind heart, a lovely face, and just enough social advantage from her royal blood to tie your hands somewhat."

The hero's daughter's heroic parent died accomplishing some great deed - defeating the Demon Lord, sealing an eldritch god, etcetera. This won a posthumous elevation to the ranks of the nobility. This gives his or her daughter legitimate noble status, but none of the experience or social mores expected of a noble young lady. She will be quite talented, but will lack the extreme genius of the self-made Extraordinary Commoner. What she will have is fame, the inherited gratitude of the country, and connections with her parent's influential and dangerous surviving companions. Your fiance's curiosity with her will soon turn to attraction, and the Hero's Daughter is not to be underestimated."

The Extraordinary Commoner is the 'default' option. Of humble background, without any social status, this accomplished young woman won admission into the exclusive Royal Academy on sheer merit. Given the stratified social structure of Villarosa, this is quite the achievement, but makes her the proverbial nail sticking out. That gives her an obvious weakness, but she is by far the most talented of the potential heroines. She will outshine her more pedigreed classmates and thereby attract the notice of your fiance." 

"I'm going to vote against the Poor Princess."

"You know, all this implicit classism is somewhat at odds with the 'literally two generations of people exist and live in comfort and harmony' nature of the world we've been envisioning so far. We might want to take a look at that and figure out palatable reasons why the world is so the way that it is."

"I can think of some unpalatable reasons!"

"Maybe the nobility are elves and the commoners are humans? No, that wouldn't work with the 'elevated to nobility' thing of the Hero's Daughter...although, hm, I have read a couple of fantasy books where humans were turned into elves...Ghys I'm probably going to regret this but what are your ideas."

"We could simply create our first generation of people with an embedded implicit understanding of the class structures we intend for them to occupy. I assume this is already how things are done when worlds are created with false histories, except that in that case they would be receiving their implicit understanding of the world from their false memories of the history they believe they have, and here they would be granted it by pure fiat. Probably religiously backed, if anything; the goddesses created the world this way and so this is the way the world ought to be. And if necessary for social order I'm sure the world-creation system is capable of leaning on everyone's personalities to get them to fall in line."

"...I mean, I don't love it but I don't hate it... until I start framing it as mind control and then I do kind of hate it a little. I don't know that I have a better idea, though. ...I do kind of like the idea of elves being noble and humans being common except that it makes me, our token technically-commoner, not an elf. Unless I figure out how to elevate myself, I guess, which is definitely also an idea I like."

"The question I have about that is how elves and humans intermarrying works, like, if you marry the crown prince and the next generation's prince is only half-elf what does that do? And I'm not sure how Ghys's thing is mind control." 

"If humans can become elves under extraordinary circumstances, half-elves can probably become elves under more ordinary circumstances? ...can elves become angels, I think that's a thing that makes sense given the setup so far and also entertains me immensely... I bet it takes some serious circumstances though, I want angels to keep being angels and not get taken over by a bunch of clever asshole ascended elves who go on to wreck the place."

"If elves can become angels I want to have a chance at it," says Ghys. "Not necessarily a guarantee, but a chance at least half as good as either of yours."

"...that's pretty fair but sounds hard to do without opening up the ranks of the angels to a bunch of assholes. No offense. Maybe put that question aside until we've picked the heroine? Who do we want as the heroine, besides—I guess either not the Poor Princess or at least not a Poor Princess who is in any way related to Didyme?"

"What happens if an angel has a kid with a human, is the result an elf or something more complicated? --Sorry, yes, right, particularly since, uh, the 'disfavored child of the previous queen' thing is uncomfortably close to the actual current situation with my older half-siblings. I guess if the Poor Princess is in no way related to me then I don't have a reason to object to it."

"I admit to favouring the Poor Princess because she sounds like the weakest opponent of the three, but perhaps we could compromise on the Hero's Daughter? Or spend some time thinking about how to make the Poor Princess a more palatable option for you, but there are many other questions we could be spending our time on."

"I'm fine with Hero's Daughter, I'm fine with some not-my-family Poor Princess variant but I'm not interested in spending a lot of time considering the question." 

"I don't care about making her a weaker opponent because I'm planning to seduce her," Naomi says cheerfully. "So I'm fine either way. Hero's Daughter sounds good, then we can get back to worldbuilding—I think if angels have kids, with anyone ever, the kids should be elves. Makes sense if angels are supposed to be—better than ordinary people, you shouldn't be able to just be born one, that's not the kind of goodness they're supposed to have."

"Makes sense. How does that fit in with the aristocracy, I feel like the angels should be--outside the system, so to speak, so if two angels have a kid where does their kid fit into it--"

"Oh good point. I mean I guess if two angels have a kid you just have a... new shiny landless noble?"

"...Hmm."

"Hmm?"

"What if nobles--elves--have pocket dimensions. That are somewhat larger than pocket-sized. So that 'landless noble' isn't a coherent concept."

"Oh, how charming!"

"...I am grudgingly charmed even though my own worldbuilding choices mean I can't start out as an elf."

She pats Naomi's hand. "You can become an elf when you marry my brother."

"Acceptable."

"And if elves have pocket dimensions then angels should have something...maybe there's a divine plane where the goddesses supposedly lived and angels can make portals to it?"

"And also have their own pocket dimensions because otherwise, when an elf becomes an angel, bad things happen." Thoughtful pause. "Can our, I don't know, souls or whatever, be routed through the divine plane very very briefly before we get incarnated, just so it's technically true that we were there for a bit?"

"That sounds fine," the angel says. "I can even, oh, briefly cloak your souls in goddess-appropriate amounts of divine magic before scattering the magic and making angels out of it, if that would help."

"Perfect! Thank you very much."

"...I hesitate to cast doubt on a compromise I myself proposed," Ghys says slowly, "but: what, exactly, is the Hero's Daughter a hero of? What calamity exists at the beginning of the world to be heroically fought?"

"Ooh, that's a good point. Maybe...whatever made the goddesses go poof? No, that doesn't work, goddesses going poof is the first thing. Uh...maybe some kind of space station had a mechanical failure and they did something incredibly dangerous to save the lives of everyone aboard and the dangerous thing killed them?"

"Oh, that works and doesn't even require us to think up extra hazards besides 'sometimes engineering fails'! Great plan."

Thoughtful pause.

"...so you guys are going to be elves which means, presumably, that you get to shapeshift your wings into whatever configuration suits you. I'm going to be a human which means I don't. What should default human wings be like? Feathers? I'm deeply conflicted about feathers. They're soft and fluffy but they need maintenance in a way skin doesn't so much. ...actually yeah when I put it like that I think bat-style wings should be the human default and feathery wings should be an elf thing because it's prestigious to need the grooming time."

"Weren't elves supposed to be able to shapeshift? Couldn't you shapeshift your wings clean, get rid of the feathers and put them back?"

"But then couldn't you also shapeshift your ridiculous hair clean? Maybe shapeshifting is, like, a little bit hard, so it's more luxurious and stuff if you just have somebody to style your hair and/or groom your wings for you."

"Well, I'm the only one who took ridiculous hair, and I specified, like, unnecessary amounts of braids," she points out. "Cleaning by shapeshifting is just a matter of, like, getting rid of the thing and putting it back, I don't think you can shapeshift hair into braids, that's too much fiddly stuff with dead tissue. Which is not to say that feathers would be nonzero a status thing but if elves can shapeshift and humans can't and have membranous wings then it would be a status thing because it displays shapeshifting, not because it takes so long to clean."

"Man, am I the only one who... never mind, grooming feathers can be a sex thing instead, I'm on board."

"I'm not saying grooming feathers ever doesn't sound fun, I just don't want to add another mandatory time-consuming hygiene item. Making it a sex thing sounds like an excellent plan. Ooh, do you think we can do that thing where--I read this one wingfic where angels have this sensitive spot on the back of their necks because of some kind of bird behavior--"

"You know, I bet elves can decide where to have sensitive spots. Or were you thinking for everyone? I could go for that."

"For everyone, yeah, at least as a default. Elves shouldn't hoard all the nice things."

"Can't say no to that. All right, what else?"

"Next is your canonical counterpart's game ending. Your options are death, being sent off to a nunnery, being forced into servitude to the heroine, being stripped of everything you have and left to eke out a living on the streets, being exiled to a foreign political marriage, and simply being dumped and humiliated. The first one gets you an extra perk and the last one costs you an extra flaw."

"I'm inclined to go with death," Didyme muses, "not because of the extra perk, but because it seems like the most straightforward one for my siblings to rescue me from after a suitably inconvenient interval, and my siblings will try to rescue me, and I don't wanna see what happens if your bosses decide their hands need tied." 

"Is death even worth that extra perk, at this point? If it's the easiest fate to escape, does that not imply it's the one that costs us the least?"

"The rules are the rules," the angel says dryly. "It would probably take resurrection longer to be invented in that case, but the rules were not originally designed for people with intelligent world-building faculties. And I can guarantee that death would be more inconvenient than getting embarrassingly publicly dumped."

"Ah, I see. Perhaps resurrection will even be invented by your siblings for the purpose of retrieving you," she says to Didyme. "Wouldn't that be charming?"

"Personally I plan on just not dying," says Naomi, "but, that said, I'm probably taking death as my fate too."

"I mean, I am also planning on not dying, I just want backup plans in case the imp of murphy decides to gang aft agley all up in my plans. So we should have a backup in case my siblings don't need to resurrect me and so don't invent resurrection. Maybe resurrecting the heroine's dead parent." 

"Oh, that's a point, yeah. The heroine will probably want to resurrect her dead parent even if nobody suggests it to her but we should, like, make sure that there's hints that resurrection is possible in the divine messages or whatever. And that part of what people should be doing with their lives is figuring out how to make it work."

She contemplates this idea for a few seconds, then says, "For some reason it feels really aesthetically correct that resurrected people come back as humans? But if you guys don't feel like it then whatever, not important."

"I can sort of see it but in that case it'd better not be too difficult to get re-elfed. We should probably come up with better words than human than elf."

"Can I request that we do not lean any more heavily on the mythology associated with the term 'angel'?"

"Dang, and here I was totally about to flippantly suggest 'cherub'. Hmm."

"I don't think cherub would work anyway because cherubim were supposed to be, like, the second most powerful kind of angel after the seraphim. The naked baby things aren't cherubim, they're something called putti which is not an angel. Uh. Not that you probably care."

"In the colloquial sense the naked baby things are totally called cherubs and there's nothing you or I can do about it but okay let's use a different source of terms."

Thougtful pause.

"I can't immediately think of anything and if nobody else can immediately think of anything either then we should move on to the next thing and come back to it later."

"Sorry, my big brother's huge nerdery rubs off on me sometimes. It would've bothered me regardless of the colloquial usage. We could do something with the wing number? Quarto and duo?"

"Hmm, maybe... alternately, we could use a different mythology. Elves could be fairies, because after all they totally could have fairy wings, and humans can be... sylphs, I guess?? That's some kind of air spirit type thing, right?"

"I wouldn't mind that. And I think it lends itself better to emphasizing the divide between angels and the rest of us than counting wings."

"I like fairy but I'm not sure about sylph...it doesn't seem to mesh well with membrane wings in my mind. What about Fomorians? They were a race that coexisted with the Tuatha de Danaan in Irish mythology, and the Tuatha are basically a fairy varietal."

"Hmm, sounds to my ear like a nationality and not a species? ...man now i'm remembering that the fae are sometimes called 'lords and ladies' and I feel like it might be kind of aesthetic if the common folk didn't have a separate name besides 'common folk' or 'commoner'."

"That is amusing."

"I'm okay with just calling people nobles and commoners. And letting people be very confused if they ever run into systems of nobility that don't have magical distinctions between the lords and the subjects."

Giggle. "Okay, cool, what next?"

"Next is minions. You get two free minions on top of, in Didyme's case, the Maid minion from her hair. You can choose a given minion option more than once. The options are Maid, Classmates, Admirer, Animal Companion, AI, and Butler."

The Maid option will give you a female personal servant (or a cross-dressing boy, if you like, though that be scandalous if revealed). Unlike any "normal" maids you have, a Maid minion is guaranteed to be highly competent, almost unquestioningly loyal, and have some useful skill beyond housework. Most commonly, she might double as a bodyguard or a spy. Oh, and even if it makes no sense in your setting, she can come with a traditional maid outfit, if you want."

The Classmates minion is actually two people, but they will almost always act as a pair. Picking this gives you two female classmates your age of slightly lower social status, whose families are formally or informally in service to your own. These two are therefore predisposed to be your friends and follow your lead. The Classmates are probably the most independent and proactive minions, and therefore also a deniable asset. They can be counted on to give you insight into the Academy gossip and help subtly manipulate it; both of which are tasks your exalted status can make difficult to accomplish yourself."

The Admirer is the male counterpart of the Classmates, though he is only a single boy. He is a talented but not exceptional fellow student with an obvious crush on you. While he knows and accepts he has no chance with you, that doesn't mean a bat of your eyelashes doesn't twist him around your little finger. You may choose for him to be a rival or a friend of your fiance; either way he will prove a useful tool."

An Animal Companion is some domesticated or tamed animal that you have bonded with and trained. In technologically advanced or magical settings, it will have near human intelligence as a genetically engineered or magical companion; in more mundane settings it will simply be an implausibly well trained pet or steed. This can be anything from a pet cat to a pegasus mount. You can even have a dragon, but only if your Villarosa's dragons are the lesser kind that can be reasonably domesticated; not if they are monsters of vast power."

Choosing the AI minion gives you a human-level artificial intelligence as a personal servant. Besides the obvious advantages of an ally that never tires or sleeps, the AI will be capable of trivially hacking and controlling any run-of-the-mill computer systems. If Als are common in your Villarosa, the AI minion will still be more advanced than the commonly available kind. This one has a tech level requirement, but since you chose Space Opera that's not something you have to worry about." 

Unlike your other options, the Butler is not directly your servant, but is instead a much older person, usually employed by your father, who has taken a liking to you. This character is often a man, but can also be a woman. Their actual job title could be Majordomo or Head Maid, or they might even just be an old friend and ally instead of holding a formal role. They are extremely skilled, but they are unlikely to ever intervene directly in your struggles. However, they instead can be an important source of grounded and wise advice, if you are willing to listen."

Additionally, the heroine will have a pseudo-minion companion; the Hero's Daughter's companion is a staff member of the Royal Academy who was close to her heroic parent and who acts in many ways similar to the Butler minion." 

"Ooh, are AIs common in our Villarosa, I feel like not? I feel like—we can make spacefaring easy but AIs are fundamentally not easy and any that existed this early in a world's history would basically be, like, you might as well make them magic spirits provided by the gods because that's what they are. On the other hand providing literal actual magic spirits could be neat, if those can count as AIs. Something something magical constructs I dunno. What do you think?"

"I might like to have a magical spirit of my very own, if the option was available."

"Magical spirits can count as AIs," the angel says agreeably. "As long as they're sufficiently--AI-like. In aesthetic and so on." 

"I think the Butler option sounds very useful."

"Will I have any extra trouble with the Classmates because my social status is barely adequate to start with?"

"No. Richer than hell will do a lot." 

"Fair enough. All right, I think I'll go for Classmates and an AI-spirit."

"I would like an Admirer," says Ghys. "And perhaps also an AI-spirit."

"Seems vaguely unaesthetic to double up—oh, you know what I could do, I could go for Classmates and a Butler and be raised by the Butler, that seems aesthetic as heck regardless of what anyone else is doing."

"Hm...I already have a Maid...I don't care that much about doubling up, I'll take an AI and an Animal Companion. And I want my Animal Companion to be the heraldic animal of the royal house or something symbolic of the royal house even if we don't do heraldry-qua-heraldry. And I'd like that to be a magic bird, something that looks sort of like a peacock but with bigger wings and all in fire colors." 

"Ooh, magic birds, I'm into it."

"Magic birds are charming," Ghys agrees.

"We should have loads of magic animals. And not limit ourselves by what's real or lives where on Earth. I like giraffes, we should have domesticated giraffes that children can ride. And cats with the personality of housecats that look like different kinds of wild cats. There's no reason to have things that will threaten people, but I don't see why we shouldn't have lots and lots of kinds of friendly ones."

"There's some reason to have things that will threaten people."

She waves a hand. "There's reason to have things that can be trained to threaten people, there's no reason to have things that will just be randomly hazardous." 

"The wildlife should not be excessively threatening but if there's, like, bears in the woods, I think that's fine. Unusually chill bears who are still not a good idea to try to pet. And then somebody can try domesticating them and eventually we'll have domesticated bears, which is cool."

"Oh, we should have domesticated magic foxes. That would be lovely."

"Yeah! --And pandas. Red pandas and panda bears both. Domestic ones. In various sizes!"

"Definitely!"

"Enthusiasm for domesticated animals aside, are we ready for our next choice?"

"I think we should return to the question of animals later but that's fair. What's next?"

"The next thing is perks and flaws, which are the last mechanical choices." 

"Tell us of these perks and flaws, then."