The space he wakes up in is bright purple and stretches on for what seems like forever. The only other thing in it that can be perceived is a rounded woman with a bright face and glowing feathery wings. 

"Congratulations! You have been selected by the ineffable Will of the Multiverse to reincarnate as the villainess of a specific kind of romance story. Kind of weird, but it's become a huge thing over ten or so of your years in at least a dozen universal branes adjacent to yours. I think one of the Will's avatars read something somewhere and got a little too invested, honestly. Now, you won't be reincarnating into an actual otome that exists," the angel says. 

She taps her chin. "I don't get it, but according to my guidelines it's actually more in genre for us to create a custom otome-style world for you? It seems weird to me, but the universe molding crews love it, so we get lots of brownie points at inter-department parties. In any case, you'll be reincarnating into the soon-to-be-created Kingdom of Villarosa, setting of the counterfactual smash hit story Roses of Villarosa, told in a variety of mediums with details varying to fit." 

"You'll be becoming the much-hated villainess of the story, fated to be sentenced to a horrible bad ending for the crime of being the gorgeous and charismatic heroine's rival in love and for generally being an awful person. I'm sure you can picture how the story goes already," she adds. "--And I'm sorry, but you're definitely going to be a woman in your next life, and you'll also be attracted to men, though you may choose whether you want to be attracted to women also in your new life or be strictly into the cute boys."

"If you object, all I can say is that management apologizes for the inconvenience, but the Will's... well, will is final. On the upside, though, the reincarnation process will ensure you don't suffer any severe body or gender dysphoria, as well as preventing too much homesickness for your old life. Those safeties are there to prevent any depressing suicides. I'm sure you'll be relieved to know that you won't have to relive being a baby or toddler, you'll recover your old identity and memories when you're a teenager, a few days or weeks before the start of 'canon.' Another benefit is that because we haven't actually sent the specification for Villarosa to the universe molders, we have a chance to tweak things to make sure that your otome villainess reincarnation is to your taste. Just pick what you like best, and when we're done the molders get to work, I download a batch of fresh fake meta-knowledge about Roses of Villarosa to your soul, and you get reincarnated."

"So let's get started, okay?"

"What the fuck."

"I get that a lot, but people want a wide variety of different answers."

"I think I just died for no apparent reason. Maybe I'm having hallucinations...that would be a plausible side effect of the chaos magic, actually..." 

The angel winces. "Ah. No. Um, according to my records, you pulled off some kind of interdimensional teleport, and landed in a universe that...well, there's all kinds of hazard warnings on it. It pretty much took one look at you and squished you on sight." 

Baruti puts his head in his hands and sits like that for a minute. 

Finally he sighs and straightens up. "Alright. At least for the moment, I might as well assume this is real. A female villain. In a fake story. Is there a reason why?"

"Because I work for gods who are capricious assholes."

"Can you quit?"

"Firstly, no, secondly, if I did, they would just make another being like me to replace me and she wouldn't be as good at helping people get through this insane process with as much of what they want as possible."

"Fair enough. What exactly are the choices I have available to me?"

"You can choose your new world's tech level and magic level, your hairstyle and hair color--those are more important than they sound--your species, various aspects of the structure of the story, and some perks and flaws. On a mechanical level. You can more-or-less fill in the details however you want as long as they don't conflict with your mechanical choices or require mechanical choices you didn't make." 

"Alright. Thank you. How free-form are the mechanical choices?"

"It...varies, but overall most of the free-form-ness is in the non-mechanical details. Just about everything can be customized in some way but, likewise, just about everything has discrete choices that must be selected between."

"Alright. What can you tell me about the tech level and magic level?"

"The tech level options are 'Aesthetically Archaic,' which takes place in a romanticized version of the past where things are much nicer than they were at actual comparable points in time, and optionally has magic; 'Actually Archaic,' where things are as bad as they actually were in the past, and you have to choose a magic level of low or none. It gives you a free perk, but there are better ways of earning perks; I don't recommend it. 'Contemporary,' where things are approximately at the tech level and social level they have in your world at the point at which you died; 'Realistic Futurism,' which encompasses a technological level a ways past yours and common to many universes geographically similar to your own, 'Marvelous,' a term which is used to encompass an aesthetic based on literature foreign to your world; your world of origin doesn't really have anything I can use to gesture to it. But it has technology beyond that of 'Realistic Futurism.' 'Steampunk,' which takes some of the themes of Marvelous and runs with them down the tech tree, envisioning a world of steam and gears and brass. Cyberpunk, which for some reason they insist on leaving in despite it making no sense to people below a certain tech level--no offense, but your world doesn't qualify--Cyberpunk is a genre full of machines that think, merchant organizations that have become bloated beyond the point of anyone's heath with money and power, and a lot of gratuitous glowing lines on things. And Space Opera, which means a tech level significantly higher than Cyberpunk and convenient interstellar travel."
 

"Interstellar."

"Yes."

"What scale of interstellar are we talking about...?"

"Arbitrarily high. It's the top of the tech scale for a reason, and that reason is that it's actually quite wide in terms of possible actual level."

"Alright. Let me think for a minute. --I haven't forgotten about Magic Level, I assure you, but I do need to think for a minute first." 

He closes his eyes and thinks for a minute. 

"You know what tech level my world is at, and what literary tropes it doesn't contain," he says, opening his eyes. "What else do you know about it?"

"A lot. And I can get you stuff from it, too--not anyone's diary, both in terms of knowing and getting, but aside from private stuff like that. If I don't know it off the top of my head, I can probably find out." 

"Can you tell me which of the Great Mages have been successfully killed, and who has been killing them? --Aside from 'other Great Mages,' I know that that's going on but I don't have everyone neatly sorted into conspirators and non-conspirators."

"Hm...I think so...let's see..." she blinks. "--Huh. Um."

"Um?"

"It looks like your little mishap didn't just chuck you into a profoundly hostile universe, it forked you," she says. "When I search for living in-universe mages over a relevant power threshold, your name comes up."