"Thank goodness. I could probably spend months fine-tuning this and I can't see a case for that not being a good idea, since I'll have to live with the consequences for approximately ever."

"It does occur to me that if we have a world where no-one can die on accident, it should still be possible to cease to exist on purpose."

". . . You have a point."

"Maybe that takes another quest. Since we're doing quest-based mechanics anyway, and that doesn't seem to be the kind of thing one ought to be able to do on impulse."

Nods all around. "After tech level and magic system, what's the next choice?"

"Those are the world choices...after that are the personal stylistic choices--hair style, hair color, and species. Please don't ask me to justify why hair color and style have such a big impact because I cannot. The hair color options are blonde, redhead, silver, 'brunette' and 'rainbow.' Blonde is the generic 'rich girl' hair color and won't have any side effects. 'Redhead' is as likely to denote hair that's actually red as orange. Red hair connotes and therefore produces stronger emotions and a little more physical strength. Silver hair--properly silver, not the white of old age--means a little less physical strength and a boost to intelligence, plus some extra magical potential or creativity and artistic talent. 'Brunette' actually means brown or black hair--where hair color options have a range of possible manifestations you can pick how you want it to come out--and represents the most common hair color, the 'everywoman' hair color. It'll make you a little more relatable and a little less agentic. 'Rainbow' hair means any unnatural hair colors not covered under one of the other options and increases the extent to which," she glances at McGonagall, "your new world is influenced by anime tropes. Anime is a muggle...I can't say it's a genre, it's too broad to be a genre, but it's a kind of muggle media."

"I have ever watched an anime but that's a really big category, can we get some examples of what a world being affected by anime tropes cashes out to?" It would have to be really good to be better than silver hair, though.

"I have actually not watched any anime and have several contradictory ideas of what the tropes are so yeah."

"Tsundere. Beach episodes. Panty shots. Biologically implausible nosebleeds. Basically any kind of anime trope compatible with what the anime version of Roses of Villarosa would be like. There are a wide variety of contradictory anime tropes but you're not going to find people yelling for hours while their muscles bulge no matter how polychromatic and gravity-defying your hair is."

"Yeah, no, that really doesn't sound worth passing up silver hair for."

"Nope."

"Indeed. So, silver hair for everyone; what's next?"

"Silver's overwhelmingly popular and for very good reason," she agrees. "Next is hairstyle. The 'drill hair' hairstyle is essentially an unrealistic level of ringlets, and grants the 'Ohohoho!' perk, which can generously be described as making you more intimidating. The 'hime cut' hairstyle is straight hair with bangs, a simple style that gives a narrative suggestion of hidden depths and grants them in the form of the 'Silk Hiding Steel' perk, which gives you a core of resilience in the face of shock or misfortune. The 'elaborate' hairstyle is whatever you want it to be, essentially, as long as what you want is something that looks like an enormous pain to achieve and maintain. You get a free Maid minion in order to help with that."

"I take it I will end up forgoing all of those benefits if I continue putting my hair in a bun?"

"Can I still get benefits if my hair is made of whatever magical construct bodies end up using for hair as long as it's shaped right?"

Bruce is feeling massively conflicted. On the one hand, obviously if you're going to modify your brain on the advice of an alien while in the middle of getting reincarnated, "a core of resilience in the face of shock or misfortune" is an awesome modification to get. On the other hand, long hair and bangs would get in his face and that would be the worst. He keeps wanting to brush the mental image of his hair out of the mental image of his eyes.

To McGonagall: "It's more complicated than that but you are essentially correct." To Margaret: "Yes, that's fine."

"And the complications are?" She could get out of the habit of putting her hair in a bun for the right incentive, but it would be effort. She once woke up at three in the morning to the sound of her safehouse's wards being tripped, and within two minutes she had driven off the intruders and also her hair was in a bun with no memory of her having put it there.

"What exactly does it mean to 'get a free Maid minion'?" That could be useful or awful or somewhere in between.

"One at a time," she says, amused. To McGonagall: "Whichever hairstyle you say you choose, there will be a reasonably strong psychological default to have your hair that way. It's possible to override, but if the people who review your choices before implementing the world think you're likely to do so, they won't give you the benefits."

"I see." It's going to be very weird and out of character to want to have her hair done in a complicated style by a maid, if she goes with that option, but once her memories come back it will all make sense.

Potentially having his hairstyle preferences magically altered is objectively less important than having his psychological resilience magically altered but feels more invasive specifically because it's so gratuitous. But that's illogical and he should just man up woman up ghost up and take the hime cut. He'll wait for the queue to be empty first, though.

To Margaret: "Minions are one of the other categories of mechanical choice; by default you all get to pick two. The Maid minion option in particular will ensure that one of your maids is especially competent, both in general and in a non-maid-related area of your choosing."

"Oh. Because we're all going to start out with the kind of parents who hire maids, aren't we."

This whole thing is like a seriously screwed up version of Rawls's "veil of ignorance" experiment.