"Oh!  So we'll have all the lodeflowers and heartweed and more!"

"... and what sort of story are we supposed to tell in this new world?  What's this romance story you mentioned?"

"Oh, that.  I almost forgot about that!  That's - going to be complicated to explain!  It's - built off of a very different cultural context than I imagine you have?"

She looks at Lila quickly - she's nodding along, alright.  "So!  You obviously have a fondness for stories.  I'm going to start from 'storybooks exist' and try to walk you through some literary and technological developments that happened on my planet."

"Fiction as written in your time, if it was anything like my planet's analogue, was not interactive at all, no?"

"... well, people sometimes heckle storytellers, and sometimes that gets them to change their stories up."  She used to do it herself sometimes.  "And then there's theater."

"But the stories themselves weren't written with that in mind, is the thing I am - pointing at, there.

"That's the first thing that's necessary context.

"Because when it got a lot easier to make books, when paper wasn't so absurdly precious anymore - people started writing single books that had multiple stories.  Not, like, in the sense of a collection of disparate things, but - actually, let me just backtrack - it's not...one book with multiple stories, so much as one story with multiple potential plotlines.  You picked one up, started at the beginning, read until you reached a point of choice and followed the instructions on where to go next depending upon the choice you wanted to make.  That make sense?"

She nods eagerly.

"The next piece of the puzzle is - well, you already mentioned plays.  And I imagine you have your fair share of romantic plays, where people get swept up off their feet and the audience swoons and so on, and have ever wished you were in the actor or actress's position."

"Yes... and if you have different paths with those, then the... audience? sort of is.  But reading is so much different from seeing a play."

"It is!  Until you find ways to record or generate sequences of images - and often corresponding sounds - on specific cues, and get that cheap enough that people can just have a Thing That Does That in their houses.  And data storage, but that's a whole 'nother thing and I could explain the Internet but I'd be here all day to just get through what I know of the math."

She likes this.  A lot.

"How would you do this?  With magic?  Is this something you're thinking of for our new world?  We should absolutely have it there!"

"My homeworld did it with entirely nonmagical - for at least my value of 'magic' - manipulation of lightning.  Well, mostly lightning, there was also light, but like...making a thing glow was by far the least hard bit at that point, just trial and error of specific mixes of materials.  ...Actually excuse me that's not even how computer pixels on rasterized monitors worked, it's just tiny bulbs with colored filters.  Anyway, magical Internet...is definitely a possibility, I guess?  Angel-Lila, um, thoughts on this as far as the rules go, considering that - I don't know if you have Space Fantasy as an option, setting-wise, and that's probably where it would rapidly go?"

"We do have that, if you want it.  But it would be very different from either of your home worlds, and the whole society would reflect that."

"But, Lila, as Alicia was saying - the Will of the Multiverse is modeling the story in this new world as something like the sort of romance story that would be in an interactive computer-play.  But it wants you to select the details.  And of course, you can fight the "fate" of the original story and send it off in a different direction... which is convenient for Alicia especially, since she's going to take the part that was "originally" the villainess."

"And who'll I be?"

"The Heroine, the nominal 'protagonist' of this romantic novel turned game parodied back into a genre of novel that actually most often centers my role.  You're the young woman with a desperate past who makes something amazing of herself and steals the love interest out from under me, in the nonexistent 'canon' route of the game.

"...Fun fact, actually: the otome romance villainess doesn't...exist...in the original genre, the otome game; it's entirely a literary invention after the fact, branching from - well, the genre of stories like this one."

"So Fate will be saying I'll overcome you and... win the man we're both in love with?  Is that what the story is?"

She's remembering that she preferred the romance stories that weren't just romances.

(And somewhere in the background she's feeling something about Efliel.  She doesn't bother asking herself what before reminding herself their vows said "till death", and she's dead now.)

"By default, that is the plot of the game.

"I hardly believe it need stay so default, if I'm reading my tropes right, angel Lila?"

Oh good; more storybuilding already!

"Yes, but you can mix it up by adding various Perks and Flaws.  I think you'll be most interested in Save The World:  You face grave danger and save the Kingdom of Villarosa from some threat.  It could be an invasion by a neighboring nation, or the Demon Lord rising again to destroy the world. "

"Great!  How do I get that Perk?"

"... it's actually listed as a Drawback, so you get it for free.

"Speaking of Drawbacks, either of you can also have a Dark Secret that will be devastating to you and your family if revealed, or an Equal Enemy.  Or in Perks, you can have an Equal Friend, you can launch a Scientific Revolution - that's inventing new technology.  There're also lots of other character traits to pick from, though I recommend first picking your social standing and background."

"Hmm.  If we both pick that - it does not give us two world-ending threats, right?"

"No; you're designing one world together."  She flips through her pad of paper for a moment.  "...Well, you are allowed to double up on the flaws where it makes sense to double up on them.  So if you want, you could have two Abhorrant Admirers, two Equal Enemies, or two apocalyptic threats.

"But before you go further, I should say - By default, since Fate is helping the Heroine" (she nods at Lila) "then she needs to take three more Flaws than Perks, and the Villainess" (she nods at Alicia) "can take two more Perks than Flaws.

"However, if you take the 'Off the Rails' perk, Fate doesn't exist in your world anymore once you 'wake up' with your memories, except to push you into some sort of conflict with each other.  If you choose that, you can both take two more Perks than Flaws."

"...I'm inclined to take that, just for - fairness, in general?  Let the dice fall where they may, and no-one meddle.  ...Though I might like a helping of plot armor when it comes to specifically the apocalypsen."