"Yes, that's what was going on. I'm genuinely impressed you remembered that after this long," the angel says, amused. 

"I have a lot of practice going on ridiculous tangents. Also I was hoping my subconscious would decide on a hairstyle while I was busy but apparently not. Can I see some pictures of hime cuts?"

"Bang length can vary," she adds helpfully. 

"Does it still count as a hime cut if I pull it back with one of those stretchy hair widgets so it doesn't get in my face? Or like a headband or something."

"Your hair will be abnormally cooperative and not get in your face regardless."

"That's very cool. I'll go with the hime cut, then. Oh, quick question, will I lose the mental benefits if I have some sort of hair accident? If my secret weakness is getting glue dumped on my head I should be aware of that."

"You won't get some kind of hair accident," she says, amused, "but no, it doesn't work like that. The perk is yours once it's issued."

"To be clear, I have no plans to get in a hair accident. I'm just expecting the unexpected because I'm apparently going to be set up for some kind of adversarial interaction with someone who thinks I'm a villainess and that's really outside my area of competence."

"Can I get more explanation of the difference between having elaborate hair and a maid and having non-elaborate hair and a maid?"

"Do you mean between the Maid minion and an ordinary maid, or do you mean between getting the Maid minion from your hair versus another source."

"I meant the first thing but now I'm curious about the second thing too."

"A Maid minion is incredibly competent, extremely loyal, and highly talented in some area outside the purview of her job. The minion itself is not changed by source."

Presumably by "it" the angel actually means the minion perk mechanic rather than the actual human being and she or her translation magic is just having a bit of trouble with pronoun antecedents.

"And those differences are determined by reincarnating different people into different circumstances such that my eventual parents hire someone else? Could you deliberately pick someone who would have been okay with it if you asked?"

"Yes, these things are handled through personality compatibility selection. Someone who wouldn't be okay with it would be much less likely to be sufficiently loyal."

"So it sounds like I could take elaborate hair without necessarily being a jerk? But the hime cut perk is awesome too . . . "

"I will be taking Elaborate Hair myself. I wouldn't discount it; good help is exceedingly useful."

"Very much so. Why would having maids make you a jerk?"

"If I was causing someone to end up as my maid who would otherwise be, I don't know, a doctor or something, and would be mad about this if they knew about it?"

"That's not even slightly how this works," the angel assures her.

"In that case I think I'll also go with elaborate hair, even though Silk Hiding Steel sounds cool."

She admits to herself, but not the others, that this is any amount influenced by wanting a beautiful work of art on her head. And by mental modifications she hasn't read detailed specs for being a bit unnerving even though that one is clearly beneficial.

"Next is species. Uh...there's a standard terminology but it would interact weirdly with local magical culture so I'm just going to call the species 'baseline' and 'plus.' You can design what the baseline species is however you like, and then plus is like that but better along most convenient axes."

Bruce is curious whether the term for one of the species is cognate with an unprintable word or an incantation or something, but that's super not the most important question here. 

"The way you phrased that I'm detecting, um, an infinite regress or something? I mean, any way in which the plus is more convenient than the baseline, we could just bake that into the baseline to start with, right? Also how does that stack with goblins and centaurs and merpeople? Are they all going to have two versions as well?"

"No. You can just bake all the benefits into the baseline species, but if one of you picks plus there have to be at least two species such that one is basically a better version of the other."

"It really doesn't sound like picking plus gets us anything, then? I think the centaur body plan is kind of neat but I'm worried I wouldn't fit in with their culture without it changing me a lot. I'm not really a living in the woods and not using technology kind of person."

"I think goblins are pretty cool but I don't know if I'd make a good goblin. Also, um, feel free to tell me I'm being super racist and should shut up, but I wonder if maybe we should put the giants on a different batch of planets from the rest of the species? They make really different use of space and have really different demography and I didn't see a lot of mutually beneficial interactions in the history books."