In Consideration of Courtesies Exchanged

[skulkidcachi90]

I really liked Luvia in this chapter, i funny to see Shirou being mentioned in this one and Luvia dad looks like a confy guy I like him.

I am really hyped for the politics plot of this fic, keep doing a great job Glow.

[Gl❀w]

I really liked Luvia in this chapter, i funny to see Shirou being mentioned in this one and Luvia dad looks like a confy guy I like him.

I am really hyped for the politics plot of this fic, keep doing a great job Glow.

Thank you! I really appreciate the feedback and I hope I can live up to expectations

[Prix with a Silent X]

But sixty percent was sufficient for Luvia.

Given her family's propensity toward twins/multiple children... This part struck me as really funny this time around in a way that it never had before.

It has been a while since I read this part, and I really enjoy the polishing that you've done on it as a whole. It has an elegant flow to it now that doesn't hiccup at any point, in my opinion.

I do wonder, does her papa actually like Waver, or does he like this arrangement? You've made me very suspicious of him, and I really love the way you're using both your narrators so far.

[Gl❀w]

Given her family's propensity toward twins/multiple children... This part struck me as really funny this time around in a way that it never had before.

It has been a while since I read this part, and I really enjoy the polishing that you've done on it as a whole. It has an elegant flow to it now that doesn't hiccup at any point, in my opinion.

I do wonder, does her papa actually like Waver, or does he like this arrangement? You've made me very suspicious of him, and I really love the way you're using both your narrators so far.
[/FONT]

I cannot believe I didn't reply to this already.

That hadn't occurred to me either, but in retrospect you are right and it's hilarious.

As for papa Edelfelt... I am glad to have stirred up some mystery

[Gl❀w]

----------------------------------

[Grant]

Have to admit that I prefer Waver with that kid from Melloi's family, purely on basis of those 'Waver as a magical detective' fics, but this has been fun to read.

[Leo Novum]

This chapter was actually slightly underwhelming to be honest. The lack of witty dialogue or mind-smothering intrigue is probably the cause. I know that this chapter is merely a buildup towards a pay off in the next or later chapters but it still felt a little weak.

Although the line about the lilies made me smile and think of Waver as a lily-livered chap. But then again, who wouldn't be in such a situation?

[just Beamu]

I do recall liking the preview of this chapter you showed me at some point and I like this version better.

[Gl❀w]

Have to admit that I prefer Waver with that kid from Melloi's family, purely on basis of those 'Waver as a magical detective' fics, but this has been fun to read.

I....um....thank you??

This chapter was actually slightly underwhelming to be honest. The lack of witty dialogue or mind-smothering intrigue is probably the cause. I know that this chapter is merely a buildup towards a pay off in the next or later chapters but it still felt a little weak.

Although the line about the lilies made me smile and think of Waver as a lily-livered chap. But then again, who wouldn't be in such a situation?

Well, it's a pretty solemn situation at the moment and Waver's got a lot on his mind. Also, everyone is kind of stuck being on their mostly-best behavior (except Reines because she's a smug monster) since they're in a larger group social setting. Luvia's also got a lot on her mind so she's not really going to feel like talking much. IMO any full-bodied story is going to have it's quieter moments, but I hope you plan to stick with it because if you've liked the intrigue, when all is said and done, I think you're going to be a very happy camper.

But yeah, Waver is a bit of a pansy. I love him anyway.

I do recall liking the preview of this chapter you showed me at some point and I like this version better.

Good to hear!

[SeiKeo]

I mean, it's somewhat indicative of the whole relationship that Waver has no idea what she's thinking about or, really, has any concern for her at all.

[Gl❀w]

-------------------------------------------

[NMR-3]

Good work, as always.

Bits of worldbuilding like this make for ideal interludes, IMO. It's difficult stuffing them into regular chapters without sounding preachy or detracting from your narrative, so this seems a good way to do that.

It's neat how you have the interlude start and end with the priest. I forget the word for what that's called, though.

[SeiKeo]

Well, it's a fun little interlude, and though I've never been ironclad on minutia it seems reasonable enough too. Only, perhaps, that it's sort of Anglo-centric, but despite Nasu talking as if the MA is pan-European he's never really treated it as much besides England so heck if that's your fault.

[Gl❀w]

Good work, as always.

Bits of worldbuilding like this make for ideal interludes, IMO. It's difficult stuffing them into regular chapters without sounding preachy or detracting from your narrative, so this seems a good way to do that.

It's neat how you have the interlude start and end with the priest. I forget the word for what that's called, though.

Bookending, maybe? But thank you!

Well, it's a fun little interlude, and though I've never been ironclad on minutia it seems reasonable enough too. Only, perhaps, that it's sort of Anglo-centric, but despite Nasu talking as if the MA is pan-European he's never really treated it as much besides England so heck if that's your fault.

Actually, this is conceptually only supposed to apply to England. I thought about this when I was crafting it and the big thing is that it's only talking about why people in the Clock Tower immediate vicinity would be doing this particular thing. Other nations are free to do as they wish, but in the words of the rewrite thread, I thought that might end up being me getting "too sidetraked talking about gazebos."

So Word-of-God on this fic is that everwhere else probably has their own customs and this just applies to the GB area.




P.S. to you lurkers:
I'm officially caught up to posting everything I have written, so from now on I am shamelessly holding the fic hostage unless I get adequate amounts of feedback :P

[Snow]

(Commenting on the whole fic so far)

Honestly I didn't think I'd like this idea. Not that it isn't interesting, but because it's not usually my kinda thing.

And I'm glad I decided to jump in.

Although I don't know much about Luvia's character, and slightly more but still not enough about adult Waiver's, your writing builds them up in a way that feels both natural and increasingly endearing. I like how both of them think they are getting the short end of the stick and how the other person must be playing them, and how the true intentions of their clan elders (mostly Reines, but Papa Edelfelt is being awful suspicious too) are just sort of looming above everything. I'm a bit more excited about seeing how this grand plan is realized than about Luvia and Waver's marital 'bliss', but I admit my interest in that too is growing from chapter to chapter along with my attachment to the characters.

Your writing style is rich and detail-oriented, which I'm always a complete sucker for, and descriptions flow nicely and fit comfortably into the narrative.

As for the last chapter, I imagined magi marriages as more utilitarian than muggle ones, but I'm curious to see your take on them.

And while I enjoy watching Waver suffer I do hope he gets some reprieve from being the resident laughingstock eventually, the poor thing.

All in all, I shall follow this with interest.

[just Beamu]

Ah, finally something I haven't seen some preview of. I like it, and it seems better to get this worldbuilding done in interludes instead of trying to fit into a chapter.

[Dullahan]

This was a post I later regretted.

caustic pedantry

to be clear, I'm not following this fic; Clock Tower intrigue doesn't intrigue me, I think Luvia's only good point is her character design, and no force in heaven or on earth could make me like Waver.

but I smelt history

The traditional church wedding of the masses over which he would ordinarily preside was, in fact, a derivative of this strange arrangement. The marriages of magekind were rooted in ancient traditions and called upon natural forces and sacred ritual to create ties of blood and belonging running into the fabric of the earth itself. Neither paper nor governing body held authority to forge a family; the parties had only to answer to the World itself.

Ancient traditions, eh? Later you refer to mage weddings as 'pagan'. Now, as it happens, I have studied the influence of Christianity on pagan (specifically Norse, but there are broad continuities among northern european cultures with this sort of thing) customs of marriage. What customs might those have been?

Early on in the Njals Saga, an episode is narrated in which Hrut – a landowner in pre-Christian Iceland – at the urging of his half-brother Hauskuld enters into negotiations with a village chief, Mord, for the hand of his only daughter, Unna.¹ What follows could be called, if only in broad strokes, an almost stereotypical picture of a Scandinavian marriage proposal in the pre-Christian period. Hauskuld vouches for his brother's character and material wealth, inheritance is discussed, the terms of dower and dowry are set out, a betrothal is made, a date for the bridal feast is fixed, and the two men shake hands to conclude their deal. Unna herself is conspicuously absent from the proceedings; this, and superficial qualities of the language used – the characters speak of 'bargains', 'terms' and 'witnesses' and so forth – cause the entire affair to come across as nothing so much as a business transaction, in which ownership of property is transferred from one party to another by a legally binding contract. This comparison is both obvious and apt, for in a literal sense there is an argument to be made for it being exactly that. The general formula by which the agreement is reached – the elements of bargaining, of witnesses, and final settlement with a handshake – would have been familiar to any Norseman of the time as the elements of a traditional business transaction, for the purchase of land or an ocean-going ship.² To understand the reason for this, it must be outlined that, in pre-Christian Scandinavia – as part of a wider trend manifested across the pagan Germanic cultures of northern Europe – the structure of legal marriage as distinct from other types of sexual relationship first originated out of economic concerns. To begin with, legal marriage was not the only type of long-term relationship between men and woman. Concubinage – an informal partnership lacking the legal ramifications of marriage – was also common, and in higher levels of society it was normal for a man to have one or more concubines in addition to being legally married, while for lower classes this kind of informal relationship would have been a normal form of male-female partnership. ³ From its inception, the key distinction of a ‘lawfully wedded‘ wife from a concubine or a slave – extramarital relationships with whom were common, even for legally married men – was connected to the ability of her offspring to inherit property.⁴ For this reason marriage was formalised to a great degree as a contract between two families rather than two individuals, requiring reciprocally binding agreements – among the more wealthy landowners especially – due to both sides being, in a very literal sense, invested⁵ in the union of their families. Traditionally, it was the prospective groom who took the initiative⁶ in seeking out a marriage partner, for reasons ranging from a desire for an alliance between his and the bride’s family to the acquisition of a familial relationship with a powerful relative of the bride.⁷ If the suitor was found acceptable,⁸ a marriage contract would be negotiated between the groom or his relatives⁹ and the bride’s ‘guardian‘, a role usually played by her father, but which could be filled by a legitimate adult son, son-in-law, brother, or mother in the absence of all other options.¹⁰ A man’s children by his legal wife were by definition ‘lawfully begotten‘, and this provided the legal basis for a system of inheritance which could regulate the transfer of property from generation to generation. For this reason, what evidence has survived of pre-Christian legal restrictions on marriage indicates a ruthlessly pragmatic interest on the part of lawmakers towards safeguarding property, with strict regulations in place to ensure couples only married within the same social class, to institute minimum property requirements on marriage, preventing the poor from producing legal heirs and hence becoming an economic drain on the community, and – rather disturbingly – to legalise the castration of beggars, even if the victim was seriously injured or killed in the process.¹¹

1 G. W. Dasent (trans.), 'The Story of Burnt Njal', http://sagadb.org/brennu-njals_saga.en, 1861, (accessed 9 October 2013).

2 J. Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1995, p.27.: “The commercial character of the transaction[a marriage negotiation] is clear from the formula - the agreeing on a price, the witnesses, the handshake – the same formula used to negotiate three other important acquisitions, land, a chieftainship, and an ocean-going vessel.”

3 An informal partnership between a man and a woman lacking the legal ramifications of marriage. See Sawyer, 'Faith, Family and Fortune', 2005, p. 113. “…in lower levels [of society] — and for the majority of people — such informal relationships must have been the normal form of partnership between men and women.”

4 ‘Property‘ in this context refers to not only land, but livestock and material possessions as well. That said, children by concubines could also be permitted as heirs, and this was not uncommon – many Scandinavian kings were children by concubines – but this was subject to legal restrictions which varied by location. See Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society, 1995, pp. 20-21.

5 Monetarily, by way of the bride price (mundr) paid by the groom’s family, and the dowry (heimanfylgja) paid by the bride’s family. Large amounts of money were often involved. See Ibid., p. 26.

6 Ibid., p. 24.: “The narrative literature nevertheless states unequivocally that the father of a girl could do nothing to initiate the marriage of his daughter but had to wait for a suitable candidate to appear.“

7 R. M. Karras, ‘Marriage and the Creation of Kin in the Sagas‘, Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 75, No. 4, 2003, p. 477.: “That the initiative, if not the final agreement, rests with the man allows him the choice not only of marriage partner but also of marital relatives. Indeed, in many cases the choice of brother-in-law or father-in-law seems to come before choice of bride. […] In a number of other sagas, men seek in marriage women they have never met because they desire an alliance with the family.“

8The sagas provide evidence of suitors being turned down by the fathers of their prospective brides for reasons ranging from having an unruly or violent character to there being too great a disparity in social class between bride and groom. See Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society, 1995, p. 25.


9 J. Jochens, 'The church and sexuality in medieval Iceland', Journal of Medieval History, Vol. 6, No. 4, 1980, pp. 378-379.

10 Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society, 1995, p. 25.

11Ibid., p. 22.

Practical folk, these pagans. Hard-headed, you might say.

Allow me to confess a personal bias. For better or worse, when I read something like "rooted in ancient traditions and called upon natural forces and sacred ritual to create ties of blood and belonging running into the fabric of the earth itself" my first thought is "New Age pseudo-paganism", which is a polite way of expressing my gut reaction, which is "goddamn hippie bullshit". The idea that people in pre-Christian times were closer to nature in some doubtless profound but perenially-hard-to-clearly-articulate way is a horrendous oversimplification which proliferates in garbage like The Da Vinci Code and by rights should stay there.

I have been trying to fight my instinctive aversion to that all the way through this interlude, because I actually do think you're on to something. This is because Magus marriage customs being rooted in pagan customs actually makes a whole goddamn lot of sense.

Yet despite this seeming extreme lack of agency on the part of women, and despite the fact that romantic attraction – though there is no doubt that it existed between couples as marriages would likely have not lasted long without it, since pagan marriage was nowhere required to be lifelong and divorces were easily obtainable for both men and women¹ – was not seen as a sound basis for marriage,² the qualities considered desirable in a bride by a prospective groom and his family did not reflect concepts such as meekness or subservience which might be expected to come to characterise individuals in such a position. Rather, it was intelligent,³ proud, and independent-minded women who were held in more esteem,⁴ and the reason for this relates to pre-Christian Norse beliefs about the inheritance of character traits; namely, that desirable and undesirable qualities in a person could be inherited from either parent in equal measure,⁵ and hence that traits desirable in one’s descendents were the traits to be desired in one’s wife.

1 Sawyer, 'Faith, Family and Fortune', 2005, p. 113.

2 E. Mundal, 'The position of women in Old Norse society and the basis for their power', NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1994, p. 10.

3 J. K. Schulman, 'Make Me a Match: Motifs of Betrothal in the Sagas of the Icelanders', Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 69, No. 3, 1997, p. 308.: “Qualities such as beauty, spirit, wisdom, and skills such as handicrafts define a woman as a good match. […] [a woman's]beauty, intelligence, practical abilities, relatives, status, and wealth guarantee that she is an excellent match.“

4 E. Mundal, 'The position of women in Old Norse society and the basis for their power', 1994, p. 10..: “Whatwas important was that bride and groom belongedto the same social class, but, in addition,we can see that the qualities of the bride were very important to the groom and his family, and could be the deciding factor if the question was raised about the woman's desirability as a match. It seems that it was those women who were exceptionally intelligent, proud, concerned about their honour, and independent-minded who were most highly regarded as future wives. These women were perhaps not easy to cope with, but it seems that the men willingly took the risk.”

5Ibid., p. 10.: “According to the Old Norse way of thinking, children inherited traits from both their parents. The inheritance from one's mother was just as important as that from one's father.”

Bold added for emphasis. The traits desirable in one's descendents were the traits to be desired in one's wife. Consider that Magus marriages are basically eugenic before anything else. Property rights no doubt play a role, but before all else, the line must go on. The family work must be continued by someone with, hopefully, more natural talent than the generation prior. Why'd Tokiomi marry Aoi? Eugenics! I don't have the glossary entry on me right now, but the story was she came from a family known for good quality circuits or something. And it worked - they got two superchildren by mage standards. Given the chance to stack the gacha in their favour before rolling, any self-respecting magus would be insane not to take it. There's also room for the flipside of pagan marital eugenics: infanticide. Sure, in the modern day magus children who get born without circuits get to hang around - vide everyone's favourite seaweed - but in the bad old days, what a waste that would have been. Considered as a breeding population, Magi are pretty much always gonna be more K-selected than muggles; they'll live longer, have fewer children and invest more in their upbringing. Education, for instance, is key, and it takes a lot in time and energy. In resource-abundant modernity, free-riders like Shinji can perhaps be supported, but in medieval times? Nope. A baby gets born without circuits - it gets killed by exposure, Spartan-style. Reroll, try again. Pagan marriages were also far more tolerant of endogamy than Christianity, though this is probably a result of Christianity having an unusually strong incest taboo, even among Abrahamic religions. The seven degrees of consanguinity and all that.

As with many other regions and cultures, these precious rites had come under attack and scrutiny upon the growth of Christianity. The religion had forgotten its own early suffering as its influence spread rapidly from small, underground sects to large, organized bodies, armed with steel and strings as kings and lords sought conquest over new lands. Headstrong young men seeking prestige, wealth, and the promise of Heaven wielded swords and spears in their quest to impose the system of their God onto anything they did not understand.

You're presenting the Christianisation of northern Europe as if it was a Crusade avant la lettre. This is a misrepresentation. Certainly we can point to instances of Christianity being spread northward by the sword - the Livonian Crusade of the later 12th-early 13th century, for example (note that that is very late in the timeline; by then, all Scandinavia had been on Team Jesus for centuries, no Swedish Crusade required) - but by and large it didn't work that way. We are speaking, broadly, of a time in which things were sufficiently unreconstructed that a king could convert and take his kingdom with him. Christianity could be propagated top-down by royal fiat. It took time, yes; IIRC Iceland had to be Christianised twice, since they just tore down the churches once the royal envoys from Norway went home. At the same time, like any new fad, it could - and did - obtain popularity at a grassroots level, for a variety of reasons. A reason that has been put forward for the religion being adopted early among Scandinavian women is, in fact, directly related to my comments on infanticide above. Christianity criminalised infanticide, and was in general a better deal for small children. If I may put my historical-materialism hat on for a moment, the conflict between pagan and Christian values was actually a conflict over private property. The Skyrim-belongs-to-the-Nords position aimed to maintain the traditional hold wealthy families had on their property, while good old Christian marriage-between-individuals-in-the-eyes-of-God was aimed at securing those sweet, sweet tithes and donations. It's not a situation in which good-hearted pagans have their naturalistic traditions uprooted by heartless, authoritarian Christianisers - it's a situation in which ruthless pagan landowners and ruthless Christian clerics fight over money.

I'm not an expert on the English Reformation, so the specific involvement of Henry VIII I won't comment on. But the horizontal transfer of culture from magus to muggle that you've outlined here is something I have difficulty swallowing. Pagan vestiges can be found damn near anywhere in the Anglo world if you look hard enough, but the 'ancient tradition' of Western marriage is Pauline. Handfasting in the sense of making an engagement between consenting individuals is Christian; pagan handfasting would be more like that case in the Njals saga, like two family heads shaking hands on a business deal. Veils go back to the Old Testament, if I'm not mistaken (?). The point I am trying to make is that it is not ritual aspects of pagan marriage that are important when treating it as a logical model of magus coupling, but rather the ruthless pragmatism of the business - the primacy of eugenics and family control of inheritance. This is the 'paganity' of magus marriage. For this reason I don't agree with setting up magus weddings as a secret cultural antecedent of modern Western marriages; the history, in my view, does not support that conclusion.

Actually, this is conceptually only supposed to apply to England. I thought about this when I was crafting it and the big thing is that it's only talking about why people in the Clock Tower immediate vicinity would be doing this particular thing. Other nations are free to do as they wish, but in the words of the rewrite thread, I thought that might end up being me getting "too sidetraked talking about gazebos."

Christ

I need to go back in time and prevent myself from ever writing that gazebo thing

I'm officially caught up to posting everything I have written, so from now on I am shamelessly holding the fic hostage unless I get adequate amounts of feedback :P

I don't know if this is you being le ironic or what, but this is really not a good attitude to have.

[Gl❀w]

I guess I should have prefaced this interlude with "I am well aware that this is revisionist history probably at its worst, but if Nasu can take gross artistic license, so can I."

The information you provided is interesting, but at the end of the day, it's a fic. Calm down.

Also, I wouldn't actually hold the fic hostage. That would be supremely dumb and counter-productive. But I do think that people should be reminded once in awhile that people who write appreciate feedback.

[Frostyvale]

Awaiting an explanation of Reines's behavior in context. It doesn't quite make sense for her to aggravate the situation with flippancy. Speaking of which, it's as of yet uncertain entirely what either side hopes to gain from this marriage, beyond the most immediate products. Reines is being fairly transparent with her intentions if she was caught so easily.

Of course these are things one waits to find out.

[Prix with a Silent X]

There are two parts of this response. The first is to Dullahan, the second is to Glow. The first part should not be necessary because:

Spoiler-tagged for length.

Spoiler:

to be clear, I'm not following this fic; Clock Tower intrigue doesn't intrigue me, I think Luvia's only good point is her character design, and no force in heaven or on earth could make me like Waver.

but I smelt history

The very first thing you have done, Dullahan, is to admit that you have no actual investment in this story at all. Not only that, but it is phrased in a way that indicates that you find its entire premise uninteresting and its characters "bad." You are entitled to these opinions on your own time, but there is no reason to come into someone's fic and to tell them that you are not invested in any way in what they have written except to respond to a particular aspect of it that you have molded to your own purposes. Your interest in history is also, on its own, fine. But what you have done here is neither helpful to promoting respect for historical fiction nor is it at all respectful of another person's work or writing. The factual information that you have presented is all well and good, but it is presented as a caustic and honestly pretty mean-spirited critique of a story that you have from the very start of your post admitted that you have no stake or investment in. No matter how "right" you are, there is no changing that this is rude. In fact, I am reminded of something you said a while back:

look, I've been pretty frustrated and unhappy IRL for the past year or so

so I just don't like new things or other people having fun

I'm sorry you feel that way, but that is no reason for you to try and make other people's experience of writing and fandom as frustrating and unhappy as whatever your personal problems are. I'm glad you know stuff about history and that it pleases you. I'm sorry something in your real life sounds pretty not-fun. But that doesn't change the fact that this post comes across as incredibly rude and centered pretty much entirely on your above-expressed attitude.

Ancient traditions, eh? Later you refer to mage weddings as 'pagan'. Now, as it happens, I have studied the influence of Christianity on pagan (specifically Norse, but there are broad continuities among northern european cultures with this sort of thing) customs of marriage. What customs might those have been?

This inherently suggests that there was no thought or research put into this. There was extensive thought and research that I was there for and frequently discussed. The fact that Glow didn't do a dissertation on the influence of Christianity on pagan customs of marriage to be submitted to a university before this fic was written and published is an entirely unreasonable critique. It completely misses the point of this story thus far, which you have already admitted that you don't care about.

Practical folk, these pagans. Hard-headed, you might say.

Allow me to confess a personal bias. For better or worse, when I read something like "rooted in ancient traditions and called upon natural forces and sacred ritual to create ties of blood and belonging running into the fabric of the earth itself" my first thought is "New Age pseudo-paganism", which is a polite way of expressing my gut reaction, which is "goddamn hippie bullshit". The idea that people in pre-Christian times were closer to nature in some doubtless profound but perenially-hard-to-clearly-articulate way is a horrendous oversimplification which proliferates in garbage like The Da Vinci Code and by rights should stay there.

Again, you are entitled to your personal opinion about "goddamn hippie bullshit," but once again you are leveling your personal bias against a story that you have no interest in giving a fair shake in the first place. Also, you might know a lot more nasuverse trivia due to your length of stay in the fandom, but Glow has absolutely done her due dilligence to learn and absorb absolutely everything she can to make this fic work the way it is supposed to as a narrative. It isn't as if nasuverse magic and the traditions surrounding it are ripped from the pages of history.

I have been trying to fight my instinctive aversion to that all the way through this interlude, because I actually do think you're on to something. This is because Magus marriage customs being rooted in pagan customs actually makes a whole goddamn lot of sense.

Bold added for emphasis. The traits desirable in one's descendents were the traits to be desired in one's wife. Consider that Magus marriages are basically eugenic before anything else. Property rights no doubt play a role, but before all else, the line must go on. The family work must be continued by someone with, hopefully, more natural talent than the generation prior. Why'd Tokiomi marry Aoi? Eugenics! I don't have the glossary entry on me right now, but the story was she came from a family known for good quality circuits or something. And it worked - they got two superchildren by mage standards. Given the chance to stack the gacha in their favour before rolling, any self-respecting magus would be insane not to take it. There's also room for the flipside of pagan marital eugenics: infanticide. Sure, in the modern day magus children who get born without circuits get to hang around - vide everyone's favourite seaweed - but in the bad old days, what a waste that would have been. Considered as a breeding population, Magi are pretty much always gonna be more K-selected than muggles; they'll live longer, have fewer children and invest more in their upbringing. Education, for instance, is key, and it takes a lot in time and energy. In resource-abundant modernity, free-riders like Shinji can perhaps be supported, but in medieval times? Nope. A baby gets born without circuits - it gets killed by exposure, Spartan-style. Reroll, try again. Pagan marriages were also far more tolerant of endogamy than Christianity, though this is probably a result of Christianity having an unusually strong incest taboo, even among Abrahamic religions. The seven degrees of consanguinity and all that.

If you actually wanted to write a comment that involved constructive criticism of this piece, you might have limited it to this topic. In this case, you actaully engaged with what Glow was trying to do in spite of your reservations about it and offered information about why you thought she "might be on to something." However, because you have already complained about every part of this in spite of your admitted lack of investment until now, it comes across as condescending. If I had just read this on its own, I wouldn't have thought this was a bad comment. It is not you bringing into the discussion what you know based on your interest in history that is the issue but rather that you didn't come here to discuss anything. You came here to lecture in a place that is Glow presenting her work -- not yours. So, good observations might exist here, but the overall tone of this is disrespectful.

You're presenting the Christianisation of northern Europe as if it was a Crusade avant la lettre. This is a misrepresentation. Certainly we can point to instances of Christianity being spread northward by the sword - the Livonian Crusade of the later 12th-early 13th century, for example (note that that is very late in the timeline; by then, all Scandinavia had been on Team Jesus for centuries, no Swedish Crusade required) - but by and large it didn't work that way. We are speaking, broadly, of a time in which things were sufficiently unreconstructed that a king could convert and take his kingdom with him. Christianity could be propagated top-down by royal fiat. It took time, yes; IIRC Iceland had to be Christianised twice, since they just tore down the churches once the royal envoys from Norway went home. At the same time, like any new fad, it could - and did - obtain popularity at a grassroots level, for a variety of reasons. A reason that has been put forward for the religion being adopted early among Scandinavian women is, in fact, directly related to my comments on infanticide above. Christianity criminalised infanticide, and was in general a better deal for small children. If I may put my historical-materialism hat on for a moment, the conflict between pagan and Christian values was actually a conflict over private property. The Skyrim-belongs-to-the-Nords position aimed to maintain the traditional hold wealthy families had on their property, while good old Christian marriage-between-individuals-in-the-eyes-of-God was aimed at securing those sweet, sweet tithes and donations. It's not a situation in which good-hearted pagans have their naturalistic traditions uprooted by heartless, authoritarian Christianisers - it's a situation in which ruthless pagan landowners and ruthless Christian clerics fight over money.

I'm not an expert on the English Reformation, so the specific involvement of Henry VIII I won't comment on. But the horizontal transfer of culture from magus to muggle that you've outlined here is something I have difficulty swallowing. Pagan vestiges can be found damn near anywhere in the Anglo world if you look hard enough, but the 'ancient tradition' of Western marriage is Pauline. Handfasting in the sense of making an engagement between consenting individuals is Christian; pagan handfasting would be more like that case in the Njals saga, like two family heads shaking hands on a business deal. Veils go back to the Old Testament, if I'm not mistaken (?). The point I am trying to make is that it is not ritual aspects of pagan marriage that are important when treating it as a logical model of magus coupling, but rather the ruthless pragmatism of the business - the primacy of eugenics and family control of inheritance. This is the 'paganity' of magus marriage. For this reason I don't agree with setting up magus weddings as a secret cultural antecedent of modern Western marriages; the history, in my view, does not support that conclusion.

Once again, it is not your apparently avid engagement in history that I take issue with. It is the way it is presented in this comment as an attack on what the narrative has suggested. This portion of the fic is in the headspace of a particular priest who is there to observe a wedding ceremony for worldbuilding reasons that have been established within this fic and narrative. Regardless of what you know about history, the nasuverse is not a full and true representation of history. There are gaps of things about mage culture that everyone admits that Nasu has not seen fit to care to elaborate upon. Fanfiction usually occupies negative spaces in a canon and engages with questions that can be posed but cannot be answered. Furthermore, this fic has already made extremely interesting use of character-specific representation of reality and the truth. Maybe this priest simply has this view of history, maybe he doesn't, and aspects of the nasuverse are riddled with artistic license and revisionist history. But again, you admitted from the beginning that you are not interested in this story but rather in the "history" that you think should motivate every aspect of people writing a narrative that they enjoy within the context of a fictional universe. This caustic insistence that people take no leeway, have no fun, and devote years-worth of passionate, intrepid historical research to produce free entertainment that is for fun is an unrealistic charge to put at someone's feet when you have actively admitted to not caring about what they are offering as said free entertainment.

There have been positive responses to this fic. People enjoying it for its narrative who are interested in what it is going to accomplish in with its plot between these characters. Those responses have not been without critique and dissenting opinions. This does not qualify as a response of that nature, though. Its only intent seems to be to call someone out for producing something with love, care, and yes, research to a reasonable degree, for not meeting your standards which are harsh, high, and which were already unreachable from the very first paragraph of this reply. All this does is increase hostility, negativity, and stagnation in your fandom. You may or may not care about that, but other people do. Everyone starts somewhere, and I think this is an excellent and painstaking start to what I hope will be a long and beneficial stay in the creative part of this fandom. I cannot imagine what possible purpose you could have in so stringently critiquing a fanfiction story for its historical content in a one-off, admittedly revisionist historical interlude when you have no room in your interest in this fandom for this narrative in particular. I don't understand why you wouldn't just read things you like and disregard things you don't, whether your reasons for that are valid or invalid to you or anyone else.

Christ

I need to go back in time and prevent myself from ever writing that gazebo thing

I'm honestly not sure why you're insulted that someone has adopted a clever phrase you produced. Typically, people write in fandom circles for the purpose of positive affirmation?

I don't know if this is you being le ironic or what, but this is really not a good attitude to have.

As she said, it is not a bad thing to remind people that feedback is a good motivator for creativity that otherwise offers no reward beyond the creativity itself. That said, Glow already responded to that for herself, but I really do have to wonder if this comment was presented with a good attitude since we're talking about those.

- - -

And now for Glow:

This interlude is a nice, quiet moment that I think expands the general scope of your fic. I can't help being flattered that my silly notion of including St. Bartholomew's Gatehouse as a part of these proceedings has become something that you're taking seriously in a fic like this. I think that in spite of the rather harsh history presented from this perspective, this narrative carries with it an overall quiet that is cinematic, atmospheric, and interestingly dissonant from the content in a good way.