"There are different levels of moping? 'this should probably live only in my head for several reasons' is different than - it is common knowledge that it couldn't ever be -"

"I've never been attracted to a dom before but it's a thing that can ever be." She spins the computer. Look, a Wikipedia article.

"Oh, I didn't have any trouble imagining it." Wikipedia article.

There's a section about social reception of the concept (Main article: Same-role relationships) and a detachedly academic summary of how it actually works (kinky nondynamic stuff, finding places of nonoverlap in "dominance style", and of course plain old taking turns).

"What do you - what's important to you about -"

"- I'm going to default to comparing and contrasting with, like, stereotypical American concepts, which you aren't working from to start with - you first."

"I like being completely trustworthy with someone's goals and their happiness and their wellbeing and ambitious, I like both of us knowing that if I'm in charge of making the things they care about happen then those things will happen, that being mine means getting everything you want because I'm that good, I like knowing I'm that trusted, I like the aesthetics of power but that bit's not specific to either role -"

"...oh, well, that's promising," says Isabella. "There's a kind of sub that goes around projecting 'terrifyingly competent agent of my dom's will', actually, it's just the possessive pronoun that's not exactly..."

"...that could work. Um. I'm not sure I could wear a collar and the hitting stuff does not appeal -"

"I'm not attached to the hitting stuff, I mentioned, I learned how but just so I wouldn't be caught off guard if it came up and someone had made assumptions about the cane. ...My collar is actually really pretty but it does have my name on it, so that would probably be weird."

"There's the whole separate set of complications that I need the Valar to continue being pliable about portals and they have - uh - religious objections -"

"Yeah, I imagine if you went around with my name on your neck it'd be conspicuous."

"People are pretty willfully blind to stuff but probably not that willfully blind."

"How blind are we talking, how much sneaking would be called for -"

"I don't know, like I said I was planning to never date, I don't have a concept of - there's probably stuff that humans would pick up on that'd pass without a second glance from Elves but I don't have a clear sense of how far we could push that -"

"And if humans do pick up on it and tell someone..."

"I'm an excellent liar but you're not especially -"

"Yeah. And I can cheat but only if I remember to, only if people don't notice me spacing out, only if they react to catching me lying in a way I notice -"

"I could probably get pretty far off 'what, precisely, did Eru forbid? Can you name the specific thing?'"

"...and, what, they splutter at you and drop the subject?"

"And I can probably reassure people we're not doing that, whatever that even is, I don't think anyone's clear, and - cuddly friendships - while you're not ready to get married are generally agreed to be all right - I hate my world."

"It has many advantages but this is not one of them."

"My people wouldn't run and tell a Vala. I don't know what they'd do, but - probably rationalize their way around it -"

"I don't suppose the whole thing where I'm an alien in what is if anything arguably a masculine role for my species helps -"

"We could in fact insist that humans have 'boy' and 'girl' flipped relative to our understanding ergo it's an acceptable relationship, but I think the reaction to that would be 'then get married and prove Eru approves -'"