"Pff. Lucky. Human women's bodies prepare for birth every month, and if a baby doesn't happen it gets rid of the old lining and makes a new one. The getting-rid-of process is gross and several other varieties of not fun. So it sounds like 'children happen by accident' is a requisite consequences of our souls not interacting with our bodies in the same way."

"Want to copy us on that? Can you?"

"Mm, the eyes seem straightforward enough, but I'd rather find out more about how the soul-body interaction works before copying it. I don't like the idea of doing something permanent to my basic nature that I don't understand."

"And it'd be unfortunate if one result was that you ended up stuck with other Elven limitations. Fair enough."

"Other Elven limitations?"

"Bound to Arda, whatever that means. We can't have kids by accident, but we also can't have sex without getting married. There are hella exploits on that but you have to be really careful with most of the appealing ones, I know people who envy Men that quite a bit."

"Oh, right, Maedhros mentioned that when I told him that the reason for chaperones was to make sure people weren't having sex. He didn't know humans could do that without getting married. What do you mean by exploits?"

"He needs to get out more; you can't spend a week in Estolad without piecing it together. Uh, same-gender doesn't count, some people sleep with Men and that hasn't yet resulted in a marriage but it's a hell of a chance to take because if somehow it did you're married to a Man and soon they'll be dead, expectations seem to sort of control whether it happens. And there are other things you can do in bed."

"Oh, are same-gender relationships okay to talk about over here? Apparently Illia ran into some problems with that over where she is."

"The Valar disapprove. The Valar also sentenced my whole family to be extinguished as a people and fail in everything we attempt and die and wish we'd died sooner, so the disapproval of the Valar moves me about as much as the disapproval of your typical fruit fly. Who'd Illia offend?"

"From what I got out of it, she mentioned that humans where we're from can get married to people of the same gender, someone was condescending about it, she was offended, and the whole thing was awkward enough that she decided it would be best to drop the subject entirely."

"Well it's a very good thing we don't have that, that'd take out half the avenues to have a good time without being spiritually bonded for all eternity. Does your sister like women, or just feel very strongly about the principle that everyone, whatever their inclination, should be stuck forever with the first person they touch?"

"Human marriage isn't spiritually binding and my sister is, in fact, bisexual."

"I'd point her at a couple people but they're dead. You could, I guess, prioritize their resurrections once you can do that kind of thing, on the grounds that Mandos probably won't appreciate them."

"Matchmaking for my sister isn't really a reason I would have for prioritizing people like that, but the god of the dead would be unhappy with them sounds a lot more compelling."

"Yep. Rebelling against Eru is one of the big things you get judged for in the Halls, one of the only unforgivable ones. And Eru gave us marriage, the vows are said before him. The Valar were super upset when we arrived in Valinor and didn't innately know what kind of thing's acceptable."

"The Valar suck. I'm half tempted to proselytize my religion just because it would make it less likely for people to listen to them."

"It seems like convincing the gods to be better, or making it easier to live without their approval, seems more useful than deceiving people about what the gods want from them."

"Which is why I'm not going to go through with it."

"If Mandos weren't the one who judges whether we're worthy of returning to life, I bet people'd worry a little less what the Valar think."

"All the more reason to work on providing an alternative."

"If people come back to life if you think they're worthy, that might be great for homosexuals but it worries me just about as much in the general sense."

"I will bring anyone back to life who has loved ones who miss them or for that matter anyone else who remembers they exist and who doesn't have anyone who can make a case that they're going to get more people killed. Anyone who I'm warned might get people killed can wait until I have confirmed that this is unlikely to happen, one way or another, since you have literally forever for me to do it in. And even if my judgement were terrible, 'you must satisfy one of two unreasonable persons' is still better than 'you must satisfy a single specific unreasonable person'."

"I assure you I'm not deterring you from resurrections."

"I know, I just--I want to bring back your dad, I do, but I would lie to a recent acquaintance if it would get me one of my parents back, and that makes it harder to trust you when you say that the only reason it would be a bad idea is because your cousin says so."