"I mean, being Feanorian involves giving less of a fuck about being a good person."

"Oh, it's about being a good person.

You know, I'm used to right and wrong being defined and enforced by the universe itself. And I rejected it, because its definition hurts people.

I am very favorably inclined to the Feanorians on this one."

"Tyelcormo was my best friend. The leaving us to die is doing a little damage to my opinion of him, but that never did."

"It's just...if people are going to a lot of effort to change themselves and declaring people who don't or can't to be bad people, it should be for something actually bad. 

Unless using the approved vocabulary gets enforced too; then it all makes sense."

"Nothing gets - enforced. Everything affects, or affected, your opportunities and your connections and your reputation, certainly including vocabulary. But there wasn't any enforcement."

"Technically the spirits are affecting things indirectly too, almost always, and I'd still use the word.

But if it's just opportunities and reputation and being a good person, that's still relevantly similar. We shouldn't just pick a segment of the population and say change if you care about those things, for the same reason we wouldn't pick a segment and say change or else."

"I don't know how much we'll stick by the old laws in the Outer Lands, really."

"Hopefully we'll use all and only the ones with good reasons behind them. Traditions can be self-reinforcing, and that goes double if we slip up on who gets magic."

"I hadn't thought about how the universe could end up enforcing stupid gender roles if we were thoughtless. It won't enforce marriage stuff, at least, we're not planning on marrying."

"Why the difference? It sounded like that was as strong a tradition as any."

"Elves don't marry in wartime, so none of your practitioners will be marrying until the war is over. Then I suppose we'll have to worry about it, but that's a long time off."

"I mean, why would it not enforce that. It doesn't care much about who marries whom on earth either, but that's because it's a lot more gender-neutral than it could be. No marriage-specific reason as far as I know."

"I expect it would enforce that if brought to its attention, but it won't be brought to the magic's attention if no practitioners marry."

"No actions to follow, right. Words'll still count.

Any other prejudices we need to worry about selecting for?"

"Hmm. Dunno what you consider a prejudice - we also don't marry first cousins or siblings or take lovers anywhere in the line of direct descent..."

"One of the big ones is, if people are unfailingly loyal to their House that would be a bad thing. It went too far that way on Earth long ago."

"...how does that fail?"

"Individuals end up expendable. Sometimes people get literally bargained away. They don't have to go along with it, but once a tradition has been around enough to stick the universe takes sides.

Basically anything everyone agrees on, it can end up being almost universal."

"Ugh. Okay, that's another reason to keep this away from the cousins, 'inspiring undying and rather creepy loyalty' is Maitimo's whole thing."

"Not many families are set up to be as despotic as possible; it's not maximally creepy. There's just essentially no line where the spirits stop taking the head's side.

If you wind up in charge of a bloodline after the war you could always just say your children are their own individuals. If your cousins wouldn't do that then yeah. No magic for them."

"I didn't know them as well as I thought and even as I thought I knew them, I'm not sure they see most people as individuals. There are lots of no-magic-for-them reasons, but this is definitely one of them.

You've seen how twitchy Findekáno gets about Maitimo. They were 'friends' for a very long time, which means Findekáno was a project of my cousin's, and he used the hell out of it right until it was more convenient to leave him to die."

"That's the kind of thing that magic would already punish. It does disapprove of some of the right things."

"Is the magic's opinion on the situation going to affect Findekáno's ring?"

"If so, probably positively.
Findekáno has the karmic high ground over Maitimo; using that ring might count as forgiving a debt or nothing at all or even retaliation. Depends on what it means to Findekáno and most observers."

"That is a thing I do not think he's decided."