Welcome to Gaia! ::

Shina walked into class and chose a desk. Seeing notes already up on the board, she quickly got her notebook and quill out and began copying the information. Her quill scratched quickly across the page, neat, clear handwriting swiftly filling the space.

Shina nodded to the professor. "Yes, Professor Harlowe," she said, before quickly filling out the parchment with her clear, neat script.

Name: Shina Kiremono
House: Ravenclaw
Year: Third year
Blood Status: Matrilineal Halfblood by way of the Kushia family of Japan.
Curriculum: I do not have a great deal of knowledge regarding Western Magical mythology, though I look forward to learning more.
Something interesting about you: I am tri-lingual, speaking English, Japanese, and Latin. I am fond of flying, and enjoy archery.

"Here you go, Professor," she said when finished, offering the parchment.

"Yes, I have read it. I thought it was particularly clever the way it presented so many potentially controversial topics that it ended up getting all but the most minor right past the noses of most of the so-called moral guardians," Shina said. Taking the volume back, she flipped to the start of the story and set a small weight on each page to hold it open.

"Well, to start with, the main magical characters are three witches. In that era, females were not expected to be strong, independent individuals. Quite the opposite, actually, they were expected to be quiet, subservient, and ornamental to the men in their lives. And yet, no one objects to the witches in the story being strong, powerful characters, possibly because the man they are sharing the story with is a muggle, and it would be even more unthinkable for conservative magical folk to object to a witch being "better" than a muggle man.

"Then we get to the challenges. None of them were solved with amazing magical skill, and in fact, only one solution used magic at all, and that was a spell to share memories, not some flashy demonstration of magical superiority. All attempts at brute force, or the magical equivalent, failed. So the message sent was that magic is not the solution to all problems. This is another possible touchy subject for highly conservative magical folk, the suggestion that bigger, stronger, more impressive magic is not in fact the best way to solve problems.

"And then we get to the fountain itself. The amazing, mystical fountain that carried no enchantment at all. The power of the fountain lay in the belief that it had power. Truly, by the time one reached it, they had no need of it at all. This seemed to suggest to me that the author was hinting that the power of magic is the belief that it is the solution, when in practice, greater strength is found in oneself and one's own hard work. Again, disregarding magic's value and suggesting that magic isn't actually the solution to problems is something that you might expect objection to.

"I could go on, I noticed at least a few more minor things I could mention, but I think I have made my point. The story is absolutely stuffed with potentially objectionable ideas, and yet, the only thing that it is called out on is the tiny, tacked on bit where the Muggle Sir Luckless ends up riding off into the sunset with the Witch Amata. Which is another important point. It was tacked on, right at the end. So the conservative wizard reading it, slowly getting more and more discomforted as things grated against his sensibilities, suddenly had a clear point to object to and focus on, right there at the end. There is something nice and simple to point to and disparage, and all the other more important, more subtle messages are forgotten, at least by detractors. Children hearing the story are still soaking in the other messages, and incorporating the lessons into their own worldviews. As for the children of those who object to the tale on the basis of the romance, well, there is no faster way to get a child to read something than to tell them they absolutely mustn't," Shina said with a sly grin.