Knowing Corwin's background with the water tribes now, combined with the fact that you can conveniently assign any cultural weight you want to the necklace tradition, it makes my initial objection even more comically overstated on my part, especially since it wasn't meant to be an objection at all, more of a "you're sort of edging toward awkward and potentially not-cool ground" observation.

>Except... doing it that way, rounding up the materials on Tuesday and
>pulling an all-nighter, would mean that he'd be doing all of that -
>proposing to Anthy and sorta-retroactively to Utena too - on
>Wednesday, which is their own anniversary. Which, well. What
>message does that send, exactly? It seems a bit... "Hey, happy
>anniversary, you crazy kids, and by the way, YOU BOTH BELONG TO ME."
>He wouldn't mean it that way - hell, they wouldn't take
>it that way! - but it's... there.

As a guy intensely interested in both process and narrative implication, I like that you take the time as an author to consider this stuff. Polyamory is hard! It's not just about having two awesome and exotic partners, it's about the delicate balance of which parts of the relationship belong to all of the participants and which parts belong only to sub-components of the greater whole.

I've read... a lot of bad harem stories. Not just fanfiction, I mean stuff people have gotten paid real money to publish. (I'm looking in your direction, John Ringo.) A lot of them. Even getting to the point where you consider "maybe having the one guy in the triad present symbols with more than a little patriarchal baggage to the two ladies in it, on THEIR anniversary, is something that could possibly send the wrong message" puts you miles and miles ahead of other people.

Anyway, I think you definitely made the correct call here. I mean, for whatever my opinion is worth. I'm wrong an awful lot!

-Merc
Keep Rat

"Remember, if approached by a librarian, keep still. Do not run away. Try to make yourself bigger than the librarian."