The Writers' Lounge

Yeah, the Tain is definitely fairly different than a lot of other Christian documents. (Although even when you say "official Church line" you have to be careful, as Catholicism was not practiced the same way in Ireland as it was in Italy, even in the same era. One could argue that it's still not, although most things are somewhat more homogenous now due to communication, etc.) But, yeah, you never really know...you just kind of guess and try to remember that people are human, but do come with a lot of different notions.

I do like magic that is coherent and makes sense. But to make magic really work, you have to put a lot of thought into it - something that a great many writers don't do. But you can get away with stuff like "yeah, we figured out buttons in a different era. Roll with it." (Although I agree that Rome...really wouldn't have worked the same without slaves/some form of cheap labor.)

I do agree that a lot of the problem with alternate histories for me is that they do overlook how technology and economics drive change. I 100% agree that there wouldn't have been much of a reason for industrialization in a world where labor was cheap and plentiful (it's telling that a lot of industrial innovations were really adopted post black plague in Europe - and that some of them might have been lost if the Americas weren't discovered before Europe could entirely revert, thus likely keeping the somewhat unusual labor to capital ratio that was established in the plague. It's not certain, but it sure wouldn't surprise me if an unbalanced labor to capital ratio led to the industrial revolution.). The challenge, though, is that we're not even 100% sure why history happened the way it did now...far less how things would change. So I can get some strange stuff happening - but there's a point where my tolerance vanishes.

I could see a Roman lady not liking slavery, but probably for very different reasons than a modern woman would. It's one of those things where I'm willing to go, "Sure, she can question the underpinnings of society" (a lot did). But she probably at some level, too, realizes that her entire well being resides on, you know, having really cheap labor around. (Unless she's dumb, which could be kind of hilarious to play with. Ala, "Oh, let me free my 60 year old slave. It's wonderful to see him free!" just to have the poor guy starve on the streets as he can't find work at that age, etc.) And I'd see it as more likely that the sympathetic lady would question going into new territories and running off with captives to be enslaved, or abusing her slaves, or whatever, than necessarily questioning the institution that her entire world is based upon.