Hello again and best wishes to you from the realm. I hope it has been a good week. As for me, I caught wind of the slap heard round the world. No one cares much over here. Here such things are pretty straight-forward: Teases are ok. Harmless playful ones between friends: no problem… Uninvited and in public though, well, that's inappropriate but not necessarily an offense. It's a tease.
Insults are a different matter. Say it in private and even the cutting and ill-tempered insults can end up appreciated, eventually. Saying it in public though, that can be bad for your health and much more so if directed against a man’s wife instead of against him.
Rock's remark was an inappropriate tease. Or so it seems to me. It was public and uninvited. It was not personal though, and there was nothing bad about the person said. It was among other jokes as an expected part of the gathering all of which were made at the expense of those in a position to afford the humility and maybe in need of some too. As the custom coarsens, it needs rethought, but the joke was not really an insult, per se.
The only *insult* there was against Rock, and it's Rock's retaliation that would be… maybe not best but understandable. There are elves that would have reacted similarly, at the time, but for whom things would be scary far from over. Not good.
Perhaps, Smith let the drink dull his senses and animate a heart already upset by other matters. If so, it might help to mention it. Personally, I am more impressed at the magnanimity of Rock. To great men, more wrongs are trifles.
That reminds me about– nope. It can wait. I just noticed some dame drinking heavily. We don’t need another one drunk and talking up my cardboard cut-out. I’m going to point it out to the man in charge. Take care, terrans.
-Pen