#iustinianas... god. he must be from. 2012? at LEAST

[thestarrymanuk]

following up on yesterday's ask from @niemalsetwas:

...and who actually gets mimosas at dim sum brunch vs. being tea-only purists?

the time i lost to this question daydreaming of dim sum brunch… 🤤 actually wait, hold on. now i'm invested in this. "does this world have brunch and/or dim sum" is a different question; in the interests of optimism i choose to believe such things would evolve independently regardless of the setting. but would they recognize earth dim sum?

many of the "typical" items i associate with dim sum—most kinds of fish (e.g. shu mai, oyster sauce, prawn cracker, crab rangoon) and, to a lesser extent, waterfowl (peking duck), plus anything involving rice (some dumplings, congee)—are difficult to source and/or semi-prohibitively expensive in this world.

but surely there could be alternatives? there are probably pigs, at least in the area of the red city, so we can do char siu (thank god). there are definitely chickens. definitely beef (though these, again, would be either tough or pricey). other excitingly edible animals roughly equivalent to a cow: wrhonts (?) and—god, i guess you could eat a dreadnought. you'd have dreadnought bao for months, or for a village, but you could.

what about the beverages? there's definitely alcohol; there's definitely fruit so there's definitely wine, some of it possibly even from grapes; there's also definitely citrus, and specifically oranges, so let's assume they're some variation of citrus x sinensis and theoretically we have all our mimosa ingredients! huzzah. similarly, there's probably tea; probably original to somewhere in the southern hemisphere, on the other side of the planet from ppilli, and somewhere that's decently humid, but easy enough to get outside of the boonies (i.e., ppilli).

so yes! excellent news: the teahouses of iridarra can definitely have (what earth would recognize as) dim sum, including optional brunch mimosas.

this established, on now to your actual question:

sitayqik: would be enchanted at the thought of brunch mimosas. not only because of the carbonation (novel), and not only because the priest of flowers (appropriately) often smells of orange blossoms. they are a priest, so they're theoretically expected to adhere to some standard of publicly virtuous conduct; but they're also like 27 and would very much be at the club if they weren't 1.) worried meyeqitš Might Need A Thing Of Them, Ever, and 2.) a little self-conscious of being the youngest (ordained) priest in the college. if they frequent a teahouse, they're usually (and genuinely) content with a nice floral—tea + jasmine, osmanthus, hibiscus, etc.—or even mint, but would be mightily tempted by something so sparkling and bright. perhaps to recreate once the sun goes down? hm.

akko: facultative tea consumer, ultimately beverage-neutral. 100% behind the spirit of mimosas but in practice probably just actually prefers tea. bubble tea, if he can get it; otherwise strong black (or oolong) milk tea. if he's feeling fancy, maybe even with real milk—usually sheep's, in this world. a fiend for those little egg custard tarts. would 100% get a mimosa just to needle…

meyeqitš: relative tea purist. will begrudgingly drink tea (mostly green) in public, perhaps with a spoonful of pomegranate arils sprinkled in when they think no one is looking; but they've never understood what people mean when they describe caffeine as giving a "boost." in other words, they'd rather drink nothing than drink bad tea. they are obviously not a teetotaler (they brew their own beer when in residence at the university) but they would probably view mimosas—any kind of idly recreational day-drinking, especially before noon—with some degree of suspicion, if not poorly-concealed judgment.

eyreth: ooohhhh they wanna be a classy southern society lady sipping mimosas so bad. unfortunately the [REDACTED] digestive system does not agree with most earth (or nearest equivalent) foodstuffs, and something as acidic as orange juice would probably not bode well. instead: they Yearn.

key: if it's with eyreth, it's never heard of an alcohol in its life. it might condescend to take a sober mint tea, which is fine but whatever, and then wait til it's lukewarm. if it's not with eyreth: it's going to need to take the next three whole days off of work, because it's going to get fucked up on its body weight in chili crisp. eyreth finds out what happened bc it used the company card for crab rangoon.

iustinianas: all day bottomless pitchers, bb. probably the only one of these people who knows what a champagne flute is. 🥂