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Myne's Italian Restaurant sounds so delicious when written out, especially with how the characters react to it.... and then nearly every time I hear of a Westerner (from American or Canadian, to Australian and British, even actual Italian, etc) trying Italian foods in Japan the quality seems to range from mediocre to terrible and there's a good chance those were the kind of recipes Myne was referencing.

So odds are, the Italian restaurant would taste pretty off to us, not just because of the adaptational restraints of the world (I don't remember garlic or a garlic-like plant ever being mentioned, for example)* but because the person who provides the recipes is half-remembering recipes from a poorly matched mixed-cuisine culture to begin with.

*edit: faulty example, according to the aoab wiki, the screaming and running plant rigar is the comparable garlic substitute available. Though while looking through the list I was surprised to notice how a major selection of the vegetables are analogs to New World plants, but most of the fruits are analogs to Old World plants, meaning the possible flavors are at least a lot more modern than the high medieval inspired setting would let on.

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Too tired to make a neat essay but I am greatly intrigued by Miya Kazuki's choice to touch on both the power possessed by and abuses towards women of all classes in her world.

Common women can own property and businesses and be acknowledged as experts in their crafts but waitresses are still expected to be prostitutes and birth and child rearing is still their burden largely seperate from men. Devouring girls in the right situations have a lot of room for social mobility but mostly risk being enslaved for power or childbearing.

Temple shrine maidens can be just as powerful and influential as men, fully capable of possessing the bishopric and commanding those beneath them, for better or worse. While grey shrine maidens are more prone to sexual abuse, a blue shrine maiden is equally capable of perpetuating the same on grey priests. That's a misuse of power, but it is unfortunately power all the same.

And noble ladies have a slew of checks and balances. Young noble women can be knights! And this is not a lesser choice for them socially compared to being a scholar or attendant, though it is a limited term for them in comparison due to the expectation of motherhood. They can be Giebes, Aubs, and Zents, though once again motherhood makes this a more difficult position for them to get, but it is something they are fully permitted to be by law. But at the same time noble wives without titles are by definition more subservient and cheaper in a sense, they are expected to do social and household management for the sake of their spouse who yet has the option to marry more wives without their consent resulting in conflict that true equality would never permit. They also are technically at the whims of their paternal figures on marriage but just as many can achieve their own choice by their strength and wit. Then comes the politics of mana, where high mana can equally promote social advancement and critical danger, lower mana and status can result in discardment, servitude, and sexual abuse.

Tl;dr: By deeply exploring the relationship of women, their agency, and power throughout class divides Ascendance of a Bookworm could be read as critical feminist spec fic, send tweet.

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Got to Rozemyne's negotiation with Sigiswald and spent the whole time shouting in my head "GET HIS ASS, MYNE, MAKE THAT MAN SQUIRM"

Still on my AoaB reread and I got back to Brigitte and Damuel my poor heart can't take it, i haven't reached further than the proposal this time but I must scream my woes that it doesn't pan out all the same.

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I'm up to Part 5 now and now would like to scream that someone PLEASE get Oswald away from Wilfried, I know it's all for nothing but that boy is practically a devil on his shoulder!

Still on my AoaB reread and I got back to Brigitte and Damuel my poor heart can't take it, i haven't reached further than the proposal this time but I must scream my woes that it doesn't pan out all the same.

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Still on my AoaB reread and I got back to Brigitte and Damuel my poor heart can't take it, i haven't reached further than the proposal this time but I must scream my woes that it doesn't pan out all the same.

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Making a Myne Spotify playlist and had the cursed thought of adding Scenes from an Italian Restaurant appeared in my head... I wonder if there's a cover that would better suit the general vibes

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Sainthood is the Temple

Warning: Ramblings of a nerd who is too into history, sociology, and anthropology, and is reading AoaB again. Bad at citing sources from my brain, assume I'm just citing the entire series so SPOILERS.

One world building thing I think is lacking in AoaB is the definition of sainthood for this world because the definition presented is incongruious with the values practiced by others.

As far as we know, Myne's saint status is made believeable because of her wealth of mana, connections to the gods, and good deeds for orphans, it is a lauded status and taken very seriously. There is no argument to be made about how powerful she is but I'd like to dive a little deeper into the true religious nature of saints.

Starting at the beinging, consider, what was the culture of sainthood and saint cults that came before Myne? There is no mention of previous saints, no cults, and no saintly domains as we see them in Catholicism but considering the nobility are very aware of the concept, they must exist before her.

It could simply be that saints in Yurgenschimdt belong to the folk hero model of the Middle Ages, where most saints were highly local heroes, known for a few miracles but were not extended to the greater religious teachings of the Church itself. Thus Myne does not learn about them because the Temple does not officially recognize them as religious figures.

As for the St. Peters and St. Marys of Yurgenschimdt, the saints so big and foundational the Church they couldn't not be known... well, that's probably just the domain of the gods instead. Yurgenschimdt's polytheism erases saintly domains and the major religious influences of people because they can be ascribed to the gods instead. We also know their saints aren't declared in death, which, when paired with a very vague concept of the afterlife, means they likely aren't serving the important purpose of arbiters of God and Heaven as Christianity would imagine it. Reactions to Myne's own interactions with the gods does seem to support that saints are expected to be strongly connected to the gods but Myne's exploits are so tremendous perhaps comparison to anything in their or our world is difficult without committing some serious blasphemy.

So Myne is blessed with a ton of mana and access to the gods themselves, and does good things, but... when everyone generally calls her crazy and over emotional for her deeds, why do they also think she's doing good things?

From our perspective Myne does a lot of good things in the form of charity (well, "better than what was present" things, few would argue child labor is *ideal* or most generous) but she seems to be the only one interested in bettering the lives of other from a sense of moral consciousness, right? She may describe it as a distraction but it does come from a sense of right and wrong, which very few agree with her about.

Commoners are kind to each other as neighbors but they still don't believe in helping strangers, such as their views and actions on orphans, there is no talk of taking in an unfamiliar child out of goodness. Merchants treat literally everything as a deal to be struck. The nobility only donate when prompted by superiors, and outside of social settings the highest of the high only consider the safety of peasants and grey priest in terms of tax collection, as in Sylvester's concerns about the attackers of the wagons who may be his citizens over concerns for the lives of the most defenseless. And the temple and farmers? Well, they do keep the orphans, but the end goal is not betterment or salvation, but to generate an easy serving class and make slave money.

So then, where does the major value of charity that Myne's sainthood rests on come in? It happens often that societies may value something without practicing it regularly, so in a world that is disconnected from both it's sense of charity and it's religion, could it be that the value of charity is explicitly religious?

As far as I can tell, there does not seem to be a strong theme of good deeds out of moral right in the myths presented and interactions between gods. The gods are largely all related, their positive actions for one another fall along the bonds of family and marriage, which *is* followed by the cultures of commoners, merchants, and nobility... but not the Temple. Ironically, it was those who were cast out by their families who are most familiar with the stories of familial bonds that shaped their very societies (and their country itself, it turns out).

In other terms, the Temple's intended function is that it is the only place where mercy as the world sees it is considered for strangers, as noble blood and poor orphans in equal measure must find solace in those who are equal but unrelated to themselves and unable to give them additional societal standing, wealth, or privilege (favoritism and breaking of celibacy being well, rulebreaking and unintended). It's the nature of the institution as a place of discardment, rather than the religion itself, to be seen by the outside world of the ideal of charity and mercy.

With that in mind, perhaps the goodness of sainthood in Ehrenfest is a reflection of the qualities associated with the ideal Temple as an institution, regardless of the emotional impact and secular uses it has otherwise. The institution of the Temple is the only place that exists to give; homes for the unwanted, connection for the unconnected, and mana for the country, and a saint is in a sense an embodiment of the ideal temple of giving, rather than an ideal person.

Basically Myne's initially a saint not for actually being religious but instead because the nobles' morality and expectations of the Temple they don't even like are still higher than what they have for themselves and it's 1:40 AM and idk maybe Myne should've introduced a workable napoleonic meritocracy cause these assholes are annoying, and I lost the plot.

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I did the thing 🫡

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WAH~ 💜

(I'm on bluesky too btw: honicmyk.bsky.social)

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~Shrimpku Cocktail Hour~

(Original Shrimpku design by @/ricedeity, shrimp cocktail vers. by me)

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Strawberry themed adopts for my gacha !!

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A lot of rumors are about to fly about this rally. Trump's team is 100% going to try and take advantage of this situation. So will malicious foreign actors/bots/etc.

Please don't auto share. Check your sources, and vet their wording/sourcing carefully.

Ask yourself - What do you not need evidence to believe? Be very careful with those biases.

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An anime-esque Shaggy and Scooby series with a kei truck mystery machine set in Japan is in production and I feel I may have been lightly grazed by Apollo's dodgeball last year.

scooby doobie doooo

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scooby doobie doooo

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My mom and I were watching the latest 9-1-1 and I was literally in the middle of saying "Hey this is shot weirdly romantically" when the kiss happened. The way we were shocked and had to rewatch to get the whole picture probably made us look ridiculous lol.

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Sunny Printed Scarf 🌈🌤️⛳️

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