#Yurgenschmidt

[aubdrewanchel]

Forget about Harry Potter. I want to know what course would you take in Royal Academy (assuming u can choose)

(Pool at the end)

Scholars

- procrastinators (unless it's something they find interesting)

- probably has adhd and/or autism

- burn out kids

- will stay up till 3am to research a random topic

- daydreams a lot

- love coffee/energy drinks

- has atleast 2-3 hyperfixation all the time

Knight

- the hyperactive kids

- favourite subject is PE (no shit)

- will brag about their fav sport

- loves watching sports on tv

- VERY competitive

- probably hate math

- carefree spirit

- probably have a healthy lifestyle(?)

Attendant

- the perfectionists

- very anxious

- has millions of backup plans

- adapts easily

- overthinkers

- I feel like they like tea a lot

- very polite

(- the parent of the friend group)

- "actors without a stage"

Archdukes

- the overachievers

- has to have perfect scores and attendance

- the "heroes"

- highly ambitious and competitive

- will sacrifice anything for their plans to work out

- people pleasers(?)

- the best at controlling their emotions

- of course (natural) leaders and/or want to be in power

[yurgenschmidt]

[likesdoodling]

Was thinking about random stuff, like crossovers and drawing ideas, and small adorable anime protagonists-

And I remembered a concept I'd had about a spy family plus ascendance of a bookworm crossover-

:D

[ming-sik]

as a devoted hater of isekai where the premise is "oh no i got isekaied as the most unfortunatest character ever but Actually my unfortunate situation is secretly the most bestest divine power and now i'm a minor deity" and a triple hater of characters whose disabilities get magically cured i have REALLY mixed feelings on the devouring bc despite appreciating the mooooostly really good deconstruction, aob stumbles at the resolution for me.

bc lets face it, that IS what the devouring is. rozemyne starts as a terminally ill peasant living without access to medical care, but from when her terminal illness is revealed to be her excess of mana the story does in fact follow the path of lvl 1 commoner → lvl 99 avatar of a goddess, and that kind of sucks because it means that aob doesn't end up doing what it seems like no isekai has the will to do and just make a protagonist that never attains godlike power and has to create a fulfilling life in this unfamiliar and harsh world despite never ever ever ever even getting to meet the crown prince, which cuts off an interesting story i wish got told more often.

However, aob is very clearly doing a deconstruction of this plot structure and her relationship with her power is extremely complicated. i do kind of wish rozemyne was kept at the level of "archduke candidate" instead of the godlike power she ends up having because rozemyne's ability to slam the 'put enough mana in the machine to Win' i think prevents some instances where she would otherwise be forced to struggle with the gap between what she wants to do and what she's physically able to do, but deciding to recreate the premise closely in order to subvert it is a fine narrative choice.

especially because rozemyne's power IS balanced and caveated by the fact that the devouring & its resulting mana clumps are a pretty severe disability. the fact that she is denied any education on it to the point of being seconds away from dying from an unknown illness for most of part 1 and even when she understands the devouring and eventually her mana clumps she has to reckon constantly with her physical limits, and the fact that she can't just pour 1 million magiwatts into any given issue to make it go away because she will die. despite rozemyne's power, her disability makes it so that she narratively has to deal with a pretty neat subversion of the 'commoner elevated to noble trope' that really takes advantage of the fact that commoners in that world are so completely locked off from magic that becoming a noble doesn't just result in mild culture shock judged by the Prissy Rich Villainness but is a fleshed-out, complex tool of systemic oppression that causes real obstacles for our heroine even as she spirals ever deeper into becoming a noble. it also serves as a really elegant allegory for systemic ableism and the way that minor issues for a rich girl can be life-threatening if you don't have access to quality medical care.

But Then The Jureve Walks In. "literally don't even worry about that," aob says, "theres a magic juice which just cures any disease, and the only challenge is creating that juice and using that juice". but no, no you tell me, the jureve is balanced narratively by the timeskip and the difficulty of getting it! rozemyne loses years of her life, that's not nothing! but while it's not NOTHING it also just. doesn't have enough far-reaching consequences that i don't feel like it's an invocation of the "dw abt your disability theres a magic cure for it" rather than a true subversion. imo a true subversion would require that there either 1) straight up not be a cure and rozemyne has to live the rest of her life at 150cm with 3 HP, 2) only be an imperfect cure which maybe allows rozemyne to reach adult size but keeps her health frail enough that using her full magic potential has serious consequences or vice versa if they want to also subvert the '300 yr old child' trope by acknowledging how much it would suck to be eternally trapped in a body with no fine motor control that people instinctively don't take seriously, or 3) only be a cure that is either temporary or otherwise not a one-and-done deal because now that she's big and healthy she just has no long-lasting consequences from her severely disabled childhood, which seems like a narrative branch that was pruned way too hard and way too early to feel like a satisfying subversion instead of just playing the trope straight with a couple extra steps. indeed, option 2b is what the jureve initially seems like...... until your man gives rozemyne some steroids and she's tall now too. so there's just no conflict whatsoever between rozemyne's power and her ability to utilize it, which makes it much, much harder to balance her power in a way that lets her have interesting conflict around magic where she can't just press X to win.

also this problem doesnt exist in a vacuum, and a related complaint is one mostly unexplored comment from when ferdinand is talking to rozemyne about dirk's devouring, and he says that dirk was born with more mana than myne, but her compression method meant that her mana ballooned much bigger than what it would have if she was raised as a noble. bc like god Damn is that interesting! my ideal plot twist would be that the cinderella theme returns because there's a random laynoble whose magic tool got taken away as a teenager who ended up independently discovering a similarly desperate mana compression method, but they're knowledgeable about magic enough to hide it as physical weakness and then become a ticking time bomb who can be exploited by antagonists as a rozemyne with nobody to help her, the ultra-devouring soldier. the contracted devouring in general are such a potent and viscerally horrifying worldbuilding element that i really wish they weren't effectively treated as npc baddies, bc like-- that could've been rozemyne! only her support network and sheer luck separates her from them. part of the problem with rozemyne being cured of the devouring means that she loses even the vestiges of her personal connection to imo the most interesting take on fantasy disability i've ever seen, which is a real shame! especially from a series that's generally so concerned with Not having npc baddies, like explaining that bandits don't attack the church because they're farmers most of the time who rely on the harvest or the fact that all the minor noble antagonists have coherent motivations from bindewald to grausam, even if you aren't at all intended to sympathize with them.

pictured below: me explaining what the devouring couldve been to you

spoilers for vol5p9:

her recent PTSD around feystones... honestly feels like it exists mainly because if rozemyne is able-bodied and therefore powerful enough to just dye a duchy's foundation in minutes... she has an auto-win button for any situation that can be resolved by Having More Mana, which is most combat and a decent amount of politics because aob takes place in a society which runs on mana. i'm saying this as someone who felt like fran's PTSD was really well-done, despite it being the protagonist's problem rozemyne's is so explicitly and exclusively focused on feystones that it ceases feeling like a character trait that serves a narrative purpose and starts feeling like something that was crowbarred in because the trait meant to serve that narrative purpose got phased out before the realization that the story had rozemyne's power be balanced for a reason. is this me being unfair to miya kazuki when it's entirely possible that this was as planned out as everything else in aob and i have no idea what she thinks of this plot development or why she chose it? yeah probably especially when this is based on an incomplete prepub, which is why i say 'feels like' so much. i just read it and thought it fell really flat esp in comparison to earlier depictions of trauma triggers.

[stardustizuku]

There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to hold a Yurgenschmidt history book from like 100 years down the line and interprets wtf happened in that one week Alexandria was founded

[rozemynelovebot]

“yurgenschmidt adult noble women wear their hair up at all times except in their chambers, making seeing it down a privilege exclusive to their husbands and attendants” ok soooo what im hearing is lieseleta gets to have that privilege with rozemyne now as her head attendant ………. i know what you are…….

[salmalin]

How Many Square Miles is Yurgenschmit? And What is the Air Speed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow Highbeast?

For fic reasons, I decided to figure out how big Yurgenschmidt is. So without further ado, I welcome you to "Sal, Why Are You Doing Math For Fanfiction Again?" Episode number Seriouslywhyareyoustilldoingthis.

(Note: I messed up on the walking math for Tuuli and accidentally did everything in halves in the original version of this post, but the country numbers are still accurate in that version, if you see it floating around.)

Naturally, I am posting my findings for all to enjoy. I will happily do the math so that y'all don't have to.

(If you just want the rough square mileage, just jump to the big red text near the bottom.)

Now, first thing's first—what maps are we working with? Because canon has three available: Ehrenfest's capitol, Ehrenfest Duchy, and Yurgenschmidt.

Now, you might brush off the Ehrenfest Capitol map right off the bat, saying we're trying to figure out large dimensions, but it's actually valid for two reasons. First, it shows how close the forest for foraging is. It's almost immediately outside the gate. It is also, however, about the same distance from the gate that Myne's house is from the gate on the other side.

So here's the city with a grid.

It took about twenty minutes for a child like Tuuli to walk from home to the gate, so I appreciated the water. -Part 1, Volume 1

The average walking speed for an adult is about 4 miles per hour, and for a child about 7 years old it would be close to 2.8 mph, but Tuuli is on the larger side, and very active, so I'd put her at about 3mph. Considering the only perspective applied to the map of the capitol is the angle, and there's no size discrepancy between buildings, we can just apply a grid and not worry about perspective lines.

The line from Myne's house to the main road is 4.6 red blocks, and from there to the gate is 5.7 red blocks. (I did the triangle math so you don't have to.) That's about 10.3 blocks. So at an average speed, a child Tuuli's size can walk about 10 blocks of space (I'm being kind to my decimals) in twenty minutes. This puts Tuuli at about half a block a minute. Since an average adult's speed is 4mph, that means an adult can cover about 13-14 blocks of space in that time, or about .7 blocks a minute. So since 1 mile is 15 minutes at 4mph, and every minute is .7 blocks, which makes 1 mile approximately 10 blocks of space on this scale.

As the distance from South Gate to the temple gate is 24 red blocks, that means the length of the commoner district is 2.4 miles long.

Now, fun fact: Buggies or carts drawn by horses go about 6-8mph. Conveniently double the speed of a child or an adult, respectively. So let's treat them like they go 7MPH. (Yes, I know they'd go faster if the horse were running. They pretty much never do that in reality. Bookworm is shockingly well-grounded in realistic principals for a fantasy series with magic.)

Length of time it would take to get from South Gate to the Temple via main road:

Child (approx 7-9): 48 min.

Adult: 34 min.

Buggy/Carriage: 20 min.

We had arrived at the village. It was about fifteen minutes away from the town gate, and after passing through the entryway, I could hear lots of people talking. -Part 1, Volume 1

"Once we flew over the lower city and passed the outer walls, the griffon immediately began descending. We were heading to the winter mansion of the closest farming town to the south gate, the same town that my neighborhood went to on pig killing day." -Part 2, Volume 3

15 minutes in a cart or buggy at 7 mph is 1.75 miles.

As they are described as "immediately" descending, this implies that they can close two miles in a very short period of time. Since it was described as "immediately", then went straight into describing the town instead of anything about the travel, or even squinting, one can assume that they closed the distance in anywhere between 1-2 minutes. This would put them at a minimum of about 0.0145 miles per second, which is a solid 52 miles per hour. (She was riding with Damuel.) And, of note, at this point, despite "immediately descending" they are described as "high up in the sky". Do even then, they were still above everyone else.

"After that we traveled to the winter mansions of four different farming towns, completing the Spring Prayer at each of them. By the time we were done, the sun was setting and I was exhausted." -Part 2, Volume 3

After Myne falls asleep, she wakes up at Baron Blon's mansion.

As the carriages are already there and unpacked, and this was their first day of travel, this tells us that Baron Blon's residence is close enough for a carriage to reach in one day. This puts it at about 30 miles maximum from Ehrenfest. So, to account for the fact that we don't have a road map, and they were stopping in other towns on the way, let's assume that, as the crow flies, a straight line between the capitol and Blon is approx. 20 miles.

This would make every red block about 5 1/2 miles. And this, folks—this is what we needed.

If every block is 5 1/2 miles long, then we have a general idea of how big the country is. North to south, highest to lowest point, Ehrenfest is about 165 miles long. So without further ado...

Ehrenfest is about 5 1/2 blocks long. That means, strangely conveniently, each of these blocks is 30 miles.

So, at 20 blocks long and 20 blocks wide, being a perfect circle,

Yurgenschmidt is approximately 600 miles across, implying a total area of 282,743 square miles.

Bonus—Clarissa's route to Ehrenfest and the assumed top speed of a highbeast!

Clarissa goes from Dunkelfelger to Ehrenfest in one day by going at top speed on her highbeast, chugging mana potions the whole way. (An appropriate fiance for our very own Hartmut the Horrible.) Now, this is hard to really calculate because we don't know where in Dunkelfelger she's coming from. NOR do we know which gates are open, or where. However, they are described vaguely, and we do know the location of one specific gate that she uses—the Frenbeltag gate!

Now, she absolutely left at first bell, no doubt about it. (Around 4AM.) She is noted to have arrived in Ehrenfest after third bell (~9:45)am. More notably, Myne was wrapping up a meeting when she gets the message. This would put the time at around 10:30 or so, meaning Clarissa had flown for around six hours, considering the time she was briefly detained.

And since using Ahrensbach's gates is described as faster, this likely means the gates in Werkestock and Dunkelfelger are likely in less ideal places than a route through Ahrensbach. Thus I propose a route along these lines for our Favorite Future Mrs. Horrible.

So this is about 14 1/2 blocks. With 30 miles per block, that is roughly 435 miles covered in five hours, or 87 miles per hour.

So highbeasts basically go as fast as cars, the speed limit is 50, laynobles are driving the speed limit, and archnobles can afford the ticket.

As always, thanks for joining me in Hell. <3

[orii-blogs-stuff]

Question, Do you think AoB Nobles talk about allergies during tea parties? Like say for example two ADC from different duchies come together and the hosting Duchy ADC says 'Please try some of the pound cake with rumptoph' and the other ADC from another Duchy says 'Oh dear, I'm afraid I can't have the rumptoph as it contains rutrebs' is that OK or is that seem as giving away information which is bad because people could use it to kill them later?!

Cuz I don't think the rutreb allergy would come up as a poision during poision testing (the part where the host ADC tastes the food to show its not poisioned)

Actually, you know how Rozemyne and everyone else was super secretive about their culinary practises and what went into each recipe, so far as to ask foe 1 small gold for a recipe book? Imagine that causes a diplomatic disaster because an ADC with an unknown allergy eats her food and everyone thought the ADC got poisioned by Ehrenfest! Wait, remember how Rozemyne shared her food with the Dorm? Including the Veronican faction? Imagine someone being allergic to her sweets and having a violent allergic reaction and dying right then and there.

Does Yurgenschmidt residents even know what an allergen is? Or do they think 'Ronald died yesterday from eating fruits that have gone bad' or 'She's obviously been poisioned!'

[valkylander]

So listen, I often do this thing where there will be a male character that I like and I'll just decide that they're a trans woman solely because I like them. This is a thing I do, I acknowledge this, I would never fight someone when it comes to these headcanons.

I need you to know that I thought that's what I was doing with Ferdinand. I was wrong.

Ferdinand is surprisingly concerned with the treatment of women and girls in Yurgenschmidt, to a point that goes beyond her usual baseline moral concern for others (which is often otherwise low). When opposing the idea of bringing another Lanzenave Princess to the Adalgisa Villa, Ferdinand argues less against the treatment she received there and more against the way the princesses themselves are treated.

Being assigned male was literally an early death sentence for Ferdinand. It is directly tied to all the suffering she has endured, and she literally has a deadname that she rejects that represents the circumstances of her assigned gender.

She hates the sound of her own voice, despite it being beloved by everyone else.

She's so woman-coded that Elvira, attempting to write a way for her to be happy even if just in fiction, made her a woman in her story. The fact that there's canon rule 63 Ferdinand in the books is wild.

She's engaged to an aro lesbian. Myne is very into women, and she's into Ferdinand in the same way (she just hasn't totally figured that out about herself). I know for a fact that if Ferdinand started HRT it wouldn't take more than six months before Myne dropped any pretense of not being in love with her.

And so as you can see, Ferdinand is a trans woman, Fermyne is yuri, and Ascendance of a Bookworm is very good.

[nefertittythegreat]

Ok, but the reason Ferdinand loves Myne so much is because she was the first person to love him unconditionally. Now I'm not saying Ferdinand wasn't loved, clearly Sylvester loves his brother dearly, but because of how Yurgenschmidt works no one was in a position to love Ferdinand just as is. Something else in their lives had to take precedence over him, but for Myne, Ferdinand was a priority. She put him first, and no one in his life has. For the first time, someone cared about him openly without fear of repercussions, and needless to say, that fact resonated with him.

[aubdrewanchel]

Yurgenschmidt writing system

Save if you ever need a random wall of text for whatever purpose (I used it in my art once)

[aubalexandria]

Honestly feeling like Rozemyne in p5.

The number of posts regarding Sylvester and Florencia being bad parents is ridiculous. Especially when Kashick exists. You want to look at neglect and favouring kids start there! Especially since that sort of neglect is seen as normal and common in Yurgenschmidt, Sylvester by noble standards is a very attentive father.

[ahb-writes]

Book Review: 'Ascendance of a Bookworm' #19 (4.7)

Ascendance of a Bookworm #19 (4.7) by Miya Kazuki, You Shiina, Quof

adventure

fantasy

magic

library science

librarian

royal academy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is truly, genuinely, not Rozemyne's fault. The bickering among nobles. The feverish complaints from biblical fundamentalists. The argumentative inquiry concerning the ternisbefallen. The return of Ferdinand's academy rival. And a whole lot of nonsense at the awards ceremony at the close of the Interduchy Tournament. Rozemyne is innocent.

ASCENDANCE OF A BOOKWORM v19 further shifts the novel series in a rather fascinating direction by asking a dangerous, if surprisingly nuanced question: What are the qualifications to be the King of Yurgenschmidt? Rozemyne stumbles upon a bit of knowledge while researching the bible that strongly implies the tension between the throne, and the holy persons who support the throne, is not as firm as one would hope. After all, shouldn't a nation's every institution be in perfect alignment on who their sovereign is, why that person was selected, and the aims and goals of said rulership?

A pair of incidents, which occur during the spring semester of Rozemyne's second year, frame an increasingly complex conversation about the right to rule. Both incidents concern the nation's holy book, and both incidents regard the explicit and ongoing challenge of determining what is (or isn't) canonical. The previous volume of this novel series took a much-needed look at the mythology that constitutes Rozemyne's new world. The current volume goes a step further, daring its characters to think and act normal despite the fragrant egos threatening to disrupt or disarm the status quo.

In short, Rozemyne (and Ferdinand) must study the thin, pearlescent line between mythology as canon and mythology as apocrypha.

At length, the bible at the temple of Ehrenfest suddenly reveals a fantastical magic circle and never-before-seen script. The new imagery implies those with the ability to see it also possess the characteristics (or have met some unknown standard) to become Zent, or king. Whoops. What the heck did Rozemyne do for an old magical book to think she's worthy of being the sovereign? Secondly, a bout with the Royal Academy's inquiry into the ternisbefallen incident unearths a query about intertextual differences (translations) among holy books. Does Rozemyne's bible contain passages that other bibles don't? Double-whoops. A subsequent investigation is called.

ASCENDANCE OF A BOOKWORM v19 exposes the sad, blatant favoritism native to those who thoughtlessly mesh religious piety with nationalism. Ferdinand, who has made a career out of avoiding such fracases, offers a stern warning: "Rozemyne, there are many things in the world that one is better off not knowing. Do not stick your nose into these matters if you wish to live. Death can come swiftly from any direction," page 89).

Nevertheless, this is a fun volume. At the start, one is thankful for the merger of time-away and time-with Royal Academy duties. This holds true even though much of the book's drama comes from individual confrontations (e.g., panel inquiries and meetings, a name-swearing ceremony, random ditter challenges), rather than from more highly stylized adventures (e.g., a bunch of Darkness feybeasts are unleashed).

In one of the novel series' few moments of exquisite continuity, readers see more action regarding mana-sucking creatures and the havoc they wreak. Typically, the author introduces something new or curious, only to abandon it the following volume. Here, Ehrenfest's experience with the ternisbefallen comes in handy.

ASCENDANCE OF A BOOKWORM v19 continues to fill in the worldbuilding gaps that have intermittently widened and narrowed over the course of so many volumes. On the positive end, readers encounter more foreshadowing when it comes to Ferdinand's awareness of the Sovereignty's shortsightedness (Rozemyne: "I couldn't help but wonder how many secrets Ferdinand was likewise pretending to have forgotten," page 94).

On the other end of things, the current volume's translation and adaptation yields a little too frequently to vague or obsequious diction. The most obvious example rests in the novel's less than clear usage of Grutrissheit. Grutrissheit is the catch-all term for the nation's bible or holy book. However, the usage is exceedingly ambiguous, sometimes implying a physical tome (as in the book held by the statue of Mestionora, in Volume 18), and sometimes implying an intangible trait, as "the symbol of the Zent" (page 89), which the king supposedly cannot rule without. It's terribly confusing.

Inconsistent and complicated mythologies aside, and biblical fundamentalist terrorists notwithstanding, ASCENDANCE OF A BOOKWORM v19 proves that even though trouble may follow little Rozemyne wherever she goes, it's not always her fault. As the young woman says: "I just wanna go home. I wanna go home and read," page 141).

❯ ❯ Light-Novel Reviews

[ming-sik]

I really did want to avoid changing names in BAON but I'm just not strong enough to put up with them as someone who's familiar enough with German that all the dictionary names sound really fucking stupid AND more importantly when a bunch of the cheap shot names have ACTUAL names that would've worked better. Idk why Kazuki fought the translator on changing the Japanese names since the jokes don't translate and are therefore ruined, but I'm definitely more annoyed that nobody insisted she change Bezewanst or Bosgeiz for at least the LNs. JK Rowling ass names, ma'am I must insist you rename "Ugly Belly" and "Stingygreedland" no matter how much you despise fat people and foreigners

[monster-gender]

Putting aside everything else about me that would make it impossible for me to actually live in Yurgenschmidt, I think the funniest thing about imagining myself as Rozemyne is getting to the high beast creation part and realizing that I can't do proper magic because I'm an aphant.

Just imagining getting to the "now visualize a sphere" part of the instructions, being like "Oh yeah this is actually impossible for me" then getting put down like a dog just makes me laugh.

Btw for anyone that's gonna say like "Oh but it's magic so it could work" etc etc, please just think about how hilarious it would be. Exhibit A:

[aspecofdust]

I wonder how trans people are treated in Yurgenschmidt's noble society sometimes. The core identity of being a noble is having a lot of mana, so there's a bit of me that hopes and prays that they wouldn't care as long as they kept doing their job. Maybe Flutrane would help the trans mortals who prayed to her, embracing change and healing. Though on the other hand, Noble society is so ruthlessly conservative and status-based that I fear for those who don't have the protection of someone with actual power. Worst case scenario, the Temple is always an option I guess...