Ascendance of a Bookworm - General Discussion

[jcochran]

@rahul-balaggan said in Ascendance of a Bookworm - General Discussion:

@paul-nebeling never know she could turn over a new leaf and be the perfect model of a Nobel little girl.

How about her being a perfect model of what a noble should be?

[Rahul Balaggan]

@jcochran That is what I am hoping this story slowly turns into...

She has the power (mana)
the knowledge (to overthrow society and make it start a new)
she is starting to become a very influential person in the lives of many big wigs
and she has her secret weapon (tombre seeds)

I wanna say I smell a coup d'é·tat, but there is no way she will want that.

[hopebestman]

@rahul-balaggan smells nice but not ready to serve yet. Myne interests in magic , she has mana. In some point she has to learn magic. So , first one volume should goes around with her training. Somehow she could join the Royal Academy(Helps with future noble will see). I would like to see Hogwards again. Also , most probably she wont start a coup but if she keeps invent things that fast , with or without her things could get serious really fast.

Honestly , i believe P2V3 or V4 will be breaking point. For now , we dont have much but after nobles enter the game , things will get really interesting.

[Paul Nebeling]

@hopebestman Maybe does have an interest in magic, but Ferdinand has said that only "real" nobels that have graduated from the Royal Academy can play with magic. He won't even let her look at documents concerning magic. Still there are a few circumstances that will probably come into play.

• Myne has a godawfuly huge mana pool
• In her "previous" world, she appeared to be a nobel. Total misconception, but...
• The religious ramifications of her being reincarnated are going to be absolutely huge.

Won't be a magic McGuffin to admit her to the Royal Academy, (We've seen how badly that failed with Rio in Spirit Chronicles.) but Ferdinand and the Archduke are going to come to understand the meaning of the phase "loose cannon", probably by example and realize that someone's got to teach Myne about magic.

[b.scot.morgan]

@paul-nebeling said in Ascendance of a Bookworm - General Discussion:

• The religious ramifications of her being reincarnated are going to be absolutely huge.

I think that depends on what the local religion currently teaches about the afterlife. It might not be that big a deal, theologically. At this point I don't think we have enough information to say.

[b.scot.morgan]

This post is deleted!

[hopebestman]

@paul-nebeling

only "real" nobels that have graduated from the Royal Academy

In that world %99 only nobles born with mana. So there could be a rule to prevents her to join academy. In that case , we have to wait her to interect with a noble(my theory she will be adopted) and that noble needs to use some strings to let her join the academy.

He won't even let her look at documents concerning magic.

That accually depens the sitution. Myne's mana pool is so huge , Ferdinand cant believes it. Thats why maybe he has to teach some techniques to control the mana. I am really suprized she didnt crush that knight. If i remeber correctly in P2V1 , Myne said she learned to control her mana but can Ferdinand take that risk? If somehow Myne loses her control , can he do something about her?He scared when they were in snyc. And he relized her mana sitution after KO thing. So we still dont know will he do something or not.

Another thing. As a story telling , we heard about Myne's mana , magic school , she will deals with nobles in future and she is somewhat genious(people thinks). So she has to learn magic from Ferdinand or academy but she has to learn. I mean thats "how to write a story" 101 , Chekhov's gun rule.

Also , i wonder will Ferdinand say tell the Archduke about another world thing. I mean that information is so huge. We dont know what happend after the dream world part so in prologue Ferdinand could discuss with Myne about that information. Maybe Ferdinand could decide to keep that information as secret and tell the ppl she is some kind of genious , has lots of mana and wont bring harm to city and the country. Because that was Ferdinand's main order. Decide that will she a treat or not. Keeping that info as secret should be fine.

PS:This is general discussing thread. So can we spoil info from the released JNC's volumes?

Edit:

Ferdinand has said that only "real" nobels that have graduated from the Royal Academy can play with magic. He won't even let her look at documents concerning magic.

+That epilogue was a break point for Ferdinand and Myne's story. Starting next volume part 1 , he could worship to her as a chosen one. He saw that , she is from another world , she has too much mana even she is 7 yo , she surpass Archduke. So she could be literally chosen by gods. As a priest :D that presumption wouldnt be strach.

[b.scot.morgan]

@hopebestman said in Ascendance of a Bookworm - General Discussion:

PS:This is general discussing thread. So can we spoil info from the released JNC's volumes?

Good question, I'd like to know this, too. I had actually forgotten that this thread wasn't in the members only section.

[Serah]

The note is only about spoilers in regards for pre-publications which are unavailable to non-subscribers.
https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/7/a-note-about-spoilers

Spoilers about released volumes are therefore absolutely fine. I personally expect behind every discussion thread spoilers - like, you cannot really discuss all the stuff happening in a story without considering those major events which are considered spoilers.

And putting everything behind a spoiler tag is rather off putting for the reading flow ~

[hopebestman]

@serah pre-pubs are not ok in here. :(

[Serah]

@hopebestman said in Ascendance of a Bookworm - General Discussion:

@serah pre-pubs are not ok in here. :(

That is what I said. Sorry if it was not clear when I wrote the stuff of released volumes are okay, since the note of keeping spoilers away only applies on prepubs.

[hopebestman]

@serah like you , english is not my mother language either :D time to time misinterpretations can happend :D but thanks for the info.

[Serah]

@hopebestman No worries. As my teachers use to say "always more than one party is responsible when it comes to understand each other". That sounds better in German - but on the other hand I cannot speak Türkçe, so ~ just let me know if something sounds weird and needs to be rephrased by me.

[hopebestman]

@serah just a second , when i saw "Türkçe" i got some hope. :)

[b.scot.morgan]

Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 2 Volume 3 (paperback) can now be preordered on Amazon in the US, for those who get their books that way.

[SomeOldGuy]

With a November 3rd release date...

[b.scot.morgan]

@someoldguy Hardcopy does always come later than ebook, I'm afraid.

[LegitPancake]

Yea that’s been up for about a week, and even longer on Books-a-Million. P2V2 paperback pre-order also went up before its prepubs started, so this is nothing new. Though the 5 month break after P2V2, which releases in June, is kinda weird. Guess Sam is really spacing then out now, which put less stress on the editors.

[unsynchedcheese]

Something I've been wondering since way back when I first read the fan translation of the webnovel, up until I was reminded of it again by watching the anime, is exactly why Myne likes books. Not in the sense of "what's her motivation" (since I'm fine with leaving it at "she likes books because that's the plot set up"), but in the sense of which part of "liking books" is the primary cause.

Basically, does Myne like books because of what they contain (ie the "collected wisdom of humanity" mentioned in the opening monologue), or does she like books because of the medium of books and paper?

These are not mutually exclusive, of course. And I'm not going deep into philosophy and (post-)structuralism and media studies and all that. (I had enough of McLuhan in university.) I'm just curious whether Myne would have gone through the whole plant paper thing if, say, her mokkan endeavour had been successful.

Because there is a difference between wanting a book, and wanting the contents of the book. The latter is what Myne seems to value, since a lot of her explanations, both in monologues to the reader/viewer and her talks with Lutz, focus on the ability for information recorded on media to be passed down through multiple people, regardless of whether they personally knew the original creator of that information. Similarly, the "collected wisdom of humanity" bit also implies that Myne's love of books is due to what she reads and absorbs through them, rather than anything inherent to the physical medium of books itself.

However, soon she also starts focusing on paper as the primary way to create books. Now, obviously there are immense advantages to paper as a medium, especially compared to her early efforts like clay tablets. So is her focus on paper books because it's the best (in terms of the historical setting) way to contain the information within a book, or because she actually likes paper books?

Personally I think it's a case where Myne certainly places more emphasis on the contents of a given book, regardless of the medium in which it's presented, eg audiobook or ebook or whatever. However, being from our "modern time" with our very long history of associating writing with books, she also has the mental association where a "true" collection of information would be presented as a book. Hence when she sees a book, she's happy to encounter it, regardless of what is actually written in it. This also applies to her joy at being taught the local alphabet; writing her name over and over isn't particularly useful for imparting information, but it has mental and emotional associations with more complex writing that are.

(If an example helps, I vaguely recall a random episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer where Giles explains his antipathy to computers: they have no smell, unlike books. So his sensory association of that smell to his love of texts does mean he likes books as a medium, even if they hypothetically have only blank pages inside.)

[Justaidan]

@unsynchedcheese (I mentioned some of this over in the vol 5 discussion I think)

When Myne is going through her past life memories with Ferdinand she mentions that her local library "has even begun to carry dvds and audiobooks". She doesn't seem dismissive of that medium at all. Earlier in vol 5 when Myne is arguing about what a book is with Ferdinand she is annoyed that Ferdinand is focusing on the medium rather than the content itself. Myne has a lots of little throwaway lines like this just dotted around the LN. Unfortunately, Myne is bad at explaining things without doing demonstrations as many of the characters have pointed out.

The type of book Myne advocates are all heavy science and technology books and only nearly as a afterthought she only mentions reading myths and other fiction after those and even then she is stressing that those teach about people in the past.

I'm interested as well in why Myne is obsessed with "books", especially with the subtle religious elements being mentioned, and who exactly Myne is. After rereading the LNs while waiting for vol 6 to start coming out my own theory right now is that Myne is a another iteration of the person/soul who was also Urano and original Myne and simply thinks she is Urano because that past life makes up so much of her memory (rather than a blend of the two or Urano on her own). I'm do have details to back that up, the narrative perspective change by the author going from WN to LN for the prologue separates Urano and Myne whereas the original WN linked them completely. Before she even gets out of bed Myne displays an immediate change of opinion of her actions as Urano mirror her poor opinion of her action/s as original-Myne. Myne seems somewhat guilty/regretful about her actions as Urano/original Myne. Effa's tidbits about original Myne potential dreaming of being people other than Urano. There are lots of little small things that add up on a reread.

(Edit: Shorter version: Myne appears to have a difference perspective on her actions as Urano and Original Myne which in part changes how she acts. It appears less as a person changing than another different iteration, or true self or something, regretting the actions of themselves in a past life)

Then you've got the religious elements that started showing up at the end of vol 3. Otto is teasing Benno about Myne being his "Goddess of Water/Spring" which is a goddess associated with change, new life and new growth and Gunther is taking such talk very very seriously. Gunther is a bit of a oddball in that he sought to become a knight as a child and became a solider as the next closest thing. In such a rigid stagnant society Gunther really stands out in his thinking and his actions also coincide with the traits associated with the Goddess of Water. It makes sense that someone with that type of abstract thinking could make the jump to divine activity given what he knows about Myne by vol 4.

Given the above I reckon the religious elements are going to become more important since it seems Myne's goal isn't to read "books" but to read the technological and scientific output of an advanced culture. In order to do that Myne needs to make drastic changes to society. (Wouldn't be surprised if Myne starts thinking of ways to get right of the High Bishop if he opposes her changing the Church into a place of teaching).

Here is a big question: If "books" to Myne are the "Crystallisation of humanity's knowledge and experience" then what the hell does she actually mean when says "librarian"?

I suspect Myne's definition of librarian will be a key point going forward.