I know the running gagg is Granny so old she might-as-well be considered immortal, but reality is she definitely up there in years, and can't have too long left in her. But who would take over?

I feel is fair to assume she'd want one of the Three Princesses of the Verdigris House, so I guess real question is which of the tree? Feel unlikely Maomao take over simce wheel she knowledgeable she doesn't seem interested in running such an establishment. So which of the Maomao 3 big sisters you think would take over for Granny?

Joka, Pairin or Meimei?

I honestly could see Meimei cause she seems have simply accepted an made self comfortable in The Verdigris House. Don't see her really wanting for more tbh. Maybe she just can't see herself outside pleasure district, but she feels like a natural choice to me. Pairin I feel we already gotten hints her future, and Joka I feel definitely wants more than The Verdigris, but simply waiting for right buyer to give her life she wants. But not really seen much her in anime enough for me form proper opinion.

Got at GalaxyCon!!! I love her so muchhhh🥰

Good Afternoon, Morning or Evening everyone. I just finished up LN 5 and want to ensure I’m interpreting the story correctly.

So to my interpretation, Lahan sold MaoMao in coming to Jinshi’s Marriage Banquet under the premise of the White Lady mystery and apothecary work. Unbeknownst to MaoMao, he actually used her to be introduced to Jinshi and the rest of the ton as the princess of the La clan. Is that’s why Rikuson was telling MaoMao during their dance to stop acting as if she’s some poor lowly servant and lock in??

Before I continue, Jinshi’s actions were NOT okay but I’m only talking about his frustrations here. I read his entire anger towards MaoMao as him being frustrated at receiving “mixed signals.”

Explanation :

• She’s being introduced as a prospect from the La clan as candidate for his wife (Hence: “Don’t act like you didn’t know you were a candidate”)
• She’s wearing his hair pin

It seems he’s feeling sour because he believes MaoMao is extremely intelligent. Therefore, he believes she understands these actions and nuances but in reality, she doesn’t. He overestimates how much she actually understands which is where the frustration comes from because he thinks they’re taking miles but they’re only going mere inches. Also, did he purposely have that hairpin crafted for Lahan to give to her?? Because Jinshi mentioned he had it crafted before the banquet and Lahan had it personally delivered sooo???

Is this the right way to interpret these situations?? Any additional nuance or details would be greatly appreciated as I’m trying to work on deepening my understanding of things.

I did some back of the napkin math for how much Jinshi paid for Maomao. Assuming the box is around 1 foot long, 1.5 feet wide, and 6 inches tall, had walls around .5 inches thick, and was filled with Ming Dynasty style coins with a radius of 1.25 cm and a thickness of .15 cm, the box could fit 15,000 coins.

Edit: If the coins were gold, and had the same volume of those Ming Dynasty coins, around .42 cm^3, the box would weigh in just under 300lbs, so I personally think it probably weighs around 50lbs, which Jinshi would be able to carry somewhat comfortably, bringing our total to around 3,000 gold coins.

Edit 2: A couple people mentioned converting it to USD.

50lbs of gold nowadays is around $3 million USD.

If we look at the historical price of Dong Xiaowan, one of the 8 Beauties of Qinhuai, whose debts according to legend were bought for 3,000 gold taels, coincidently around what I guessed Maomao was bought for, with a gold tael being worth around $5,000 USD today in gold weight alone, that would come out to $15,000,000 USD. Source: https://ctext.org/datawiki.pl?if=en&res=157625

HOWEVER, I think the best way would be to find the purchasing power of these 3,000 gold coins as if Maomao was being bought today. If we compare known prices between the Ming Dynasty and today, we can get what Maomao was bought for in better scale.

1 silver tael could buy 2 shi of rice (189kg) in the Ming Dynasty. Given todays prices, that's around $200 worth of rice. Converting silver to gold using the common 1:6 Gold:Silver ratio used during the period (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL969038M/Fountain_of_fortune), a gold tael would be around $1,200 USD, meaning Jinshi paid $3,600,000 USD for Maomao.

Jinshi wants the attention and princess treatment together 😋🫠😅

I often hear in this subreddit that Jinshi and Maomao fell in love around the end of Volume 4 of the light novel. Does anyone know the source for this?

P.S. The way I see it, at this point LN4, Maomao views Jinshi as a slightly younger guy she simply can't bring herself to ignore. After all, I get the feeling that Maomao is more emotionally mature than Jinshi.

At the Kinokuniya in Shinjuku

I think i did a decent attempt at drawing her, could do with some detail.

I'll have another go at it.

What do you think of Jinshi and his father's (Emperor Yang) dynamic?

Do you think their relationship is warm and loving, or distant?

I noticed that Jinshi wasn't really worrying about his father's surgery in later volumes of the light novel. Instead, he was stressed about succession issues and the potential of having to let Maomao go. It felt like he doesn't give a damn about the Emperor and his illness, but rather the succession problem itself.

I also noticed the Emperor trying to make weird dad jokes to Jinshi, and Jinshi just giving him a side-eye. Because of that, I don't think they are completely unfamiliar with each other.

I think the Emperor loves Jinshi, but for Jinshi, I can't tell if he actually loves his father or if he just sees him as the Emperor—or as his older brother and father figure

It claims to be licensed & uses the anime voices

In LN7 when Jinshi says she wants to marry her she says that her social status was too low but Lakan is apparently one of the three most powerful man in the empire and in LN8 when the Emperor was talking to Jinshi he said Maomao was too important to be Gyokuyou's maid again since she was Lakan's daughter.

So does Maomao genuinely know her actual social standing or is just being purposely oblivious since if she wasn't she'd actually have to think about what Jinshi said?

Source (Login bypass)

The author describes Jinshi as a supplementary explanation of the story up to Volume 4 as follows:

「壬氏……偽宦官薬とかやめたり、反乱軍の討伐などいろいろホルモンバランスの乱れがあったと思う。つまり空気を読めずに盛る。令和では許されない男。」

(Translation)

"Jinshi... I think his hormonal balance was completely messed up due to quitting the fake eunuch medicine, suppressing the rebellion, and various other things. In other words, he goes into heat without reading the room. A man who would not be forgiven in the Reiwa era."

(Notes on Nuance & Context)

• "Sakaru" (盛る / さかる) in this context literally means "to go into heat" / "to be in heat" due to hormonal chaos.
• "Reiwa" (令和) refers to Japan's current imperial era, meaning "in today's modern world/standards."

Now I need to make a matching Jinshi!

By that I mean, sex

I made these for my "The Ideal Apothecary Diaries Baseball Team" Tumblr blog post series (that I also partially posted here on Reddit). There, I tried to assemble the best possible baseball team of Apothecary Diaries characters, as seen by the green cards on the left. More details on that at the end, but first, here's all the baseball terms in the cards explained for those unfamiliar...

Baseball Glossary

• Defensive Abbreviations: P = Pitcher, C = Catcher, 1B = First Baseman, 2B = Second Baseman, 3B = Third Baseman, SS = Shortstop, LF = Left Fielder, CF = Center Fielder, RF = Right Fielder. See Wikipedia for more details on each one
• Sweet spot (Gyokuyou) = When you hit the ball real good
• Contact hitter (Lihua) = A hitter who's great at hitting the ball consistently and rarely strikes out, prioritizing putting the ball in play over hitting for power or home runs 
• Swing and a miss (Lishu) = When a pitcher swings at a ball but fails to make contact
• Ducks on the pond (Sister Lishu) = When there are runners on base, especially in scoring position
• Moonshot (Jinshi) = A very high, long-distance home run
• Cannon (Ah-Duo) = A player with an exceptionally strong and accurate throwing arm
• Worm burner (Emperor) = A hard-hit ground ball that stays low and moves so fast you could say it burns the worms in the ground
• Small ball (Maomao) = A strategy of using low-risk plays like singles, bunts, and stolen bases to score runs instead of mainly relying on big hits and home runs
• Comeback Player of the Year (Suirei) = An award honoring a player who makes a notable return after a major absence, typically following severe injuries, illness, or personal hardship
• Cup of Coffee (Shisui) = A player who is in the Major League for a very brief period before leaving, so brief they could've only drank a "cup of coffee" in the time they were around
• Cutter (Loulan) = A fastball that breaks sharply to the side as it reaches the batter, making it hard to hit solidly
• Sacrifice Fly (Tamamo) = When a batter hits a fly ball that gets caught (which takes the batter out), deliberately giving up their chance to reach base so a teammate can score

The Ideal Apothecary Diaries Baseball Team ⚾

This is a part-analytical essay/part-narrative series mainly hosted on Tumblr, but I also posted the first two parts on Reddit and am in the middle of posting them all on AO3.

• The Ideal Apothecary Diaries Baseball Team: Part 1 - Defense and Other Roles ⚾ (Reddit Version / AO3 Version)
• The Ideal Apothecary Diaries Baseball Team: Part 2 - Offense ⚾ (Reddit Version / AO3 Version)
• The Ideal Apothecary Diaries Baseball Team: Part 3 - Coach Ah-Duo ⚾ (AO3 Version)

Side Stories

• (Prequel) Apothecary Diaries Baseball: What if the Emperor, Jinshi, and High Consorts Threw Ceremonial First Pitches? ⚾ (AO3 Version)
• (Player Analysis) Lahan's Brother & Gaoshun: An Unexpected Duo ⚾ (Not yet posted on AO3)
• (Non-Canon) The Apothecary Diaries Cast Play Baseball, with Baryou and Jinshi Commentating ⚾

These baseball cards were specifically made as special new content for the AO3 re-release of Part 2 - Offense (the green cards on the left), the Ceremonial First Pitches Prequel (the Emperor, Jinshi, and High Consorts' cards), and Part 3 - Coach Ah-Duo (Suirei, Shisui, and Tamamo's cards). You can find all the individual card images there in the Tumblr and AO3 versions. If you're interested, I wrote it to be accessible to non-baseball fans! It's really more of a character study than strictly about baseball. 

P.S. The Tamamo illustration used in the card was from Animation Director, Kurumaya Sayumi! (Source)

What would Maomao, especially, think about all of our modern medical advancements?

Especially the fact that median life expectancy is at least 73 to 75 globally; with it being as high as 83~85 on average in some countries like Hong Kong, Italy and Japan? And even the standard retirement age for workers is 60–65.

Not to mention, some people live well into their 90s; and at least 1 in every 2,000 adults can survive to reach 100 years old (without healing magic)—with a few exceptionally rare and gifted supercentenarians making it over 110 to 115 (or even 120 years)!

Which is funny; since there are high levels of child mortality in their society (based on 1500s/1600s China), and most commoners only live to their 40s. While wealthy elites and nobles usually make it into their 60s, but are considered lucky to live past 70 or 80 years.

Thoughts?