Official Protector Of Kuronuma Sawako (ง •̀_•́)ง

feudal huh...?? what?

“Alright.”

“You sure? Cause if you're about to leave the room and come back in with a white nightie and drape yourself romantically across my fainting couch with your neck and half your bosom exposed, then I'm going to ask you to leave.”

“It's fine.”

"Really. Cause again, it just isn't a thing for me. This is the way in which I eat, it would be like if every time you had a sandwich the sandwich awkwardly tried to have sex with you. Which, again, no judgement on the sandwich! Full respect for the sandwich! But I. don’t. Want. To fuck. The sandwich.”

“… I solemnly swear that both slices of bread will stay on at all times, and I won't even try to show you my mayonnaise.”

“Phew. Okay. Can I ask why you're doing this then?”

“You live in a giant fuck off mansion with like a bajillion rooms and servants. During the cost of living crisis. Give me some rooms rent free and a stipend for food and entertainment and you can drain me fuckin' dry for all I care.”

The best ones have advice on decor, how to select high-quality furniture, childrearing, fashion, etc--from a contemporary perspective, and the things the authors feel the need to clarify vs the wild shit that will just casually mention like it's something everyone knows and agrees on is REALLY revealing of the culture and how it's shifted.

And while a lot of the advice is WILDLY bigoted or just outright funny, you'd be surprised how much of it is...just genuinely timeless, and shockingly compassionate.

They ALSO, as a writer, have INVALUABLE resources--because, again, they're talking about things that are so MUNDANE that a lot of the time nobody really sat down to formally document what normal, everyday people thought or cared about--because that's boring! But a book written to provide advice and information to, say, a young woman who's never run her own home before? You can fully expect an entire chapter dedicated to The Types Of Oven, and which features are useful and worth spending money on, and which features are a huge hassle to clean and a waste of space, and what to spend that money on instead.

And like. As a writer who frequently works in the 1800s? Fuck inflation calculators, this is the kind of thing I need. This is absolutely priceless.

Now that being said.

My current favorite 'etiquette guide' in the world is actually like....70% purely practical advice, written by a gentleman the groupchat has affectionately dubbed History's Most Autistic Man In The World, and thank god they didn't have Aderall back then

Because the AuDHD is strong in this one and as a result, in addition to the deeply practical and useful everyday reference points, we also have: