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bookclub4m · 1 year

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Episode 174 - Economics

This episode we’re talking about the genre of Economics! We discuss economic philosophy, Excel spreadsheets, micro vs macro, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | Jam Edwards

Things We Read (or tried to…)

Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World by Ha-Joon Chang

Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil by Nicholas Shaxson

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara

Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak

Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails by Yanis Varoufakis, translated by Jacob Moe

Other Media We Mentioned

Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World by Rutger Bregman

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

Adam Hochschild

The Colour of Magic by Terry Prachett

“Perhaps there is something in this reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits? It was a cumbersome phrase. Rincewind tried to get his tongue around the thick syllables that were the word in Twoflower's own language.

What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement by Vladimir Lenin (Wikipedia)

Links, Articles, and Things

If Books Could Kill - Freakonomics

Fear the Boom and Bust: Keynes vs. Hayek (YouTube)

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek - Economics Rap Battle Round Two

Peter Singer (Wikipedia)

Unspeakable Conversations: Harriet McBryde Johnson on debating Peter Singer

“He insists he doesn't want to kill me. He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was.”

If Books Could Kill - Rich Dad Poor Dad

Saltwater and freshwater economics (Wikipedia)

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (Wikipedia)

Another normal day of mining in Africa (Reddit)

Belt and Road Initiative (Wikipedia)

Report exposes solar panel industry Uyghur forced labour links

Ouija (Wikipedia)

Chinchilla (Wikipedia)

Social media is doomed to die (The Verge)

Reddit: Antiwork

Reddit: Late Stage Capitalism

25 Economics books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

Get Good with Money: Ten Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole by Tiffany Aliche

Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism, and the Need for Collective Change by Aja Barber

The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans—And How We Can Fix It by Dorothy A. Brown

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World by Ha-Joon Chang

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk by Satyajit Das

The Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the Land, Rebuilding the Economy by Grand Chief Ronald Derrickson and Arthur Manuel

Wolf Hustle: A Black Woman on Wall Street by Cin Fabré

Build the Damn Thing: How to Start a Successful Business If You're Not a Rich White Guy by Kathryn Finney

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas

Indigenomics: Taking a Seat at the Economic Table by Carol Anne Hilton

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex edited by Incite! Women of Colour Against Violence

Upholding Indigenous Economic Relationships: Nehiyawak Narratives by Shalene Wuttunee Jobin

How We Can Win: Race, History and Changing the Money Game That's Rigged by Kimberly Jones

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee

Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Can’t We Just Print More Money? Economics in Ten Simple Questions by Rupal Patel

The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America by Shawn D. Rochester

Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy by Kohei Saito

The Wisdom of Sustainability: Buddist Economics for the 21st Century by Sulak Sivaraksa

Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance by Edgar Villanueva

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today by Linda Yueh

Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yunus

Give us feedback!

Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read!

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Join us again on Tuesday, May 16th we’ll be talking about some old genres we’ve covered and whether we’d read them again.

Then on Tuesday, June 6th we’ll be discussing the genre of Fantasy!

#economics #episodes #nonfiction

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ventblogtobedeleted · 2 years

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i don't think i would choose to be what i am. not because i don't love myself- i do. i do. i have found much love, and much wonder in the world through indulging myself as an artist. i never chose to be an artist, i never chose to be queer, i never chose to be neurodivergent. but. and there's that but. if you explained to me how much harder these things would make my life for me, I would choose to be something else. it is not that i don't love my fellow artists. that i don't love my fellow queers.

but,

i am not the kind of queer that is marketable, that is fun, that is easy to connect to. i am not the kind of queer you can make happy romantic stories about. i am not the kind of queer that is universally embraced. i understand, on some level, that none of us feel "queer enough". i still don't know how to survive a world while being aromantic and asexual. i don't know how to exist in a space where having my boundaries means having no one.

but,

i adore art, but artists are not valued. i am not born to a system that makes space to allow artists to thrive. ai generative art is progressing fast- ive seen the images, what untrained people can make with them. as soon as people have easy access to an end product, they will move on from caring about artists. do i advocate for the technology to be limited? how do i beg the universe to be supported? i have no other skills. do artists deserve to eat? but their answer is simple. why don't you just choose something else to be?

i am a valuable human being outside what is rewarded by our culture. i love myself outside what is valued by capitalism. you hear it often- neurodivergent people, queer people, and artists have inherent and intrinsic value, because we are human. but what is value? is it having a future? is it access to insurance and to therapy? describe being valued to me in a way that is synonymous with myself.

my life is not the worst. i am from an upper middle class family. i am able to live off of family members who were doing well before the world shut down. i am white. i do not require to spend thousands of dollars on my body in order to feel at home. but then i think to myself, if this is how it feels to have my amount of support, then how awful is it to be someone else? how terrible is it to be less advantaged? more desperate?

i don't know. i don't know.

a lot of this sounds like im angry at the world. at a vaguely defined structure. late stage capitalism is an easy catch all for the woes of our culture, and im still uncertain im using the word right. is this another online echo chamber? am i angry? is this what anger is supposed to feel like? maybe anger would be healthier than whatever doomerism gloom has seized me. i can't think of a future. i can't find a future for myself. realistically, i understand this is an issue of mental health, but i can't find the words to disprove any of it, either.

id like to go to bed now.

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pandoratheprocrasticreator · 3 years

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I listened to the TAZ Grad finale!

Fellas is it gay to become imbued with the essence of the sea after influence from your water genasi teammate, pester said teammate afterwards to name a boat after you, and sail away with them into the sunset to run a cruise line scam and become morally righteous pirates?

Ive been looking at people’s reactions on the finale and yeah I loved the chaos magic parts! The whole issue with the mishandling of D&D mechanics was never really a problem with me, although I know some people feel more strongly about that than I do.

Personally, I’ve always listened to TAZ for the story and not the actual D&D so I never really took issue with any of the DM-ing mistakes Travis did. Parts of the actual story had problems (the centaurs, Ranier, other points where Travis tried to be inclusive but implemented it where it wasn’t relevant) but overall I think the enjoyable parts far outweighed the bad.

And the McElroys in general are funny as hell so even though Grad wasn’t as profound as Balance or as sad as Amnesty I still enjoyed it a lot! I would probably put Grad above Amnesty but below Balance, but of course Balance holds a special place in my heart.

A problem people had with the finale that I didn’t notice while listening was that of all their talk of “destroying capitalism,” the trio settled down to comply with capitalist society at the end. And while I do agree that the “this system is bad but let’s slowly make change from within” message has been done to death, I don’t think that the ending was necessarily performative and disingenuous on the McElroy’s part.

The first point is that even though the trio decided to participate in Nua’s society in stereotypically “exploitative” careers, (particularly in Fitzroy and Firbolg/Gary’s case) they did so explicitly to keep people from being exploited by the system. Not to mention their paths fit their character arcs pretty well.

Fitzroy’s “who will protect the weak from the strong” speech doesn’t indicate a sleazy lawyer willing to exploit the law to make a quick buck. One person described him as one of those pro-bono lawyers and I agree with that comparison. Fitzroy is a morally good person at his core, and he initially thought the hero society would help him do good, and after becoming disillusioned with hero society, he decided to carve out his own system to allow him to do good, both by being a lawyer and by being a pirate that only attacks rich assholes. (I really like that he clarified he would only attack rich assholes my chaotic good lawyer boi <3)

Firbolg’s whole character arc of being conscientious of resources to help the community instead of hoarding things to himself, in my opinion, culminates neatly with his decision of becoming a financial advisor. He has learned that both the “share all your resources without regard for the future” ideals of the Firlbolg and the “hoard all your resources for your own benefit” ideal of Nua’s society are both flawed extremes, and has dedicated his career to helping communities find a balance between the two.

Argo’s cruise seems more of a small business to me than a capitalistic venture, but I have never taken an econ class in my life so I digress. His character arc was about finding something to live for other than the past and I think it’s a good conclusion to his arc that he commemorates his mother and friends with the cruise line but still seeks out his own future outside of that by becoming a pirate. His original plan was to go with the establishment and work with one of the most powerful heroes in the world until he gets revenge, so it’s nice to see him grow to find his own self sustaining outside of the establishment.

The second point is that TAZ Grad was never about destroying capitalism. That was a joke that Travis laid the foundation to, but it was the players who made that joke and rolled with it. Tumblr user @fitzroythecreator wrote a really good analysis of how the main theme of Grad was self reliance which I agree with. While that is one of the main themes, I will be focusing on the theme of capitalism that a lot of people tend to focus on.

The characters’ goal was to destroy the HOG, which was an allegory for how organizations function under capitalism, but never a direct parallel with capitalism as an ideology or functional system itself.

When they first joked about “ending capitalism” by blowing up the HOG I was concerned because that’s not how anything works. The HOG was just one cog (heh) in the capitalist machine that was Nua’s society, and while destroying it would cause significant damage and change, it wouldn’t immediately shift everyone’s worldviews to discard their capitalist society as a whole. If the boys carried out the mission and all of a sudden the whole world was fixed, it would be even more disingenuous to present a utopian solution to a pressing, real world problem that simply cannot be solved this way.

I’m glad that they didn’t end capitalism. Social issues like this can never realistically be resolved by three spunky heroes on an adventure. You would need action from an entire population. Often violent action. There were already issues with too many NPCs in the spotlight so describing and entire population’s uprising would have exacerbated the problems even more. As four white men, the McElroys neither had the answers for how to end capitalism, nor would their medium of a D&D podcast have allowed them to present them effectively.

From my perspective, the way they would have actually ended capitalism was to go to war like Chaos and Order wanted. In this case, the entire social order and way of life for Nua would have been overturned. The main characters, Fitzroy most vocally, reject this option because of the human toll (or elves, or dwarves...whatever the term for that is for D&D races). Instead, they disturb the system to expose its flaws and let society recognize said flaws in the background. (Again, they couldn’t focus too much on it as it would take away from focus on the main characters.) Then, they choose to find their own place in the system and fix it from within.

I’m not surprised that the McElroys would pick the “change the flawed system from within” route over the “use continuous and possibly violent action to force rapid social change” route in the end. While the second stance could work if written correctly, there’s a lot more room for the message conveyed to be catastrophically bad if the writing doesn’t work. I’m personally glad that the McElroys, who don’t have a solution, presented the tamer first take instead of trying to give a solution with the second take and failing spectacularly.

TAZ: Grad was social commentary on the problems of late stage capitalistic society, but it never tries to present a clear answer on how to end this society. Rather, it recognizes that this is a problem that can’t be solved by one small group of people. It presents several possible solutions to navigate this society to bring yourself happiness within this soul crushing system while slowly changing the attitude of the society. After all, if everyone quietly changed societal attitudes for the better, then perhaps one day the population will be united enough to bring about the drastic social change that we all hope for.

#taz: graduation #taz grad #fitzroy maplecourt #argo keene #taz firbolg #SHUT UP JESSICA #this is the kind of analysis i do with media when im bored #except none of my friends that i share my bad takes with know about taz grad so #its your problem now

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mr-entj · 5 years

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Hey Mr. ENTJ, I hope you and the INTJ are well! big fan of your blog and I wanted to ask that in your career, can you give an idea of each MBTI type's career jump patterns or reasonings? For example do you see a pattern that certain types are more sure about what they want to do before other types or so on and so forth? Thank you

Combined with the following ask:

As a manager have you seen that certain MBTI types job hob or career change in a certain way or has it been random?

Related answers:

MBTI and career choice

Can you talk about MBTI types in the professional world and patterns or data you’ve noticed based on which areas those times have gravitated towards?

The higher the Se (extraverted sensing), the more frequent the career jumps. The higher the Si (introverted sensing), the less frequent the career jumps. Enneagram comes heavily into play here. In order from most to least career movement, including their actual MBTI types:

SP (ESTP > ESFP > ISTP > ISFP)

NJ (ENTJ > ENFJ > INTJ > INFJ) and NP (ENFP > ENTP > INTP > INFP)

SJ (ESTJ > ESFJ > ISTJ > ISFJ)

For SPs, they jump around a lot early in their careers with a tendency to prioritize one-off jobs and temporary roles before settling down into something that they can build into a cohesive career.

ESTP and ESFP job hopping is due to a mix of the following factors: 1) uncertainty of what they want to do long-term 2) impatience with career progression 3) low tolerance for bad managers and the tendency to tell said bad managers to fuck off. They’re generally stronger in job interviews (and less intimidated by them) so it offers more opportunities for them to move around.

ISTP and ISFP job hopping has similar factors but #3 is less applicable. The sense I’ve gotten from ISxPs in my life is that they prioritize other things beyond their careers and so they focus their energy there. Their high Se makes them more practical and realistic than their NP cousins (who may want to marry their passions and interests with career) so a job can be just a job to generate income for ISxPs, but their true interests reside elsewhere.

For NJs, similar patterns between the extraverts and introverts, but more stability because they play a long-term game where they know that getting to Z requires suffering through A,B,C, etc. NTJs tend to be more certain about what they want to do before the other types but they can experience a late stage career pivot to do something else once the initial goals are achieved. NFJs tend to be less certain about what they want to do at first but once they figure it out they stick to it much longer.

ENTJs will ditch a team ASAP if they find a better role that advances their careers, ENFJs will do exactly the same but they tend to manage the optics of their exits more carefully to preserve social capital due to their enneagram types.

INTJs and INFJs are either the first to leave or the last to leave, they can typically see when a ship is about to sink before everyone else but they can procrastinate leaving a company because job hunting is a nightmare. Job hunting is a nightmare for everyone but it’s especially a nightmare for introverts.

For NPs, it’s a toss-up between 1) landing the exact role in a company they want and staying forever or 2) job hopping and banging their heads against the wall trying to break into their dream career while simultaneously refusing to do what’s necessary to successfully break into their dream career because they don’t want to do it. NPs tend to be career late bloomers.

ENFPs and INFPs have low tolerance for working at a company that doesn’t align with their values or interests but they’ll stay a long time if they love what they do, even if it’s low paying, and they’ll do it better than everyone else.

ENTPs and INTPs tend to oscillate back and forth between: 1) “I want to be my own boss and do my own thing” 2) “Being my own boss is really freaking hard so let me work for someone” and 3) “Do I really need to work at all if I don’t spend a lot of money? Work sucks.” Once they grow out of this phase and finally settle down on what they want to do they’re consumed with it and then eventually become experts.

For SJs, the quote “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t” applies here and they have a high tolerance for sticking it out in sub-optimal work environments especially if they have seniority in the organization.

ISTJs and ISFJs tend to stay longer in one place, accumulate a library of organizational knowledge, and establish seniority so they benefit from all the perks associated with it (better work schedules, more flexibility, stronger relationships with leadership, more institutional knowledge, etc.).

They tend to be highly stable and highly competent so SJs leaving a company typically means that leadership fucked up on such a gargantuan scale they managed to drive out their most loyal people. A mass exodus of SJs out of an organization is one of the biggest red flags to not join that company.

#mbti #myers briggs #career #estj #istj #entj #intj #entp #intp #enfp #infp #esfp #isfp #estp #istp #esfj #isfj #infj #enfj #typology #mbtiq #mine #faq

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Hi, I'm sorry if I bother. English is not my first language, and I hope to be clear. I read that you are a historian. Here, in Mexico, I was studying history, but I discovered that after bachelor's degree, you need at least a master's degree in order to get a job that allows to live. Other factors aside, that put me off quite a bite. I wanted to ask you how that works in your country, if there are job opportunities and things like that. Thank you so much!

First off, you’re not a bother at all, your English is just fine, and I’m happy to help!

As for your questions: ..... ahaha, oof. Up front, I will say that I’ll try to be both supportive and realistic here, since I obviously feel strongly that we need more historians, I myself am a historian, and I don’t want anyone to base their decision solely on what one person on the internet tells them. There are a lot of factors for you to consider, and this is intended to just give you my perspective on how I’ve experienced them. I have answered several other asks about my academic research and career trajectory (such as it presently is....) in my school stuff tag, which you might like to consult to see what else people have asked/I have answered. But I do want to be honest with you about what you might expect, especially in the COVID world, which has turned an already-grim academic job market into... well, one thing at a time. Let’s get started!

I am American, or at least my passport says I am, and I have either studied, done research, or taught (sometimes all three) in the US, the UK, and Europe. I did my PhD at a fairly prestigious large research university in the UK, and I’m currently applying for jobs in that same general sphere (the US and the Anglophone academic world). That, therefore, is the experience that I’m speaking to, though I can imagine there are some things that are more or less the same across the world. Obviously the US is a screaming hellfire nuclear waste dump right now, teetering on the brink of permanent fascism, so.... that’s a cheerful and promising prospect for long-term academic employment in this country, by which I mean it terrifies me. Also, as I have ranted about on many occasions before, the humanities in general have been so systematically, deliberately, and extensively devalued by late-stage capitalism as not being monetarily “worthwhile” that it’s no accident that there aren’t many jobs. This isn’t to say there aren’t ANY, but.... yeah. Nobody wants to become a historian because they think they’re going to get rich for it. They’ll be lucky to get a stable job. My perusal of job boards has all been “online part time adjunct instructor!” which is frankly, brutally depressing. Everything is gig-economy, ad-hoc, temporary-term disposable labor, which is devaluing and destabilizing an entire generation of eager young academics who really WOULD like to be gainfully employed in education and just can’t be, and.... oy.

Ugh. Anyway. I promised I was going to be supportive, so we won’t get too far into the weeds of my existential despair right now. In short: yes, to teach college/university, and possibly the better kind of high school, you will need at least one graduate degree in history, and there’s no getting around that. If you want to do something history-adjacent but not academia, that requirement might be changed. There are plenty of other careers that would value a history degree and the critical thinking, reading, analytical, and big-picture skills that it teaches, assuming that any of us have jobs in the future. You may want to consider if you have enough passion for the subject to do multiple rigorous (and often expensive) advanced degrees in history; if you don’t want to do a master’s, that might be a sign that you like history as a hobby, but don’t want to commit to it professionally. And that is completely fine! it doesn’t make you a failure or mean that you’re any lesser as a person, and if you study history up to the bachelor level and decide that you don’t want to do it anymore, it’s better to know that now than before you’re stuck sinking years of money and effort into something that burns you out and isn’t where you want to be.

I have been honest about the fact of how hard a PhD is (the hardest thing I’ve done in my life) and how dispiriting the post-degree job market is (I realize I have the especial bad fortune to be job-hunting in the plague world, but hooo boy). The basic standard is that you never hear back from anybody at all. Sometimes they send a polite form-letter “your application will not be progressing to the next stage we wish you the best” rejection, but the culture has basically become that they just straight-up ignore you, and I hate it. It’s like screaming into the void over and over. Applications are often multiple pieces of labor-intensive work (CV, cover letters, teaching statement, research proposals, previous courses, contacting people to write letters of reference for you) and to constantly do that and get.... absolutely nothing in return is, again, complete trash on your mental health. Even if you recognize that it’s not really about you and there are a ton of people going through the same experience, it’s not fun. I’m about to submit yet another application, 18 months or so after I first started job hunting, and I have yet to receive even a single request for an interview. Imma be real with you chief: It sucks. You run through the whole “I’m clearly a fraud/an idiot/wildly unqualified compared to everyone else/etc” impostor syndrome highlight reel. And you just kind of have to deal with it, suck it up buttercup, and trudge your ass back to the job board anyway.

Then again: no matter how nihilistic that sounds: there are some jobs, and people do get them. There aren’t many of them, and the competition is therefore intense; every humanities/history postdoc or entry-level professorship opening will probably have a good 50-75 applicants at least, and that’s on the very low end for the more prestigious schemes. My dear @oldshrewsburyian, however, has gone through the exact same grind with early-career researcher hell and temporary visiting jobs, and she did in fact just land a tenure-track position earlier this year, which is wonderful and well-deserved. So: It can happen! I know people who have gotten real academic jobs, in other words! There is hope for the rest of us! Theoretically!

Basically, you’ll need to decide what your appetite is for future study, what kind of positions you might like to apply for and where, what your plan is if that doesn’t work out, if you would be happy doing something history-related but outside academia, if you’re willing to accept that we may not know for several years what the post-COVID job situation is, and all the other major uncertainties right now. I really wish I could give you clarity on these things, but unfortunately, I don’t know myself. Nobody does. So I mean this from the bottom of my heart: Good luck. Hang in there. Let’s hope things get better soon, or at least eventually. Until then, Ave Imperator, etcetera.

#history #school stuff #anonymous #ask

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alexswak · 5 years

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Notes on Animation Quality in Anime

I had a rare chance in 2017 to meet Hiromi Matsushita, one of Minky Momo’s most prominent animators. Matsushita is still active in the industry, and when I entered the room he was focused on drawing a scene, which he finished in around 10 minutes. I think he didn't lose his skills yet. I asked him for a drawing, of Momo of course, a request he found too hard even with the help of an image of Momo from google. More than 10 minutes passed, a lot of drawing and redrawing on the same paper, he handed me the illustration saying: “I’m sorry, this isn’t the real Momo.”

Now, I’m not saying he couldn’t draw her correctly because he got used to the radically different anime drawings of today, it may be because he just forgot how to draw Momo, or any other reason for all I know. Whatever the reason was, anime drawings and character designs had changed radically, evolved if you will, through recent Japanese animation history. The common answer to the reason behind this change always seemed funny to me, which is “because technology.” It’s not enough to just deny this claim, so I’d like to elaborate more on why and how anime drawings change over time. This is obviously a big topic, so what I’ll say here would be more of my (personal) perspective on the matter. Take it however you like.

I should start with defining what I mean with drawings. I’m not talking here about coloring, effects or the like, I mean the bare drawings themselves. This is literally the key drawings (frames), and to a lesser degree the in-betweens. Character designs are their own thing as well. This means that advancements in image quality and related technologies don’t count, since remastering a movie from the ‘70s in HD doesn’t mean the drawings themselves changed at all, forget about improved. Another point is the difference between the drawings on their own and how they move, i.e. the difference between animating and drawing, still there’s a direct influence between these two I’d like to talk about as well.

Sometimes, I feel like people look at the animation industry the same way they look at the gaming industry in this regard, not helped by the fact that mainstream high-budget animation productions in the US adopted the same technology for animating (CG). As for the Japanese industry though, it’s and has always been the pencil and paper. I’m not denying all the technological advancements that happened, but they weren’t fundamental changes that improved the quality of a drawing on paper. Even then, there were mostly only two new major technologies used introduced in anime production in the last decade: Digital coloring in the late ‘90s, and Xerography in the late ‘60s.

Xerography is basically a technique to copy drawings from normal paper to cels for coloring. Cels obviously can’t be drawn on due to their fragile nature, I believe. I rarely saw anyone talk about this technology before (in anime) so I’ll try to do a simple and short introduction. It was first introduced to Japanese companies through Disney’s Delmants 101, which caught the attention of Toei Douga (Toei Animation now). Toei took the device and modified it, most importantly adding an extra camera used for tracking perspective. Mainly to make drawings larger/smaller as they moved towards/away from the horizon. This device first saw use in Toei’s “Ken and Wolves” TV show early ‘60s. It wasn’t cheap nor easy, so Toei sought a better alternative, one of which was a device called “Trace Machine - ツレースマシン”, first used in “Sasuke” late ‘60s. It’s hard for me to point out how these two devices differed, but one advantage of the Trace Machine was conveying the original delicacy and feeling of the traced drawings better, something Disney’s machine didn’t manage to do quite well. Sasuke was praised for capturing the original soul of the manga, and it wasn’t Sasuke alone, Gekiga adaptations saw a rise in that era due to this machine making capturing the roughness of Gekiga drawings possible. Just look at Tiger Mask or Samurai Giants. I’m not sure here, but it seems like Xerography didn’t saw mainstream use until later in the ‘80s, probably because of costs. Anyway, here’s a Japanese article for more info.

As well-known it may be, we need a quick review: Astro Boy. Toei was aiming for a “Disney of the east” status, and really the idea of periodically producing anime was so strange back then, in Japan at least. The ~2 hours movies of the time needed years, so 20 minutes weekly was just insane. And insanely different were those TV productions from the quality movies of the time. You may have heard this before, but really watching clips of Astro Boy is the only way to understand how primitive it was. Nonetheless, it succeeded in becoming the standard for TV anime, and TV anime becoming the standard for anime in general later on even for movies. All the downgrade in quality of animation and everything.

This is where most people would start bashing the TV industry, yet I have a different perspective on the matter. The huge output of the Japanese industry is the main reason it reached its current international success and behind Japan’s status as the animation capital of the world. TV in America may have had a catastrophic effect on the industry, and wasn’t without negatives in Japan, but the way TV was handled and evolved is vastly different between the two countries and in turn the two vastly different outcomes we have now. TV in Japan presented a steady stream of relatively quick and flexible projects for Japanese creators to learn and experiment, a stream that only grew further increasing the variety of works and styles, the best thing the Japanese industry is known for now. Almost all well-known Japanese creators today had their start learning and experimenting in TV.

The huge amount of works produced was pretty useful for training creators in an environment that relies on learning by doing and still, to this day, mostly lacks any effective prior training system. Look no further than Tomonori Kogawa, who had a degree in fine arts, to see the important addition for properly studying and learning art. Kogawa kinda reminds me of Akino Sugino, not that their styles are similar or anything, it’s just that both care a lot about drawings quality. Ashita no Joe, which he supervised, had probably the best drawings quality of its decade.

When it comes to animation though, Toei Douga movies followed a similar realistic approach to Disney in treating characters as if they are actors on a stage. After TV anime emerged the principle remained the same, so creators just tried to replicate life in a working condition much more limited and restrained than that of Toei. Quality improved generally after some adapting and experimenting in this new landscape, but the focus mainly wasn’t on animation quality anyway. It was stories and direction that counted, Tomino and Gundam as a prime example. Even the “anime boom”, initiated by Yamato’s movie in ‘76, didn’t change that. The real change in that regard only came after treating animation in a more free way, free from the obligation of imitating real life I mean, which was the way Yoshinori Kanada treated it.

I won’t get into Kanada and his style, sources on him are enough anyway, what we need here is just the result of his wild popularity in the early ‘80s: Changing people’s view to anime. Before Kanada came, the only industry celebrities were directors, while animators stayed unknown. Not anymore. Kanada was maybe, for a time at least, number one in the industry, and this just goes to show the change in mindset: Animation is at the forefront now. And how did Kanada animate? Pretty unrealistically.

Let me detour a bit to talk about realism first. I remember some saying that Akira ushered in the age of realism in anime, a claim certainly far from the truth. Akira is rather the pinnacle of this long going approach. Pinpointing a start isn’t of much use in this discussion anyhow, and if not for my appreciation of documenting such info I wouldn’t have brought this up at all, but my argument is that the start of realism in animation is the start of animation itself.

Yet an important question must be addressed here: What realism are we talking about? If you think of it as just replicating life, then you’re oversimplifying animation as a whole. There’s only one way for things to move in real life, restrained by physics and all, but animation offers a multitude of approaches to represent movement, ways that imply realism nonetheless. And different approaches were popular at different times throughout anime history.

Take Utsunomiya for example, who wasn’t sure about joining the industry at first. He knew how the situation was, and how hard it would be to create anime in the same or similar to Disney and early Toei movies’ style that he so admired. I personally always found it weird how people held Utsunomiya’s style for realistic. His style is maybe considered as the epitome of what Toei’s theatrical realism aspired to achieve, and the main characteristics of that are exaggerated acting and theatrical movements, which is maybe not strictly realistic or natural. Nonetheless, as for weight and spacing, there’s no denying his accuracy and fine execution. Akira, and to a lesser extent Gosenzosama-banbanzai, are the embodiment of his and Takashi Nakamura’s approach in animating.

See this scene from Utsunomiya

I don’t know much about 70’s and 60’s realism, but the main description I read at least was, again, the theatrical realism influenced by Disney. The Kanada “revolution” was more of an abnormality, since realism returned to be the dominant style of anime after a while, and its evolution didn’t stop anyway. A lot of the pioneers of the next realism wave started or matured under the Kanada age, such as Takashi Nakamura or Utsunomiya.

There are different aspects to realism as well. One of Takashi Nakamura’s famous scenes, his scene in Gold Lightan, is considered to be a very realistic depiction of debris and stones in his time at least. Others depict effects and liquids realistically and so on. I feel like this is just a matter of approach and perspective. Utsunomiya for example saw the characters as actors on a stage, Ohira saw them a lot of times as gelatinous almost liquidy shapes, but all those approaches and depictions induce a realistic feeling in a sense, and are finely (and realistically) timed and weighed in their movement.

See this scene from Takashi Nakamrua. Notice hand and mouth movement.

Of course not all animators can do realistic movement well. Miyazaki and others complained about every other animator in the early 80s’ being a Kanada knock-off, a bad knock-offs in a lot of cases, yet Kanada’s style wasn’t hard to imitate, maybe not perfectly but definitely to a “good enough” degree. Realism on the other hand is hard, even harder in shows that lack talents such as Utsunomiya or time and budget. It was obvious after Akira, or even a while before Akira, which style the industry (or the audience) will prefer. And at that point the industry took a different approach to realism, not the realistic movement approach seen in Akira and movies that established this style in Japan to begin with, but an approach that gives the feel of realism in different ways, first being character designs and increasing the lines and details in drawings generally.

If we go back to the ‘60s and some of the ‘70s we can see many shows with designs rich in lines or styles close to realism, but it was mainly the exception and didn’t represent the main trend, some of which being caused by things like Gekiga or personal styles such as Sugino’s or Osamu Dezaki’s. Late ‘70s and early ‘80s mainly had simplistic designs which really helped Kanada’s style grow and spread. Simplicity contradicts realism by nature, and adding more lines or details to a drawing makes it harder to draw/animate. Straightforward, and this is just what happened after the demise of Kanada’s style, more realistic designs that barely move. Just look at any OVA from that period and compare it to any OVA from the Kanada wave. Amazing what 5 years could do!

Vampire Sensou in 1990. Interesting character designs, not much movement though.

Difficulty of drawing isn’t the sole problem here. Kanada’s style, despite its energetic nature, doesn’t require a lot of frames, actually the low number of frames is one of its strong characteristics. It’s a style born from the constraints of the Japanese industry to begin with, and if you think about it probably no other industry would have given born to such a style but the Japanese one. While you need a substantial number of frames to achieve a convincingly real movement. Maybe I’m over exaggerating here, but the Japanese TV industry tried two decades to achieve realism in an environment not suited for it and found Kanada’s style that embodied the sole of this industry, just to abandon it for an unconvincing realism.

Kanada’s OVA “Birth” in 1984 is probably the important turning point. Maybe you could say that the story of OVAs is also the story of Japanese anime, as OVAs reflected the state of the industry in general in each period. Maybe because OVAs were the direct way to reach the audience without the need for a TV channel or a distributor or even a high budget, in turn being a demonstration of the audience’s preference. It was definitely the free expression window for creators, young independent ones especially, free from any obligations for any big company. Obviously big companies were there, even more so in the late ‘80s after OVAs matured, but all in all it was the will of the creators that shined through. OVAs also played a decisive role in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when anime (TV especially) was facing a hard time due to different reason beyond the scope of this article. This led to OVAs influencing the development of the industry in interesting ways, hard to imagine if you look at the state of OVAs now.

The Japanese industry relied heavily on TV since pretty early on, so any problem facing TV anime is a problem for the industry as a whole. Middle/Late ‘80s wasn’t the best time for TV, a long story with multiple causes such as the change in demographics and emergence of video games, but our concern here is the paradigm shift that happened. For the most part and up to that point anime revenue came from games or manga or something else, a separate product. Not the show itself, meaning that its quality wasn’t a concern as long as it supported the primary product well. This obviously didn’t hold Ichiro Itano back from doing his wonderful circus scenes, or Tomino from executing his different depiction of mecha anime, but those again were creative acts on the personal level not the project as a whole, and in the end it wasn’t Tomino’s direction and vision that saved Gundam, it was the Gunpla.

It’s a fine system as long as the audience keeps on buying your primary product, something a lot of companies struggled with later on, reaching the OVA system where you just sell the show itself rather than a separate product. A similar system to movies, but simpler, safer and with less parties involved. We take internet for granted today, but in the ‘80s OVAs were the only choice for creators wanting to self-publish something weird or radically different, something that obviously won’t be backed by big companies.

Anyway, selling the show itself is completely different approach with completely different focus points. Quality comes first now, and first of all is drawings and animation quality, since anime is a visual medium after all. Without constraints or demands from distributors or any tight schedules, and with making less episodes, you’re able to raise quality considerably, the main selling point of OVAs. Patlabor, Gunbuster or Gundam 0083 all had high quality and were big successes, not only setting the standards for visual quality in anime, but also showing how important visual quality in anime is, both for companies and audiences. After this model matured, attempts to replicate this success in TV anime started, where the potential is much bigger due to the wider reach, which led to the contemporary late-night model we have now, maybe the most successful anime model till quite recently. Evangelion is considered to have played an active role in establishing this model, and in increasing visual quality in TV anime generally, and Ryusuke Hikawa claims that what he calls the “Quality Revolution” in the anime industry started in the ‘90s. I also think that Evangelion played no small part in establishing the production committee system we have now in every show, but I’m not quite sure.

Before I end this I want to link two nice resources for further reading. The mecha history research and an article that came in Akira’s Animation Archive, both by Ryusuke Hikawa.

#anime #anime history #animation #Yoshinori Kanada #Satoru Utsunomiya #Takashi Nakamura #Akira #Realism

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dokkaebiking · 4 years

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I Am But a Humble Cryptid...

...but I was actually tagged to do a thing, and I’m very happy to have a pleasant distraction from all the bullshit that’s happening in the world/my life right now ♥

Tagged by: @joeys-piano rules: answer 30 questions and tag however many blogs you want!

name: Tavis (still haven’t been able to afford to make it my legal name, but it’s my name whether legal documents think so or not D:< Feel free to call me Tav!)

gender: Cryptid. No but really, what the fuck even is gender anymore? I’m transgender, in the nonbinary department, but it’s easier to just tell people I’m a man so I go with that as a default. More in the agender territory though, with masucline leanings, and my pronouns are he/him and they/them. Either or work.

star sign: Taurus, and I’m very much like my star sign. Just wants peace and comfort, sorta stubborn (over dumb things, usually), likes food, and I’m a big guy so I intimidate people by just existing. I could be staring into space and freak someone out, it’s weird...

height: 5′11″, or 180 cm. Does not help my case of “intimidating by doing absolutely nothing”, let me tell you...I’ve learned to capitalize on it, though, and work security these days ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

time: 6:36pm mountain time, currently.

birthday: April 22, 1989. I...am old (ᓀ ᓀ)

favorite band: Not sure I have one, really? The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, they’re pretty good. I’ll forever love Evanescence, fight me. And, hmmm, I dunno, Panic! At the Disco? That still counts as a band, right? Oh! Breaking Benjamin is amazing. Really, I tend to just like single albums, or a song or two, so bands in general aren’t favorites of mine, but I suppose the ones I mentioned are ones I’m fond of, at least.

favorite solo artists: GACKT, Daughtry, and, I dunno, the Me of several years ago, before I started T injections, who could hit those high notes that my cracking voice no longer can achieve ☆⌒(ゝ。∂)

last movie: GIVEN The Movie. WATCH IT. IT WAS SO GOOD. @ladyxxdaydream knows what I’m talking about!

when did I create this blog: 2013? Or maybe 2012? Around that time.

what i post: Shit like this, where I got tagged lmao. Also art and fanfic, but none of my work would really be considered popular in any of the fandoms I contribute to, so I don’t really see my work as even ‘posts’, and more like me just chucking things I occasionally make into the void.

last thing i googled: Fujiwara Keiji—cause I was watching “Devil and Realist” and heard his voice, and then got hit with emotions cause I had the faint recollection that something had happened to him, googled him, and yup I was reminded that he died last year. Talk about a punch to the gut, remembering that out of the blue (ಥ﹏ಥ)

other blogs: I technically don’t have any other blogs, but I’m a mod for @one-ace-man

do I get asks?: Very rarely, but when I do it’s usually from a mutual whom I love and cherish them for humoring my want to fill out ask memes.

why I chose my url: A billion years ago I wanted to spite the antis in the OPM fandom who had it out for the Asexual fans in the fandom, so I took “Caped Baldy” and made it into “Caped Ace”, just to really rub it in. And basically say, “FUCK (ﾉಥ益ಥ)ﾉ OFF”. I also really loved superheroes like Batman and such at the time (still do, but not as much), so it worked on another level for me. Now, neither of these things are really my focuses, but while I’ve been considering a name change for awhile, for the time being it sure has stuck around ☆～('▽^人)

following: 425

number of followers: 829, and hoping most of those are real people and not bots.

instruments: The only thing I ever got any training on, before life flipped me the bird and told me “fuck you, you don’t have the time or money to learn an instrument”, was the keyboard/piano. Always wanted to learn cello and/or violin, but again, no money for that. Drums was something I was very interested in and took a percussion class during middle school, but AGAIN, could never afford official lessons or the equipment so, right alongside everything else, I just never learned.

what am i wearing: Oversized pink hoodie that says “I’M TIRED” on it, surrounded by roses (it’s a mood, okay), and khaki joggers that make me look like a hobo but are at least comfortable.

dream job: An overnight security position in a cemetery/graveyard. Legit. Sign me the fuck up for that—I wanna walk patrol a dark, empty area that’s spooky as hell, and there’s no one alive around me that I’ll have to perform customer service to.

dream trip: I’ve wanted to go to Japan for a billions years, but also Ireland would be amazing, and any place with amazing temples/historical sites I could see and/or explore respectfully.

favorite foods: I love all kinds of curry. Japanese, Indian, Thai—if it’s curry I love it and will eat the fuck outta it. This one Thai place in Hillcrest (San Diego, CA) had the spiciest and most delicious curry, and they made these things called Curry Puffs, which I would sell a kidney right now for.

favorite song: This is an impossible question to answer ლ(ಠ_ಠ ლ)

nationality: Caucasian. White as fuck. Mayonnaise with a side of sour cream.

last book I read: If light/webnovels count, then Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint. I haven’t finished it yet, I’m milking it for as long as I can’t because I don’t want it to end, but god damn it’s so good...no wonder it’s loved by so many people in and outside Korea ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡ Might re-read TCF for the third time, but the KR fandom’s shenanigans towards international fans on twitter lately has made me take a step back from TCF for the time being. SMPU (What Happens When the Second Male Lead Powers Up) is very quickly becoming a favorite of mine, even if the only way I can read it right now is on Ridibooks using Google Translate, which is...not ideal, but it’s better than nothing!

top 3 fictional universes I would like to live in: Pokemon for sure. The Cat Returns (oh to live as a cat in the cat kingdom, and dance at the cat ball with the Baron, voiced by Cary Elwes (*˘︶˘*).｡.:*♡). And any of those crazy universes that KR webnovels exist in, be it like SMPU’s world that’s from a romance novel, or Solo Leveling, which is the whacky ‘life became like a dungeon crawler game’ world. I might die in .002 seconds if I suddenly had game stats and monsters were everywhere, but it’s better than living in late-stage capitalism any day.

Tagging: @ladyxxdaydream @liveandletrain @guardiandae @jojoeatsflan @synasays and anyone else who wants to do it!

#ask meme #tagged #tav babbles #been awhile since I've done one of these #but I saw joey tag me and I go AN URGE

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egle0702 · 7 years

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[TRANS] Singles May 2017 Taecyeon Article

If you head north from the centre of the Cuban capital, Havana, you’ll reach a beach. It’s Malecon, called the blue heart of Havana. This place showcases the current Cuba the best. In between buildings that remind you of Europe, and especially Spain, stand old cars painted in pastel colours, and on the other side of the breakwater tall hotel buildings are rising.

“This is Cuba, over there’s a tourist attraction, and if you cross the sea, you’ll get to the United States, right?” Taecyeon says taking a look around as he walks down a coastal road spreading along the seaside. “It’s a place where time runs slowly. You could say the time has stopped here.”

However, his time is running fast relentlessly. He appears in dramas, movies, and of course, variety shows; and he stands on stage at 2PM concerts. In fact, he shot two dramas and one movie last year. “The House of the Disappeared,” which was released recently, was filmed in the midst of his busy schedule last year.

“The beginning was senior Kim Yunjin who starred in the movie together with me. The structure of a film she chooses is strong. After all, they say you watch Kim Yunjin because you trust her. I’ve always been her fan, so the moment we received the offer, I thought I had to do it.”

Actually, he chooses films and dramas quite carefully. He reads a scenario several times and substitutes himself with all sorts of characters.

“I thought “as expected” as I received the script and read it. I had a great time reading it. I was concerned that I would have to play a priest who had a rather heavy feeling to him, as opposed to my usual character, but I got confident as I talked with the director Lim Daewoong.”

His choice was right. The acting performance in The House of the Disappeared, and of course the film itself, drew praise even before the premiere. Just as he thought. Of course, he learned a lot as he worked with Kim Yunjin.

“Her concentration on acting is amazing. We would talk leisurely before the shooting about this and that, but once the camera starts rolling she turns into another person. I also got a lot of advice. What I should pay attention to depending on the flow of the movie, what details should change in the middle of acting, and so on. I also listened to a lot of stories about life behind camera.”

Taecyeon also says that Kim Yunjin recommended him to venture into the Hollywood market. But there is another mountain he has to climb right now. It’s the military service.

“The enlistment date hasn’t been decided yet. So it is rather hard to plan other filming or music activities. But I don’t regret my decision to enlist. I’m a bit baffled that the public is so interested in this obvious decision.”

However, he isn’t aimlessly waiting for the enlistment date. It seems that he will be busy until the very last day when he leaves for the training grounds. Ok Taecyeon has announced about new drama plans just recently.

“It’s a lot better to be busy,” Ok Taecyeon says laughing. He’s not used to resting. He says he hasn’t had a chance to rest for a long while ever since his debut with 2PM. Even if he has 3 days off, on the last day he goes through conflicting emotions thinking “I must enjoy the last minutes of my rest,” but then again he feels like “Ah, I want to work ASAP,” and it was the same in Cuba. Even as he was walking down the coastal road in Malecon, he kept on thinking about his next activities after the movie premiere.

“When I have a day off, I usually spend it at home. You know, if you stay at home all the time, you get itchy. If that happens, I take the car and drive to Eurwangni in Incheon or Wolmi Island.”

It’s not because he would be a workaholic. On the contrary, he has a free working style.

“Up until quite recently, I used to think there was a goal out there, and for starters, just run! To the point I wasn’t aware of what was happening next to me. Now I am a lot more flexible. It’s because I realised you can’t reach your goals immediately just because you hurry towards them. I just think “That goal is quite far. I can just go towards it slowly enjoying the process.”

It seems that while he is a realist, at the same time he is also dreaming of something really big, something that others cannot imagine.

Ok Taecyeon does not say that it is burdensome to stand in front of the camera alone and act without other 2PM members.

“I feel strong responsibility for acting, where you have to solve everything yourself. But I don’t consider it a burden. The responsibility you feel whenever you work on something makes you think that you want to do better than before. I try to think of the positive sides first. After all, the spotlight that comes through acting is solely mine (laughs). You could say there’s a thrill of walking a tightrope there.”

When you speak with him, you realise he has a special talent of finding hidden realities. And you get to think that perhaps it was the thing that created the “Ok-bingu” character that is full of awkward charm. What’s more, he even says this:

“My friends from high school don’t think I’m a celebrity. And it’s not because we’re friends. It’s because I’m easy-going and it’s not that hard to prank me.”

It seems he would have the same tendencies in his love life, too. Another person charms him when he notices in them something he couldn’t find in himself.

“It’s important to understand each other well and have similar preferences, but I do find it charming, when the other person has something I don’t. For example, a flexible body. I am extremely stiff. It’s like, mismatch within the harmony (laughs)?”

He says that he’s been making a list of his ideal types and the qualities of his future spouse for a very long time.

“I’m not just looking for the opposites. In order to understand each other well, you have to have some similarities, too. Lately, I’ve added “not picky with food” to the list. I think we could be happy together if my other half could enjoy food with me, as I love to eat.”

I asked for the number of that requirement on the list.

“Number 8. I write down just trivial things, nothing great or important (laughs).”

Ok Taecyeon will probably need to make a new list, too. They say that soldiers are writing down lists of food they want to eat on their vacation. It doesn’t seem like he’s going to be an exception.

“I think that I will be able to meet all sorts of people during the 2 years of military service, so I’m definitely looking forward to that. Seniors are telling me that my expressiveness in acting will have changed a lot by the time I’ll get discharged. And they say it’ll be the same for composing and singing. So I have big expectations regarding that. I’m also very curious as to how I’m going to change within the two years.”

Also, how will Cuba, Havana, Malecon change in two years? Taecyeon smiles instead of giving an answer.

“I think I will remember this place every time I’ll read a Hemingway novel. Havana is still quiet. You can feel peace and relief even at famous places. The same applies to the restaurant where Hemingway supposedly wrote his novels while looking out into the sea. So I wish that, just like now, here the time would continue running slow.”

He turns to look at the sea and takes a sip of his mojito.

“Ah, but this really tastes bad. Is this what the original tastes like? My own mojitos would taste better! (laughs)”

Once again, Taecyeon breaks into the Ok Bingu laugh, or should we say the Cuba laugh? In his smile, you can still feel purity that hasn’t been affected by time. Just like Cuba itself.

Scans: Baque

Original photos: TUPIEMALWAYS

Kor-Eng: Egle0702

#Taecyeon #2PM #Singles #translation #2PM Taecyeon #Taecyeon Singles #Singles magazine

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keystonewarrior · 5 years

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D&D Idea The Mystery of Gers

D&D Idea The Mystery of Gers In the region of Gers lies Castle Nebar. Time are pleasant, peaceful, and prosperous. It was only a few years ago the aged Lord Cavin Nebar was slain by his mistress, Jyrydryn The Kite (rumored to be a Mar Onnen Assassin) who then abducted Lady Vera Nebar to parts unknown. Castle Nebar and the town, farms, and villages around it were left under the supervision of Carlin Usaf, the renowned knight from Ringing Rock, until the child Lord Rabert Nebar would come of age. But Sir Carlin, sound of mind and temperament and stout of voice, was older than even Lord Cavin, and while he would still wear his armor in public and bear his family sword, he was really simply a political boy scout present to keep the child under the protection of the crown. In fact, the armor isn't armor at all, but simply enchanted clothing that looks and sounds like a suit of mail and the family sword is in the hands of his eldest daughter Sir Kattlynn Usaf and the replica he carries is wooden, but enchanted to look and sound - and parry and cut - like a real sword. Young Lord Rabert was also a very capable and intelligent ruler and in little need of Sir Carlin's supervision. It's all just a show, a show that has been going strong, unchallenged, for seven years. But soon Lord Rabert will be nineteen and expected to take his father's sword and marry according to custom. Rumor has it he has already selected a bride, but nobody knows who it is. That is the mystery. From the first, Lord Rabert hired on many wise counselors. Ostensibly, they were there to let him learn the many languages of the books in the family library to teach him skill at arms and courtly manners, and literacy and numeracy, but they also brought their excellence in arts, magic, and engineering to the castle and the town. The City Wash. One of the most profound changes, the envy of every local lady and lord who have tried to copy it, was the construction of the city bath house and wash. Led by Counselor Mayta Gee, they designed it and led the construction and trained the regular staff. People, and their clothing, are washed regularly. Families take turns staffing the facility to assist the full-time laborers who mostly act as trainers and supervisors. This required a new well and also a new fountain in town. The people are clean, healthy, and happy, bringing increased politeness to neighbors and visitors and a decrease in illness and disease. The Ratters. In addition to the new water supply, the sewers have seen wide upgrades. An officially recognized group led by one of Rabert's new counselors keeps them clear of debris and vermin. Led by Counselor Victor Sprengwerk, the sewers also serve as a means of getting the castle guard to the main gate of the town in just a few minutes by means of a boat in the main line. This was a lesson drawn from Sir Carlin's defense of the City of Loor, where a surprise attack on the city gate filled the streets with panicked citizens and the main guard got caught in the streets between Loor Keep and the gates. Carlin, still a squire then, was able to raise additional forces and take them through the back alleys to capture and close the gates, then painfully eliminate the foreign threat from within Loor itself. The Raffaufs. Rubbish is collected twice daily. Anything that might be eaten by a pig is picked up by the morning crew on their rounds, sorted, then fed to the pigs. The Raffaufs also turn the compost for the town gardens. They are also the drunk watch, picking up derelicts and vagrants and dumping them in the drunk tank. This effort is led by Counselor Syrrha Coe. There are not a significant amount of orphans in the area, but those that are there are also raised by the Raffaufs. The evening rounds are mostly led by older orphans who pick up broken junk and non-food. Anything that can be recovered and rebuilt into something useful is made new again by the orphans in their workshop and sold. They also take care of the drunks, checking them for medical emergencies like ketoacidosis or frostbite, before turning them out after they have dried up and paid their fine. Drunks unable to pay have to work a day in the garden or the pig farm. The orphans also sell the compost for private use and work the city garden and take care of the pigs. Kids who show a talent are given training for trades, and all are taught basic literacy and numeracy. Conselor Coe says this free education will pay off with huge dividends later when Lord Rabert's heirs rule the land. The Biergarten. The brainchild of Counselor Zach Zheff, a public meal is held every evening at dusk. This is not a big bash, and only watered wine or clean water is offered for drink. The fare is simple, typically soup and bread or stews. Exotic foods from Zach's homeland are offered on occasion - ravioli, pasta, or pizza. Much of what is served comes from the city garden and the pig farm (much of that is sold for profit). It includes a new grove of fruit-bearing trees, still young, and a fine hall built for inclement weather. The hall and the grove are the largest single place in the town for public gatherings - even more space than market street and market square. Nobody is turned away, and there is always plenty of food. A donation is expected, but not required. Most who choose to eat there mostly donate their time, taking turns serving and cleaning. Commercial inns and taverns at first detested the idea, saying it would be bad for business, but they have all thrived. The Raffauf orphans also typically work the event for payment. Daisy Quinn works for the Nebar family. She is in her forties and replaced Daisy Sitka who returned to their order. Her specialty is communication, medicine, and history. She is able to commune with her order to access knowledge not found in her memory or in the castle library. Commercial improvements followed along with each of the civic improvements Lord Rabert initiated. The community is wealthier than anybody's memory can recall. The young lord has hosted private events at Castle Nebar for other aristocratic families. He has hosted events for the rising artisan class and visiting dignitaries. He has even hosted events for the citizenry there, served by the Raffauf orphans. In the early years, he would don common clothing and hide among the children and serve the public, getting an ear for what people really thought. He is too well known, and too tall, for that now. During harvest this year, he intends to reveal who he will ask to marry in a great public ceremony. Realistically, most of the public will be at the Biergarten or one of the other public venues, while the upper class will enjoy the festivities at the castle. Lord Rabert has not let any hint as to who he intends. Aristocrats are shocked to think their daughter might not be asked, other wealthy families and the rising artisan class are excited even to have a shot. Lately, rumors have burst that perhaps even a peasant girl could be named, since the Crown Princess in the Capital announced at High Summer Fest that such a policy does exist in the Queen's Law and the Light Blue Regiment, the Queen's Own, are even escorting Chief Justice Rhenn Kist so there won't be any challenges by aristocrats who get their feathers ruffled. Only one person other than Lord Rabert might know, and she does seem to have a twinkle in her eye whenever someone brings up the subject. Lord Rabert's most trusted adviser is also his highest ranking military commander (this does not hurt Lord Calvin's feelings, since he can still beat both of them at chess). Counselor General Noor Majeyan has a rapier wit and a rapier. She commands the castle guard (and the city guard through her lieutenant Zye Magov). She is the most skilled weapon master in the land, and she is also a singer and performer. She often takes center stage at public events, acting as emcee and bodyguard for Rabert. Her dark hair and accent mark her as a foreigner, but almost nobody minds or would say so out loud. Her lieutenant Zye Magov is a half-ogre warrior who carries a shield the size of a stout oak door and wields a six-foot sword. Who will Rabert ask to marry him? He plans to reveal his intended at midnight on the night of Harvestfest.

DM notes: Rabert is just a kid but intelligent, well educated, and well advised. He will announce an engagement, but he is only announcing that he will ask a peasant girl from the Raffauf orphanage, a girl he has known for years. But he is also announcing that she will have four years before she must answer. She doesn't know. Rabert always wears a blue cape that protects him from any piercing damage and carries two gloves in his belt. The gloves are magical and must first be put on to work - one creates a clear light blue magical shield and the other a long-sword. These are emergency use only, since General Noor is never more than a few paces away and her instincts are keen. Mayta Gee is a mid-level mage who specializes in water-based spells, She is about forty but dresses and acts like a teenager, She is also a patient practical joker and almost nobody can lie to her. Victor Sprengwerk is mid-40s and is a retired* thief. He dresses in clean comfortable clothing suitable for the work he does. The garb is highly durable and enchanted to turn black in a fraction of a second. He has uncovered every secret passage in the town and the castle and added a few more. The boat in the main sewer line is an enchanted barge, between himself, Sir Carlin. Mayta Gee, and other engineers and skilled craftsmen, the barge can carry one hundred soldiers from the barracks and arms room at the castle to the city gate in under two minutes (their best alert drill time in 79 seconds). Syrrha Coe is a mid-level mage almost 50 years old. She grew up an orphan on a farm until a mage found her, sensed her talent, and took her on as an apprentice. Turned out he was a bastard too. She jealously protects her orphans and loves to farm and work in the garden. Most of her spells are defensive and utility. Zach Zheff is a fighter with a troubled past. He always seemed to be in some kind of trouble with somebody. He is about forty and was long acquainted with Mayta Gee, who actually got him this gig. He loves food, he has a passion for food almost as strong as his desire to see how far he can push things before he gets in trouble. Since he eats so much, almost incessantly, he also works out all the time. The most dangerous weapon he carries anymore is a kitchen knife. Daisy Quinn is a Daisy. Like all the others she is a plain appearing female human in her forties who usually stands or sits relatively still, hardly noticed. She has no combat ability. She rarely speaks with anybody except Rabert, but is polite enough if you ask her something that has a real answer. General Noor Majeyan trained with the Ta N'Jair on Karell Ruh but is now forbidden to wear red. She is a very high level fighter (far beyond anything your party has). She is only 36 years old. In combat, if she wins initiative, she can make double attacks every round, fighting first and last. If she does not have initiative, then she moves up one spot in the sequence each round until the fighting is over or she has initiative, and then she gets double attacks. She is immune to sleep and charm type spells and any kind of mental attack. She fights with a sabre and throwing knives (she carries thirty of them) and then with a second sabre. A thrown knife that hits on a natural 20 costs the affected target all attacks that round, moves them into the last position in the initiative sequence, costs them additional damage if they try to attack and any successful attack they make also causes them the same amount of damage. When fighting with two sabres she will typically use half her attacks as parries (defending herself or a nearby ally) and the other attacks offensively. Zye Magov is a huge, hulking eight foot eight inch tall five-hundred pound half ogre of indeterminate age. He is as effective a fighter as he is ugly. His shield is six feet tall and he wields a two-handed sword one-handed without penalty. He pretty much wears his full plate armor, and helm, all the time. He polishes his armor to a bright shine and wears a bright white tabard with a small bird (a kestrel) embroidered on it. He has a very pleasant, deep voice (he sings nicely, but Noor sings better) and he will remove his helm to play a bamboo flute to accompany her singing - he plays very well. Neither he nor Noor will reveal where he trained in his youth, but where he comes from they don't mint stupid troopers. One time, he almost beat Sir Carlin in chess.

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