Well the Tobirama characterization poll for Useful (working title) is doing better than I thought, as far as like interacting goes. Ok, so while that does its thing lets talk “Tobirama's Dowry Issue”, I'm once again asking to pick the masses' collective brain to like fact check me and spot the issues I'm not seeing anymore.
Here’s the problem/solutions I'm settling on (well the multiple problems in one mathematical issue, I asked historical reddit but no dice)… it's lengthy, but maybe it'll help someone not writing Tobirama/Madara bc this stuff was a task to figure out.
Yuinou. Like a bride price + food and drink + engagement party but where the family taking whichever spouse is paying for the other family’s investment in the kid. Its almost like a retirement fund for the family whose kid left bc that kid won’t be there to help their elderly parents as much. From what I can tell, it was determined based on how much the that investment was. Now it seems like it's a salary's worth multiplied by the region's exception. (n x salary = yuinou). SO I need Madara's and Tobirama's wages. Easy peasy right? Right?
Ninja Salary. How much everyone makes in Naruto is actually impossible to figure out. Because of the many factors that go into how the economy works in Naruto, you also have the pseudo benefit to have it connected to real world currency. The whole 1 ryo -> 10 yen all well and good but if you know even a passing whiff of an idea of Japan's economic history you begin to see the issues (rant for another day). The only solid thing we have in prices is how pricey the reward for a completed mission is. (Which actually sucks as far as info goes because it implies either an ungodly inflation rate, taxation to the high heavens, and/or ninja are responsible for their own retirement pension.) If we use Itachi's numbers for missions completed that are weighted toward the middle-higher scale and his freakishly well documented amount of time he took to do said missions, dump his D into A we have about 3,300,00 ryo a year/275k a month for a well to do ninja. But what about the warring period?
Wages for our old timey boys. Our best real world example is samurai were paid a nebulous annual 200 koku by their daimyo. If we pretend that the ryo was worth a koku as intended, without the drama of Japan's banking, then he should only be making 16 ryo a month. OBVIOUSLY that's not going to be it in modern standards because the Senju and Uchiha are well off enough to feud. You can't feed and clothe an army on 160 yen a month unless inflation actually hit the Naruto world like a freight train. (Honestly, possible, those wars had to be doing something). So the Ryo had to have lost value before Kishimoto decided the 1 ryo = 10 yen thing or whatever Narutoverse's equivalent of a koku was is vastly different. But if we take the actual worth of a koku in modern terms we can guess the Naruto ryo's worth. To clarify 1 koku should be enough rice to feed a man a year, about 150 kg/330 lbs. If 1 kg of rice is 463 yen then 1 koku would be 69,450 yen aka 6,945 ryo. Make that 200 koku and you get 1,389,000 "ryo" a year, 115,750 a month. It may not be 3m. But! What we get from that is real world historical buying power... which I can use to do some typical writer BS. If a clan of 200 had an active 50 ninja, consumed 200 koku minimum then the income of the clan as a whole would be around 66,561,000 ryo a year from ninja alone. Not counting purchasing metals or cloth or livestock that can be refined by the non shinobi or already processed things and luxuries like spices and medicines. The civilians would make a generous 7k annually (some likely not making anything because they're children and some being too old to work) so all together they'd add 1,225,000 ryo which again would likely go towards food and clothing costs but it would lessen the burden on the shinobi being bread winners (even though they are), it'd keep a certain level of luxury to the main clan's living conditions.
All these factors considered it'd make 200k ryo a month for an heir, maybe 250k for a leader. (2-2.5 million yen (14,880-18,600 USD or 13,496-16,870 EUR as far as conversion goes today)) So now we got (n x 200k = yuinou), what about this region number? Well, I can can be completely arbitrary with this since the only examples I have are modern. 3 or 4 wouldn't be a strange number, so let's say the low end is 3 x 200k and the extreme high end would be 4 x 250k. Making a yuinou between these clans a whopping 600k ~ 1m "ryo", this number would work for most of us in the Warring Clan corner of Naruto. It's an obscene amount considering 72% of people following the tradition now is half or lower as much. It does work though when you consider how old money both clans are. Madara/Izuna marrying Hashirama or Tobirama. Hashirama/Tobirama marrying Madara or Izuna, heck, it's a good estimate for how much yuinou was paid for Mito.
But then... what is Tobirama's dowry? Yuinou isn't dowry, it's coming from the Uchiha... and there are manuals for appropriate items to take from your parents home to where you're marrying into (I just can't read or find them so second hand sources are my main). Amount though... Basically I'm going to fudge it after looking at the buying power of the clan and Tobirama himself. Then fudge it more to fit the story I'm concocting. Will anyone care? Probably not. But I spent the last two days down this rabbit hole simply because I needed to know what was within Tobirama's monetary means. The driving point of my yaoi slash fic is the man doing everything he can to be useful.
(Also if you found this doing a deep search for Naruto economics or Japan's traditional marriage practices, I am so sorry.)
"and this is where the british stole all of our stuff!"
"now let me guess you're gonna ask me about saffron and cardamom and naan bread which is the same as saying bread bread which is the same as saying CHAI TEA >:(" "oh i love chai tea" "NO"
"well that was another easy adventure for spider-ma---" [everything explodes]
I'm so excited to announce that I will be taking a brand new turn with my webtoon! CTC will now be a fantasy romance! ⚔️💖
"I was trapped in a tower for 200 years by my wicked mother, only to be saved by the assassin sent to kill the Dark Lord- but he doesn't know it's me!?"
I know this change may be too sudden for most of my readers, especially after 4 hard years working on CTC, but I know you guys will love the new direction! 💖
Stay tuned for chapter 1- “That handsome daring sexy rogue is here to kill ME!?”
at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
has anybody else seen the bit in tommy's new video yet. where he asks mumbo jumbo if he can revive technoblade with redstone. bc that actually made my jaw DROP hol yshit. the pause just before he says it. you can hear the gears turning in phil's head as he realizes what tommy's about to say. the immediate psychic damage. truly horrid thank you tommy. ik techno would be losing it over that joke
jacob wants to make friends with edward and decides to help him with his complexion for his meeting with bella tomorrow. edward doesn’t even know who this guy is. (also, no, edward can’t read jacob’s mind cause the system blocks his thoughts out)
Drunk Satoru would get wasted off of half a spiked seltzer. This bitch would be white girl wasted, sobbing in the corner of the room asking you if you’d still love him if he was a worm. He’s gonna be a whiny little bitch and so utterly sensitive. Even you caressing his arm will have him whimpering and whining.
You could ask drunk Satoru to sit on your lap… no better yet STRADDLE your lap and he’s doing it with enthusiasm. Doesn’t mater that he’s taller and bigger than you, he will put all of his weight on you and nearly crush you with the force of his love.
Sloppy make outs with drunk Satoru will always lead to sloppy fucking. Sloppy because he’s too far gone to actually be on top in any capacity, he’s relying on you to ride his dick till you’re done and will not be able to assist you in any capacity.
Sloppy because you’re equally as drunk and cannot bounce on his lap without his assistance after a while. So it turns into this wet mess of just half heartedly bouncing while primarily grinding your hip down on his.
Drunk Satoru is practically sobbing as you ride his dick, not stopping even after he has cum because he’s still fucking hard and you want to milk him for everything he’s worth. Either that or you’ll pass out first.