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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Lailoken said:
Her inner monologue seems to suggest that she is, if anything, overestimating Keiko's growth. She seems to be of the attitude that she had to either break or ascend, and that she didn't break she must have reached her potential.
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I'm not sure I understand the fear that she could somehow be manipulated, then. She wouldn't meekly do whatever the family wanted. She's not that girl anymore, and she has powerful people to protect her if it comes to it.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
I'm not sure I understand the fear that she could somehow be manipulated, then. She wouldn't meekly do whatever the family wanted. She's not that girl anymore, and she has powerful people to protect her if it comes to it.
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There are a lot of people who are more powerful, and at the very least telling people trying to manipulate her through her relationship with her sister "no" would still require her to shoot the hostage herself. Ami's decision wasn't about Keiko's personal development. It was about her establishing a secure powerbase in the Nara before being exposed. Right now she's just a prospective and very controversial adoptee from a very fragile new clan.
 
Lailoken said:
There are a lot of people who are more powerful, and at the very least telling people trying to manipulate her through her relationship with her sister "no" would still require her to shoot the hostage herself. Ami's decision wasn't about Keiko's personal development. It was about her establishing a secure powerbase in the Nara before being exposed. Right now she's just a prospective and very controversial adoptee from a very fragile new clan.
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So the concern is that someone would try to force Ami to do things by holding her relationship with Keiko hostage, or force Keiko to do things by holding her relationship with Ami hostage, or am I misunderstanding?
 
TaliesinSkye said:
So the concern is that someone would try to force Ami to do things by holding her relationship with Keiko hostage, or force Keiko to do things by holding her relationship with Ami hostage, or am I misunderstanding?
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While Keiko wasn't part of the established clan of the Nara and therefore able to combat it effectively, yes.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
I agree. We should ask how we can be the best sibling to Keiko possible. And if there's anything we can do to make it possible for Ami to still be present in her life. We could also tell her how far Keiko has come in the last few years, which might help Ami recalculate how well Keiko is able to protect herself from manipulations.
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I thought Hazou could relate his recent experiences with family members going pretty damn far for each other to what Ami is doing, and how selfish and irrational it can be.

Ami is very likely to be extremely biased in her analysis of the whole situation. She blames herself for nearly losing Keiko, and therefore could easily overcorrect towards extreme means of keeping Keiko safe. Come to think of it, her chosen course of action could be way of subconsciously punishing herself for failing Keiko so thoroughly by denying herself contact she obviously craves.

Furthermore, her newly acquired political acumen could be a reaction to Shikigamis rebellion. After all, this huge event nearly killed her beloved sister, and she presumably had no clue about any of it. Makes sense to fix that afterwards.

Final observation: I don't know if we really want Ami to become the special envoy. Because she has all the reason in the world to absolutely hate Mari. One Hana incident was enough.
 
Velorien said:
That is almost literally what just happened. Except it's nearly midnight here and I don't want my sleep interrupted by the emergency services/police/army/ICBMs/time-travelling assassins, so I'm having to keep it down. Details left to your imagination.
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My imagination is having you isekai-d off to Candyland.

Good luck! Tip: Don't trust the peppermint guy, he's a jerk.
 
Roomba said:
I thought Hazou could relate his recent experiences with family members going pretty damn far for each other to what Ami is doing, and how selfish and irrational it can be.

Ami is very likely to be extremely biased in her analysis of the whole situation. She blames herself for nearly losing Keiko, and therefore could easily overcorrect towards extreme means of keeping Keiko safe. Come to think of it, her chosen course of action could be way of subconsciously punishing herself for failing Keiko so thoroughly by denying herself contact she obviously craves.

Furthermore, her newly acquired political acumen could be a reaction to Shikigamis rebellion. After all, this huge event nearly killed her beloved sister, and she presumably had no clue about any of it. Makes sense to fix that afterwards.

Final observation: I don't know if we really want Ami to become the special envoy. Because she has all the reason in the world to absolutely hate Mari. One Hana incident was enough.
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Personally, I would be very interested in having that conversation mentioned above with Ami.
 
Roomba said:
I thought Hazou could relate his recent experiences with family members going pretty damn far for each other to what Ami is doing, and how selfish and irrational it can be.

Ami is very likely to be extremely biased in her analysis of the whole situation. She blames herself for nearly losing Keiko, and therefore could easily overcorrect towards extreme means of keeping Keiko safe. Come to think of it, her chosen course of action could be way of subconsciously punishing herself for failing Keiko so thoroughly by denying herself contact she obviously craves.

Furthermore, her newly acquired political acumen could be a reaction to Shikigamis rebellion. After all, this huge event nearly killed her beloved sister, and she presumably had no clue about any of it. Makes sense to fix that afterwards.

Final observation: I don't know if we really want Ami to become the special envoy. Because she has all the reason in the world to absolutely hate Mari. One Hana incident was enough.
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This strikes me as deeply insightful.

One last thing I don't understand; if Ami's concern is someone leveraging any relationship she has with her sister, how would being part of the Nara protect her in a way that the Kage and the rest of Goketsu can't?
 
Cariyaga said:
Personally, I would be very interested in having that conversation mentioned above with Ami.
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Honestly, no memes or trickery, being able to have that conversation and write a plan for it is the main reason I'm aboard this train. I find the whole scenario incredibly dramatically compelling.

The second reason is that I'd like Hazou to discuss his Uplift ideas with smart people and give them some depth in the process. Ami is one convenient target for this, but I'd even be willing to accept (ugh) Shikaku if it came to it.
 
Roomba said:
Honestly, no memes or trickery, being able to have that conversation and write a plan for it is the main reason I'm aboard this train. I find the whole scenario incredibly dramatically compelling.

The second reason is that I'd like Hazou to discuss his Uplift ideas with smart people and give them some depth in the process. Ami is one convenient target for this, but I'd even be willing to accept (ugh) Shikaku if it came to it.
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SHIKAMARU: *literally hasn't spoken to Hazou in a month except for a single passing greeting*

SHIKAMARU: Why do you hate me so?
 
Roomba said:
Honestly, no memes or trickery, being able to have that conversation and write a plan for it is the main reason I'm aboard this train. I find the whole scenario incredibly dramatically compelling.

The second reason is that I'd like Hazou to discuss his Uplift ideas with smart people and give them some depth in the process. Ami is one convenient target for this, but I'd even be willing to accept (ugh) Shikaku if it came to it.
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If you get the chance to write up a plan of your own, I'd likely vote for it for that conversation.
 
Roomba said:
I thought Hazou could relate his recent experiences with family members going pretty damn far for each other to what Ami is doing, and how selfish and irrational it can be.

Ami is very likely to be extremely biased in her analysis of the whole situation. She blames herself for nearly losing Keiko, and therefore could easily overcorrect towards extreme means of keeping Keiko safe. Come to think of it, her chosen course of action could be way of subconsciously punishing herself for failing Keiko so thoroughly by denying herself contact she obviously craves.

Furthermore, her newly acquired political acumen could be a reaction to Shikigamis rebellion. After all, this huge event nearly killed her beloved sister, and she presumably had no clue about any of it. Makes sense to fix that afterwards.

Final observation: I don't know if we really want Ami to become the special envoy. Because she has all the reason in the world to absolutely hate Mari. One Hana incident was enough.
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Do you really think that the supergenius conspiracy didn't know about the simmering rebellion? A group of ninja disgruntled with Mist's direction forming an independent power and bridge to Leaf seems right up their alley.
 
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MMKII said:
SHIKAMARU: *literally hasn't spoken to Hazou in a month except for a single passing greeting*

SHIKAMARU: Why do you hate me so?
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So like... there's this thing that happens sometimes in long-form fiction where you don't cover every waking moment, where the readers have a different idea of what's going on in unspoken for times than the author(s) do.

For me personally, I was under the impression that Hazou spent some non-negligible amount of time socializing amongst Leaf nin.
 
Cariyaga said:
So like... there's this thing that happens sometimes in long-form fiction where you don't cover every waking moment, where the readers have a different idea of what's going on in unspoken for times than the author(s) do.

For me personally, I was under the impression that Hazou spent some non-negligible amount of time socializing amongst Leaf nin.
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*looks back at that month *

When? :p
 
MMKII said:
SHIKAMARU: *literally hasn't spoken to Hazou in a month except for a single passing greeting*

SHIKAMARU: Why do you hate me so?
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I still have lingering trauma from the Fifth Event, ok?!

And more generally, I find discussions with people who don't care about anything kinda dull, even if they're really smart.

Cariyaga said:
If you get the chance to write up a plan of your own, I'd likely vote for it for that conversation.
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Well, we need to set up the meeting first! I'm probably going to vote for either of the Ami-positive plans this cycle. Actually planning for the meeting itself is going to consume a significant amount of word count. We're doing something adventurous, which means the plan will need to be really good.

Lailoken said:
Do you really think that the supergenius conspiracy didn't know about the simmering rebellion? A group of ninja disgruntled with Mist's direction forming an independent power and bridge to Leaf seems right up their alley.
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Yes. That's exactly what I think. Intelligence is not magic. It is not precognition or clairvoyance either. Both the Mori and the Nara can and do miss things regularly. To put things brutally, no amount of computational power can make up for insufficient data, and nobody on this board has perfect information available.
 
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@huhYeahGoodPoint so, are you going to throw your lot in with any of the plans posted? (I think the leading ones are just different variations of yours.)
 
A lot of the discussion on Ami has been focussed on how risky it is or what we can gain/learn from her, but it seems like we're ignoring how disrespectful this is to Keiko. We all seem to be in agreement that Keiko would not want us to be interacting in general with Ami while their relationship is so fraught, and that she definitely would not appreciate Hazou meddling in the relationship in particular.

It seems incredibly condescending for Hazou to ignore this and decide that he knows better, and that he is going to attempt to "fix" their relationship.

If it's not with the intention of fixing their relationship, there's no compelling reason for Hazou to ignore Keiko's wishes and go and talk with the one person Keiko would request he avoid. Being a good sibling is very noble, but you would never go and talk to someone's estranged father or their ex just for tips on how to improve your relationship with them, at least if the person in question doesn't want you talking with their estranged relation.

I do think it would be a really interesting conversation to read, and I'd love for Hazou to be closer with her, if only because of how cool Ami is. But this is just so inconsiderate of Keiko if we're doing this for any other reason other than fixing their relationship, and so arrogant if we really are so confident, in character, that we're going to cause more good than harm by ignoring Keiko's wishes and stepping in.

[x] N Minus Ami
[X] O Minus Ami
 
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MMKII said:
@huhYeahGoodPoint so, are you going to throw your lot in with any of the plans posted? (I think the leading ones are just different variations of yours.)
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I haven't had a lot of time to actually sit down and consider this, plus or minus any remaining affinity I had for editing my own plan; I might be able to get a fully edited version of my own plan up tonight, but if I can't I'll probably throw my hat behind Oneiros'
 
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