As for Ami, the question you always have to ask is, what will she do in response?
What could she possibly do?
Try to marry Haz....
Oh.
One of the dynamics in the story that irks me is the fact that apologies and efforts (however flawed they may be) to accommodate others always seem so one-sided. However, that might my biases talking so I was wondering if others felt the same: is Hazou truly the only one who apologizes and tries to make up with others or is my 'headcanon' wrong? It feels like we spend a sizeable amount of plans trying to fix our relations with people and I don't recall NPCs doing the same for him. A couple examples: Keiko, Ino, Noburi, Keiko, Kagome, etc.
Yes and no
Yes.
In the sense that we aren't the only one fucking up.
It's just that other people are too deep in their own issues to actually notice that until everything blow up in the most spectacular way.
There is a reason if half of the interludes we see it's people dying/suffering horribly because they can't be bothered to talk.
Like the Uchiha/Senju that killed each other because "Oh!We are clearly in love and my family wants either of us dead" was too difficult to say.
Should i remind you that Ren first plan with us was "Go to the child of the sister we cast out and ask him to come with us, while not saying anything to said sister", instead of actually talking like a decent human being do?
She is the current Mizukage, not some genin fresh of the academy.
And let's not even get started on Ami,currently running for the "Smartest idiot in all of the world", that it's an accurate phrase to describe a fair amount of ninja.
We are in that sweet spot of sanity where we create gigantic messes, but have the insight to actually notice it.
No in the sense that generally speaking they fuck up less than us(Even if their fuck-ups are generally far bigger)
Because they are a single characters, we are a hivemind that act through a distinct and separate character.
This makes our decision making process far more polished, and capable of ridiculous flexibility, at the cost of not being exactly constant in execution and forgetting things that a person living there would not.
But hey!
We can easily resolve this!
A calming tea with Aunt Ren,and some gift for her:
The Three Lists, i call it.
The List of the Past:All The Ways You Hurt My Mother and Me.
The List of the Present:All the Ways You Could Have Prevented This.
The List of the Future:What You Can Do to Change It.
I am filled with complicated negative emotions. Let's try unpacking them:
Shino tried to surrender. Keiko didn't let him. She had already won the fight but decided to maim her opponent. She made it look like she was trying to make a point along the lines of "Don't mess with the Goketsu", legitimizing her actions with Shino not surrendering before the fight I guess.
But she didn't actually want him to surrender before the fight. She knew he wouldn't; because it would make Shino look bad if he surredered the finals because he got threatened by his opponent.
She explicitely wanted to make Shino feel a significant amount of pain.
Now, I can sympathise with wanting to cause pain to someone who has caused you pain. It might not always be a good thing to do, but I can understand the feeling.
But Shino didn't actually do anyting to Keiko (I think?). Rather it feels to me like Keiko was angry at Hazou/Shikamaru and therefore emotionally felt in the right to fuck up some unrelated stranger [insert 'are we the baddies' meme here].
Then again, these are ninja with a different perception of physical violence. And they were engaged in a mock fight-to-the-death.
Still, what Keiko did is quite a contrast to how Choji handled his win against Hinata.
I feel that it wouldn't be unusual for Shino and/or his friends/family to develop a bit of a grudge.
Bad relations with the Aburame might influence wether or not Jiraiya keeps the hat.
A formal apology may be appropriate.
I mean, Keiko did explicitly say that this was a bad idea.
Shino ignored her warning.
Shino got wrecked.
If Keiko wanted to hurt Shino, she wouldn't have warned him in such a way.
So it's less "Keiko wants to hurt Shino" and more "Keiko is pissed, so she's not gonna waste energy controlling herself".
It's normal being far less patient when you're angry.
If Keiko explicitly went out of her way to engineer a situation where she would hurt Shino more than necessary, then you would be right.
She's not exactly...justified, but it's understandable.
Yes, a reconciliation may be appropriate, but personally i would suggest a direct interaction from Keiko instead of a formal one.
We want comrades, not enemies.
