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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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[x] Action Plan: Blood and Wine

[x] Action Plan: Investigate and Prepare
  • Party Time: Celebrate Yuno and Noburi's pending nuptials. Tell Mari about the Hagoromo letter and verify that we aren't walking into a trap. Also ask Yuno/Noburi whether they want a celebration
    • Invite normal Game Night attendants (plus Ami, Sasuke, Naruto, and anyone that Noburi and Yuno might want there)
    • Observe Isan traditions regarding seat placement, food, and decor, but try to keep the overall tone of the party informal and upbeat. Coordinate with Noburi and Mari accordingly
      • it's meant to be a surprise for Yuno, to show that we can incorporate her traditions, and that she won't have to abandon them just to be a Goketsu.
    • Introduce Ami and Yuno to each other
      • try to make them friends but don't force anything if they're not keen on it
    • Talk with Mari, commiserate/laugh about our family members' respective love lives (even our own)
  • Meet with Cannai's recommended summoners
    • This is a meeting between equals.
    • Be respectful but do not be submissive
    • Find out what would be required to make a contract with them
  • Discuss ways to get the marriage recognized
    • Find a priest who can be bribed or blackmailed into performing it
    • Do it under Toadism, The Church of Youth, Isan culture, or Mist culture.
    • Bring up the precedent set by Mari and Jiraiya - legal marriage when necessary for Leaf
Offscreen
  • Tell Goketsu and Gaku about the Hagoromo letter.
  • Ask Mari and Gaku to begin investigating the Hagoromo.
    • What are they like as a clan, broad strokes?
    • Is the clan, as a whole, as... zealous as their leader?
      • Are they like the Akimichi (generally friendly, with "traditional" values) or the Hyuuga (scornful bigots)
    • What is their relationship with Hyuuga? Are they working together? We thought they would hate them from the loans.
  • In case we decide to make Hagoromo enemies. Investigate, but don't do anything hostile yet
    • Mari should begin to look for any blackmail material
      • review Jiriaya's notes for anything relevant
    • Keiko and Gaku start looking into there financials.
  • Have Gaku and Mari begin planning Noburi and Yuno's wedding
    • Setting a date, location, combining Isan and Leaf traditions, food, etc
 
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faflec said:
@RandomOTP please for the love of jashin check with Mari to make sure that we aren't walking into a trap with the announcement
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How's this?

RandomOTP said:
[x] Action Plan: Blood and Wine
Words: TBD
  • Party Time: Celebrate Yuno and Noburi's pending nuptials (sanity check with Mari first. Could it be a trap?)
    • Invite normal Game Night attendants (plus Ami, Sasuke, Naruto, and anyone that Noburi and Yuno might want there)
    • Observe Isan traditions regarding seat placement, food, and decor, but try to keep the overall tone of the party informal and upbeat. Coordinate with Noburi and Mari accordingly
      • it's meant to be a surprise for Yuno, to show that we can incorporate her traditions, and that she won't have to abandon them just to be a Goketsu.
    • Introduce Ami and Yuno to each other
      • try to make them friends but don't force anything if they're not keen on it
    • Talk with Mari, commiserate/laugh about our family members' respective love lives (even our own)
  • Meet with Cannai's recommended summoners
    • This is a meeting between equals.
    • Be respectful but do not be submissive
    • Find out what would be required to make a contract with them
Offscreen
  • Order a huge bulk order of expensive wedding clothes (Isan-style fashion, as directed by Yuno) from the Hagoromo, ostensibly for Noburi and Yuno's wedding, but in reality for Keiko's hinted plan against the Hagoromo
  • Ask Mari and Gaku to begin investigating the Hagoromo.
    • What are they like as a clan, broad strokes?
    • Is the clan, as a whole, as... zealous as their leader?
      • Are they like the Akimichi (generally friendly, with "traditional" values) or the Hyuuga (scornful bigots)
  • Have Gaku and Mari begin planning Noburi and Yuno's wedding
    • Setting a date, location, combining Isan and Leaf traditions, food, etc
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ChairAgainstWall said:
…people are talking about smashing an entire clan to pieces over a petty snub.
…
Five minutes…

"When you look into the Abyss, the Abyss looks back." Yes, a trite Niechze quote, but worth quoting because of what it doesn't say: that when you realize the Abyss is looking at you, you realize it's been looking at you for hours now.

The identy of oppressor and oppressed can change without you realizing it. There isn't a pop-up notification for it. In the space of a century, Christianity went from persecuted to persecutor. They justified persecuting pagans in the name of a man murdered for unorthodox religious beliefs.

… Edmund Burke vehemently opposed the French Revolution. Edmund Burke is remembered as one of the leading intellectual justifiers for gradualist reform and political moderation. "Not nothing" does not at all mean "nuclear option".

Ditto.

More seriously, has it occurred to you that the Hagoromo would probably think we are overreacting? Getting married by someone else is such an obvious move that they can't have not seen it coming. I see this as a petty insult on their part, to be answered by similarly minor jabs.

From 1950s America, where birth control, no-fault divorce, interracial marriage and most especially "homosexual acts" were all illegal, and opposed by wide majorities, to 2020 America, where all these are not only legal, but supported by wide majorities? Incrementalism works. Who has more of his policies still standing, Woodrow Wilson or Vladimir Lenin?

Lastly, the Goketsu simply don't have the resources to start, much less win, a blood feud with a major clan. Petty sniping, on the other hand, is simply expected among Ninja clans. So we do an Isan marriage, and move on. For best effect, we act like this was always our plan, and the Hagoromo never affected it, and that we don't deign to note their existence. They snub us, we snub back, and life goes on, except that we've got our foot wedged in the door with the Concubine Laws. That's a heck of a bigger step than One Inc. Vs Olesen.

Also?

This. I (and I guess Firestorm, and probably Kiba) just want to leave room for our enemy to back down and concede the round.

Ugh, too complex an idea to get across. I'm not saying people don't have right to be upset, I'm saying that victory disease is a thing, and we can't let our desire for ultimate victory mislead us into making a tactical error. Remember Fabius Maximus, and don't make the mistake of Varro!

Edit: almost forgot!
[x] Action Plan: Blood and Wine
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There is some serious... smoothing over of history there. Calling the US civil rights movement incrementalism is disingenuous at best.

You can't just say "it took 60 years to get this stuff, and now we have this stuff, so therefor taking decades to get it is the only way that works."
Every single item you listed was a *fight* to get. Every single one was seen as radical, and incrementalists (aka the white moderate, see MLKJ) opposed them saying "if you get greedy and move too fast no one will stand behind you! Just take your bad beats and be happy you have it better than you used to, geez. Better things aren't possible."

Not now means never. As a progressive if you accept not now, then the movement is over.

Conservatives only give ground when we're in their faces and ***really fucking annoying***. That's the entire point of protests. They get in the way and demand a response, because you can't ignore them. (This is why the conservative argument that protests turn people away from their cause because they're annoying us really funny.). You need to convince them that ceding to your demands is the only way to go back to normal, even if its a different normal, because that's the only thing they care about. (This touches on the concept of privilege. Politics is annoying or fun, rather than an important thing that can seriously affect multiple if not all aspects of your life.)
 
RandomOTP said:
And what about Keiko? Do we ignore her say in this? She has a plan, let's trust her enough to go ahead and order the bulk amount of clothes, and then talk to her about this. She was the slighted party here, not Hazou.
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I mean, basically this. Work with your discriminated-against loved one to change the system, don't do stuff for them without actually checking what they want. Doubly so when said loved one is a brilliant plan optimizer with her own plans in the works.

[x] Action Plan: Blood and Wine

Also, it truly is a shame we're scattered over the globe (though there's also upsides there), and that none of us have absurd ninja powers (that I know of), because our Team Uplift is already noticeably larger than Hazou's.

Let's kick some ass

[X] Action plan: The march of progress will crush all opposition
 
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Hagoromo slighted Kei by being a homophobe at her.

Hagoromo slighted Hazou (and the entire rest of the clan) by refusing to perform religious ceremonies for the Gouketsu.

Hazou is definitely a slighted party here, even if he's far from the main one.
 
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Twinnstars said:
Not now means never. As a progressive if you accept not now, then the movement is over.
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I dislike this framing. Should we also pursue every other humanitarian and progressive reform we want, all at once, assuming that we can just mow through the norms of the entirety of the rest of Leaf, including the stances of even the moderate and liberal clans, and force our whims on the world by force?

If we say that we don't have the power to do that now, are we giving up on all of those things forever?

Why are you singling out this specific humanitarian issue as something that we cannot possibly wait on if we actually care about getting it done? If anything, slapping a time bomb to your mission and saying 'If I don't win in the next five minutes, this goal is dead!' sounds like the way to kill your movement.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
I dislike this framing. Should we also pursue every other humanitarian and progressive reform we want, all at once, assuming that we can just mow through the norms of the entirety of the rest of Leaf, including the stances of even the moderate and liberal clans, and force our whims on the world by force?

If we say that we don't have the power to do that now, are we giving up on all of those things forever?

Why are you singling out this specific humanitarian issue as something that we cannot possibly wait on if we actually care about getting it done? If anything, slapping a time bomb to your mission and saying 'If I don't win in the next five minutes, this goal is dead!' sounds like the way to kill your movement.
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Yes. We should pursue every avenue to uplift that we can. Is that even a question? That doesn't mean that we should be shouting about uplift on the street a la Lee and YOUTH, but it does mean that we can't meekly nod and stop working towards them when people say to stop or "not now".

If one proposed bill gets blocked, draft another. If one protest or strike isn't enough, plan more. Plan more varied types of protests. *never stop moving*.

Again, it doesn't mean go nuclear if on one specific instance you get shot down. It means never stop trying. If someone tells you "not now, try again in 10 years when we're more comfortable with it" and you do wait, guess what? They're going to say the exact same thing then.
 
Shane_357 said:
What if we publicly request that Hinata officiate the marriage as the leader of Konoha's most noble and traditional clan.
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I'd be okay with that, provided that the Goketsu are on friendlier terms with the Hyuuga at the time of our asking. Right now, the Hyuuga wouldn't really benefit in any way from doing that. If anything, they'd lose some support of the other traditional clans, since they'd be doing something that would go against the Leaf's traditions.

MadScientist said:
Hagoromo slighted Kei by being a homophobe at her.

Hagoromo slighted Hazou (and the entire rest of the clan) by refusing to perform religious ceremonies for the Gouketsu.

Hazou is definitely a slighted party here, even if he's far from the main one.
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I'd argue that Hazou-as-a-character may not have been slighted at all. We-the-hivemind don't know Hazou's opinion on marriage-as-an-institution, nor do we know how he reacted to the letter. For all we know, the Hagoromo might be doing the equivalent of "I know you don't like PB&J, but don't ask because I wouldn't share anyway!"

I suppose that there's the fact that Hazou (as a clan head and holder of the IN) would need to get married eventually. But that makes the Hagoromo's declaration a political inconvenience, rather than a personal attack. And I could see an argument where maybe Ino/Akane would prefer a "traditional" marriage ceremony, but the Hagoromo's declaration would prevent that. But that circumstance is just like Keiko's situation, flipped to the marriage issue: Hazou wouldn't be personally effected, but his loved ones would be.

Edit: wait, shouldn't voting have closed by now? In this instance, does it keep going until the QMs close it, or do votes that occur beyond the stated closing time not count? I'm not trying to be pedantic, sly, or rude, this is just the first time it's happened since I joined the quest, and I'm not sure of the protocol...
 
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RandomOTP said:
I'd be okay with that, provided that the Goketsu are on friendlier terms with the Hyuuga at the time of our asking. Right now, the Hyuuga wouldn't really benefit in any way from doing that. If anything, they'd lose support of the other traditional clans, since they'd be doing something that would go against the Leaf's traditions.



I'd argue that Hazou-as-a-character may not have been slighted at all. We-the-hivemind don't know Hazou's opinion on marriage-as-an-institution, nor do we know how he reacted to the letter. For all we know, the Hagoromo might be doing the equivalent of "I know you don't like PB&J, but don't ask because I wouldn't share anyway!"

I suppose that there's the fact that Hazou (as a clan head and holder of the IN) would need to get married eventually. But that makes the Hagoromo's declaration a political inconvenience, rather than a personal attack. And I could see an argument where maybe Ino/Akane would prefer a "traditional" marriage ceremony, but the Hagoromo's declaration would prevent that. But that circumstance is just like Keiko's situation, flipped to the marriage issue: Hazou wouldn't be personally effected, but his loved ones would be.
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It doesn't matter whether Hazou the person or Hazou the political figure was slighted. He was slighted.
 
Twinnstars said:
Yes. We should pursue every avenue to uplift that we can. Is that even a question? That doesn't mean that we should be shouting about uplift on the street a la Lee and YOUTH, but it does mean that we can't meekly nod and stop working towards them when people say to stop or "not now".

If one proposed bill gets blocked, draft another. If one protest or strike isn't enough, plan more. Plan more varied types of protests. *never stop moving*.

Again, it doesn't mean go nuclear if on one specific instance you get shot down. It means never stop trying. If someone tells you "not now, try again in 10 years when we're more comfortable with it" and you do wait, guess what? They're going to say the exact same thing then.
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I'll note that "not now, try again in 10 years when we're more comfortable with it" from the people we're trying to change is not the same as "not now, we'll build up power in the shadows and then force it through when we're demigods" from us.

You may be very used to human rights only coming from an energized populace and groundswells of protests and demonstrations, but remember that we aren't civlians, or even normal ninja. We're the ninja aristocracy, and if we play our cards right we can win the human rights debate by sheer oligarchic force. Groundswells, protests, the will of the populace, not only would those things be staggeringly unlikely and pointless in the ninja death dictatorships of this world, but we won't need them either.

When your only power is your rage, use your rage. When you're a ninja aristocrat who will be an unquestionable demigod in half a decade, you can afford to plot and plan in the shadows instead of frittering away your credibility being loud and not accomplishing anything.
 
RandomOTP said:
Edit: wait, shouldn't voting have closed by now? In this instance, does it keep going until the QMs close it, or do votes that occur beyond the stated closing time not count? I'm not trying to be pedantic, sly, or rude, this is just the first time it's happened since I joined the quest, and I'm not sure of the protocol...
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Historically, Vel considers the vote closed as soon as the closing time passes -- whether he says it's closed or not, while EJ considers the vote closed when he personally closes it.
 
Twinnstars said:
Again, it doesn't mean go nuclear if on one specific instance you get shot down.
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I agree. Which is why I find it puzzling that you would then prefer to vote for a plan that immediately does exactly that.

Oneiros said:
Keiko and Gaku start looking into there financials. Hazou wants to destroy every stream of revenue they have. Leave them destitute
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It doesn't even look for alternatives or intel, it already assumes full culpability of everyone in the clan and immediately goes for the nuclear option. Are there people who disagree with their clan head? People who don't deserve to live on the streets? Doesn't matter, we will add more misery to the world as the Uplift clan without even looking at alternatives because we are - justifiably - angry at what the Hagoromo stand for.

That is where and why I take issue with that plan. The goals are noble, certainly. Minimize bigotry, make Leaf a more pleasant place to live in and so on. But the methods of doing so are wrong. Or at the very least premature because we lack important intel.

Even pragmatically, unless we can wield absolute power (which we cannot at this time), being known as the clan to eagerly mete out disproportionate retribution for the smallest of slights* will not do us any favors to work with neutral or hostile clans in the future. Even if we succeed, we will have lost a lot of political capital which we then cannot cash in for even bigger problems.

*their PoV, naturally; I don't think you will find anyone here arguing that they are in the right.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
I'll note that "not now, try again in 10 years when we're more comfortable with it" from the people we're trying to change is not the same as "not now, we'll build up power in the shadows and then force it through when we're demigods" from us.

You may be very used to human rights only coming from an energized populace and groundswells of protests and demonstrations, but remember that we aren't civlians, or even normal ninja. We're the ninja aristocracy, and if we play our cards right we can win the human rights debate by sheer oligarchic force. Groundswells, protests, the will of the populace, not only would those things be staggeringly unlikely and pointless in the ninja death dictatorships of this world, but we won't need them either.

When your only power is your rage, use your rage. When you're a ninja aristocrat who will be an unquestionable demigod in half a decade, you can afford to plot and plan in the shadows instead of frittering away your credibility being loud and not accomplishing anything.
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I'll note that we were talking about different things for a while there. I was responding to comments made about civil rights irl.

I do still disagree with you in the case of the quest but to a lesser extent. Ninja do still need to eat. If the farmers went on strike, or burned their fields rather than provide tribute it would force a change. A lot of people would die, but it would force change. But yes, personal power is much more easily turned to societal change in MfD.

(Unless some technique hacker makes a permanent genjutsu to be used on civvies in which case oh well)


Edit: @Tua I owe Oneiros a vote and I generally agree with them
 
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rejoice! edits have been made
Oneiros said:
  • hey have decided to put there petty vendetta over the good of Leaf for that they must be destroyed
    • But if they change there ways they can be spared
  • Keiko and Gaku start looking into there financials. Hazou wants the power to destroy every stream of revenue they have. If necessary we should be able to Leave them destitute
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MadScientist said:
It doesn't matter whether Hazou the person or Hazou the political figure was slighted. He was slighted.
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Oh, they tried to slight him (or at least, their clan head did, anyway), but whether or not they succeeded is a little up in the air. I'd say that to slight someone, the slight needs to be personal, something that the slighted party cares enough about to feel slighted.

The Hagoromo are saying that they'll refuse to officiate any Goketsu marriages, which is a pretty big claim from one entire clan to another, especially if literally every priest is connected to them in some way (really, if the Hagoromo are so central to the religious underpinning of Leaf's society, then I could see Asuma slapping them on the back of the head, telling them to stop raising tensions when Leaf needs unity, and then telling them to get over it. It'd be like if an entire clan were the only ones who... i don't know, filled out birth certificates, and then unilaterally said they wouldn't do it for another clan. If they really had that ability, it'd be stupid of them to do that because suddenly everyone would wonder "what if I'm next?" which would require Hokage intervention). Which, sure that impacts Hazou's loved ones and whomever we adopt later on, but if Hazou isn't personally invested in marriage (beyond whatever social obligations he may have as a clan head) then I'd argue that Hazou wouldn't feel personally slighted, but rather he'd be annoyed at the barrier that's preventing him from doing his duties.

roobee said:
wait where was keiko's plan mentioned?
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A few updates ago, right after the Clan Meetings where the vote about mistresses/lovers happened, Keiko came up to Hazou and basically said "I know you're upset with the Hagoromo, but I have a plan in the works. I need the Goketsu to order a huge amount of clothes from the Hagoromo clan to make it work. Can you do this for me?" And Hazou basically said "You're scary when you smile like that, but hell yes."

That's why I'm in favor of ordering the clothes and then doing some investigation on the side. Keiko, Hazou's scary sister, has a plan. Let's go through with that plan, do some investigative work to see what the wider Hagoromo clan is like, and then act accordingly. It might be that Keiko's plan is better than our own, or sufficient enough to cover whatever slights Hazou may or may not personally feel.
 
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