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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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It is now 17 votes in favor of not going missing, and 19 votes in favor of immediately going missing.

Seems fair to say the thread is split over this issue and there is not a consensus to leave.

Adhoc vote count started by _The_Bomb on Apr 10, 2024 at 2:33 PM, finished with 213 posts and 47 votes.
[missingwhen] [missinghow] [missingwho] [orochimaruprocess] Default
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MMKII said:
Okay, but this does not lead to a good outcome?

The QMs are sticking to their guns wrt Simulationism as much as possible. I don't think "[X] Yeah next chapter please" does much according to those principles: Hazoupilot will try his best but fail anyway.

The hypothetical world in which this quest wasn't a quest isn't the one we're in. It's a quest!
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My point is that "good outcome" has different definitions based on whether you're a player or a reader. Up to now they have (mostly) converged, but this one is a pretty stark divide.

(This is not prescriptive of anything, just an observation.)
 
Heleor said:
My point is that "good outcome" has different definitions based on whether you're a player or a reader. Up to now they have (mostly) converged, but this one is a pretty stark divide.

(This is not prescriptive of anything, just an observation.)
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As a reader AND a player, I think Akatsuki win is a narrative Bad End. Not every player or reader feels the same way but I do not trust mass murder/mass brainwash gang with the fate of the world and uncontested power.

I also think there's an element of survivorship bias here. The readers who like "kick rocks in Leaf for 400 chapters and drive the QMs mad" as a story stuck around - the ones who didn't aren't here.
 
DanZapman said:
We've been told that Itachi has lots of esoteric techniques we don't yet know and he could plausibly have gotten some of Conjura's scary spacetime stuff. Additionally, his first use of Amaterasu seemed to be spreading it a lot more freely than the next two. Besides, Itachi also has SC and I suspect his CR is only unexceptional by the standards of Oro, the guy who has like 2000 chakra or something ridiculous for ??? reasons. Not to be a doomer but I legit don't have enough info about Itachi to imagine a matchup with any certainty.
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Bah, Itachi SCs don't have the Sharingan. We just have to punch harder than him. Ez pz.
 
Happy 10000 pages! In this time we've invented the holy grail of ninja combat, bought our way into Leaf, started WWIV (indirectly), got Pain killed, and did so much treason. Here's to another 10000 pages of reshaping the world and desperately hoping it's for the better!
Noumero said:
Oh, right. Here's one: the Akatsuki realize we've gone missing, go up to Orochimaru, strike some sort of deal, and then he arranges for them (i. e., Itachi + Kisame) to ambush us on the Seventh Path when we're supposed to meet him. I think they collectively can set up some way to foil reverse-summoning.
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A hard sell, imo. Orochimaru has made his opinions pretty clear about the Akatsuki before, in an environment where he gains nothing from lying, in a way that aligns with his demonstrated costly signal of defecting from them and fighting to the death to stop them. Leaf already gives him very nearly everything he wants, and he's well aware that the secrets Hazou holds cannot be allowed to reach the Akatsuki.

From the other side of the situation, the Akatsuki have little reason to drag Orochimaru into this. Both because our relationship with him has been fairly minimal and because, well, he's Orochimaru of the Sannin and not an easy nut to crack. They can't kill him and he knows it, and they know that he knows it. I figure the Akatsuki will likely not be spending their resources trying to put the screws on a Sannin when they'll have their hands pretty full setting up a "once we can relay a message to Hazou we threaten to slaughter his clan unless he turns himself in" scheme or some other gambit that requires flagrant violations of Leaf's sovereignty.
Noumero said:
Use Kumokogo as our security guarantor, as she'd surely be able to ensure no-one is sneaking up on us? ... I don't know that I trust her this much. She's probably thankful to us for pulling the Crusade together, but she's surely also thankful to Itachi and Kisame and Orochimaru for actually fighting in it, and Orochimaru is also working on the Great Seal and can probably convincingly argue he's a better expert, and the three essies can just use the big-stick diplomacy to try and get her to stand back (which may or may not work; she may or may not be able to solo them in her own domain)...
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This one is simple, at least. Devastatingly simple, even. Just make Kumokogo pinky promise not to turn us in. We've seen that she takes oaths more seriously than life itself (just look at all the hoops she jumped through to escape the rules around the Great Seal) and we have the first-mover advantage here. Once she agrees to help us with the meeting, she's completely neutralized as a risk vector.
 
_The_Bomb said:
It is now 17 votes in favor of not going missing, and 19 votes in favor of immediately going missing.

Seems fair to say the thread is split over this issue and there is not a consensus to leave.
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This is extremely disingenuous when you consider there are 35 votes when you combine leave now and and leave with conditions. The thread is clearly in favor of leaving we're just split on the timing
 
Oneiros said:
What I find incredibly frustrating about the go missing/stay in Leaf vote is how much it's basically a proxy for quest engagement. Leave now voters have made 68693 post. While stay voters have made 31809 post but 25753 of those post are from Faflec Georg is an outlier that should not be counted.
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I've been feeling a lot of this. Thanks for pulling numbers.

Heleor said:
The activity of the voters and the pretty clear split, in my mind, is all due to the separation of story vs game.

The voters who are active and create plans want to interact with the mechanics and win the game. That said, the missing direction seems like it would ruin all of the amazing character interactions that have been made to date and detract from the story. This is why this decision is so polarizing - the "correct" decision is actually the one that seems it would be worse to read. (Incidentally, the "correct" decision is to lighthouse until Hazo emerges with some magic runes and seals and..., but the QMs pretty rightly shut that down)
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Actually, I think leaving leaf will ultimately result in a more fun story.
I've been guessing that the reader-only section doesn't want the feels bad of losing the things(relationships, etc) we have now. Which, like fair. But..

Nobody wants to vote "hey let's dump Ino". But the highly-engaged section is responsible for coming up with an actual strategy, and "stay in leaf forever" just isn't cutting it.
 
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Oneiros said:
This is extremely disingenuous when you consider there are 35 votes when you combine leave now and and leave with conditions. The thread is clearly in favor of leaving we're just split on the timing
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Have you looked at the names of people who voted for those two options? There's a titanic overlap. Presenting it as you did is what's extremely disingenuous. How many unique voters were you trying to pass off as 35 votes?
 
Hmm now I'm curious, let's check

Unique "immediately, in the next day or two at the most":
T_of_A
Iris-Iven-Ibis
Zerovirus
RandomOTP
Inferno Vulpix
Twinnstars
Left-Hand Mutant
zxzx24 = 8

Unique: "not until certain things have happened"
Black King
Egg Shavings
FaintlySorcerous
Rafin
MinTaxer
Halberdier
redzonejoe
Buggy = 8

Of the latter, Buggy also voted not to go at all, so (for the sake of interest), counting them solely as a stayer. Also including Rafin, who sort of voted that (since predominant opinion is to bring all of Uplift and they voted to not leave if we bring all of Uplift), seems an effective +6 for a total of 25 to 18 at the moment.
 
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_The_Bomb said:
Have you looked at the names of people who voted for those two options? There's a titanic overlap. Presenting it as you did is what's extremely disingenuous. How many unique voters were you trying to pass off as 35 votes?
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I will fully admit I very well might have fucked up checking the list or doing math (ADHD brain go BRRRR) but I'll go over them now
Fake edit: I totally did fuck up I added everyone missing from one list to 19 instead of just doing one.
  1. leave immediatly:
    1. T_of_A
    2. Iris-Iven-Ibis
    3. zerovirus
    4. randomOTP
    5. Inferno Vulpix
    6. twinstar
    7. left-Hand Mutant
    8. zxzx24
  2. Leave When
    1. Black King
    2. eggshavings
    3. FaintlySorcerous
    4. Rafin
    5. MinTax
    6. Halberdier
    7. redzonejoe
    8. Buggy
 
Noumero said:
Yeah, I was about to bring this up myself... Because–

... there's no freaking way Naruto approves that, is there?

The way I saw it before, the whole "take the entire family and go" plan relied on Naruto either being completely on-board and waving ahead anything we want, or blissfully unaware of just how many people we're taking missing until it's too late to abort (at which point he'd have little recourse but to play along). But now, after he's had time to cool his head a bit? After he started to have an inkling regarding Noburi's strategic value? If we need to go through him to get this mission... Hell no, he ain't rubber-stamping this. And he'd realize we're about to go missing, and take serious measures before we can disappear.

I feel the "outwardly take a whole-family mission and just not come back" plan is a bust. We need to do it more subtly, stagger our defections at least a bit (across days, to be clear, not weeks). Don't make it easily bureaucratically legible what a large batch of people (i. e., combat and political power) we're taking.

Just, I don't know... Time Hazou and Kagome going off to do research at a distant site with Noburi and Yuno going out on a date in Tanzaku Gai with Kei taking that mission to kill chakra beasts to unstagnate, and simultaneously have Mari exfiltrate out of Leaf in a crowd of civilians. That'd work.

... Oh, maybe also forge one of the clerks mindlessly rubber-stamping a whole-family mission to hunt down the Summoning Scroll? That way, we'd have the best of both worlds: an official cover regarding why we're suddenly all gone all at once, which would give Naruto an excuse not to set off hunter-nin immediately, but without giving him an opportunity to veto us.


Hm. I'd seen the idea to contact Orochimaru afterwards, and my instinctive reaction to it was "hell no, that'd be fun but too risky", but now that you lay it out like this, I... don't actually see plausible ways for this to go horribly wrong...

Oh, right. Here's one: the Akatsuki realize we've gone missing, go up to Orochimaru, strike some sort of deal, and then he arranges for them (i. e., Itachi + Kisame) to ambush us on the Seventh Path when we're supposed to meet him. I think they collectively can set up some way to foil reverse-summoning.

Hm. Using an SC to contact him... mostly foils that? Except the Sharingan, which apparently may have straight-up mind-control abilities... And who knows what esoteric Crow summons Itachi can bring to bear on the problem...

Use Kumokogo as our security guarantor, as she'd surely be able to ensure no-one is sneaking up on us? ... I don't know that I trust her this much. She's probably thankful to us for pulling the Crusade together, but she's surely also thankful to Itachi and Kisame and Orochimaru for actually fighting in it, and Orochimaru is also working on the Great Seal and can probably convincingly argue he's a better expert, and the three essies can just use the big-stick diplomacy to try and get her to stand back (which may or may not work; she may or may not be able to solo them in her own domain)...

Another concern here is that Oro may pull off some Sherlock Holmes-style "the dirt on Hazou's boots is unique to the southermost beach of the Taro Island" bullshit in order to figure out where we are.

I dunno. [x] Sanity-check with Kei.
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right, new plan.

send Noburi out on a(genuine!) scroll hunt with Mari, Kei, and Yuno. we can probably get this approved. Naruto dosen't think this is Noburi going missing, because Hazou and Kagome stay behind.

In two months, when Hazou's TH training is done, we grab Kagome and book it, linking up with the others.


EDIT: this even gives us 2 months where we have to option to have a messy breakup with Ino, thus protecting her from retaliation.
 
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