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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Kylinger said:
I'm looking forward to seeing the first entirely blank plan in action. If we don't have a plan there's no way Konoha can predict it!
[JK] Action Plan: Take This Plan
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"Inoichi-sama, it is as you predicted: the mind of your daughter's suitor is completely empty."

eaglejarl said:
I am so looking forward to the next update. I just short-sold stock in Morton's and I'm looking forward to being rich.
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Could someone explain the joke to me?

1234qwerty said:
Let me try to do a better job explaining. I thought Velorien may have decided to delay awarding exp in chapter 89: Part 1 because it skipped the middle of the day. Then, when Part 2 was delayed by a lore update, that intention may have gotten lost in the shuffle.
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Nope, that 13 XP was the entirety of the XP for the plan, and was duly awarded.

Jello_Raptor said:
@eaglejarl @Velorien : Can we please retcon this so it happens the day after the meeting with Jiraiya and the library stuff? I know Kabuto is excited, but he's got to understand how scheduling works.
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Already done, actually. It is now "next few days".
 
Cariyaga said:
So, I think this is actually worth talking about here: I don't think that Hazou is capable of caring for Ino nearly as much as he does Akane.
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Could you explain why? At a glance, it just seems like Akane has an enormous head start.

Also, unfortunately you don't actually have to be particularly compatible to care for someone deeply.
 
@Velorien

I just realized I never mentioned this specifically, so I will do so now.

THANK YOU for that marvelous confession scene. I've read it four times now and it still hits me like a truck. It's just so incredibly genuine to both of their characters, it has these incredibly beautiful moments without descending into dramatic cliches. And most of all, it's one of those rare scenes where I look at it and am slapped in the face with this sense of "I am currently incapable of writing a scene this good; I couldn't have done this" that makes me want to become better.

I've loved Akane since we met her, and I wrote the plan that recruited her, and holy crap the feelings I get at getting this ship finally sailing are powerful.

Ugh.

Just, great job.
 
Velorien said:
Could you explain why? At a glance, it just seems like Akane has an enormous head start.

Also, unfortunately you don't actually have to be particularly compatible to care for someone deeply.
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That was the point, yes; sorry, I'm a bit tired and out of it, so apologies if my point wasn't clear. Akane's got such a head start and I'm not sure that Ino would be willing to be second fiddle in such a way for as long a time as it would take. On top of which, trust will be extremely difficult to come by for a pairing with a Yamanaka heiress.
 
@Langevin Good plan, overall. Only problems I have are with the speech outline. Specifically the emotional appeals (that I'd think J would think of as pure naivety) and the parts about "look at how fucking clever we are, we can do this" (which is pretty basic arrogance considering they are the most powerful ninja village and he is a Living Legend and World's Greatest Sealmaster). Hopefully, this speech won't occur here.
 
Killer_Whale said:
[X] OliWhail
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When I wrote CounterBot I explicitly chose not to support voting by person name. Under approval voting a person may well have more than one plan going, or could add one later after you vote. Voting blindly for a person could therefore meaning voting for something you didn't actually support. I judged "not voting against your interests by mistake" as a higher good, even though by-name voting is obviously convenient.

Velorien said:
Could someone explain the joke to me?
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Yeah, that started off obscure and got pretty impenetrable when I switched to "short-sell". Morton's Salt is a major brand over here. When the supply of salt goes up the price goes down and Morton's stock should go down with it. Short-selling is a bet that the price of a stock will go down.

Basically, I'm teasing the players by implying that I expect them to be furious at the next update.
 
Questions on Talky Scenes plans:
  1. We promised Akane we would visit her again the next day. (Or really, we said that such promises are unnecessary, but in this particular case that's equivalent.) We should have a contingency on not ending the day before we've had a chance to do that.
  2. We should probably also bring it up in our scheduling conflicts talk at the beginning of the day.
 
ChronOblivion said:
@Langevin Good plan, overall. Only problems I have are with the speech outline. Specifically the emotional appeals (that I'd think J would think of as pure naivety) and the parts about "look at how fucking clever we are, we can do this" (which is pretty basic arrogance considering they are the most powerful ninja village and he is a Living Legend and World's Greatest Sealmaster). Hopefully, this speech won't occur here.
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Thing is, this is the person we're asking "are you with us?". The person whose buy-in we're trying to get, despite the fact that he and many of his colleagues have had the opportunity and temperament to try similar things in the past. Our 'arrogance' is baked into the situation; I'm just trying to justify it with things that aren't explicitly "we're the main character of a rational quest".

Also, I was focusing on content over tone, which is hard to get across properly in text in any case. But I intended it to be less "look how fucking awesome we are" and more "see, we have some reason to think we can do stuff despite the efficient ninja hypothesis".

The only thing that I think is a pure emotional appeal is the "precious people" part, and that serves an explanatory role as well. Other than that, the intended thrust of the compassion parts is that it's actually an important advantage for us / a reason we can imagine or at least hope our plans could work on an international scale. We've seen the dividends of trust in individual cases, and we can imagine it overcoming some of the barriers to cooperation on a larger scale as well.

Sorry if that didn't come across well, either--I didn't have the time/energy to refine the thing as much as I'd like. I've made some edits to try and get the intended points across better without coming across as arrogant or overly sentimental. Glad you liked it overall, and thanks for the feedback.
 
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Voting is closed.

CounterBot, version 1.5


Plan name: Make EJ Write Talky Scenes
Voters: @Cariyaga, @faflec, @Jello_Raptor, @Kalkin, @Kiba, @Killer_Whale, @notanautomaton, @OliWhail, @ProperAttorney
Num votes: 9

Plan name: Talky Scenes Where We Don't Insult Jiraiya
Voters: @bayesclef, @Dictator4Hire, @faflec, @Jello_Raptor, @Langevin, @notanautomaton, @Traiden
Num votes: 7

Plan name: Training Noburi: Sneaky Medic
Voters: @1234qwerty, @bayesclef, @Cariyaga, @faflec, @Kiba, @OliWhail, @Traiden
Num votes: 7

Plan name: Training Keiko: Sneaky Wind
Voters: @1234qwerty, @bayesclef, @Cariyaga, @Kiba, @OliWhail, @Traiden
Num votes: 6

Plan name: Lore update
Voters: @1234qwerty, @Chronocide, @Langevin, @Muer'ci, @WheelbarrowWight
Num votes: 5

Plan name: Training Hazou: Sneaky MEW
Voters: @bayesclef, @Cariyaga, @Kiba, @OliWhail, @Traiden
Num votes: 5

Plan name: Action Subplan (Kabuto Discussion): Cautious Kitchen Sink
Voters: @Langevin
Num votes: 1

Plan name: Action Subplan (Kabuto Discussion): Opsec is a river in Egypt
Voters: @Cariyaga
Num votes: 1

Plan name: Akane and Hazou-OTP XOR BFFs
Voters: @WheelbarrowWight
Num votes: 1

Plan name: Ask Jiraiya to manage our romantic life (he can get a book out of it if he gets us a harem)
Voters: @Kalkin
Num votes: 1

Plan name: Assisting and Conversing
Voters: @Dictator4Hire
Num votes: 1

Plan name: OliWhail
Voters: @Killer_Whale
Num votes: 1

Plan name: Relationship Plan: Keeping Our Options Open
Voters: @Dictator4Hire
Num votes: 1

Plan name: Romance Plan: IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE
Voters: @faflec
Num votes: 1

Plan name: Take This Plan
Voters: @Kiba
Num votes: 1

Plan name: Training Hazou: Autonomous Iron Nerve actions + simultaneous Iron Nerve gestures
Voters: @1234qwerty
Num votes: 1


Number of voters: 17
 
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Ha. I love the Efficient Ninja Hypothesis: If a ninja thought he found something that nobody exploited, it's either unexploitable or had already been exploited to hell and back.
 
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faflec said:
@eaglejarl, How does the "Number of voters" count 7 voters if the number of people who voted for the winning Action Plan counts 9?
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That is a good question.

I am more delighted by the fact that Plan name: Make EJ Write Talky Scenes is victorious, while Plan name: Talky Scenes Where We Don't Insult Jiraiya is only runner-up. It has wonderful implications.
Kiba said:
Ha. I love the Efficient Ninja Hypothesis: If a ninja thought he found something that nobody exploited, it's either exploitable or had already been exploited to hell and back.
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Do you mean "unexploitable"?
 
Velorien said:
Akazino, of course - because it's going to be one hell of a gamble.

(Plus, it gives each name a turn both starting and ending a pairing.)
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Velorien said:
It might actually work better in the shinobi world (assuming awareness of poly to begin with). To a ninja, the possibility of oneself or one's partner not coming back from the next mission will never be far from one's thoughts. "This will reduce the pain to my partner when I die, and provide them with a support network" can be a big deal under those circumstances.
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Velorien said:
Could you explain why? At a glance, it just seems like Akane has an enormous head start.
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I think we have a good chance of making poly happen eventually. The XP reward will be amazing.
 
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