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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Kylinger said:
I feel like having a nervous breakdown because it's politically/socially convenient is exactly what a Cold Stone Killer mastermind would do.
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Counting on the rest of the team's reaction to sell it. I don't expect them to be prepared for a genuine breakdown on Hazou's part. And I do think it would be a genuine breakdown.

Huh, thanks to the booze I forgot half the reason I started the post you're responding to.

Confession time:
I've had mixed feelings about the Youthsuit rollback since it happened.
On the one hand, it felt like a bad end. It made me unhappy to lose, etc, etc, etc.
On the other, the QMs' reasoning for why Hazou would suffer a mental breakdown was more than a little compelling. It felt right for the character and situation.
I've always wondered how it would play out.
That's actually part of the reason I voted suicide before the rollback.
Part of it was anger at the QMs, but a not insignificant part was that it felt right for the character and situation. I'll admit that I'm a sucker for tragedy.

@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail
So, this might be a bit awkward, but if you have any thoughts on how you would have handled a successful suicide vote, I'm really interested to know.
If any of you were to say, write an omake covering that I'd be bouncing up and down in glee.

@Oneiros43
Thanks for the reference, I'd quote you but it would be an empty quote.
 
Radvic said:
To be fair, we are a Cold Stone Killer mastermind :p
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I am reminded of HPMOR where, iirc, Harry offers to go through some sort of challenge to prove he wasn't evil but his offer was declined, because no matter what the challenge was, he was smart enough to fake his way through it.
I failed my Google-Fu to find the exact quote though. :/
 
Dissonance said:
I am reminded of HPMOR where, iirc, Harry offers to go through some sort of challenge to prove he wasn't evil but his offer was declined, because no matter what the challenge was, he was smart enough to fake his way through it.
I failed my Google-Fu to find the exact quote though. :/
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Haven't read HPMOR, but I'm pretty sure that quote comes from the sorting hat.
 
"To convince me that you harbor no ambitions of becoming a Dark Lord?" said Professor Quirrell, now looking outright amused. "I suppose you could just raise your right hand."

"What?" Harry said blankly. "But I can raise my right hand whether or not I -" Harry stopped, feeling rather stupid.
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Dissonance said:
I am reminded of HPMOR where, iirc, Harry offers to go through some sort of challenge to prove he wasn't evil but his offer was declined, because no matter what the challenge was, he was smart enough to fake his way through it.
I failed my Google-Fu to find the exact quote though. :/
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Yeah- It wouldn't eliminate the possibility of us having master level acting skills nor that we have the ability to induce a nervous breakdown in ourselves. Which, I'm not entirely convinced we couldn't actually do that.
 
eaglejarl said:
Honestly, I wish you were correct. I strongly dislike the culture that we've created and I wish I had a good reason for it to not be like this.
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Well, here's our chance to make things better. We'll change the damn culture if we have to.

Maybe we can appeal to Shikaku about that? ...damn, Hazou really needs to learn some probability theory. And math in general.
 
Oneiros43 said:
It's more the fact that you decided to keep so much from canon Naruto. The clan structure. The relative position of all of the hidden villages. The fact that ninja apparently constantly plot how to kill each other even when they are allies. The rampant paranoia about letting your allies know about techniques that they literally can't copy. The Uchiha massacre still happening. Akatsuki still being exactly the same and still be based in rain. Leaf being the good village. Just feels to me that you decided to be beholden to canon to much and not really try to work out what the actual dynamic of the world should be.
Like sending scrubs to kill Jounin is stupid dumb. This is a rational fic so no one should blatantly pick up an idiot ball but that pretty much it. Then when people point out why this stuff is dumb you claim oh I wish the world was different. When you literally sit up the starting point of the world.
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Yeah, you're right about the 'scrubs vs jōnin' thing. That was an offhand thought that I threw in while writing that particular post, and not part of the group-approved worldbuilding proper. Put that one on my brain wandering a bit.

As to the rest -- how do you know that Akatsuki are the same, and why do you believe they are based in Rain? Why do you think that Leaf is the good village? You've only seen two, or three if you count Swamp.

As to my comment about disliking the culture...recall that this was a group effort. All of us suggested things that the other QMs wished were not the case but could not find a valid reason to refute. There are things about the MfD world that I wish were not the case and I'm sure the others feel the same way. (Note that "disliking the culture we created" is not the same as "disliking the thing we created.") The problem is that once you have some basic premises set they tend to influence a lot of what comes afterwards.
 
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Kylinger said:
Yeah- It wouldn't eliminate the possibility of us having master level acting skills nor that we have the ability to induce a nervous breakdown in ourselves. Which, I'm not entirely convinced we couldn't actually do that.
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Hazou's bloodline is literally "can perfectly replicate anything he deems necessary" We have the ability to induce a nervous breakdown in ourselves.
 
Saint said:
"But my mom, for me, she, uh, she figured out how to turn it off. It took her a long time, 'cause she had to practice. Re-learn how to walk and lift her arms and smile and everything without it on, and then, on my birthday, she gave me a gift. It was the most precious thing I think any Kurosawa has ever given another, and it was my mom to me. She gave me a hug, a completely unique hug. One that she could never replicate again, not even if she wanted to. It was a hug only I ever owned and will ever own."

Hazou stands up, shaky, no elegance in his steps, no ninja training. He can't really kneel down next to Keiko, instead he just kinda collapses but he collapses correctly enough that he can get his arms around her.

Hazou gives Keiko a hug.

"Happy birthday. Thank you for being my friend."
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ProperAttorney said:
Looking at the plan, is there any way we can change
  • Ask them, if it's okay, if you could tell Minami the story of the Village Hidden in the Swamp. She needs to understand.
so that we don't give away so much just by asking. This lady is smart, she's already connecting plenty of dots. Not too difficult for her to connect "Village Hidden in the Swamp" with "Join Leaf-Mist extermination mission in the swamp some time back." Might not be important, but I think we've put our collective feet in our mouth enough as it is.
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Does she not already know that we come from Mist? She's calling us by our actual names and a Wakahisa should be pretty obvious anyway. Aren't at least the names of the clans from various villages common knowledge? On the other hand, I feel if she did know we are from Mist, it should have come up in her thoughts at least once in the last chapter. Especially as Mist has a particularly bad reputation in Leaf if I remember correctly. Or at least she would have recalled it when thinking "She was surrounded by the Cold Stone Killers. [...] The villains who had all but delivered Hot Springs into Mist's hands."

Can someone please clarify this for me? This is a lot of assumptions and guesses from me, and I may be missing something obvious. This probably came up long ago anyway as our minders in Leaf used our true names, but I don't remember it well. I am sorry if it is obvious or has already been said and I missed or forgot it.

If she doesn't know, I totally agree we should not mention "Village Hidden in the Swamp" without explicit approbation by the team. Maybe rather ask them if he could tell Minami the story that lead to us becoming missing-nin.
 
As an aside, something I just realized: Given the connection between body language (that is, people with displaying a certain body langauge feature -- ie smiling-- tend to feel the emotion linked to it) and emotion, the Kurosawa would have quite above average emotional control. ...Well, ones that aren't friggin' fourteen, anyway.
 
eaglejarl said:
As to the rest -- how do you know that Akatsuki are the same, and why do you believe they are based in Rain? Why do you think that Leaf is the good village? You've only seen two, or three if you count Swamp.
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Every named or mentioned member outside of the leader has a direct canon character associated with them
eaglejarl said:
created by Deidara
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eaglejarl said:
Hoshigaki Kisame, a blue-skinned missing-nin from Mi
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eaglejarl said:
His partner fought with a scythe and seemed utterly immune to harm
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eaglejarl said:
S-rank puppet-user that I didn't recognize and one of my former students: Konan, a paper- and explosive-tag user. Former student or not, she had no problem trying to kill me.
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As for leaf being the good village there's never had them do anything morally ambiguous on screen. The only thing we have is kagome saying the run scorch squads but do it more humanely.

We have kagome saying that akatsuki is based in rain.

That on top of the fact that you basically decided that clan techniques learnable by low chunnin are secret is kinda bizarre to me.
That ninja will basically risk there life of there team and themselves just feels like an idiot ball.
Honestly I think you messed up a lot in your world building especially by not changing the political and social structures to account for this being a rational quest. Then when the player base assumes that everyone in the world is rational you bop us over the head with a herring.
 
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Cariyaga said:
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail Can Hazou "turn off" Iron Nerve?
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eaglejarl said:
"At least you don't have to remember to be a person," Hazou snapped.

As quick as it had come, the anger drained away and left him deflated. "Yes, there's a lot of good about the Iron Nerve," Hazou said. "The part about copying seals—sure, it lets me do that, but that's a party trick. I can reliably draw designs, how nice. I still need to learn to infuse them or they're just pretty squiggles. Let me tell you, training under Kagome-sensei isn't exactly all honeycake and hot baths."

"Okay, that's fair," Noburi said. He paused. "What did you mean about being a person?"

Hazou thought about how to answer. "You remember half-speed sparring at the Academy? Everything is slow enough that you can choose exactly what you're going to do next. You can consciously tighten each muscle, choose exactly how hard you're going to push or pull. Right?"

"Yeah, so?"

"That's my life," Hazou said. "It's like there's a big catalog of every motion I've ever made, right behind my eyes. If I'm not thinking about it, the Iron Nerve will choose one based on my subconcious intent and replay it. I'll walk, or run, or tumble, exactly the way I did before. If I am thinking about it, then I can choose from the catalog, select which action gets replayed, but it's still exactly like the first time. In order to learn a new motion I have to concentrate on turning the Iron Nerve off. I have to focus on reacting...well, I can't say reacting normally, because for me the Iron Nerve is normal. I have to focus on turning the Iron Nerve off so that I can move on my own."

"Okaaay," Noburi said, clearly confused.

"You don't get it, do you?" Hazou asked. "I'm a windup toy except when I remember to be a person."
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Have we ever tried using Seals for computation?
Like, maybe 1+1 or something simple like that? Is it theoretically possible?

If the computation is instant, that would have implications I think. Although how would it even work, I don't know.
 
edqu said:
Have we ever tried using Seals for computation?
Like, maybe 1+1 or something simple like that? Is it theoretically possible?

If the computation is instant, that would have implications I think. Although how would it even work, I don't know.
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Pretty sure we can't tell the difference between "instant" and "really really fast?"
 
Radvic said:
Pretty sure we can't tell the difference between "instant" and "really really fast?"
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Well we can just pick an absurd computation. Like, find the 2^^^^^^^^2th prime number using a very slow algorithm. Or I don't know, Hazou can plausibly come up with something similar that doesn't require CS or math knowledge.

Also, we could pick an infinite computation. We might crash the universe, or the operating system will tell us we're using too much resources.
 
edqu said:
Well we can just pick an absurd computation. Like, find the 2^^^^^^^^2th prime number using a very slow algorithm. Or I don't know, Hazou can plausibly come up with something similar that doesn't require CS or math knowledge.

Also, we could pick an infinite computation. We might crash the universe, or the operating system will tell us we're using too much resources.
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I am totally on board with asking chakra to do something requiring an infinite amount of energy.
 
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