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I am wary of weary of stuffing another keg full of social gunpowder broaching the "lets kill people a bit more discriminately shall we?" conversation with Kagome at this moment in time.
 
I'm just tired of all of these social arcs (specifically the clusterfucks, I'm fine with social arcs in general) and kind of want them to be over but rushing it's only gonna make things worse.

...Can we just vote in, "Hazou is empathetic to all involved; here are some thoughts he has on the matters in question; here are things he wants to work toward re: the social clusterfucks; here are things he doesn't want out of them" and be done with it?
 
I reiterate: Kagome doesn't have a leg to stand on here. Mutual reconciliation should occur after he is shut down hard. In fact, we should probably recruit Keiko to repeat her, "I can hear the killbox calling", speech since what is probably bothering him more than anything is that all three of his closest family members left him out of healing the fourth rather than it just being Hazou.

In at case, any reconciliation should involve Keiko and Noburi as well.
 
I reiterate: Kagome doesn't have a leg to stand on here. Mutual reconciliation should occur after he is shut down hard. In fact, we should probably recruit Keiko to repeat her, "I can hear the killbox calling", speech since what is probably bothering him more than anything is that all three of his closest family members left him out of healing the fourth rather than it just being Hazou.

In at case, any reconciliation should involve Keiko and Noburi as well.
Eh, he had a point that us not telling him could have turned out very poorly. He's aware of his flaws. We don't need to point them out.
 
Eh, he had a point that us not telling him could have turned out very poorly. He's aware of his flaws. We don't need to point them out.

He absolutely is not. His flaws got Mari badly injured and endangered an entire operation, then they nearly got the whole clan executed and still managed to wreck a critical gambit while rendering it indebted to extradimensional Nazis, then, immediately afterwards, he did the exact same thing again trying to fix it instead of, y'know, actually consulting anybody. He does not get to play the, "You made decisions without involving me" card. If he does we play it right back a dozen times and, at most, agree that we were both wrong and neither of us should do it again.

This flaw isn't fixed yet, by the way. He nearly got in a fist-fight with a Kage over a disagreement about pedagogical philosophy and, yet again, only the active intervention of a social spec jounin kept it from coming to a head. He will eventually blow everything up if he doesn't finally learn that he does not get to make decisions for everybody just because he thinks he knows better, and there will never be a more sympathetic moment for him to internalize that.
 
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@MadScientist

  • Training with four of these people? How long do you expect the update to last?
  • Finding vagrants to spread rumor? Why do you assume homeless people exist? Also doesn't it make us look suspicious? Do you expect Hazō to do it alone, or with Noburi/Keiko?
 
He absolutely is not. His flaws got Mari badly injured and endangered an entire operation, then they nearly got the whole clan executed and still managed to wreck a critical gambit while rendering it indebted to extradimensional Nazis, then, immediately afterwards, he did the exact same thing again trying to fix it instead of, y'know, actually consulting anybody. He does not get to play the, "You made decisions without involving me" card. If he does we play it right back a dozen times and, at best, agree that we were both wrong and neither of us should do it again.

This flaw isn't fixed yet, by the way. He nearly got in a fist-fight with a Kage over a disagreement about pedagogical philosophy and, yet again, only the active intervention of a social spec jounin kept it from coming to a head. He will eventually blow everything up if he doesn't finally learn that he does not get to make decisions for everybody just because he thinks he knows better, and there will never be a more sympathetic moment for him to internalize that.
I don't want him to hate us though. And he's very much not a normal person. His team is everything to him, and we betrayed him by not talking to him about this.
 
I don't want him to hate us though. And he's very much not a normal person. His team is everything to him, and we betrayed him by not talking to him about this.

-and he betrayed his team multiple times by committing exactly the same actus reus, with worse mens rea, to vastly worse effect.

-and yet, his team forgave him, because he is family and we trust him to at least mean well while trying to become better. Now it's his turn.
 
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-and he betrayed his team multiple times by committing exactly the same actus reus, with worse mens rea, to vastly worse effect.

-and yet, his team forgave him, because he is family and we trust him to at least mean well while trying to become better. Now it's his turn.
And is there a reason that we have to strike him when he's most vulnerable?

Your solution seems more likely to lead to much greater drama and I am done with all of this social drama.

We can talk about that later.
 
We are rapidly approaching some sort of local minimum where Keiko is the most stable of all of us.

This needs to be averted at all costs, because whatever throws Noburi off the deep end will likely kill most if not all of us in the process.
 
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And is there a reason that we have to strike him when he's most vulnerable?

Your solution seems more likely to lead to much greater drama and I am done with all of this social drama.

We can talk about that later.

I've frankly been in favor of this since the Kagome-murder post, but right now is the first time, possibly ever, that he has seen the other side of the problem. This is something about him which absolutely needs to be fixed, and this is an unprecedented opening.

-oh, yeah, it also cleanly shuts down the endless drama train of apologies this arc is turning into. Two birds, one kunai.



We are rapidly approaching some sort of local minimum where Keiko is the most stable of all of us.

This needs to be averted at all costs, because whatever throws Noburi off the deep end will likely kill most if not all of us in the process.

Nah, it'll just spin her off into her own quest of metaphysical psychological horror, which is the objective.



Why?

Why does it need to be his turn?

-because this is the first time he's been on the other end? -because he needs to learn this vital lesson before he breaks something the GMs will finally refuse to retcon? -because Hazou, Keiko, and Noburi have between them at least a single ounce of pride and self-worth between them?
 
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I stopped reading WtR because I finally couldn't stand his various special-snowflake writing conventions -- making up new punctuation, capitalizing species names ("Ivy", "Tiger", "Human"), refusing to use dialogue tags even at the expense of clarity, etc.
Don't forget writing key dialogue in Invisitext!
Right! How could I forget that one? Oh my god, it's such a pain in the ass when you're on mobile.

And let's not even get started on the "Yes, I'm writing two separate stories at the same time (Paragon [the main story, where the main character is not an asshat Mary Sue] and Renegage [the alt story where the main character IS an asshat Mary Sue]) and interweaving them so if you aren't interested in Renegade well then hahaha because this whole next block of (two, seven, ten, twenty, however many) is going to be him, with maybe one or two of Paragon sprinkled in! Oh, and Renegade is going to be an absolute Mary Sue for the first few real-life years of the story, facing no opposition whatsoever and being a complete dick to everyone in the story...and then he's suddenly going to do a heel-face turn and start to have some real challenges that make his story really engaging...oh, and then he's not going to get much focus anymore. Hahahahaha."
 
Finding vagrants to spread rumor? Why do you assume homeless people exist? Also doesn't it make us look suspicious?
In order:

1) Finding vagrants, yes.
2) Homeless people exist.
3) "Do it in disguise."

What could possibly be the problem here? We spent half of an update doing some intel gathering in disguise and nothing bad happened. This is not so different.
 
What could possibly be the problem here? We spent half of an update doing some intel gathering in disguise and nothing bad happened. This is not so different.
The fact that it's explicitly in a plan and so doesn't have the unplanned-actions-Hazou-takes-don't-go-terribly-to-avoid-stripping-players-of-agency bias :p
 
Right! How could I forget that one? Oh my god, it's such a pain in the ass when you're on mobile.

And let's not even get started on the "Yes, I'm writing two separate stories at the same time (Paragon [the main story, where the main character is not an asshat Mary Sue] and Renegage [the alt story where the main character IS an asshat Mary Sue]) and interweaving them so if you aren't interested in Renegade well then hahaha because this whole next block of (two, seven, ten, twenty, however many) is going to be him, with maybe one or two of Paragon sprinkled in! Oh, and Renegade is going to be an absolute Mary Sue for the first few real-life years of the story, facing no opposition whatsoever and being a complete dick to everyone in the story...and then he's suddenly going to do a heel-face turn and start to have some real challenges that make his story really engaging...oh, and then he's not going to get much focus anymore. Hahahahaha."
The sad bit is that I actually find the Renegade story to be about ten times more interesting than the Paragon one at this point, but it's not the "Main" story so...
 
Seriously, I love Kagome. Speaking as somebody who complains that classic Tom Clancy is too wet and reads technically classified avionic technical readouts for fun, he is one of the only characters I have sympathized with, ever, but if we don't fix this he is going to blow up everything and we are going to lose either the quest or, worse, him. He needs a good smacking with the clue-bat while he's left himself exposed.
 
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Seriously, I love Kagome. Speaking as somebody who complains that classic Tom Clancy is too wet and reads technically illegal avionic technical readouts for fun, he is one of the only characters I have sympathized with, ever, but if we don't fix this he is going to blow up everything and we are going to lose either the quest or, worse, him. He needs a good smacking with the clue-bat while he's left himself exposed.
At least run it by Noburi, Keiko, and Mari, then.
 
@Lailoken Is there a particular reason we have to do it specifically in response to Kagome's actions in the recent chapter? I don't object to having this conversation in principle, but the way you want to approach it makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. It's...FMPOV Kagome would feel that Hazou was only bringing this up because he'd screwed up and wanted to shift the blame over to Kagome. Which wouldn't end well for anyone involved.

In any case, the voting period ends in ~8 hours, which makes me want to say NO to the change just because of our history with this thing.
 
Apologize to Kagome.

Give Kagome his birthday presents early as an apology.

Give Kagome his birthday presents early as an apology.

Apologize to Kagome.

@Lailoken has convinced me this is a bad idea.

On reflection, I'm pretty sick of seeing Hazou take flak for everything that happens, and further, I think our habit of having him compulsively apologize for every slight and every fuckup is more than a little unhealthy for the guy.

We are trying to do our damndest to do right by everyone, and fuck if Hazou isn't one of the best things that ever happened to this hellhole of a world, even if it is three steps forward and two back the whole way. This world just isn't good enough for him.

It was Hana who caused this whole debacle, not Hazou. Hazou is in no way culpable for Mari's funk, Hana's surprise motivational torture session, or for preventing Kagome from literally murdering his mother (and a Mist diplomat nonetheless) right in front of him.

And Kagome's upset because he got left out of the conversation, yet he virtually proves we were correct to do so? Even if it was an unintentional act of omission compounded by extraneous circumstances that no one foresaw -- he once again almost obliterates everything we've worked so hard for in a single lapse of judgement even with warning and assurances from his family.

No
, Kagome, and fuck off.

Fuck.

...I love Kagome. He's fucking great. (Do I need to quote how many times I've said that in a reaction post?) But he needs help, and badly. He's a powderkeg one mishap away from exploding at all times. Hell, we're pretty negligent even bringing him into the city. It's played for laughs, but how many times has his newfound family prevented him from killing someone, getting himself sent off to T&I, and causing our world to implode?

Apologizing is basically affirming his worldview and stating that even if we don't condone his behavior, we will at least tacitly accept it for no other reason than because he threw a tantrum and we want to assuage his feelings.

That is not acceptable.

Don't ask me what to do instead. Fuck if I know. I'd personally probably just have Hazou tuning all this out and relaxing in solitude (or at least training nonstop for the tournament if prioritizing mental health isn't productive enough).

Hana be damned, Mari can take responsibility for herself, and Kagome can learn the hard way that love and acceptance is never unconditional.

/rant

E: On more reflection this isn't really fair to Mari. She's the worst off here by any stretch. But still, what else is Hazou to do? I still believe the best course of action is to just stick by her while she figures it out.
 
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