- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Why, how do you think deeply traumatised and not entirely sane jōnin flirt?
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
Tua
鸡肉面条汤
- Location
- شوربة الدجاج المعكرونة
Like Gai's and Kakashi's canon relationship, basically.
- Location
- Yes.
Hm? What relationship?
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hana already went down on her so hard, she broke her mind.
Man, Hana can use her tongue.
She left Mari wet and shaking.
It took Jiraiya himself to set her straight.
Hazou didn't expect meeting two moms at once would leave him so hot and bothered.
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Tua
鸡肉面条汤
- Location
- شوربة الدجاج المعكرونة
The whole competition thing. They seemed to be good friends despite Kakashi's efforts.
- Location
- Yes.
I was miming Kakashi's tendency to act confused about Gai and his actions.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
So, I've finished my analysis of the chapter. I'll be trying something a bit unusual here; bear with me.
As such, I think she is more interested in Uplift than she made seem at first glance, and she'll prove an excellent ally in the future. This was a triumph, I'm making a note here, etc. etc.
- Ami opened with a detailed account of her machinations around Yukizome's Experimental Cuisine's history. I believe it served three purposes:
- Tactical bragging: Hazou found her scheme impressive, and immediately compared it to his (subpar) performance.
- Demonstrated how Ami operates, from which Hazou could learn useful lessons if he tries.
- Signaled that she is at least a little interested in playing fair by giving a thorough answer to his question. (Assuming the whole thing wasn't a lie, of course. We should check.)
- After Hazou gave her the present, she pushed pretty hard towards familiarity (hug, then first names), which could be seen as either manipulative (and as a setup for the later seduction attempt), or manipulative and signalling that she would like to continue dealing with Hazou in the future.
- After Hazou took too long to answer, she made the first mood whiplash. Her offer was actually not that bad (as far as I could tell, it was pretty similar to CCnJ), but the sharp change in demeanour worked to unsettle Hazou, put him off-balance. It was a relatively gentle, if still noticeable, reminder that he put himself in danger by meeting with her.
- She then made a casual comment that Hazou is worth more to her alive than dead. That was friendly? I mean, I don't think anybody expected her to not think along these lines; it's basically like saying to a friend that you like them.
- She diverted the conversation away from her own goals by distracting Hazou with food, but she did meet him halfway by dissing the system...
- ... before making another off-hand comment about murdering random people. She seems really fond of these.
- On the topic of Uplift, she brought up some genuinely novel and valid points: about how alien that society would be to the EN, about merchants and excess resources. It's not something we didn't think of, but I don't think anyone in-universe brought that up before.
- And then there was this thing about the Ghost Scales OPSEC incident. What Ami meant there greatly depends on how it's proceeding, and Jiraiya still didn't update us on that, but I think it was a subtle way of signalling approval/reassurance. Attempting to hide it from the Mori's upper echelons was a lost cause the moment we decided on the Iron Nerve lie (they're the thinker clan sharing the village with the Kurosawa, they already know all secrets of the IN, and they know that explosions-tanking isn't one of them), so Ami's remarking on its bad-for-Ren implications could only mean that it worked on the other villages (if it didn't work, she would have ridiculed it instead).
- Returning to Uplift: Over the course of the conversation, she subtly signaled that she disapproved of Hazou's plans without ever stating this outright. Now she made her opinion explicit: No, she doesn't in fact disapprove, she would be happy if Hazou succeed! Also, here's a random wise-sounding plot-crafting advice.
- It's almost, but not quite, enough to get Hazou caught in her blatantly obvious trap where she does Hazou a favour without asking then expects him to repay. Thankfully, precommiting remains the winning strategy.
- Hazou brings up the world's slow death; Ami makes a valid point that it's too far in the future to make anyone care now. I doubt that she doesn't care, but it makes the point more poignant.
- Hazou takes a second too long to reflect, and cue mood whiplash #2 where she almost threatens to murder him. I... don't see much purpose in this, other than to put him off-balance again and remind him how dangerous real world is.
- It is funny that I consider an action that accomplishes "only" two things simultaneously lacking in purpose. That's what analysing Ami's actions does to you, I suppose.
- And now time for the pay-off. Mood whiplash #3: seduction. Contrary to what she said, it was more than "a few basic body language techniques".
- Over the course of the conversation, Ami was gradually putting Hazou more and more off-balance.
- Her latest action was the most unsettling one so far, very effective in frightening Hazou — and misattribution of arousal is a thing.
- Framing was excellent: she acknowledged the largest issue in communication between them (that he knew he couldn't see through her acting) and claimed she was putting herself on the line to fix it. Declining being seduced would be heartless.
- And, well, I suppose basic body language techniques were involved too.
- And when Hazou successfully resisted (ah, I'm still a bit annoyed at myself I didn't think to put a precommitment against it), she pretty clearly stated what she was doing this entire conversation, shortly before terminating it.
As such, I think she is more interested in Uplift than she made seem at first glance, and she'll prove an excellent ally in the future. This was a triumph, I'm making a note here, etc. etc.
Did you buy it? I was making a point there, about how easy it would be to buy into her act.
This meeting was a disaster and a failure.
I guess she gave Hazou an opportunity to make himself interesting to her, with her remarks WRT the stamp, but he didn't notice, of course.
This meeting was a disaster and a failure.
- Nice setup from the beginning: the only one witnessing that conversation was someone loyal to Ami/Mist. If Hazou did something unwise, Ami had a witness; if Ami did something untoward, Hazou would have had only his words as proof.
- Her digression into the restaurant's history served three purposes:
- Intimidating Hazou with her political skills.
- Offering a lot of "valuable" (actually almost useless) information for free — making Hazou want to reciprocate.
- Signalling (in conjunction with her earlier comment about Shinjirou) that she controls everything surrounding this meeting, the whole context.
- When she was bringing up Hazou's present (thrice), she was subtly mocking it each time by contrasting it with large-political manoeuvring or examples of social brilliance (i. e.: world in chaos and the Hokage out to kill her, powerful people offering her bribes for favours, the multitude of "points" she made). A metaphor for how small, powerless, and irrelevant Hazou really is.
- Mood whiplash #1 served four objectives:
- Put Hazou off-balance.
- Punish him for taking too long with the answer.
- Punish him for not accepting her suggestion to be closer.
- Instill general wariness/fear into him.
- Same with her casual remarks about considering murdering him. I made it sound like a quirky shtick, but it was made solely for the purpose of intimidating Hazou and keeping him off-balance. That was what she optimized for the entire time: she in control, Hazou off-balance. Very Shikaku.
- The Mori may like to pretend, whenever it's convenient, that they know everyone's secrets, but they're not actually omniscient. It's entirely possible the Kurosawa managed to hide something from them for generations — and even if not, Ami isn't a Mori elder aware of everything her clan knows. She couldn't be certain the Iron Nerve doesn't allow to tank explosions, so she casually mentioned the Iron Nerve lie harvested from Ikeda to gauge Hazou's reaction. He likely gave everything away, ruining our work. The Mori, and Mist as a whole, now know about the armor jutsu.
- (Jiraiya will kill Hazou next update, yes.)
- The favour, the seduction — how safe they really were? She claims she would have stopped the seduction — before or after things progressed enough that she had some solid blackmail material? As to the favour, Hazou is bad at deal-making enough she could have likely bargained the Skywalkers out of him if he let her. Our precommitments just barely saved us.
- And then she claimed it's the Frozen Skein's fault. Probably the most outrageous lie of the entire meeting.
I guess she gave Hazou an opportunity to make himself interesting to her, with her remarks WRT the stamp, but he didn't notice, of course.
Did you buy it? I was making a point about how the preconceptions one starts with could influence one's view of the facts, and how easy it would therefore be to see Ami in good or bad light respectively. Also, I love lying-narrator gimmicks. (I fear I forced it a bit with the bad interpretation; I was feeling tired. Good one is closer to the truth, I think, though I made sure to mix up my blatant lies with honest conjectures in both sections.)
Actual opinion this time (I promise ^_^):
Over the course of the conversation, Ami cultivated a dual persona where she was simultaneously a horrifying Kage-level social expert, and a vulnerable girl genuinely trying to be fair to Hazou despite their inherent power difference. She did it through means both subtle ("you're worth more to me alive than dead" / "I could, and probably will, die within the month") and blatant (mood whiplashes). It's made plain as day here:
She then freely used either persona whenever it was convenient, despite their seeming irreconcilability. Quite insidious (I love it). I tried to mirror it in this post, as you could see. I don't think there's any point in looking deeper into it; she is an excellent actor capable of spinning up multiple complex personalities out of the whole cloth in minutes, but that's that. She is not a hivemind, nor insane; overall, I think the meeting went well and she played nice.
I guess that's all. If you want an in-depth non-gimmicky analysis, wait for @MadScientist's.
(I do think she liked the stamp though. Stupid probably-Jiraiya vetoing eating on the ceiling and giving her a post-interaction survey. Or maybe it was gravity. Stupid gravity.)
Actual opinion this time (I promise ^_^):
Over the course of the conversation, Ami cultivated a dual persona where she was simultaneously a horrifying Kage-level social expert, and a vulnerable girl genuinely trying to be fair to Hazou despite their inherent power difference. She did it through means both subtle ("you're worth more to me alive than dead" / "I could, and probably will, die within the month") and blatant (mood whiplashes). It's made plain as day here:
You see, the poor girl is who she really is, but she shares the mind with this terrifying conglomeration of mental subroutines she developed to survive in the cutthroat ninja world which randomly activates in response to arbitrary stimuli and hard-to-predict trigger phrases. In other words, she is a good person, but she is not in control of her own mind. Oh, poor Ami.
She then freely used either persona whenever it was convenient, despite their seeming irreconcilability. Quite insidious (I love it). I tried to mirror it in this post, as you could see. I don't think there's any point in looking deeper into it; she is an excellent actor capable of spinning up multiple complex personalities out of the whole cloth in minutes, but that's that. She is not a hivemind, nor insane; overall, I think the meeting went well and she played nice.
I guess that's all. If you want an in-depth non-gimmicky analysis, wait for @MadScientist's.
(I do think she liked the stamp though. Stupid probably-Jiraiya vetoing eating on the ceiling and giving her a post-interaction survey. Or maybe it was gravity. Stupid gravity.)
My worst fears were confirmed. She plays at a level above even us-the-hivemind, and she throws memetic metafictional weaponry around like no tomorrow. Look at this nonsense:
She even got faflec. faflec, the most paranoid of us all!:
I now want to orchestrate for her to sit in a room with Shikaku and Kagome, discussing crazy conspiracy theories. Also, I'll be entirely fine with her turning Hazou into her willing minion provided he'll be an important one, because then I'll get to read more chapters like that one and I won't need to write plans for them. No effort, only pleasure.
She even got faflec. faflec, the most paranoid of us all!:
We're defeated.
the concept of nothingness
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Evenstar
Triple Jump Unlocked
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I will note that there have been only two readings done, and already you are beginning to believe in the cards. You're trying to justify their apparent meaning as something I did to them, because you don't want to believe that random chance is that accurate.
But it is!
The drawings are done with the Major Arcana only. I precommitted to take the first set produced by this generator each time, and actually did so. As it doesn't give me upright/reversed, I've ignored facing. Order does matter, though, so this is permutations, not combinations.
The math works out as:
21 options of 1st card *
20 options of 2nd card *
19 options of 3rd card
7,980 possible sets.
Are there really 7,980 possible chapters? I doubt it. There are not 7,980 unique readings for those 7,980 different sets: similar reasoning can result from completely different cards.
The fact that both sets appear meaningful is a testament to the complex symbology of tarot and the pattern-matching power of the human brain. There really, genuinely is no deeper meaning in the deck. You're just falling victim to a weaponized form of the Law of Fives.
This danger - the instinctive belief that the cards "say" things - is why they are a Dangerous Last Resort Technique to the Kakero. They really do have value as a decision-making tool, because they allow you to externalize your doubts - "I'm not saying it, the deck is saying it."
But come to rely on that too much, and you'll start thinking the deck has opinions. Once you do that - once you personify it - it instantly becomes value-negative, because the question you're asking it has changed. It stops being "What do I think?", and becomes "what do you think?"
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Soooo, the dude was disowned and his business isn't doing well at all. How can he afford the location? The son of a civilian chef doesn't strike me as the kind of person to have a lot of savings, and with his restaurant as unpopular as it is, he probably couldn't afford a rent.
Might this be a plot hook? (probably not)
Hmm.... snow-walking or wall-running "just because" seems perfectly in character for Ami.
On the other hand, arriving earlier makes a lot of sense; if nothing else from a security perspective.
Hazou never actually confirms wether Shinjirō actually exists, and Ami discourages him from trying to find out.
Is... is this the ancient secret social spec technique of asking for something absurd first to make the thing you actually want seem insignificant in comparison?
While it fails at first, I guess she gets what she wants in the end:
So... what do you think Ami intended with this meeting? It seems like she wants something from Hazou (prime candidate would be Keiko-related I guess), considering the effort she seems to have invested into this meeting and into building a relationship with Hazou.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That was fun.
Minor nit-pick: at one point you use "recuperate" when you mean "reciprocate". Possibly a Freudian slip based on how Hazō might feel after that meeting.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
To be fair, I was thinking along similar directions with a less ridiculous magnitude.
We only have her word she would have stopped, after all.
Oh, yes, of course.
I thought you went a little too fast and hard on both. There are obviously points in both of them, but I found myself disagreeing with the framing and a lot of the noise evidence thrown in to confuse us (or was it???).
I'm in agreement here.
Tua
鸡肉面条汤
- Location
- شوربة الدجاج المعكرونة
Of course.
Your post was the most recent one I read about this topic and I will remain steadfast in my conviction that this is the only irrefutable and ultimate truth.
Until I read another post about the same topic that is more recent, anyway. But until then you may rest assured that you have my unwavering support.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Theory:Ami is ten cats in a trenchcoat.
Price: One hug react.
Did you buy it?
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There's a beautiful episode of Gravity Falls in which the protagonist grows ever more convinced that the boy his sister is dating is a zombie, based on his barely-human appearance and behaviour which fit all the classic signs.
It turns out that the boyfriend is actually three gnomes in a trenchcoat, and all the strange symptoms are a result of them being incompetent at recreating and piloting a human being.
Ponder this.
Tua
鸡肉面条汤
- Location
- شوربة الدجاج المعكرونة
Yes. It explains everything and especially the fixation Ami and Keiko have with kitten plushies.
Also, the Ami chapter abridged:
HAZOU: So Uplift?
AMI: I WILL KILL YOU NOW. Actually, nevermind. How about this food though?
HAZOU: (⊙_☉)
AMI: ^_^
HAZOU: So I was wonderin--
AMI: TOO LATE, IT IS MY TIME TO SPEAK NOW. Would you like a hug? ʘ‿ʘ
HAZOU: ...
AMI: You now owe me a favor, just for being in my presence. Do you want to hook up, no strings attached?
HAZOU: *thinks about Keiko*
AMI: STOP THAT, SHE IS MINE. I mean, haha, I was just joking. ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ
HAZOU: Well, this was a waste of time.
AMI: Sorry, sometimes my control chip malfunctions and I switch through all of my personality routines by accident. Not your fault. I'll still kill you though. Maybe.
HAZOU: I should go.
AMI: That's what I wanted you to think and say. And don't you ever forget it. Good bye! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧
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Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I've seen the "Gnomes in a trenchcoat" episode
Incidentally, that must be what Shikaku and other people feel like sometimes when looking at us.
- Location
- Yes.
Sometimes?
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Also:
Extrapolating wildly from the similarity, I guess it implies that Ami set up a farm somewhere, where she breeds superintelligent chakra beasts. She plans to eventually use them as lab partners, to develop the technology to take over the world.
Oh! Is this what's in Bear?
(I do recommend Twig, by the way: a web serial about a group of cognitively enhanced children used as spies/problem-solvers by a biotechnological Academy in alternative-1920s biopunk world. It's monstrously long (around one-and-a-half million words) and has quite a few flaws, but it's full of excellent characters and plot developments. If you liked Chapter 242, you'll likely like Twig as well.)
It reminded me of:
Fray from Twig said:
Oh! Is this what's in Bear?
(I do recommend Twig, by the way: a web serial about a group of cognitively enhanced children used as spies/problem-solvers by a biotechnological Academy in alternative-1920s biopunk world. It's monstrously long (around one-and-a-half million words) and has quite a few flaws, but it's full of excellent characters and plot developments. If you liked Chapter 242, you'll likely like Twig as well.)
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Well yes, I mean--
Hmm.
Actually, you're right. We definitely look like an absolute lunatic. An absolute lunatic whose insane gambits just so happen to come up yahtzee way too often for that to be a coincidence.
Anyways, what should we actually do now?
I proposed this:
The main weakness I see in the above is verbosity and lack of content. A lot of debriefing, not so much anything else. I'm struggling on what to do as far as "Hanging out with Noburi." , and thinking about if there are any other misc. things we should be doing.
(Yes, yes. Gambling license, making explosives, viewing fights, talking to folks. Besides that.)
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- Location
- Liverpool
Is this going to be threadmarked? Because it's great!
- Location
- NY
The more important question here is: is Hazou Paragon xor Renegade?
- Location
- Yes.
- Location
- NY
You aren't allowed to edit my post just to make that joke work -_-
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Renegades for life.
- Location
- Academy City
- Pronouns
- They
That's not very Paragon of you, MMKII.