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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Finally. Can we invite Zabuza to a games night now? Can we scheme to get Yukino introduced to Ami? Or can we, at long last, do go forth in violence, nuking Mist and setting our sights to Bear?
 
huhYeahGoodPoint said:
Actually...not necessarily.

You have to realize that literally every single combatant on Leaf's side was ANBU and up; moreover, the main way it was used in combat was a mobility jutsu when there was an S-Ranker with a preestablished ludicrous growth rate.

However, if Jiraiya gives away the fact that the Pretty Pink Pony no Jutsu is in fact a skywalkers, Hazou specifically is fucked,
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Naruto, though. His Kage Bunshin spam. His clones can't copy seals, but if it were a jutsu they ought to be able to fly?
 
eaglejarl said:
Oof! 10k words written yesterday and today. (Did I do a little on Friday? I think a tiny bit, but I'm not sure. Regardless, mostly yesterday and today.)

NaNoWriMo, eat your heart out. Over the past ~1 month of calendar time I've written about 27,000 words in ~5 days of actual writing time.
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That is astonishingly productive. I feel accomplished when I manage 1000 or 2000 words in a day. Professional authors are doing alright if they manage 500 consistently over long periods.



Since people are flooding in in reply to the chapter, I'd like to get more eyes on my proposed approach towards Ino for possible information on how chakra might facilitate nonverbal communication. I think it could be helpful to us to pursue the possibility as a research project.
TaliesinSkye said:
Prototyping a possible approach to Ino for people to critique:

"Hey, do you have a minute for us to sit down and talk? There's something I'd like to hear your thoughts on.

"Thanks! So, I've been dealing with someone particularly confusing and frustrating to understand lately, and it's had me wishing for some better way to communicate with people than just with words. Sometimes all the words seem like they're only getting in the way, when all I want is some way to just show people who I am and what I want and believe without all the lies and the distractions. Maybe even invite them to do the same so I can understand them if they want me to, so the understanding can be mutual and there's a foundation to build trust and cooperation on.

"That got me thinking about the stories of how the Sage gave people chakra so that they could better communicate and understand one another, to foster peace and cooperation. Assuming there's some kernel of truth to the stories, does that maybe mean that anyone with chakra is capable of communicating on some sort of direct emotional or mental level? Broadcasting killing intent seems to do something like that, and maybe that's some sort of bastardized version of a much more flexible form of communication that the Sage taught, one that we've held on to because of the ninja tendency to focus only on how we can weaponize everything.

"Do you think it's possible for people to learn to communicate things other than killing intent in a similar way, or communicate directly in some other way? I completely understand if we're brushing up against clan secrets and you can't talk about it, but some of the things your family can do seem reminiscent enough of some of these ideas that it made me wonder if they're a development on it and you'd have insight you could offer."
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TaliesinSkye said:
That is astonishingly productive. I feel accomplished when I manage 1000 or 2000 words in a day. Professional authors are doing alright if they manage 500 consistently over long periods.
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I watched a Brandon Sanderson series on professional writing, and he says that an average pro puts about 500 words on a page per hour. They then spend way more time editing, proofing, and revising. If you're doing 2000 words in a day then I'd say you're doing well. I've written this much because I enjoy MfD enough that I'm willing to spend 50-60% of my weekend writing for it, but then I don't do much writing during the week.


EDIT: Also, I'm wrong about my production. The following has been added to my earlier post:

Checking my logs I find that I did work on the Interlude some on Wednesday and Thursday, then a small bit on Friday and finished it on Saturday. Okay, that means about 7-8 writing days over the month.
 
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eaglejarl said:
I watched a Brandon Sanderson series on professional writing, and he says that an average pro puts about 500 words on a page per hour.
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Those lecture series are really interesting to watch. I need to give them a listen again.

As far as content creation speed goes, I'm convinced Brandon Sanderson has the IRL Shadow CLone jutsu.
 
faflec said:
So...I'm thinking that not only do they know Leaf has Skywalkers, but also that they're seals (since it being a jutsu implies that it would be one that Leaf's shinobi could learn to a skilled level stupidly quickly). And since our group is known to have two sealmasters in it, and Jiraiya adopted us around the same time that the Leaf-Mist-Akatsuki clusterfuck happened...

I think Ami got her answer as to what we sold Jiraiya for Leaf citizenship.

Can we leave now?
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Leaving right now might confirm that we are the source of skywalkers. They know about skywalkers, but there is a ~30% chance that they don't know they are seals.

Because there are other possibilities for skywalkers. It could be a ridiculously easy jutsu. It could be a difficult jutsu that gives flight to your allies. It could be Yamanaka created fairytales forced upon the unconscious mind of the lone survivor.

But if they do know for certain that we did it, then they aren't going to capture us, because this would put us on guard. The main risk is that they didn't know it was us, but do now. If our reaction confirms that we know something we shouldn't, they might decide to come after us later.

They are probably going for two angles on this:
  • Mist knows about skywalkers. This changes a lot about Mist's and Leaf's negotiating positions. They essentially get to declare a mistrial on the negotiations and do them again, but this time they know more about what we are and aren't willing to offer, but they were able to lie to us all last round.
  • They get to observe the reactions of all of Leaf, particularly those who know that Zabuza being alive means that Mist knows about skywalkers. The fact that the Hokage's kids know for some reason will be very, very, telling.

So our reaction and Noburi's reaction can't let them know that we know.

So we don't know about skywalkers. If we didn't know anything about the situation, what would we conclude?
  • An S rank ninja being brought back from the dead in the most dramatic way possible clearly means that they are trying to get a reaction out of someone. That he is our personal boogeyman is probably just coincidence.
  • Mist is now much stronger, every S ranker counts for a ton.
  • It might be internal politics. With the rest of the old guard obliterated, Zabuza is one of the few heroes Mist has left, and who he lends support to is important.
  • There might be some important secret about the battle that Mist wants to reveal that they have
    • This is important. It should be considered common knowledge that there is a very important secret about the battle of the gods.
In any of these cases, our best move is to shut up. So our best move in this universe is to shut up.
 
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How long until, once the negotiations are over, Zabuza leverages his popularity and back-from-the-grave legend to convince Ren to abdicate the hat so he can become Mizukage?

After all, Zabs can totally take Ren in a fight.
 
So, just to be clear: Zabuza frequently is out of the village for months.

Why would anyone (publically) assume he was dead?
 
eaglejarl said:
I watched a Brandon Sanderson series on professional writing, and he says that an average pro puts about 500 words on a page per hour. They then spend way more time editing, proofing, and revising. If you're doing 2000 words in a day then I'd say you're doing well. I've written this much because I enjoy MfD enough that I'm willing to spend 50-60% of my weekend writing for it, but then I don't do much writing during the week.


EDIT: Also, I'm wrong about my production. The following has been added to my earlier post:

Checking my logs I find that I did work on the Interlude some on Wednesday and Thursday, then a small bit on Friday and finished it on Saturday. Okay, that means about 7-8 writing days over the month.
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Eh, 2500 word days are about as productive as I ever get. Consistently I'm managing more like 450 after editing. It'd be nice to do more, but my focus often peters out after a few hours.

That's still in principle two novels a year, so it's better than many professional authors.

Oh, if you like Brandon Sanderson's writing advice I recommend his podcast, Writing Excuses. There's a ton of material there, it's in its 14th season.

Writing Excuses

Edit: Also pretty cool for anyone unaware of it is the Rationally Writing podcast, which is focused specifically on rational fiction by two well respected rationalist serial authors.

Rationally Writing | Daystar Eld
 
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Cariyaga said:
Why would anyone (publically) assume he was dead?
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I'm not sure the casualty list was ever made public, but we should assume that everyone thought that Zabuza was dead. Zabuza wasn't just an S ranked ninja, he was a hero of Mist. In the scramble for the Hat, there should have been a play for his support. The fact that there wasn't meant that Mist didn't think he was hard to reach, Mist thought he was dead. This fact would have been easily observable by anyone with Kage level resources, especially Kage trying to figure out which S rankers were still alive.
 
This might be crazy talk but I have a suspicion that the Zabuza in the newest chapter might secretly be Zabuza.
 
eaglejarl said:
Eventually, the fireworks came to an end in a massive display: an eagle made of flame fought with a dragon made of lightning. The two swirled and twisted, buffeting one another with wings and talons, neither able to land a decisive blow. Finally, the eagle seized the upper talon by catching its enemy's neck in the eagle's beak and shaking it, then latching on with the talons and tearing the lightning monster apart in a screaming orgy of destruction that left the audience ooohing and aaahing.
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You can just feel Eaglejarl's desperate need for combat here
 
By the way, why are people assuming Zabuza returned to Mist only recently - with all the repercussions that includes like potential knowledge of Skywalkers?

To me it makes a lot of sense that Zabuza made contact and debriefed Ren earlier, but Ren chose only now to reveal his survival to Jiraiya because she is a Master TrollDiplomat.
 
Tua said:
Yes.
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Strange, you would think that OG Zabuza would never reveal himself.

Speaking of Zabuza, though...what happened to Yukino?

Some weird part of me is screaming that Zabuza is gonna put his support behind Ren (or whomever would support him the most) in exchange for getting her Mist citizenship. Or maybe that's the lupchanzen talking.

Edit: Shut up.
 
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faflec said:
Strange, you would think that OG Zabuza would never reveal himself.

Speaking of Zabuza, though...what happened to Yukino?

Some weird part of me is screaming that Zabuza is gonna put his support behind Ren (or whomever would support him the most) in exchange for getting her Mist citizenship. Or maybe that's the lupchanzen talking.

Edit: Shut up.
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Zabuza wouldn't be so overt as to ask for Yukino to gain citizenship, that would look like he's being nice to her and he'd never hear the end of it.

He'd probably get her some vacuous position that lets her stay in Mist as long as she doesn't cause trouble, and then make sure the bureaucracy works out so the duration of that position never actually expires.
 
eaglejarl said:
Noburi thought carefully, then turned to their sister. "Keiko, don't take this the wrong way, but I have to ask...is your sister right in the head? I mean, based on what Hazō says, she's either crazy as a bag of wet cats or she's just acting like it to make sure that no one can predict her. Which is it?"

Keiko glared, then stood up and stomped out of the room.
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Well that was incredibly tasteless.
Finally, Momochi turned to face Keiko.
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nope nope nope nope
Super unsurprised that Zabuza is back in Mist (we were told he was alive), but a bit surprised they didn't keep him hidden. AFAICT, the most likely hypothesis is that they're doing this because they're scared; keeping hidden that they know about Skywalkers would allow them more counterattack but make it more likely that they actually end up at fisticuffs. That, or he got amnesia (lol) or they didn't realize we thought he was dead (hmm).
 
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