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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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MMKII said:
Do you guys think Naruto would be willing to introduce us to Teuchi? An in with the Leaf-brand yakuza would be good...
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Wasn't Teuchi the name of the Mist oyabun?

Unless you are referring to the ramen guy, who unfortunately also perished during the Battle of the Gods. Only half joking here, Naruto being his main source of incoming he was probably the second most concerned party invested into bringing him back after Jiraiya.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
Going over old updates, just found this in a mid-chapter flashback:

Aside from being another example of the Jounin aura, I think the fact that Mari's aura is about not being dominated by a man is very sad. I also, more relevantly, think that we should be very, very careful about how we approach Mari as she is now, bound to us as her Clan Head and in a very poor headspace besides.
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That is an insightful point. We shouldn't ever resort to trying to force her to do anything. She deserves better than that anyway, even when she's stuck in a depressive pit.

I wonder, not for the first time, what the mechanism is that killing intent uses to cross the divide between minds. It might be related to however genjutsu works, but it doesn't have genjutsu's biggest limitation, the need for eye contact, nor hand seals or apparent chakra expenditure, so it might be completely unrelated. It appears to even work over fairly impressive distances with lots of barriers in the way.

If we can figure out what the medium of transmission is we could probably find a way to cut it off so we can't feel it, or so a person can't project it. With a more advanced understanding we might even be able to manipulate it.

I'd still like to try those experiments I proposed a while back during the tournament to see if we can project other things besides killing intent and have people feel them. Love or connection or purpose or something. It could be a profoundly useful leadership tool, and maybe even a good way of communicating silently or coordinating in combat.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
That is an insightful point. We shouldn't ever resort to trying to force her to do anything. She deserves better than that anyway, even when she's stuck in a depressive pit.
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Solely because this thread has gotten into serious trouble for imprecise usage of language before, are we not effectively forcing her, through our orders as Acting Clan Head, to do social things instead of sitting in her room crying? I understand the distinction that I think you're making here, but the language as it is is unworkable considering that our government is literally military dictatorships all the way down.
 
firestorm440 said:
Solely because this thread has gotten into serious trouble for imprecise usage of language before, are we not effectively forcing her, through our orders as Acting Clan Head, to do social things instead of sitting in her room crying? I understand the distinction that I think you're making here, but the language as it is is unworkable considering that our government is literally military dictatorships all the way down.
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There's a fine line in there somewhere. I think Mari knows that if she refused to do as we ordered as acting clan head we wouldn't do anything more terrible than be disappointed in her. We're also not using authority to make her do anything deeply immoral. Those are probably the two red lines that I would stay away from.

What Hazou really did in that scene was use persuasion. 'Mari, the family's lives are at risk if this political crisis goes badly. We need your help if we're going to maximize our chances of survival. I know what you're going through right now, so I'm going to take on the moral responsibility for this. If you don't trust your own sense of right and wrong, I'll let you rely on mine.'

That's a pretty powerful argument.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
There's a fine line in there somewhere. I think Mari knows that if she refused to do as we ordered as acting clan head we wouldn't do anything more terrible than be disappointed in her. We're also not using authority to make her do anything deeply immoral. Those are probably the two red lines that I would stay away from.

What Hazou really did in that scene was use persuasion. 'Mari, the family's lives are at risk if this political crisis goes badly. We need your help if we're going to maximize our chances of survival. I know what you're going through right now, so I'm going to take on the moral responsibility for this. If you don't trust your own sense of right and wrong, I'll let you rely on mine.'

That's a pretty powerful argument.
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Which is fine, so long as Mari doesn't just suspend her ethical judgement on the basis that we'll be responsible for anything she does. I'm sure she could get some pretty decent atrocities going if she put her mind to it.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
Which is fine, so long as Mari doesn't just suspend her ethical judgement on the basis that we'll be responsible for anything she does. I'm sure she could get some pretty decent atrocities going if she put her mind to it.
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Hopefully it goes without saying that we're only taking responsibility for things we actually tell her to do, not whatever she cares to think up. Hopefully.

Just to be safe we should probably avoid open ended directions like 'Make X Hokage' or whatever.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
Hopefully it goes without saying that we're only taking responsibility for things we actually tell her to do, not whatever she cares to think up. Hopefully.

Just to be safe we should probably avoid open ended directions like 'Make X Hokage' or whatever.
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}:>

eaglejarl said:
"Mari!" he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and resting a hand on her shoulder through the covers. "I need you—we need you to snap out of it. I order you to protect the political interest of the Gōketsu. You're worried about manipulating people? Fine. Do it to our enemies. You want redemption, do something to earn it instead of just wallowing in your own self-pity."
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eaglejarl said:
"It's all on me, Mari. As your Clan Head, I am ordering you to help, and anything you do at my orders is my responsibility. Not yours. Do you understand?"
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eaglejarl said:
"No excuses, Mari. As your Clan Head, I am ordering you to get on your feet and protect this clan. Whatever you do, the responsibility is mine."
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MMKII said:
FYI: It is canonically the case that the VIHH only speak in lowercase italics with a fair amount of l33tsp34k-tier grammar.
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My original authorial intent was for the voices' style to closely mirror chatroom communication and ideally flow without any punctuation whatsoever. Ironically, even though I dubbed them "Voices", they don't really speak (because nobody actually physically talks like that), as much as spew out an only vaguely ordered stream of consciousness. In the world of VIHH, Hazou ended up with a messy IRC channel in his head rather than a neatly structured and organized forum thread.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
Nah, making clans angry would be counterproductive. But I absolutely agree that we'll have to keep stuff secret.
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Depends how angry they get, and who we make angry. For example, suppose Mari started a huge fight between the Hyuuga and one of their supporters. The supporters won't vote for the Hyuuga anymore, but they still hate us.

Plus hey, there might be a literal body or two. False flag assassination? risky as hell. I hope not.
 
eaglejarl said:
"What does it eat?" Keiko asked.

"Us, it thought," Hazou said.

She rolled her eyes. "Normally, I mean. A predator this size must need an incredible number of calories to maintain the speed it displayed. Clearly, it's an ambush predator, which will save it considerable energy, but the question still stands."

"Does it matter?" Hazou asked. "It's dead."

"Yes," Keiko said. "But there's a piece missing here. We've seen too many apex predators and not enough game for them to feed on. Maybe there's a lot more fish than we saw, but evolution fitted this monster to take down large prey, not the occasional watersnake. One explanation would be that there's something deeper in the swamp that's recently arrived and is dangerous enough that it's been pushing apex predators out of their normal hunting ranges."
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Was rereading this chapter, and noticed this. Did we ever figure out what that was about? Sounds like something that could be good for an interlude or something. Maybe just a big infodump about the ecology of the Swamp Of Death, in place of an interlude?
 
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