@huhYeahGoodPoint What's the current word count? I would really like a section that makes use of the wedding party. Both because these kinds of events are politically important and because I don't want to miss out seeing a Leaf wedding party.
Below is my own version.
During the wedding party:
With few words, indicate to Keiko that you still love her as a sister and that you need to apologize and have a serious talk at a more opportune time.
With the goal of seeming friendly and building rapport, mingle with:
It has 34 words, but it is a first draft, neither optimized for word count nor for actual content. But it should allow for a handful of vignettes without necessarily taking up a whole scene.
@huhYeahGoodPoint What's the current word count? I would really like a section that makes use of the wedding party. Both because these kinds of events are politically important and because I don't want to miss out seeing a Leaf wedding party.
Below is my own version.
It has 34 words, but it is a first draft, neither optimized for word count nor for actual content. But it should allow for a handful of vignettes without necessarily taking up a whole scene.
It always surprises me when people say this. I think he actually handles social stuff better than average for a 14-15 year old. I also think that he has visibly improved. I suspect there's an element of negativity bias -- negative outcomes stand out in the memory more than positive ones.
It always surprises me when people say this. I think he actually handles social stuff better than average for a 14-15 year old. I also think that he has visibly improved. I suspect there's an element of negativity bias -- negative outcomes stand out in the memory more than positive ones.
He insisted that Keiko wasn't allowed to stop arms-dealing to the Pangolin ahead of schedule, after she put in considerable thought towards mitigating the issues, on knee-jerk impulse to value the clan over the individual.
Hazou hated it when Jiraiya did it, so why does he think it is good now?
Jiraiya...Jiraiya was great. But - no, and - he had flaws, some of which Hazou picked up.
One of them was this. Hazou needs to acknowledge that he has valued the utility to the clan over the people, hurting Keiko and Mari.
He ordered Mari to attack Keiko, which deeply wounded both.
Resolve to discuss this with the clan.
Especially Keiko and Mari.
Mari
(Soon after reflection)
Admit your mistake in trying to override Keiko and using her to do so. Thank her for her attempt to intervene. Reaffirm you take full responsibility for her actions to protect the clan.
Amend your order: "protect the members of the clan". The clan means nothing if we treat it as an abstract ideal and allow its members to come to harm.
"Clan" includes her: her well-being matters.
Ino
(Retroactively) Get Mari's help on a bouquet of mourning.
Considerations:
We're friends with Ino, allies to the Yamanaka, but were acquaintances with Inoichi.
It always surprises me when people say this. I think he actually handles social stuff better than average for a 14-15 year old. I also think that he has visibly improved. I suspect there's an element of negativity bias -- negative outcomes stand out in the memory more than positive ones.
I, for the record, definitely notice. I also don't think Hazou did that badly this update. He made a very bad judgement call with giving Mari the go ahead to try to persuade Keiko, but that's not really the kind of lack of social grace the players have been bemoaning; it's more like his recurring problem of becoming excessively goal-oriented under pressure rearing its ugly head with really bad timing. Thus far, he's struck a very good balance of firm, decisive, but open to suggestions and feedback, in his leadership of the clan.
I understand that dealing with the consequences of Hazou's misstep is important, insofar as this misstep is actual, but we mustn't forget that we are, in fact, in a precarious position that just became even more precarious. Thankfully, we now have access to a very clever person who owes us a favour.
Includes some of @huhYeahGoodPoint 's and @Jello_Raptor's ideas for damage-control with Keiko and Mari. But they've been made... milder.
[x] Action Plan: Impure World Domination Wordcount: 360
Aftermath:
Talk to Keiko. Reaffirm you're still family.
CCnJ: You both could've handled that better. Hazou shouldn't have tried to override her after it was made clear she thought her decision through. Keiko shouldn't have presented us with an ultimatum; she should've trusted us enough to discuss it in advance, to at least consider other options.
Suggest salvaging Keiko's relations with the Pangolins by claiming Hazou ordered to end the deal.
Talk to Mari. Admit your mistake in trying to override Keiko. Thank her for intervening. Reaffirm your full responsibility over any actions she takes to protect the clan.
Amend your order: "protect the members of the clan". "Clan" means nothing if we treat it as an abstract ideal and allow its members to come to harm.
"Clan" includes her: her well-being matters.
Consider acquiring intel on the Hagoromo's internal politics, perhaps by covertly fishing for information in bars. Considering your disguise skills...
... or lack thereof. How do you wear a wig again? Or appear older/feminine? Practice with mirror.
Do you have IN movements for putting on disguises? Reflect on the first time you used them. Something is... off. It's been off for weeks, since you lost disguise kits.
What about spotting disguise? Logically, if you suspect an infiltrator, you should check their height, weight... but instead you're inclined to hit them? And Noburi too...
Meet with Kagome and Mari (high-security room, Silent Mines + Anti-Hyuuga Seals).
Describe your disguise-related freakout.
Mari, an infiltration specialist: Did you notice anything wrong? Has Hazou gone mad?
Kagome: any idea what happened?
Discuss the topic in-depth. Figure out whether you or the world is crazy; pin down how exactly.
Discuss Ami Favours with Mari.
Update Mari on our experience with her in Mist.
If investigation into disguises bore fruits: suggest exchanging her that information for a favour.
Discuss the following favour ideas:
Politics:
Open-ended: "Work with me to maximize my personal influence on Leaf politics."
Specific: Assist the Gouketsu against the Hyuuga bloc.
Social:
Open-ended: "Maximize my social competence over the next half-a-year".
Specific: Arrange for IN social training.
Which one is more important? Take specific or open-ended options?
Meet with Ami. Secure room at the compound (Anti-Hyuuga seals, Silence Mines). Yuuichi waits outside.
Accept her previous terms: no social games, clear exchange of information and commitments.
If investigation into disguises bore fruits:
You possess novel information of major importance to infiltration specialists. Likely unique information.
You're willing to reveal it for a favour.
Don't answer any questions about it unless she accepts.
Spend favour(s):
(Discuss with Mari first: open-ended or specific? If you have only 1 favour, spend it on power or social?)
Politics:
Open-ended: "Work with me to maximize my personal influence on Leaf politics."
Specific: Assist the Gouketsu against the Hyuuga bloc.
Social:
Open-ended: "Maximize my social competence over the next half-a-year".
Specific: Arrange for IN social training.
Reasoning:
1. Ami is a ridiculously powerful political agent. She managed to almost effortlessly get herself into Leaf with minimal oversight, even as the thread found itself unable to as much as message her, and a few days after arriving, she already arranged for the creation of a clan. She may or may not be more competent politically than Mari was at her prime; she is definitely more on-point than anyone in our clan currently, and she has a lot of experience working with pseudo-chaotic systems, such as Leaf's current internal politics.
2. Unfortunately, she isn't our ally; she is an active issue. She is going to mess up Leaf's internal politics, and we do not have any assurance that she won't throw us off a cliff in the process. Keiko is part of the Nara clan now; her fortunes are not tied to the Gouketsu as much as they used to. Ami'll surely cushion our fall, because she cares about Keiko's feelings and Keiko will be sad if we go splat, but there's no guarantee that we won't end up as the most minor of minor clans, glad just to be alive... or, perhaps, deeply in debt to Ami, and acting on her orders with minimal personal agency. (And no, Velorien's promise that "the resultant chaos will be interpreted favourably to us" was conditional on us successfully getting her into Leaf. We had no hand in helping her; all bets are off on what happens now.)
3. Fortunately, we have her favour. We can take it, and channel her absurd proficiency into creating beneficial-to-us chaos. I'm willing to change the exact wording, but an open-ended request to "maximize our personal influence over Leaf politics" would be my choice. It covers everything: taking Hiashi down, helping Mari with her campaign or convincing her it'd be better for Asuma to win, ensuring we're not ran out of town or killed by the enraged clans, and most importantly, ensuring that Ami doesn't turn us into her puppets.
4. In the last update, we saw that Ami is looking into the hole the henge fell into — she was planning to ask Mari about her disguise skills "going rusty". We could beat her to the punch — nudge Hazou towards noticing the anomaly as well, have him talk to Mari and Kagome (resident eldritch horror specialist), try to ensure that Kagome tells us about the henge. If that succeeds, we'll be able to sell this information to her in exchange for another favour.
5. This favour could be spent on whatever the thread desires — fixing Mari, or Iron Nerve Socials, or just "making Hazou socially competent".
6. If we plan to do any of this, we must do it now. Next update will be too late: Ami will have already approached Mari and figured out everything about the henge, and she'll have already started several unknown politics-influencing plots, making it much harder to course-correct her into helping the Gouketsu.
(EDIT: I should have said that I find this plan well put together and that it would be a lot of fun to write the Kagome/Mari/Hazō discussion of henge.)
I have no significant questions about this except as below:
It always surprises me when people say this. I think he actually handles social stuff better than average for a 14-15 year old. I also think that he has visibly improved. I suspect there's an element of negativity bias -- negative outcomes stand out in the memory more than positive ones.
Frankly, Hazou has improved an immense amount since the start of the chuunin exam.
However I think negativity bias here is pretty reasonable. When severe social mistakes can lead to kill boxing, death, expulsion from your nation, and similarly bad outcomes, it's a good idea to weight in favor of the bad.
It's also not been very long (in terms of word count) since Hazou visibly started to improve.
I think you'll see the thread shift to your model of Hazou over time, just be patient. As Hazou gains personal power the threat of a foot-in-mouth moment lowers. Likewise the portion of the story where Hazou is socially competent will grow larger, and the readers' models will shift.
As a QM your model of Hazou is set at who he is right now, but the readers' models of Hazou are a lagging indicator.
Edit: "Right now, the foot in our mouth looms large over our head."
It goes against my personal policy to point out things like this, but I would note she said pretty much this exact thing. In the afternoon discussion: "I've been distressed for a long time over this, and don't want to keep selling weapons". In the evening, she elaborated with ,"I feel like my hands are covered in blood and I'm responsible for countless deaths".
I understand that that is literally what was communicated, but theres not really much wiggle room for honest discussion if one just storms off and/or delivers an ultimatum, which is sort of my point.
Her words communicated her feelings on the issue quite fine. Her actions communicated "And I don't really care about what you have to say on this, for one reason or another."
I'm very much an actions speak louder than words guy, so when the two conflict I more or less go with what the actions communicate subtext-wise. By and large (and this may not map accurately at all to the reality inside the MfD-verse!!) what this communicates to me (along with the killing intent glaring stuff, along with the violence threatening stuff) is that "Keiko either doesn't consider how her actions look from another person's POV or she isn't able or willing to self-insert to figure out how they might be recieved."
That might be deliberate on her part or it might be accidental. It could very well be that she isn't really capable of doing that, or that the best she comes up with is "People will look at me like I'm a complaining useless Keiko." or that it just didn't occur to her or any number of reasons. Regardless of the how , what or why behind that, it's still a massive communication problem and a pretty critical flaw (one of many that needs addressing: I'm looking at Hazou's agency issues[kinda improving there. That is our fault entirely.], Kagome's inability to trust that another teammate has a better grip on the siruation and just go with it [he's getting better] , and Mari's most recent anything regarding whatever the hell shes doing[ this goes triple double infinity+1 for that recent outburst against Keiko. That was abhorrent. ]) in the Team/Family dynamics.
That's just my two cents on it. I hope I'm not ruffling any feathers or throwing more dashes of salt onto the growing pile.
E: And to be very clear, this is not a "I think the QMs aren't writing stuff correctly grrrrrr more salt!" sort of observation. I'm speaking from the lens of how the characters interact with each other.
Well, Mari is currently pretending to not be drowning in despair and self-loathing in addition to everything else she's doing. I'm assuming it decreases her efficiency at least moderately, and then I don't know that she is so much better than Ami that she's still better even despite that.
Granted, it's been literal years since we last saw Mari do anything politically complex. Maybe I'm underestimating her/overestimating Ami.
@Noumero I'd just like to say your plans are a work of art. Stopping Zabuza, Your part in the Ami date plans, the Kagome info dump and the current one are all incredible. On top of that you constantly optimize every plans word count to a degree that verges on sorcery. Thank you so much for your hard work
Given his peers are mostly clan heirs who have been groomed for effective social interaction since birth, it's pretty much what you'd expect. If you mean within the clan, Noburi's a natural, Akane is mostly just sane (and hence unusual in these parts), and Keiko is probably enough to cancel them all out anyway.
Given his peers are mostly clan heirs who have been groomed for effective social interaction since birth, it's pretty much what you'd expect. If you mean within the clan, Noburi's a natural, Akane is mostly just sane (and hence unusual in these parts), and Keiko is probably enough to cancel them all out anyway.
honestly Kei has the highest social ability out of any one. She's able to stand down social spec jounin. Hazō is definitely at the very bottom of the pecking order. He's getting better. See his date with icky. But he gets trampled over more often than not
Edit: really the bouncing back and forth between competence and being dumber than a box of rocks really is what gets to me
@Noumero I'd just like to say your plans are a work of art. Stopping Zabuza, Your part in the Ami date plans, the Kagome info dump and the current one are all incredible. On top of that you constantly optimize every plans word count to a degree that verges on sorcery. Thank you so much for your hard work
Given his peers are mostly clan heirs who have been groomed for effective social interaction since birth, it's pretty much what you'd expect. If you mean within the clan, Noburi's a natural, Akane is mostly just sane (and hence unusual in these parts), and Keiko is probably enough to cancel them all out anyway.
Hazo basically serves the role of canon Naruto. He's that plucky underdog who somehow wasn't mentored/cultivated well until the age of 12 even though he should be, given that he would under different circumstance, is heir to the Kurosawa clan.
I'd argue that Lee, Neji, Keiko, Kiba and Shiori have all demonstrated social awareness on par or worse than Hazo's. Tenten gets by, but is hardly a butterfly. We haven't really seen enough of Chouji or Shino outside of the pre-tournament taunts to say where they'd fall.
At worst, Hazo is middle-of-the-pack, which isn't bad for a non-clan kid who grew up ostracised.
Interactions with Chouji actually paint him very well. I think we have enough data to pretty much say he is the most reasonable and compassionate man out of the bunch. Like Noburi but nicer and less of a wise-ass.
