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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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eaglejarl said:
In other news, remind me what the latest figures were on your mortgage? We changed it and I don't remember where it ended up.
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It used to be R4 Million, but it got edited out after the economy got poked and everything went for review. Please note that this figure is the monthly figure for all our expenses, not just the mortgage.
 
Cariyaga said:
@OliWhail How much did you enjoy putting your Black Spreadsheet Magycks to work here?
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Hey, he's not the only one with l33t spreadsheet powaz! This pair was all me, thankyewverymuch.

Oli's job was to compile every economics post and organize them for us, while @Velorien kept us both on the straight and narrow towards player misery the most realistic possible model of reality.
 
Rafin said:
Ooh. What's Mantle?

Do these connect further, like math would?
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They are transitive, but not commutative. Order of operations matters.
For each step that the chain passes through, the final result becomes more and more abstract, less felt-in-the-gut and more known-with-the-mind. This is because the reasoning for the connection becomes more and more complex as it passes through more and more intermediate stages - and therefore it's something you have to actively construct.

You can also think of it as "[DRIVE] is [MOTIVE]" for each new step in the chain; these can also produce useful results! Particularly long chains can sometimes even be decomposed into [MOTIVE] is [MOTIVE].

Doing just the obvious forward readings, Hazou's sets are:

2-chain:
[Curiosity]: Knowledge is Fun
[Learning]: Knowledge is Power
[Heroism]: Compassion is Power
[Community]: Belonging is Compassion
[Loyalty]: Belonging is Duty

3-Chain:
[^_^]: Fun is Knowledge is Power
[Shinji]: Knowledge is Power is Compassion
[Hana]: Power is Compassion is Belonging
[Clanless]: Compassion is Belonging is Duty

4-Chain:
[Creative Idealism]: Fun is Knowledge is Power is Compassion
[The Uplift Ideal]: Knowledge is Power is Compassion is Belonging
[The Will of Fire]: Power is Compassion is Belonging is Duty

5-Chain:
[Team Uplift]: Fun is Knowledge is Power is Compassion is Belonging
[Forged in Fire]: Knowledge is Power is Compassion is Belonging is Duty

6-Chain:
[Project Uplift]: Fun is Knowledge is Power is Compassion is Belonging is Duty
Yes, this does mean Hazou ultimately thinks of Uplift as "the Duty I have to Fun."
You can also construct it as any of:
  • [Fun] is [Forged in Fire]
  • [Team Uplift] is [Duty]
  • [Curiosity] is [The Will Of Fire]
  • [^_^] is [Clanless]
  • ...etc.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Alright, got a sketch done. Still not sure which side of the Otters the Condors are supposed to be, but with other statements about the Capybara and so it'd be very awkward if the Condors touched the Pangolins and Toads and were south of the Otters.

Still a good deal of guesswork on the details, but this is roughly how things fit together.

Also, the Pangolins border a heckton of other clans.
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I'd love to know where the mountains and the university are. I'm guessing a North/South range running down the center of the continent, and I think the University was supposed to be just on the other side?
 
Mari believes…

Power is Safety (You're only safe if you have power.)
Safety is Power (Being safe is a form of power.)
^ This motive is a trauma, because it associates a Primal Drive. It's pretty much impossible to function well while your Survival, Safety or Freedom is under threat; when one of your other drives gets tangled up in them, it almost always results in deeply irrational and maladaptive behavior.

Belonging is Power (All power is fundamentally given by someone.)
Power is Belonging (Having power means you have bonds with others.)

Duty is Belonging (She's loyal.)
Belonging is Duty (She's honorable.)

Retribution is Fun (Inflicting suffering on your enemies is cool and exciting.)
Fun is Retribution (Having fun hurts those who hate you.)

Sex is Fun (Sex is cool and exciting.)
Fun is Sex (Everything cool and exciting is sexual to some extent.)

So she produces two chains:

Safety is Power is Belonging is Duty
Retribution is Fun is Sex

It seems pretty clear that these result in some pretty twisted belief modes. Let's start with the closer associations.

Safety is Power:
Being safe is power. If you make someone less safe, you are attacking their power. If you make someone safer, you are giving them power.

Safety is Power And Belonging:
"You can only be safe if you have authority over others."

This is the manipulator-drive that forces Mari to see everyone as targets all the time. It's a deep-seated need for control; she believes the only way for her to be safe is for her to belong where she is.

Belonging is Power and Safety
"If you're alone, you're weak and vulnerable."

Mari fears abandonment. Not having anyone else to rely on is terrifying to her. This is what left her paralyzed when she realized she could be subverting all of us.

Power is Safety and Belonging
This is half of the Heartbreaker. Mari can't be safe with or close to anyone unless she has power over them.


Now the other side of that four-link:
Duty is Belonging and Power.
Obligations tie you to people, which gives them strings to manipulate.

Or, more kindly: "Following your duty makes you stronger and ensures you have a place in the world."

Power is Duty and Belonging.
If you have power, you have a responsibility to use that power well. This is a deep part of Mari's moral compass; she is deeply concerned about how she affects those she's responsible for. Hana used this as an in and broke her with it.

Belonging is Duty and Power.
Tying yourself to others is a double-edged sword; they gain a hold on you even as you gain a hold on them.

And the whole four-chain:
Duty is Belonging and Power and Safety.
This is the dissociative drive that Mari tapped when Hazou ordered her to work for the good of the clan. So long as she's doing her duty, she's ours, she's strong, and she's safe.

Of course, this functions by shoving all responsibility onto the person giving her orders. She can't betray her handler: she has a duty. She can't be weak: her duty demands strength. She can't be vulnerable: her duty demands armor. She is these things because they are necessary, not because they are right.

Belonging is Duty and Power and Safety.
This is Mari's loyalty. Belonging to a greater purpose is an obligation that strengthens and protects her. If she doesn't have a greater purpose, she's adrift, weak and vulnerable.

Power is Belonging and Duty and Safety.
This is Mari's ambition - to be essential. By gathering power to herself, she binds herself deeply into the fabric of the world, thus ensuring her own safety.

Safety is Belonging and Duty and Power.
This is why Mari bargained for retirement. Keeping us safe is an obligation in itself, but so long as she acts for our protection she's in the right.


And now the final tri-link:
Sex is Fun and Retribution.
By having a lot of sex, Mari has fun and tells her enemies to go screw themselves. Simple enough.

Fun is Sex and Retribution.
Mari's concept of fun is both sexual and vengeful. We've seen shades of this onscreen in the quest - pranks, innuendoes, her love of teasing. I suspect putting the full thing onstage would very quickly become X-rated.

And yet this isn't the other half of the Heartbreaker. It's controllable and even useful, more fox than devil.

Retribution is Fun and Sex.
In other words, vengeance is both exciting and arousing to Mari. This is the other half of the Heartbreaker, the thing that makes Mari someone even ninja are scared of. She's a true sadist - not someone who enjoys inflicting pain, but someone who enjoys inflicting suffering. She gets off on it.

That's the Mari that we're risking letting loose.


Evaluation of what this means for Mari's mental state:
1: I was wrong; Hana actually broke Mari's belief that she meaningfully Belongs to us. During our Missing-Nin days, Mari was mostly running on the Loyalty arrangement of her 4-chain, with Belonging as the impelling Drive.

When Hana told Mari that she had just been manipulating us, Mari's Belonging Drive inverted - she no longer Belongs, so she has no idea where her Duty lies and she's no longer Safe or Powerful anymore.

2: Mari is currently running on her 4-chain dissociative drive, impelled by a Duty that lets her Belong, have Power and be Safe. This is not a healthy mindset, but it's not the Heartbreaker.

3: Mari is essential to us right now. We need her. If she tries to maintain her dissociative state for too long, she'll be impelled by that to slip right into the ambitious form of her four-chain where she's power-driven and tries to become essential to everyone. The fact that she's running for Hokage directly is a bad sign in this regard.

4: However, that by itself is only half the Heartbreaker; it's the ambitious, scheming part that sees everyone as a potential target.

Her being willing to target Keiko with a serious social attack is also a really bad sign. It may indicate that this half of the Heartbreaker is already up and running.

5: We need to keep really, really careful watch for any of the following from Mari:
- Unusually high libido.
- She's having too much fun.
- She's being put in direct contact with our enemies, or seems smugly satisfied.

These are all strong indications that the other half of the Heartbreaker is waking up.
 
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Evenstar said:
Mari believes…

Power is Safety (You're only safe if you have power.)
Safety is Power (Being safe is a form of power.)
^ This motive is a trauma, because it associates a Primal Drive. It's pretty much impossible to function well while your Survival, Safety or Freedom is under threat; when one of your other drives gets tangled up in them, it almost always results in deeply irrational and maladaptive behavior.

Belonging is Power (All power is fundamentally given by someone.)
Power is Belonging (Having power means you have bonds with others.)

Duty is Belonging (She's loyal.)
Belonging is Duty (She's honorable.)

Retribution is Fun (Inflicting suffering on your enemies is cool and exciting.)
Fun is Retribution (Having fun hurts those who hate you.)

Sex is Fun (Sex is cool and exciting.)
Fun is Sex (Everything cool and exciting is sexual to some extent.)

So she produces two chains:

Safety is Power is Belonging is Duty
Retribution is Fun is Sex

It seems pretty clear that these result in some pretty twisted belief modes. Let's start with the closer associations.

Safety is Power:
Being safe is power. If you make someone less safe, you are attacking their power. If you make someone safer, you are giving them power.

Safety is Power And Belonging:
"You can only be safe if you have authority over others."

This is the manipulator-drive that forces Mari to see everyone as targets all the time. It's a deep-seated need for control; she believes the only way for her to be safe is for her to belong where she is.

Belonging is Power and Safety
"If you're alone, you're weak and vulnerable."

Mari fears abandonment. Not having anyone else to rely on is terrifying to her. This is what left her paralyzed when she realized she could be subverting all of us.

Power is Safety and Belonging
This is half of the Heartbreaker. Mari can't be safe with or close to anyone unless she has power over them.


Now the other side of that four-link:
Duty is Belonging and Power.
Obligations tie you to people, which gives them strings to manipulate.

Or, more kindly: "Following your duty makes you stronger and ensures you have a place in the world."

Power is Duty and Belonging.
If you have power, you have a responsibility to use that power well. This is a deep part of Mari's moral compass; she is deeply concerned about how she affects those she's responsible for. Hana used this as an in and broke her with it.

Belonging is Duty and Power.
Tying yourself to others is a double-edged sword; they gain a hold on you even as you gain a hold on them.

And the whole four-chain:
Duty is Belonging and Power and Safety.
This is the dissociative drive that Mari tapped when Hazou ordered her to work for the good of the clan. So long as she's doing her duty, she's ours, she's strong, and she's safe.

Of course, this functions by shoving all responsibility onto the person giving her orders. She can't betray her handler: she has a duty. She can't be weak: her duty demands strength. She can't be vulnerable: her duty demands armor. She is these things because they are necessary, not because they are right.

Belonging is Duty and Power and Safety.
This is Mari's loyalty. Belonging to a greater purpose is an obligation that strengthens and protects her. If she doesn't have a greater purpose, she's adrift, weak and vulnerable.

Power is Belonging and Duty and Safety.
This is Mari's ambition - to be essential. By gathering power to herself, she binds herself deeply into the fabric of the world, thus ensuring her own safety.

Safety is Belonging and Duty and Power.
This is why Mari bargained for retirement. Keeping us safe is an obligation in itself, but so long as she acts for our protection she's in the right.


And now the final tri-link:
Sex is Fun and Retribution.
By having a lot of sex, Mari has fun and tells her enemies to go screw themselves. Simple enough.

Fun is Sex and Retribution.
Mari's concept of fun is both sexual and vengeful. We've seen shades of this onscreen in the quest - pranks, innuendoes, her love of teasing. I suspect putting the full thing onstage would very quickly become X-rated.

And yet this isn't the other half of the Heartbreaker. It's controllable and even useful, more fox than devil.

Retribution is Fun and Sex.
In other words, vengeance is both exciting and arousing to Mari. This is the other half of the Heartbreaker, the thing that makes Mari someone even ninja are scared of. She's a true sadist - not someone who enjoys inflicting pain, but someone who enjoys inflicting suffering. She gets off on it.

That's the Mari that we're risking letting loose.


Evaluation of what this means for Mari's mental state:
1: I was wrong; Hana actually broke Mari's belief that she meaningfully Belongs to us. During our Missing-Nin days, Mari was mostly running on the Loyalty arrangement of her 4-chain, with Belonging as the impelling Drive.

When Hana told Mari that she had just been manipulating us, Mari's Belonging Drive inverted - she no longer Belongs, so she has no idea where her Duty lies and she's no longer Safe or Powerful anymore.

2: Mari is currently running on her 4-chain dissociative drive, impelled by a Duty that lets her Belong, have Power and be Safe. This is not a healthy mindset, but it's not the Heartbreaker.

3: Mari is essential to us right now. We need her. If she tries to maintain her dissociative state for too long, she'll be impelled by that to slip right into the ambitious form of her four-chain where she's power-driven and tries to become essential to everyone. The fact that she's running for Hokage directly is a bad sign in this regard.

4: However, that by itself is only half the Heartbreaker; it's the ambitious, scheming part that sees everyone as a potential target.

Her being willing to target Keiko with a serious social attack is also a really bad sign. It may indicate that this half of the Heartbreaker is already up and running.

5: We need to keep really, really careful watch for any of the following from Mari:
- Unusually high libido.
- She's having too much fun.
- She's being put in direct contact with our enemies, or seems smugly satisfied.

These are all strong indications that the other half of the Heartbreaker is waking up.
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So...in a Mari flashback we got to see Yagura KI'ing her over a failed mission and (implicitly) revealing that he'd straight-up break her if he ever decided she wasn't useful anymore. I'm curious as to how you'd interpret the results of his actions here.
 
@Evenstar

I find your emotional models here really interesting, and this is clearly something you've put a lot of thought into. What do you think it looks like when you chain a drive with an anti-drive? If, say, you take Freedom, invert it to Imprisonment, and then chain Imprisonment to a "good" drive like Belonging? I can only assume it would be mentally unhealthy, but you've already given examples of drives chained to drives that are unhealthy, so I can't help but wonder whether you can get healthy "mix and match" type chains.

Edit: I suppose the obvious way to make it work is by inverting Retribution to Mercy and chaining that, but the unpleasant inversion of Retribution wouldn't be Mercy but Injustice. Harder, but you could chain Injustice to Wealth (allowing your asshole boss to tell unfair jokes at your expense instead of snarking back allows you to keep your high-paying job, etc.) which could be adaptive, even if it isn't exactly fun.
 
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eaglejarl said:
Capybara
Shit fighters, great spies and infiltrators (calming aura). Territory is the SEmost on the continent, Turtle/Otter/Toad in left-to-right arc on northern border.
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That calming aura sounds really useful for us. Someone other than Mari could calm Kagome down, plus they're about as likely as anyone to be able (and willing) to act as psychologists.

eaglejarl said:
Cat
Stealth, powerful combatants, great at night. Huge territory in the middle of the continent. They call themselves the 'Feline' Clan, but only call them that to their face. Everyone else calls them Cats. The Leopards broke off a few generations ago, apparently over some weird ideology thing that I never really understood, but all other cats are here. Total jackasses. Loners, work poorly or not at all in groups, think they're above everyone to a degree that makes the pangolins look cuddly. Vicious. Vaguely psychopathic. Fuck 'em.
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The cats must be incredibly powerful individually if they don't work well with each other. Otherwise any clan that could actually work well in groups would just steamroll them one at a time.

eaglejarl said:
Crustacean
My info is sketchy. Powerful combatants -- massive armor, powerful attacks. Mostly in the water and, like all the ocean clans, their territory is...fluid. (See what I did there?) They mostly take the depths, while the Krakens take the midlevel and the Sharks take the top.
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Ooh, mantis shrimp, maybe?
 
TaliesinSkye said:
I don't see why the Pangolins would make up a story about a university that they fell out of contact with several generations ago when they lost access to a mountain pass. That would be strange.
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A university for all the summon clans ought to have the supporting social infrastructure in places, including treaties. Jiraiya noted such things don't exist.
 
Kiba said:
A university for all the summon clans ought to have the supporting social infrastructure in places, including treaties. Jiraiya noted such things don't exist.
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What did he say, exactly?

I could see alternatives, like the university having powerful inhabitants that are defense from interference enough.

Cariyaga said:
You don't see why xenophobes would make up a story about how their sworn enemies are bad people?
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It's a strange thing to lie about. If it were a lie it would be far too easy to uncover. There are easier ways to demonize one's enemies than making up a university that doesn't actually exist so they can be alleged to have cut off access to it. Tell people they lie, cheat, start wars and eat babies, or whatever. Stuff that's harder to disprove or notice as a lie than claims about a university nobody else would ever have heard of.

If you guys really think it's a lie, there's an easy way to find out. Just have one of the other summoners ask their summons. If they're aware of the university (and access to it will have been within living memory for some) then there you have it. If they aren't, then it looks more likely it's made up. This would probably work best with clans that aren't allied with the Pangolins. Perhaps the slug(s).
 
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faflec said:
So...in a Mari flashback we got to see Yagura KI'ing her over a failed mission and (implicitly) revealing that he'd straight-up break her if he ever decided she wasn't useful anymore. I'm curious as to how you'd interpret the results of his actions here.
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Duty... is Safety.

I think. Depends on the long-term effects. Haven't read the whole thing, just the Yagura scene.

MadScientist said:
@Evenstar

I find your emotional models here really interesting, and this is clearly something you've put a lot of thought into. What do you think it looks like when you chain a drive with an anti-drive? If, say, you take Freedom, invert it to Imprisonment, and then chain Imprisonment to a "good" drive like Belonging? I can only assume it would be mentally unhealthy, but you've already given examples of drives chained to drives that are unhealthy, so I can't help but wonder whether you can get healthy "mix and match" type chains.

Edit: I suppose the obvious way to make it work is by inverting Retribution to Mercy and chaining that, but the unpleasant inversion of Retribution wouldn't be Mercy but Injustice. Harder, but you could chain Injustice to Wealth (allowing your asshole boss to tell unfair jokes at your expense instead of snarking back allows you to keep your high-paying job, etc.) which could be adaptive, even if it isn't exactly fun.
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No, the drive is the same, it's just that you value it a negative amount now. Suicidal people have a negative survival drive.

Negative drives are Generally Quite Bad, because human drives are adaptive. Some of the scarier drives you would feel would be fine to value negatively, but for example if you have Negative Retribution then you become a conflict-averse pushover.

Mari Right Now has Negative Belonging chained in to her dissociative drive - "Not relying on anyone is power." The complex renders her functional, but she's still got a serious problem.

This system represents at least five kinds of trauma:
1: Drive damage. You don't care about something as much anymore.
2: Drive inversion. You care a negative amount about something.
3: Drive flare. You care way too much about something now.
4: Drive Loss. You stop caring about something altogether.
5: Motive Break. Survival, Safety or Freedom replaces half of one of your existing Motives.

In general, trauma follows the pattern:
Drive Flare (Initial Resistance.)
Drive Damage (Burnout.)
Motive Break (I CARE ABOUT THIS!!)
Drive Inversion (I care about not caring about this.)
Drive Loss (I don't care anymore.)
 
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