Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Excellent. Thank you.
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
Inserted tally
- Location
- Yes.
We should probably argue this from a moral standpoint if we want to sell it to Keiko (which I'm assuming we do). I mean, from the sounds of it Isan is going the way of the Pangolin Clan, and Keiko has some pretty strong opinions about that sort of thing.
You know, if we aren't doing any Training Plans for Hazou this cycle, it might be a good idea to do this as background 'research'; i.e., to bounce ideas and make new proposals. Not sure if it's acceptable to the QMs, just an idle thought thought.
You know, there was this town in eastern Wind Country that pays Akatsuki (via intermediary) to clear land...if Akatsuki is at all serious about Uplift in the sense that we are, one thing we could do is start whispers about looking for land to be cleared of monsters, and hope Akatsuki takes the bait. We'd get an intermediary that we can manipulate into sending the message for a more direct meeting, and some village gets to not worry about dying horribly as much.
Or we could capture the intermediary that was mentioned, either/or.
Side note: I just realized this, but it's going to be Keiko that's going to be sending the messages (via Pangolin). Anything that happens is going to be on her, the Nara, and (likely) on us. It boils down to the same concerns I had earlier, but hoo boy that's going to be some pressure on her.
I'm going to ask again for you to remove or otherwise change this. Velorien has already stated that an Interlude about this stuff would be something they'd be interested in writing, and I'm more than willing to precommit to voting for such an Interlude.
Didn't one of the QMs literally say that there aren't any of these? At least, there aren't any more than two floors...
You know, if we want to be breaking Neji's soul down, we might want to make it a Team Gouketsu thing and have Noburi and Hazou work together with Keiko to break Neji down. So I'd like to repeat my suggestions from earlier (Noburi fucks with Neji while learning Summoning, Hazou fucks with Neji while promoting YOUTH), under a slightly different banner.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Plan Segment: Finally not a weapon!
- Through whatever channels are appropriate, submit a military innovation to the Tower:
- If the roofs of important buildings in Konoha are protected with 5SB'd tarps, it would render potential aerial bombarment by enemy skywalking ninjas ineffective.
- This would not only blunt the impact of aerial bombardment, but dissuade further attacks.
- It would be prudent to ensure that 5SB is strong enough for the task by performing aerial bombardment on such an object outside the bounds of Konoha.
- Location
- Yes.
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail In lieu of voting for Training Plans or Research Plans, would we be allowed to do Research Experiments? Stuff like testing if 5SB'd tarps could defend against aerial bombardment, or even theoretical discussion on the difficulty of making certain seals?
What is our progress?
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I am very much against removing this. The hive mind needs low cost pressure to deal with longish term goals. This is a way to ensure it with minimal cost
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
What are Megalovania seals again?
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Macerators with variable unstore position + velocity vectors in 3-space.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Done. Does that look fine?
Done.
That isn't exactly us contacting them, it's us trying to hunt them down. I imagine that ends with them killing us.
An interlude wouldn't be enough, as MMKII had noted. But fine, I'll compromise; see below.
Right, fixed by removing the "multi-store" qualifier.
No, Hazou is supposed to be his savior — we can't exactly turn him if we're all mean to him. Noburi could play a part too, but this could wait until the following plans. Regarding your particular idea, though — we're not even sure yet, strictly speaking, that Noburi is suitable to be a summoner yet.
[x] Action Plan: Stick Your Appendages Everywhere W/O COMMITTING TO DISCUSSING FORBIDDEN LORE THIS IC WEEK
Wordcount: 280
Intended duration: 1 day.
- Message Keiko to arrive as soon as convenient, to discuss "a Pangolins-related matter".
- Continue dinner while waiting:
- Ask Mari to summarize global and local politics to Yuno. "Especially the Hokage's external-politics views."
- Offer Yuno a guest room.
- Incidentally, did she speak to Mori Ami?
- Covertly offer Noburi and Yuno an opportunity to speak privately.
- Once Keiko arrives, discuss privately (Team Uplift only, update Yuno afterwards):
- What's Mari's take on Isan? Does Keiko want to involve herself? Is Noburi interested in the marriage?
- Ethically, Isan is heading in a bad direction, and we could help. Pragmatically, it's a good power-grabbing opportunity. You're inclined to go along.
- Takahashi mentioned "concessions" from Azai — could they be working together?
- Possible attack vectors:
- Challenge Sousuke's religious significance. Summon Pangolins, have them publicly condemn Azai's sacred tapirs as enemies, reveal Sousuke's "visions" as lies.
- Challenge Sousuke's competence. The SSSSS seems Orochimaru's. Tell Isan's public about who he was; bring some body-horror examples.
- Contact the SSSSS and turn them against Sousuke by promising funding or Basement samples.
- Ask Kagome about Cloud's religion.
- Ask Keiko to send messages via Pangolins:
- To Crows and Sharks: Invitation for Akatsuki to open dialogue.
- Or should we instead post a request through an intermediary for a strategic-scale beast-clearing operation and wait?
- To the Mara Summoner: Invitation to discuss philosophy.
- Might require political capital with Pangolins. Would she be willing to sell non-combat seals, or wood/food?
- To Crows and Sharks: Invitation for Akatsuki to open dialogue.
- What's Mari's take on Isan? Does Keiko want to involve herself? Is Noburi interested in the marriage?
- Background:
- Ask Tsunade to check Noburi's suitability for Summoning and SC; no time to deal with Kabuto.
- Buy a tavern/inn damaged by the failure.
- Schedule a Games Night on February 15/16. Invite Team Gai + Keiko (both important), KEI ninja, other peers.
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- Location
- Yes.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I've noticed that I have a great deal of trouble responding to your posts. When I read them I notice I have to make serious effort parsing them and how they relate to my rebuttal, and often I find that my interpretation of what you say seems irrelevant even after significant effort.
For example, my interpretation of your response here is that you believe Noumero's bullet point is low-cost (worst-case: Noburi pranks us) that lets us advance our goals (Akatsuki) at low pressure (again, Noburi pranking us is the worst-case scenario); therefore removing it is a bad idea. But I find this to be beside the point, as it ignores the actual concern I expressed earlier: I have serious reservations with plans that have us commit to any course of action with negative incentive set in place specifically to force us to commit to it in future. Encouraging this method of commitment, I suspect, will lead us into situations where we are forced into carrying out actions we really would rather not do solely because of the consequences of breaking our commitment as outlined from previous plans*.
So you can see that I'm really frustrated by this, as my understanding of what you have said suggests that I am either massively misinterpreting what you have said, rendering my entire post a waste of both of our time to type and to read; or you have accidentally misinterpreted my core concern regarding Noumero's bullet point, again wasting both our time due to needing to explain and re-align ourselves.
To be clear, I don't mind us deciding to have a meeting about the Forbidden Lore. I don't mind, in isolation, getting Noburi to prank us if we don't. I am concerned about the metaeffects this will have on the hivemind, on our plans, and on the quality of thread discussions and planmaking in the future.
*Maybe I'm falling for the slippery slope fallacy, but even after having considered the possibility, I still feel that the situation which I have envisioned is entirely plausible for the hivemind to do.
Wait, is that what they are? That sounds...really, really dangerous to experiment on. Like, "I will get smushed berry lodged inside my brainstem" dangerous.
[x] Action Plan: Stick Your Appendages Everywhere W/O COMMITTING TO DISCUSSING FORBIDDEN LORE THIS IC WEEK
@Noumero As an alternative to what I have suggested earlier regarding Interludes and the like, might I suggest asking Mari to sit us (Hazou, Kagome, and anyone else who ought to be there) down for the meeting, and state that we're likely to forget and that she should remember for us? It commits us to doing the meeting, with the only consequence being that we have to do the meeting?
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
I think you do. I don't expect this type of commitment to proliferate at all, and in the unlikely case that it does, I certainly don't expect it to remain widespread after the first instance of a badly-calculated commitment putting us at a non-marginal disadvantage.
That... could work, actually. I'm willing to try it out.
- Location
- Yes.
[x] Action Plan: Stick Your Appendages Everywhere
Anyway, I'm thinking we might want to outline basic strategy for ousting !Aizen, and possibly getting Hiashi to sign off on us leading it. After all, we'd be getting a fuckton of reputation/power after taking over a quasi-Hidden Village, which he probably won't want since the Gouketsu are a rival party.
Side notes:
To be fair, I also don't think it'll last past the first badly-calculated commitment. Since I don't think we'll survive the first instance.
Anyway, I'm thinking we might want to outline basic strategy for ousting !Aizen, and possibly getting Hiashi to sign off on us leading it. After all, we'd be getting a fuckton of reputation/power after taking over a quasi-Hidden Village, which he probably won't want since the Gouketsu are a rival party.
Side notes:
- I missed your spoilered response, sorry. Regarding having Uplift break Neji, we could just as easily use the meetings as excuses for helping "save" Neji, or similar. I don't think Hiashi would want us to seriously interact with Neji given what's happened before.
- Do we have a plan for keeping a foothold in the Summoning Realm, xor are we just gonna let the Pangolins get steamrolled and take the increased bounty?
- We should probably make note of the whole Snake-alliance thing they have going, since, well. Orochimaru. Or not, if we're planning on pardoning him. Maybe the whole thing is a Mist flag again?
@Velorien @eaglejarl does Mari/Hazo know (or have some probability-weighted thoughts on) the proximate reason(s) why Rock is going to war now? She seemed so confident in the prediction.
-I am led to understand that the timeline is moved up from ~ 1yr to ~1 month bc they stabilized their politics 11 months more quickly than we previously expected. Yes? That seems to imply that it is not a war of distraction..
-Starvation/fuel shortage/economic collapse doesn't seem to be the driver (unless something happened?) since the previous idea was 12 months? We haven't heard of currency devaluations or massive price fluctuations.
-Leaf is relatively weak, yes, but everyone is hurting
-They hate us, but that is not new.
-If it were expansionism, they would probably be asking for massive concessions of land etc. first
-The fact that Kagome and Hazo are sealmasters and need to be taken out quickly, a la Whirlpool, does not seem like grounds for war, for a number of reasons...almost said it does not hold water.
1. If they have some religious/societal pathology to wipe us out to the last person, then we ought to be talking about a pre-emptive strike of some magnitude (i.e. we would have strong/tangible moral justification, not just real-politic calculation).
2. And if it comes to war, if we don't consolidate out power (and/or plan our escape), our clan will surely be sacrificed for the greater good. That is they way Hiashi thinks.
-I am led to understand that the timeline is moved up from ~ 1yr to ~1 month bc they stabilized their politics 11 months more quickly than we previously expected. Yes? That seems to imply that it is not a war of distraction..
-Starvation/fuel shortage/economic collapse doesn't seem to be the driver (unless something happened?) since the previous idea was 12 months? We haven't heard of currency devaluations or massive price fluctuations.
-Leaf is relatively weak, yes, but everyone is hurting
-They hate us, but that is not new.
-If it were expansionism, they would probably be asking for massive concessions of land etc. first
-The fact that Kagome and Hazo are sealmasters and need to be taken out quickly, a la Whirlpool, does not seem like grounds for war, for a number of reasons...almost said it does not hold water.
1. If they have some religious/societal pathology to wipe us out to the last person, then we ought to be talking about a pre-emptive strike of some magnitude (i.e. we would have strong/tangible moral justification, not just real-politic calculation).
2. And if it comes to war, if we don't consolidate out power (and/or plan our escape), our clan will surely be sacrificed for the greater good. That is they way Hiashi thinks.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah you pretty badly misinterpreted my position. Though I don't expect my argument will do much to convince you since it to is a meta argument but in the exact opposite direction.
From my POV the hive mind has a history of planning exactly one move ahead. We have a bunch of lofty goals and projects that require steady effort. These projects almost never get advanced because the hive mind flits from emergency to emergency with little regard if that is actually a good use of our time. If we adopt the strategy of putting outside pressure on Hazō we will achieve more long term goals.
In regards to risk we are in complete control. We decide the stakes and the goals. So we will always have over sight on these plans.
I thought wars might last months.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
My read is that it's a combination of 'they hate us' and 'we're at our weakest'. Rock is hurting, yes, but now's their best chance to lay a smackdown on Leaf before we recover from our losses and surpass them again. Further, the events of the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny and ensuing alliance with Mist are still unknown internationally, so Rock also likely expects that Leaf is alone with a gutted Sand and is also at risk of being invaded by Mist.
There's not much that I want to say to this except that I strongly disagree with your model, or at least the implications you cast with it. I feel that it's true that we spent a lot of time with a crisis or otherwise important unignorable task in front of us, but I personally have been loving the chance to get to things we've wanted to do for a long time and certainly don't feel like we can just opt out important unignorable tasks showing up at our doorstep. Or in other words, you seem to think that it's our fault that we don't have time to get to all the things on our bucket list, and I simply cannot agree with that.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well an example of a time we fundamentally did dither and waste time was the month long break. We played emergency management with Mari's mental health that ultimately didn't matter. We advanced zero goals then
OK. We spent 3-4 days dungeon diving with Noburi almost dying, have acquired Mangeko Iron Nerve(TM), and then we spent ~three weeks doing what we wanted such as testing SINs(which was an insightful failure), convincing Naruto the benefit of uplift and doing a mission, and testing salts. That's a solid month of doing things we want.
Now we have a fucking fire we need to put out.
It doesn't seem that we have gotten much things done in the long term. At least Akatsuki recieves a stamp of approval. Now we just need to figure out a way to get to Akatsuki without getting caught. Maybe use Jiraiya's network?
WATER RESISTANCE TRAINING
So I've been thinking about an interesting training method that's been kicking in the back of my noggin for a bit. I was inspired by a comment about sparring with Rock Lee in water and modern exercise methods.
Kept googling until I found something on ancient Japanese swimming. The search brought up something called Suijutsu; an area involving balancing, swimming, fighting, and escape techniques in water while wearing armor.
Suijutsu
I assumed that Mist would be the one to most develop Suijutsu since water, swimming, and 7 swordsmen are their thing. I do see some limitations with this for Hazo though(I'm no fitness expert):
- Need a body of water or pool.
- The expense of pool maintenance
- Hazo wouldn't know any of the skills involved that would be useful efficient moves, exercises, techniques, etc.
- Need to rework your balance and moves you do have for the pool. (Not sure if IN can be used)
- Water resistance is useful up to a point (Non-athletes or civies would burn fat, gain speed, endurance, flexibility, and strength. Real-world athletes and ninja can already achieve their max work-out intensity and weight resistance on land, so little to no gains. Their joints are spared though. Also more wholistic workouts)
Besides the limits, it's useful that water is acknowledged as a training tool in Mist and there was a real-world equivalent; The underlying stuff is what I want to work on. I'm counting on Hazo having a general idea about how water can provide training benefits through water resistance. The only problem is that regular water might not be enough to really push him the way it would a regular genin or what's needed for WW4; He needs something to provide more resistance than what he can get from regular weights on land. He needs extra weights or he has to increase the viscosity of a pool he's in?
As for the benefits I see this could be good for taijutsu, athletics, physique, and maybe melee weapons.
Water properties and application for Training
Aquatic Cross Training for Athletes
Thoughts?
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wait, you put half-truths and lies in your installment???
Damn, I wish I'd thought of that. It could have been hilarious.
Yes, you can do a reasonable amount of that.
Something that is clearly in need of a better name.
@eaglejarl Before I make any more assumptions, does Suijutsu exist in Mist? And how widely known would it's existance be among the populace?
I was thinking kenjutsu users (Zabuza) would use it.
I was thinking kenjutsu users (Zabuza) would use it.
- Location
- Europe
I am not against contacting Akatsuki, but using the Pangolin or even the Toad's like this is a terrible idea. Remember the Map?
The Pangolin have to go through a number of other Clans to deliver a message and at least two of them, Monkey (who don't like the Pangolin to begin with) and Turtle (soon to be Neji's) are close to them. The Pangolin gave us info on the Capybara scroll and their movements, who says that this doesn't go back to Asuma (he might only tell us we are idiots but still) or Hiashi?
Additionally Jiraya never finished this:
We have no clue who is watching. (Those guys might be allied with Akatsuki though)
Once Noburi is the Toad summoner we might be able to talk to Sharks without a problem, but until then we probably have to wait.
Besides, if Akatsuki wants to stop the war they are fully capable to do that on their own.
But anyway can you add asking about the minor villages that surround Earth? If we understand a bit about their politics maybe we can turn them and avoid or delay the war?