The first bullet, to me, feel like we're saying "We expected better from you, and we're sorry that we were wrong about that"; the second claims that we're still willing to work with you as equals (is that interpretation correct?), but I feel that Ami has done a greater share of work of stuff in comparison to us, so it sorta falls flat.
I dunno, maybe 'justify' was the wrong word. I got the image of Hazou being this holier-than-though character acting disappointed but still willing to work together despite Ami's actions leading them to having conflict, which...I don't think Ami will respond well to that.
Allright, I can see that. The idea here is that while Ami wronged us, Mari punished her, and we're willing to let bygones be bygones and move on. The problem with this is that Ami doesn't think she did anything wrong, so forgiving her in general is going to look like a meaningless social ritual to her. However, it is very clear, at least to me, that she actually did not expect Hazou's reaction, and is somewhat childishly upset about it, treating it as a betrayal of sorts. The point of framing the reconciliation the way I did, was to make her realize that this feeling is mutual - that Hazou also feels this way about her, that he didn't expect her to cross certain lines.
Ami is very smart, but not very mature or self-aware. I'm hoping to improve that by making her more likely to treat Hazou as, to borrow another poster's terminology, more like another human being rather than an NPC. From yours and
@RandomOTP's comments, it seems like I need to work more on making Hazou's mindset clearer on this.
These parts feel mutually exclusive. It feels as though Hazou is staking the moral high ground and saying, oh-so-generously, that "we were wrong to expect better from you, but we're mature enough to continue working with you in spite of your flaws."
Further, I don't like how it asserts a claim on Ami's familial knowledge. While I've mused about it as a possibility, it's also possible that Ami does understand and simply has trouble putting that theory into practice. Or maybe this is genuinely how Ami expresses her familial affections. Look at the power dynamic she has with Kieko. Ami could do almost anything to Kieko would forgive Ami for it --sweeping it under the "Ami has a plan I cannot foresee" umbrella or the "I'm so worthless that I deserve this" umbrella.
Do I think these possibilities are as likely? Not quite. But I worry that (with the wording as it currently is) Hazou will come across as high-handed, moralizing, and snobbish. That might not be the intent of the plan, and that might not be Hazou's intent when he says it, but Hazou is a fallible/realistic character and has a habit of dining on his foot, especially when he's earnest. Remember, Hazou-the-character accidentally implied to Orochimaru that he, a teenage missing-nin from a foreign country with a clanless ninja's education, would know how to lead the Goketsu Clan than Orochimaru of the Sannin (back when we were still trying to convince him not to slaughter us all for squatting in his home) and got his soul brutalized for it.
But yeah, this plan's overarching tone comes across as too patronizing for me to be comfortable voting for it.
The not knowing how to have a family part is something Ami herself told us, in these exact words:
"Ami," he said carefully, looking into her eyes, "would you like to be family?"
"Hazō," she said equally carefully, "I have no idea what that means."
In general, I try to be careful about what I assert as truth in these sections, vs what is simply conjecture based on evidence. Ami being isolated and developing her social prowess as a defense mechanism is conjecture, and phrased as such, for example.
More generally, the mindset I was trying to put Hazou in is less that of condescension for Ami being stupid and immature, and more empathy in the vein of this section:
"We don't know what it's like to have normal families. Keiko, you and I had our lives revolve around a single person, and we lost them two years ago, and even if we can get them back, the kind of relationship we had back then is gone forever. Kagome-sensei was alone for too long, and on some level he's still getting his head around what it means to have friends. Mari-sensei's family destroyed her. Noburi, you're an exception except when you aren't, and I guess Akane's normal because of course she is. And Jiraiya's an orphan with a weird, tangled family that keeps leaving him behind. Maybe one day I'll even consider him one of us, as soon as he stops using fear to keep us in line.
As in, like most of the team, Ami is simpy someone damaged by their circumstances. We don't look down on Keiko due to her issues, and we shouldn't do so for Ami here. I'll make edits later today in an attempt to make this clearer, as both you and faflec interpreted the tone of the plan this way.
