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Doesn't count. Yuno accidentally dropped some secret lore about The Five that Kei absolutely had to keep secret and was well in her rights to send her away. If anything, she was being merciful.

I would totally count it, maybe the situation is reasonable, but the underlying problem of Keiko unilaterally ending the conversation(And treating Hazou and Uplift as the enemy of the situation) counts. Especially when you consider the fact that Isan was going to be an ally to Leaf if everything went well, so hurting Yuno would have been a monumentally stupid move.
 
Kei herself later admitted that she massively overreacted because she wanted to feel useful to the Nara.
I don't actually remember this so I can't comment on specifics. That said, Kei very frequently is way to hard on herself and is quick to dip into self-loathing thoughts. Just because she thinks she's in the wrong doesn't mean she actually is.
I would totally count it, maybe the situation is reasonable, but the underlying problem of Keiko unilaterally ending the conversation(And treating Hazou and Uplift as the enemy of the situation) counts. Especially when you consider the fact that Isan was going to be an ally to Leaf if everything went well, so hurting Yuno would have been a monumentally stupid move.
With the way that clan secrets are handled in universe, Kei was 100% in the right. Sure, to you and me it seems unreasonable to shut a conversation down like that but ask literally anyone in universe and they'll tell you that Kei was totally in line. We can't judge Kei for acting in accordance with in-universe culture just because we don't give clan secrets the same weight as the characters do.

Also, it's not like this was information needed for an imminent emergency. Pausing a conversation until later isn't a big deal, especially if it's for an important reason like this. Didn't Jiaryia tell us that saying "I need to talk to my clan head about this before I say anything else" is a perfectly valid line that even the Hokage had to accept? Kei basically did that (and everyone in the room accepted it; only people out of universe took issue with what happened).
edit: spelling
 
There's also the time she got Noburi to punch Hazou in the jaw.
Oh, also that time she helped contribute to Mari's Hana-induced breakdown.
I have completely forgotten the former and am confused by the latter. Which chapters were these?

Aaaaand also the whole time when she basically ignored Goketsu because the Nara needed her, appealing to her impostor syndrome, after the collapse.
I am a bad QM for violating my own principles and unduly interfering with player discussion. However, it feels odd to me to complain that Keiko focused on helping an ally of the Gōketsu at a time when said ally had suddenly lost its clan head, most of its senior ninja, and countless assets, whereas the Gōketsu had not.
 
I have completely forgotten the former and am confused by the latter. Which chapters were these?
This was the moment that Keiko chose to storm into the experimental area.

"Hazō, tie me up immediately. We will demonstrate to Inoue-sensei what you want me to do with my hands."
-o-
Hazō lay on his back and stared up at the peaceful blue sky above, wondering when Noburi had learned to punch so hard. The boy had run off after socking Hazō in the jaw, and Keiko was sitting silently on a tree stump, apparently having some kind of breakdown at the collective insanity of all those around her.​
Mari-sensei gave her a wild-eyed look. "Don't you understand? Ever since we met, I have been using you as a tool!"

"Well, obviously."

Mari-sensei couldn't even speak.

"You saved my life, Mari-sensei. It belonged to you after that. Besides, it wasn't as if I had a better use for it.

"Nor any expectations. Mori are tools. That is what we are, what it means to have no initiative of our own. My inadequacy as a tool was the beginning of the cataclysmic chain reaction that made me the self-loathing creature I am now. For me to be genuinely useful to someone like you was above my aspirations. You taught me. You guided me. You made me better. You have even, at times, encouraged me to express my preferences and develop my agency, for all that my attempts at independence have only added misery to the world.

"The scale of your accomplishments cannot be denied. Look how far we have come from our starting point. Look how far I have come from who I was when you first saw me at the edge of the water. And no matter what you may believe, treating someone as a tool is not incompatible with a familial bond—this, too, is something that I learned from my Mori family.

"I trust you, Mari-sensei. I… I love you. I have never had any regrets about being your tool. If you, one of the people I love most, can truly use me to find happiness, and if I can continue to grow through your use of me, is that not as much of a parent-child relationship as anyone can ask for?"

Would those words be enough? Kei, lacking Mari-sensei's talent for healing others, had nothing more to offer than her own feelings.

Mari-sensei stared at her like a woman seeing the end of the world. "What have I done?" she whispered. "What have I done?"

Kei felt a terrible fear snaking through her. "I don't understand."

But Mari-sensei said nothing more.
 
I don't remember this. Do you remember the source?

Keiko shook her head. "No, I am the one who undermined that trust. I have been acting like a Nara. I believed that it was necessary, that if I did not make a sufficient effort, I would be judged only on my intellectual merits, and therefore rejected as I was by the Mori.
---
Doesn't count. Yuno accidentally dropped some secret lore about The Five that Kei absolutely had to keep secret and was well in her rights to send her away.

"Oh, but it's a Gōketsu clan secret," Kagome added. "I mean, it's not a good one, anyone with half a brain can figure out how to make it work, but I reckon it's bad policy if we can't ever give you stuff without handing it over to Nara st- students. Of sealing. At the same time. You know?"

Keiko nodded. "I understand. I will keep this for private use, though, naturally, I am in no position to prevent Nara sealmasters from attempting to invent their own version.

I am also the Nara second-in-command, with the authority to punish or swear to secrecy as I will.
 
I'm not sure those are in the same vein as the other criticisms of Keiko, insofar as they were good-faith attempts to carry out Hazō's training plan and offer reassurance to Mari respectively.
I am in complete agreement.
My apologies. I had been growing annoyed with the increasingly unreasonable criticisms of Keiko's actions in the past days and decided to accelerate things to their logical conclusion.
 
I am confused by your analogy. Leaving aside the issues involved in your implied proposal for the sealmasters, Keiko didn't have the authority to swear the Gōketsu to secrecy if Yuno shared a Nara clan secret with them.
My apologies. I had been growing annoyed with the increasingly unreasonable criticisms of Keiko's actions in the past days and decided to accelerate things to their logical conclusion.
Forgive me if I am being dense after staying up way too late last night working on the update, but what's the logical conclusion?
 
I have completely forgotten the former and am confused by the latter. Which chapters were these?

I am a bad QM for violating my own principles and unduly interfering with player discussion. However, it feels odd to me to complain that Keiko focused on helping an ally of the Gōketsu at a time when said ally had suddenly lost its clan head, most of its senior ninja, and countless assets, whereas the Gōketsu had not.

Oh the problem isn't what she did, the problem is the reasoning behind her action. "An ally of the Goketsu is in difficulty, let's concentrate on them" is one thing "The Nara appeal to my inferiority complex, so i kinda ignore my own family struggles to bask in the feeling of being needed" is another. In personal relationships, intent is important.

EDIT: This doesn't mean Keiko is bad, or her actions are unreasonable, she is a child soldier that needs to deal with Goketsu,Uplift, Nara,Kei and so on. She is in a difficult situation and cannot deal with everything, it's not her fault, but the fact that she cannot deal with everything is...well, a fact.
 
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Forgive me if I am being dense after staying up way too late last night working on the update, but what's the logical conclusion?
To criticize Keiko for anything that a) she was involved in that b) resulted in something bad happen, regardless of the context or her intent/knowledge at the time.

Hm. Maybe calling it the 'logical' conclusion was inaccurate.
 
I had been growing annoyed with the increasingly unreasonable criticisms of Keiko's actions in the past days and decided to accelerate things to their logical conclusion.

My original point was never about Kei herself, though. She's a brilliantly written character with beliavable flaws and motivations, and I do feel bad for her. I'm just a bit frustrated with the amount of people, real or imaginary, that keep bending over to accomodate her.

Example, if it was my fiancee that was about to be sent to prison for almost spilling a secret that an entire village knows, after a jonin master infiltrator spent weeks there no less, then I wouldn't just sit there like this is fine.

Kei will keep doing Kei things, which is fine, and I'll keep pointing out that she's somehow never the one that gets punched in the face, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
 
Example, if it was my fiancee that was about to be sent to prison for almost spilling a secret that an entire village knows, after a jonin master infiltrator spent weeks there no less, then I wouldn't just sit there like this is fine.
That's because you and your fiancee don't live in a ninja deathworld? I mean, Keiko literally stated she was entitled to execute her based on Leaf's clan secret laws, and I get the feeling that she was probably obligated to do so, with temporary confinement being an attempt to keep her safe (relatively).

Please keep in mind that we are not in a modern society. Kagome outright murdered Minami pre-retcon over her finding out one of our clan secrets, out of fear that it could be used against us; and post-retcon he only failed because we convinced the QMs that we would have noticed him acting suspiciously.
Kei will keep doing Kei things, which is fine, and I'll keep pointing out that she's somehow never the one that gets punched in the face, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Wait, you...actually think she was in the wrong over the Noburi-punches-Hazou situation? Wtf??
 
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Kei will keep doing Kei things, which is fine, and I'll keep pointing out that she's somehow never the one that gets punched in the face, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I highly suspect Asuma will/already has chewed her out for it when the mission report is turned in (unless we commit treason again and leave that part out). And Kei has definitely experienced consequences for her BS, see: Asuma getting pissed at her about the Concubine Law and weighing whether to pass it at all. It's just that Hazou is never the one "punching people in the face" for their actions. I don't understand the impression that Kei is somehow avoiding punishment while everyone else is getting fucked over for their mistakes constantly. Mari committed acts far more atrocious than Kei and Hazou forgave her pretty easily.
 
I highly suspect Asuma will/already has chewed her out for it when the mission report is turned in (unless we commit treason again and leave that part out). And Kei has definitely experienced consequences for her BS, see: Asuma getting pissed at her about the Concubine Law and weighing whether to pass it at all. It's just that Hazou is never the one "punching people in the face" for their actions. I don't understand the impression that Kei is somehow avoiding punishment while everyone else is getting fucked over for their mistakes constantly. Mari committed acts far more atrocious than Kei and Hazou forgave her pretty easily.

I wouldn't say the Concubine Law counts, that was a political misstep, not a relationship/social one. But yes, Hazou prefer to go for the constructive route generally, like with Mari,Keiko and the Akatsuki.
 
Wait, you...actually think she was in the wrong over the Noburi-punches-Hazou situation? Wtf??

I was obviously alluding to a general trend rather than any specific situation.

I mean, Keiko literally stated she was entitled to execute her based on Leaf's clan secret laws, and I get the feeling that she was probably obligated to do so, with temporary confinement being an attempt to keep her safe (relatively).

I'll repeat that I'm not debating right or wrong. She was surrounded by family, people who had her back for years in the wild, and Yuno who worshipped her. Who would have reported her?

She could have simply appealed to keep it a secret, but instead she brought legal proceedings into it, treating Yuno like shit in the process. Hazo at least had the balls to try and discuss it, but the rest watched like oh that's just poor old Kei having a mood, obviously we can't blame her. I'm not saying I would punch her in the face specifically . . . but the idea of a few friendly digs to the gut to keep her grounded doesn't sound too outlandish to me.

Asuma getting pissed at her about the Concubine Law and weighing whether to pass it at all.

I'll file that under "no lasting tangible consequences" x)
 
It has been a general trend from the start to be cotton puff soft with Kei when it comes to anything and everything because she's a pile of ground glass mentally.
 
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Question: can anyone give me some examples of Hazō treating other family members with the kind of strictness it's been implied he should apply to Keiko?
 
I don't currently have much time to type this out, so my apologies if this comes out half-formed or grammatically mangled.

Much if Kei's missteps have been so far behind her personal arc that blaming current-Kei for secluding herself on the 7th Path post-love reveal would be like blaming current-Hazou for the first killbox, or current-Mari for what she did under Yagura's thumb.

As for Kei prioritizing the Nara, in the immediate aftermath of the Collapse? The Goketsu Clan are a small, tightly-knit family whose near-telepathic levels of teamwork daunted Minami from the very start. Further, Noburi and Kei both place an immense amount of personal trust in Hazou's ability to do "The Thing." And Hazou's Thing has been observed by outside parties (Chunnin exams, combat section, iirc) and they were equally stunned.

I don't think it's unreasonable that Kei, amongst the mental/emotional shock of their version of 9/11, to focus on the Nara. The Nara weren't planning for this. The Nara lost their clan head, most of their senior ninja, and Shika was reeling from the Death of Both parents. So Kei stepped up to the plate and led the Nara Clan, trusting the Goketsu to be able to survive the tragedy in a way that the Nara might not.

And if we must assign blame for Kei drifting after marrying into the Nara, I would say that half of the blame is at Hazou's feet as well. Kei may have drifted apart (something she admits readily in the scene where Hazou and Kei reaffirm their familial bond and agree to never drift so far apart ever again, legal issues sh-megal issues).

After all, I remember a great deal of worrying amongst the hivemind (myself included) on what to reveal to Kei --either out of a worry not to pull her oaths in different directions, or a fear that she might betray us.

Kei isn't perfect. She's as flawed as any real human being is, and her realism is one of the fantastic things about her character. But she is growing as a person. Don't write her off just because her journey to healing/growth isn't 100% progress. Just like a real person, she's going to falter and misstep. She's going to backslide every now and again. Because she's human.

Be patient, be supportive. Be a friend. Because that's what we need when we're growing, when we're struggling.
 
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