- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The big strategy meeting at which he'd have suggested this got short-circuited by world war. It hasn't been proposed and rejected.
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
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Yup.
Yeah, it fits that heuristic. Although some such plans went excellently well instead (Kabuto, Zabuza), but I recognize a losing proposition when I see one.
You're probably right, all things considered. I think my opposition to this, at its core, is motivated by the fact that I completely loathe that we let it all get this far.
Didn't we see all of this coming months and years ago? Didn't we discuss the fact that Orochimaru is going to eventually become a problem, and that we need to somehow preempt him? Didn't we conceive of a non-lethal vivisection as the means to placate him while getting something in return? But we did nothing, didn't prepare any contingencies, barely even gathered any information about him, and now that deal is being forced on us, except instead of a mutually beneficial exchange that might open the door for a more productive relationship, we'll get nothing out of it.
And we'll also learn nothing out of this. Proactively offering Oro a deal, or forcing him to actually compromise, would've revealed some new facets of his character. But as it's turning out, he'll just wave his Intimidation 100 around and get everything he wants, as he always does, without us getting any clue whether any of this was an act or not.
It's all quite frustrating.
Sure, sure, but I frown at the insinuation that it's somehow unimportant to use correct terms to describe things. We'd be placing ourselves in a dangerous situation, at someone else's mercy, in order to give them something they want, at no benefit to ourselves. In what world is this a "compromise"?
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yet more from ages back in QM QUINOA:
- Formalized travel between Mist and Leaf.
- You can be an (off-duty) ninja or a representative of a business based in the village.
- You get explicit permission from your Kage.
- You pay for a chūnin escort mission from the receiving village. This pays for a minder who will be with you 24/7 and will make sure you don't go anywhere you shouldn't, and have no private conversations with anyone.
- You pay for a genin escort mission from your original village. This pays for a minder who will be with you 24/7 and will make sure you don't give away any secrets of your original village.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I worry if we do this, then in-scene, an NPC may suggest a better plan that's agreed-upon in the meeting, and that plan is then carried out without input from the hivemind. We could start the next action plan with "having done the approved/optimized plan..."
They're all from the story (Snowflake's first interlude/summon). It shows that Hazou remembers and hasn't forgotten, which reflects a certain level of care on his part. It further solidifies that Kei is important to him (I worry she'll regress into self-esteem/sacrificial thoughts due to the shock of all this) and that Snowflake isn't merely a "borrowed bond" from Kei (again, insecurities and shock of situation leading to regression of personal growth).
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Psudo-edit: nevermind, voting's closed... Sorry!
- Location
- Europe
Mari manipulated and deceived him. His "social blindness" is him probably just not caring about the conesquences and general unwillingness to change.
She probably dies in the war, her last thoughts being "I am all alone in the world".
Maybe we get some TYS from that? Vivisection + Hana dead should get us to ~15 or so.
I was just writting my post!
Anyway, I hope Tsunade tells us more about alternative research methodes into Bloodlines. Not everything can be solved by cutting things open.
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- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I had forgotten about this, honestly. Yeah, sure, I'll cut out the pseudo-echolocation. IIRC, my thought process at the time was that the jutsu seemed to have no utility, but now I'd argue that Opsec is a reason in its own right. Give me a few minutes and I'll edit it accordingly (if it's reflected in the mechanics, it'll have to wait until later tonight. Studying at the library right now).
I remember thinking that the jutsu may be too over powered/useful without the degradation in eyesight. I can take that part out if you think it's fine without it?
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Indeed. That's why it's best to stick to explosives.
Jello_Raptor
(Confirmed Jelly)
- Location
- Left of Center
Maybe we tell Orochimaru that Kei is available for examination in one of the Leaf Hospital surgical suites? Ideally one with a viewing gallery.
I suggested some Earth Jutsu a couple weeks ago, I just wanted to check if they're on your list of suggested jutsu.
- Location
- USA
Main question: What do you look for the most when it comes to approving/denying jutsu? This is important if we're to propose jutsu that are good, and likely to be approved.
Side question: how much would you appreciate proposed mechanics?
- Location
- USA
Oh, since I think no one's done it yet -- SC Training. Base XP 7, rates are 1.3 and 1.0:
Kei: +9.1 XP
Akane: +7 XP
Kei: +9.1 XP
Akane: +7 XP
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Yeah, same. As I said earlier, I can't bring myself to feel happy about being vindicated by process of elimination, of the plan I firmly believed was our best bet only making it into plans when the hourglass finally ran out of sand and it was the only option left. And now instead of being a 'just crazy enough to work' trademark Hazou idea it's a desperate last resort after even the Hokage confirmed he can't protect us. A testament to passiveness rather than agency. And if we had simply taken the initiative, we could have arranged it in a manner of our choosing and tightened the margins or even obtained benefits.
Is there anything else that we can apply this lesson to? Something that we're currently sitting on that we probably know the right answer already but just haven't gone and taken it? Instead of fretting about the past we could maybe turn this into an opportunity to avoid making the same mistake somewhere else.
I imagine Orochimaru feels it's a compromise, I can't imagine him thinking of restrictions on his research as anything other than a concession. Each of us is not at our ideal outcome (ours would obviously be to be left alone), but also neither of us are at the least ideal outcome. For us that would be dying, and for Orochimaru that would not be doing the experiments at all. Both of us are somewhere in the middle of the desire-satisfaction gradient, so I'd say it counts as a compromise.
(If it helps, flip it around. Orochimaru has us dead to rights, and us ensuring our survival is not the maintaining of the status quo but rather us actively escaping a lethal situation. I'd call that a benefit.)
All in all it probably counts as both a surrender and a compromise, but as always there's the question of what's most fair to internally call it and what's most fair to say in discussion. Word choice serves rhetoric, and choosing of all possible correct words the one with preferred connotations is common practice, but the accuracy of the words and the connotations lie on a gradient as well and I feel that when the misalignment passes a certain threshold it's justified to point out the discrepancy even if the words used are still mostly accurate. In the example at hand, I didn't feel that the connotations of 'unconditional surrender, giving up, the enemy gets exactly what they want' were very accurate to our situation, even if it is accurate to describe our actions as a conditional surrender.
- Location
- Yes.
There is an answer to this statement which I am too afraid to say out loud in the thread, lest the QMs take note and make my fears into reality.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chosen by a god? Check.
- Location
- Italy
I respectfully disagree, the current situation is extremely within expectation of the people that were against the vivisection, in the sense that, as long as we didn't poke Orochimaru, there was a good chance it wouldn't bother us, and it was...right. Oro was not interested in the Iron Nerve nor in Kei, the Hazoupilot, poking Orochimaru without our request, put us in this situation. The "don't poke Oro" was, as a strategy, working, insofar as Oro wasn't willing to risk pissing everyone off to vivisect us.
In fact, poking Orochimaru ended in him going "Oh wait, how did you re-created the 3D Seal", that was the fear of the people that didn't want to interact with Oro. Both sides had valid reasons for their plans, so i don't feel going "We knew it would happen" is very constructive considering all of this happened thanks to an Hazou-Pilot update.
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
That is the point.
The 'don't poke Oro' strat would inevitably fail because we have no way to actually keep from getting his attention in the course of our other activities. And we made no study of what to do in this case because any time it was brought up, people would go into a panic over it.
- Location
- Italy
The natural counter-point is "The thing that ruined don't poke Oro strategy was directly poking Oro". You can't really say that getting caught on fire was inevitable if you're on fire because jumped into the fire drenched in gasoline.
"We knew this was going to happen" is simply not true? the problem we had was "Oro is maybe interested in us and we should move first", the chapter quite clearly showed that no, Orochimaru was not interested in us. Because what was proposed as "What to do" was "Poke Oro directly and ask for a vivisection" not "Go to Asuma and prepare a strategy" as an actual back-up would be.
EDIT: As i said, people had their reason for following this line of action and i feel this is just dumbing the argument being made before, regardless of the "Oro panic" that, i admit, was understandably present.
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- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
And yet, here we are. You can't say that we would've been fine if we did nothing when we did do nothing and by circumstances outside our control[1] it happened anyways. I don't remember any calls to take back control of Hazou to make sure that Hazoupilot wouldn't go and poke Oro.
Frankly, if we look at the actions we actually took, we tried your way through and through, and yet here we are, having gained nothing for the attempt except being put on the back foot, trying to implement the plan we've been advocating all along because we correctly believed the situation was unsustainable.
[1] Which includes Hazoupilot ever since we voted to give up total control.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
You're starting off by saying that you're disagreeing here, but then you go on to talk about how the exact thing that @Noumero was talking about actually did happen, as far as I can tell. One of the points of the argument at the time was that the Ostrich strategy was doomed to failure from the get-go, and that an interaction like this was probably inevitable, so it would have been best to initiate it ourselves for maximal gain and control over it.
i.e., last week, we could have gone up to Oro and arranged a vivisection procedure with Tsunade and Naruto watching, in exchange for some cool stuff. Oro's response was much more likely to be "Okay, that sounds like a good deal to me." and we would be over and done with this.
Now, we cannot do this, because Orochimaru has considered this possibility actively, and in doing so, has conjured up expectations for himself on how this would go for him. To negotiate with him at this juncture is much more difficult, because he already has set expectations.
First mover advantage is significant. Don't underestimate it.
- Location
- Italy
I'm confident in saying that an answer such as "Well, regardless of the reasoning only the result matter" is a completely sterile answer. By the same reasoning escaping the Swamp was a mistake, because this is the result. It's a completely sterile argument that adds nothing to the table.
I'm not saying that this was the best way to deal with the problem, nor that it's what i would have done or would do, what i'm saying is that going "This completely unforseen thing that happened was clearly predictable and people were idiots" is not fair to the discourse in the passing months because it characterize one side as a bunch of idiots that should have known better.
It's like going to Hiruzen and saying "You're an idiot because the Akatsuki attacked at the showdown". There could have been better choices? Yes. Is it fair to let our frustation take control and say "Hiruzen was stupid"? No.
EDIT: I mean, this whole tangent is basically quietly going "I told you so" and personally i disagree for various reason. First of which it's not useful to anyone. Second that a reasoning can be sound even if it's doesn't bring you to a positive result. If Hazou-pilot blabbed about Seal Memory during the surgery(In the hypothetical "voluntary vivisection universe")and Oro decided to escalate, would it be fair to say "The plan was stupid"? Personally i would say "No, the reasoning was sound, regardless of the result".
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@Inferno Vulpix I agree that it seems pretty clear that the "don't poke" strategy has failed. It's less clear to me that the counterfactual of "proactively volunteer for vivisection" strategy would have fared better. For one thing, I expect Naruto/Tsunade to be MUCH more sympathetic and willing to help us in this situation versus the situation where we've decided to go in for vivisection of our own volition. Especially considering that Tsunade's only advice was "don't be interesting"; we would be explicitly ignoring her exact advice at the same time as we ask her for a favour to execute it.
The "proactively strategise with Asuma" plan maybe would have been more useful, but we did talk to the best positioned person (Tsunade) to strategise what to do about Oro's interest. The terrible thing about counterfactuals, is that we'll never know 🙃
The "proactively strategise with Asuma" plan maybe would have been more useful, but we did talk to the best positioned person (Tsunade) to strategise what to do about Oro's interest. The terrible thing about counterfactuals, is that we'll never know 🙃
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