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
- Location
- Potato land
This is a serious problem, because Akane is fundamentally correct. She did learn something new about herself in the course of this mission, and it destroyed her self-image. In order to get better, she's going to have to rebuild it, probably different than it used to be.
What we need to do is give her as much support as possible once the shock wears off, and not let her cut herself off from the family. Trying to argue her out of her self-recrimination is bound to fail, as it already has this chapter.
In the short term, we can't let her settle into this current state as her new normal, or we'll seriously need to consider her a suicide risk.
Hazou, as her boyfriend and clan head, should absolutely give her as much emotional and material support as he can. I very much doubt trying to *argue* her out of this would go well for anyone, Mari and Neira included. The problem isn't really the Uplift thing either way.
What we need to do is give her as much support as possible once the shock wears off, and not let her cut herself off from the family. Trying to argue her out of her self-recrimination is bound to fail, as it already has this chapter.
In the short term, we can't let her settle into this current state as her new normal, or we'll seriously need to consider her a suicide risk.
Hazou, as her boyfriend and clan head, should absolutely give her as much emotional and material support as he can. I very much doubt trying to *argue* her out of this would go well for anyone, Mari and Neira included. The problem isn't really the Uplift thing either way.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Def agree that Hazou should be giving her emotional support. I was more concerned how the playerbase sometimes decides that we personally must manage and respond to every clan drama. Like Akane says she usually follows whatever is the most immediate authority figure. To grow as a person she has to make her own choices about who she is. Hazou (and by extensions us) can't give her the answer she must find them for herself
- Location
- America
In this case it'd probably save Akane's life. She sounds borderline suicidal at the moment. In the middle of a fight it'd be very easy for her to be overcome by a surge of guilt and willingly leap into a kunai to protect an ally.
We have options here.
A. Passively hope Akane gets better on her own and just provide her emotional support. High chance Akane gets worse/dies.
B. Attempt to reconcile Uplift and Akane's actions so that Akane is able to continue believing in Uplift and make peace with what she's done. This will only work if we have a feasible argument that Akane will accept. Pointing out the state of the world clearly didn't work.
C. Modify Uplift so that it focuses on the greater good, and allows for deaths in the short term to prevent greater deaths later on. Explaining necromancy would help a lot here.
D. Take this opportunity to stop trying to uphold Uplift. In the future, when FOOMing is complete and we are ready to create a new world order, innocents will die in the ensuing struggle that our bid for power will create. Uplift will be impossible to uphold then, and so Uplift will always be an obstacle for us. I wish we'd go with this one but it'd never be voted in.
E. Change Akane's mind so that she no longer feels guilt over the civilians she killed. Turn her into a sociopath that still believes in Uplift and Akane will survive. To Akane, Uplift and murdering civilians are conflicting with each other. Instead of solving the Uplift side of things, we work on the murder part. I doubt Hazōpilot would ever go with this but it'd be fun to see happen.
If we don't take the initiative and just provide comfort and support, I expect Akane to die on her next mission.
- Location
- Liverpool
[x] Action Plan: When Words Fail, Use Action
[X] Roomba
[X] Roomba
If anything, Akane dying should be a very effective motivation to get on with the resurrecting people research project, unlike those screamy flammable peasants. And their children.
No need to rethink our alignment with an entrenched polity in this system of collateral murder.
No need to rethink our alignment with an entrenched polity in this system of collateral murder.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Seems like two scenes, one with Shika and one with Gaku, and it feels pretty manageable. Thanks for asking.
Am I correct that the plan does *not* call for talking to Asuma about it? It's prep only?
Yes and he did the rest of the planning and sent the plans back to Asuma.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Not yet, I'd like to have a cohesive, unified plan in place before bringing it to him. Though, if that sounds too indecisive, we could offscreen the prepwork and jump straight to "present Asuma with the plan."
My initial goal was getting Akane intimately involved with the planning of the presentation, and then working directly with implementing it. Words weren't enough, so I'm hoping that having Akane work directly with a major Uplift Project will help.
- Location
- Yes.
I'm not sure if Akane getting involved with another Uplift project is the right direction. The root of her misery ATM is the fact that she's seeing herself as someone who believes, but doesn't have any strong beliefs. She sees herself in this position where she fights passionately (for Youth, for Uplift), but the moment some strong figure says to do otherwise (ASUMA: Burn this city alive), and she does that. And from the sounds of it, she didn't even try to find a better way.
Chances are what happened during the mission was that Yamanaka (a infiltration/social spec) explained things to Akane in the sort of kind, reasonable tones that makes you feel stupid and ashamed for having thought otherwise, even though your inner self is roiling with guilt and confused fear, and by the time you've snapped out of things the entire place is on fire and people are screaming and burning and now you're getting flashbacks to the Sunset Racer and aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
*ahem* That went a bit sideways, my apologies. But the bit about the Sunset Racer is important, because at that time Akane had the benefit of Hazou having tried (and from Akane's POV, tried his best) to save the crew, so Akane could at least comfort herself in knowing someone she perceives as smarter than her failed so she clearly could not have done better...but now she had her own chance to try, and she didn't. She failed to try, and she hates herself because of it.
Aaaaaanyway, if I had the opportunity to talk to Akane I would make her sit down and think about what she could have done. Make her throw out ways to keep the townspeople from being destroyed; then walk her through those ideas, and what the downstream consequences would look like. Like if she wanted to force a mass evacuation: would that be plausible; would the townsfolk just get eaten by monsters; if they survived to the next village, would they contribute meaningfully to Iwa's war effort? And at the end of it all tell her that being able to map all those potential consequences ahead of time would be insane, no reasonable person could do it.
And in the end, all Akane can do; all anyone can do is to try their best, and learn to do better for next time. No one has the right to demand anything more of her.
---
Or I could be completely wrong and this would blow up in our face horribly, who knows?
Chances are what happened during the mission was that Yamanaka (a infiltration/social spec) explained things to Akane in the sort of kind, reasonable tones that makes you feel stupid and ashamed for having thought otherwise, even though your inner self is roiling with guilt and confused fear, and by the time you've snapped out of things the entire place is on fire and people are screaming and burning and now you're getting flashbacks to the Sunset Racer and aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
*ahem* That went a bit sideways, my apologies. But the bit about the Sunset Racer is important, because at that time Akane had the benefit of Hazou having tried (and from Akane's POV, tried his best) to save the crew, so Akane could at least comfort herself in knowing someone she perceives as smarter than her failed so she clearly could not have done better...but now she had her own chance to try, and she didn't. She failed to try, and she hates herself because of it.
Aaaaaanyway, if I had the opportunity to talk to Akane I would make her sit down and think about what she could have done. Make her throw out ways to keep the townspeople from being destroyed; then walk her through those ideas, and what the downstream consequences would look like. Like if she wanted to force a mass evacuation: would that be plausible; would the townsfolk just get eaten by monsters; if they survived to the next village, would they contribute meaningfully to Iwa's war effort? And at the end of it all tell her that being able to map all those potential consequences ahead of time would be insane, no reasonable person could do it.
And in the end, all Akane can do; all anyone can do is to try their best, and learn to do better for next time. No one has the right to demand anything more of her.
---
Or I could be completely wrong and this would blow up in our face horribly, who knows?
Unaligned Player
Agony that desires to meet Extinction
- Location
- Adrift between sanity and madness
- Pronouns
- Shrug
Should we correct Akane's assumption that this is even most of Team Uplift' priorities? Because while Leaf not being the first loyalty is likely true for everyone, I have my doubts that the increase in the prosperity for the common sapient is priority numero uno for everyone else.
- Location
- Yes.
Uplift isn't even Hazou's top priority, and he invented the damn thing.
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
Immigration Plan: Ethical, Yet Actually Feasible (Suck it, Deathworld!)
Which means we have the opportunity to get a bunch of Rock I&S specialists to pass through a specific location. At which point a hidden Hyuga can spot them, and describe them for a waiting combat squad to capture or kill at their leisure. Even better, the infiltrators will be pretending to be civilians, so they won't have most of their weapons and equipment.
Having multiple immigration checkpoints that must all be passed through and waiting until the infiltrator has passed the immigration checkpoint where the Hyuga is, would ensure that the Rock nin don't get wise to which checkpoints they need to sneak past. It would also spare most of the civilians coming through and make sure that they don't get discouraged from coming by hearing about us killing people at the checkpoints. We could also have the Hyuga vary which checkpoint they are at to make it even harder to skip them, as well as doing occasional sweeps of the villages where we settle the civilians.
We could even have the civilian groups that infiltrators are part of walk through prepared trap zones. Then we just blow them sky high with no warning. Easy combat.
A plan section may look something like this:
Okay, at this point it's really more of a plan than a plan segment. If anyone wants to take it up, I'd be happy to vote for any plan along these lines!
Edit:
There is now a plan based on this, thanks to the wonderful RandomOTP. Here's a link to the plan, for anyone who is interested but doesn't want to trawl through the different plans to find it:
This… is actually brilliant. When Rock gets word of this, they'll undoubtedly take advantage by trying to infiltrate ninja in among the civilians to spy on us.
Which means we have the opportunity to get a bunch of Rock I&S specialists to pass through a specific location. At which point a hidden Hyuga can spot them, and describe them for a waiting combat squad to capture or kill at their leisure. Even better, the infiltrators will be pretending to be civilians, so they won't have most of their weapons and equipment.
Having multiple immigration checkpoints that must all be passed through and waiting until the infiltrator has passed the immigration checkpoint where the Hyuga is, would ensure that the Rock nin don't get wise to which checkpoints they need to sneak past. It would also spare most of the civilians coming through and make sure that they don't get discouraged from coming by hearing about us killing people at the checkpoints. We could also have the Hyuga vary which checkpoint they are at to make it even harder to skip them, as well as doing occasional sweeps of the villages where we settle the civilians.
We could even have the civilian groups that infiltrators are part of walk through prepared trap zones. Then we just blow them sky high with no warning. Easy combat.
A plan section may look something like this:
- Meeting with (Asuma? Shikamaru?)
- Idea: set up and encourage mass civilian immigration from Rock to Leaf
- Rock will obviously send infiltrators
- Create immigration checkpoints, forcing infiltrators within range of hidden Hyuga
- Kill infiltrators elsewhere so Rock doesn't get savvy
- Benefits:
- More civilians for Leaf, less for Rock
- Dead Rock ninja ^_^
- Gōketsu will take full responsibility for making new civilians productive for Leaf
- If Asuma approves, begin preparations:
- Buy unoccupied land
- Must be feasible to clear of chakra creatures (no mines fiasco)
- Must be arable or otherwise potentially productive
- Make productive via summons, fertility jutsu, MEW
- Find civilian to run town
- Ex Daimyo? GED graduate?
- Make taxes lower than normal, supplement with Gōketsu funds
- Buy unoccupied land
- Talk with Akane
- You can't give back those people's lives by leaving the Gōketsu or abandoning uplift
- What you can do is try to make the world a better place for the people that are still here
- Uplift isn't about being perfect. If it was, no one would fit it, not even the Sage himself
- Please, help us make things better for people. We won't always be able to avoid hurting people, but we can at least minimize the damage and try to have a net positive effect on the world
- (If Asuma approved) Share what you are doing to try and save civilians
- Give Akane something tangible to do to help civilians before her next mission
- Give money/food to a starving family?
- Work at hospital, helping the med nin?
- Bring medicine to families?
- Just order Akane to help as many civilians as she can as much as possible before her first mission?
- Explain necromancy?
Okay, at this point it's really more of a plan than a plan segment. If anyone wants to take it up, I'd be happy to vote for any plan along these lines!
Edit:
There is now a plan based on this, thanks to the wonderful RandomOTP. Here's a link to the plan, for anyone who is interested but doesn't want to trawl through the different plans to find it:
Last edited:
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[x] Action Plan: When Words Fail, Use Action (Now, With More Action!!)
Words: 363 (for now)
Words: 363 (for now)
- Sanity check everything with Shikamaru, Kei, and Mari. Ask Ami for advice.
- Shikamaru
- Idea:
- Set up and encourage mass civilian immigration from Rock to Leaf
- Inevitable Infiltrators:
- Create immigration checkpoints, forcing infiltrators within range of Hyuuga
- Kill infiltrators elsewhere so Rock doesn't get savvy
- Rock's Countermoves:
- Stop sending infiltrators:
- We keep getting free civilians and the squad is now on a continuous scorch squad mission, without the trauma.
- Use posting as a way to ease traumatized ninja into the field before they resume normal missions.
- Prevent immigration (violently/nonviolently)
- Rock will be damaging their own civilians.
- Stop sending infiltrators:
- Benefits:
- More civilians for Leaf, less for Rock
- Dead Rock ninja
- Gōketsu will handle making new civilians productive for Leaf
- Farmland, GED education (medical/admin assistants, NFF), construction, trade apprentices...
- Methodology
- Destroy main transportation routes
- Heavily target other infrastructure, leave civilians alive (increases strain on system)
- Rumors: Sell Leaf as a promised land
- Funded Till 'n Fills (Bakuchioka)
- More food, fertile soil, bison meat
- Lower taxes (if approved/lie)
- Safety (MEW walls)
- Better access to chakra beast extermination
- Idea:
- If Asuma approves, begin preparations:
- Buy unoccupied land
- Make productive (Summons, fertility jutsu, MEW)
- Find civilian to run town
- Ex Daimyo? GED graduate?
- Make taxes lower than normal, supplement with Gōketsu funds
- (offscreen)
- Explain Akane situation to Kagome and Cannai, ask for help/advice.
- Ask Asuma to extend Akane's break.
- Talk with Akane
- You can't give back those people's lives by leaving the Gōketsu or abandoning uplift
- What you can do is try to make the world a better place for the people that are still here
- Uplift isn't about being perfect. If it was, no one would fit it, not even the Sage himself
- Please, help us make things better for people. We won't always be able to avoid hurting people, but we can at least minimize the damage and try to have a net positive effect on the world
- (If Asuma approved) Share what you are doing to try and save civilians
- Suggest that Akane do something tangible to help civilians before her next mission
- Give money/food to a starving family?
- Work at hospital, helping the med nin?
- Bring medicine to families?
- Explain necromancy (high opsec)
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- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
@Sentient Tree You're nine kinds of amazing. Posted the plan.
@Halberdier, There now exists a vastly improved version of the previous version
@Halberdier, There now exists a vastly improved version of the previous version
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
[x] Action Plan: When Words Fail, Use Action (Now, With More Action!!)
Yesssssss!
Yesssssss!
- Location
- Liverpool
[x] Action Plan: When Words Fail, Use Action (Now, With More Action!!)
@RandomOTP
Looks good. Though we don't have much for finances, and having rock civilians pay less than leaf civilians will look funky, so flushing that segment out/changing it to "use lower/optimized tax as experimental test", with a link in the line to the conversation from before?
@RandomOTP
Looks good. Though we don't have much for finances, and having rock civilians pay less than leaf civilians will look funky, so flushing that segment out/changing it to "use lower/optimized tax as experimental test", with a link in the line to the conversation from before?
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It should be pretty cheap, since the Goketsu are doing the clearing themselves. I know that the Goketsu Method of making farmable land (Pangolin Summons) was so effective that we sold the service/use of it to another clan. And, iirc, that was before the Fertility Jutsu was been available for everyone.
But as for the taxation, I don't think there's been an effortpost about it before. Just idle discussion of "hey, if we didn't steal literally all of their money, they might be more productive."
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Unaligned Player
Agony that desires to meet Extinction
- Location
- Adrift between sanity and madness
- Pronouns
- Shrug
It's his raison d'etre but yeah he's still a person with desires and motives that can overpower it.
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
Regarding taxes, we could spin it to Asuma as a way to incentivize immigration and bait the trap for infiltrators. If Rock gets information that we're lowering taxes for the immigrants and planning something big, they'll be confused and want more information so they can be prepared for whatever we're planning. So they'll send more
Might want to change this to just:
- Meeting with Asuma and Shikamaru
The best part of this plan is that even after Rock figures out they've been duped we still aren't wasting the squad manning the immigration checkpoints.
- They can stop sending infiltrators, in which case we keep getting free civilians and the squad is basically on a continuous scorch squad mission, minus the psychological trauma.
- We could even start using it as a slight break for ninja like Akane who need a bit of a break before they go back to normal missions.
- Or they could prevent their civilians from crossing the border by attacking them, attacking the checkpoints, or spreading rumors that we're the ones killing immigrants. In which case they're basically doing our job for us, Rock's ninja are just as big a threat to their civilians as ours are.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Please, please no.
Shikamaru, absolutely. Asuma? Not until we're sure he won't regard this as treason and until we've gotten past the first draft of the idea.
I concur with @FaintlySorcerous about going through Shikamaru first.
This is something Tsunade would definitely need to be aware of as well. Who knows if Rock would purposely send refugees to us for some nefarious reason. I like the intent though.
[x] Action Plan: When Words Fail, Use Action (Now, With More Action!!)
This is something Tsunade would definitely need to be aware of as well. Who knows if Rock would purposely send refugees to us for some nefarious reason. I like the intent though.
[x] Action Plan: When Words Fail, Use Action (Now, With More Action!!)
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- Location
- Italy
I...don't think that would fix the problem? We're offering a practical solution to a moral problem. Giving Akane a way to help civilians doesn't resolve the fact that, when the chips were down, she decided to burn a town.