[Haruhi] Unhandled Exception story thread

[Muphrid]

So.  This thing ended up being quite different from any of the outlines.  But it focuses more on Nagato than the others did (because they split more time between her and Kyon and Haruhi).  It's my hope this idea will do more for Nagato than the other ideas did.

So please feel free to consider this chapter 1 draft.  The main index of chapters and drafts can be found here.

[Grahf]

This was quite a departure from what you initially talked about. You've got a nice hook at the beginning that makes me wonder how we're going to get to that point. The way you've portrayed Yuki's pov here is something that I probably wouldn't have expected, and from an opening chapter I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it, it just took some getting used to.

I do wonder if we'll get further explanations as to some of her choices of labels -- even with the details given about Mikuru and Koizumi I still found myself wanting more, and of course Haruhi's epithet could be a very pregnant word to use considering the circumstances.

I guess that I was mostly quite surprised by how, not whimsical, but perhaps dramatic, Yuki's own thoughts seem to be here.

I haven't particularly looked for any grammar or spelling, so I may address that later. However, I can say that you've left me curious for a further look.

[Muphrid]

I do wonder if we'll get further explanations as to some of her choices of labels -- even with the details given about Mikuru and Koizumi I still found myself wanting more, and of course Haruhi's epithet could be a very pregnant word to use considering the circumstances.

Yeah, it's something I can definitely try to flesh out over the course of the story.  In truth, the epithets were something I came up with very late in writing this chapter, after looking over Nagato's poems again, where Kyon makes the connection that some of the unnamed characters in her work might represent Asahina and Koizumi and so on.  Going with that idea gave me a convenient way to cut out a lot of "robot speak" that would've been necessary for her to refer to a lot of different people.

In general, Nagato's poems are very abstract and metaphorical.  While the action here is much more concrete, I did want to present things (people, in particular) with that abstract labeling to help capture her style.

Haruhi's epithet does indeed have that strong negative connotation if viewed as a personal insult.  I would be open to considering a more neutral word, but I think it can be fitting to use the word that is in place right now if/when Nagato becomes especially frustrated with Haruhi at some point.

I guess that I was mostly quite surprised by how, not whimsical, but perhaps dramatic, Yuki's own thoughts seem to be here.

Can you elaborate on this point?

[JonBob]

Couple of quick first thoughts:

Re: Witch, when I started reading, I got some some vibes similar to Umineko's "Witch of Miracles". Which still has some negative connotations, but not necessarily the hag/wicked witch types. Also, the usage of a lot of titles makes me think of Tarot, but using card titles would be a bit trite and/or hard to fit in.

The stuff with the Choir made me think of the Sky Canopy Domain from BDH, but reversed.

The end of the first chapter actually feels like it would be the end of any other piece.

[Muphrid]

The stuff with the Choir made me think of the Sky Canopy Domain from BDH, but reversed.

Yeah, you're right. There was originally an extended metaphor with Nagato comparing the announcement to a symphony, with Haruhi the conductor and such. I cut some of that but the label for the IDSE remained, happening to collide a bit with Brian's work. Hopefully this is forgivable; it won't take on some of the details that are characteristic of Kuyou's kin at least.

[Grahf]

Can you elaborate on this point?

To me it was mostly the extended metaphor regarding the choir that struck me as something slightly more artistic concept than what might come from Yuki. At the same time we're never privy to whatever any other character is thinking in this series, so it could very well be completely correct in the end, that's part of the beauty of it.

Although I believe that it might be an untenable request, I think that it might be interesting if Yuki didn't always think this way, and did use to think in more analytical and technological terminology, but that the more she interacted with the brigade the most her own personal thoughts changed. Something like Primary Observation Target becoming The Witch. It would at least be amusing, if not highly informative, to see just when such a shift occurred, and under what circumstances.

Again, if you want to portray her as always having thought like this, then there's nothing wrong with that either and it makes the above idea somewhat silly. Still, as I was reading the story it was something that kept coming up in my head, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to bring it up.

[Muphrid]

I gotcha.  This style will probably be what I keep to for most of the story, but I'm not opposed to including a passage in which she experiments.

[Arakawa]

Okay, it's been a while since I was able to do any writing or C&C....

Since it looks like you've changed the idea sufficiently that I can't count on any assumptions from your old outline, I haven't bothered to refresh my memory of what you were going to do earlier; since that planning may no longer be relevant anyway.

Spoiler: ShowHide

That ability allowed her to move quickly, as fast as I could keep up with though neither of us ran.

"as fast as I could keep up with though neither of us ran" -- that seems to have a typo in there somewhere

A woman passed pink bag to her partner.

passed a pink bag?

Strange. I didn't think young people were so dedicated to cleaning.

Even stranger: the man referred to "strange weather" like it was common knowledge, but the Choir had no data on this phenomenon. Perhaps it fell beneath a relevance threshold.

Or perhaps it was deemed irrelevant to me.

Nagato at this point already comes across as more human (in some ways) than she was in canon. I'm not sure if that's an intentional divergence that comes from her narration style, or if the style is leaking back from the far-future scene into the flashback descriptions. At some points -- the one quoted above most noticeably -- she talks in a way that suggests humanlike thinking at that specific point in time, rather than just in how she perceives the event afterwards.

While the Witch had perpetuated an repeating August,

Does 'an' really go with 'repeating'?

"Is sending a message through a middle-man as insulting for data beings as it is for humans?"

The Choir hoped not to emulate humans, but I thought he was right. It had that much in common with them: the capacity to be petty.

This is a nicely chilling scene, but the logic here is kind of hard to follow. Is it really so difficult for the Choir to notify Nagato directly? Or is there really some point of alien non-etiquette that Nagato is expected to grasp, from the fact that the Choir refuses to talk to her directly?

Absent other explanation, I'll assume the IDSE has firewalled Nagato to keep her from infecting the rest of it with her crazy :-P

It'd be a lot better if he just left us alone,

Would Kyon really refer to the IDSE as 'he'?

Unlike the Choir, the Witch's goals were loosely defined and could change on a whim. The search for a reading light turned into a quest for magnifiers. The hunt for bookmarks became an exploration of electronic reading devices.

I'm trying to remember when the Haruhi series is set and whether ebook readers were a thing then; but in any case, much like the Harry Potter setting, it's the kind of story that's very easily adjustable in time.

(I seem to recall the anime playing very fast and loose with what version of Windows they were supposed to be on.....)

It did not see the universe as having a story. That story could rival any novel written by human hands.

So, is Nagato saying that the universe has a hugely interesting story, but the IDSE is not able to appreciate that? Thus, Nagato's choice is to become a being who could appreciate the story, but wouldn't know about that; or to remain in the IDSE and have her humanity correspondingly crimped.

That's some irony.

I'm starting to see the reason behind the choice to make Nagato humanlike right off the bat, so (even if it's striking at first) the conversation with Kimidori justifies it more than adequately.

Third, without the resources of the Choir, the SOS Brigade would be more vulnerable to crisis. The Witch's abilities might've made us immune to any threat, but they were unreliable. In dealing with the Other Ghost, she bifurcated the universe and manifested an alter ego. Not even the Choir could understand how this solution represented the best and most direct means to disable that threat. There had been speculation that the Witch had access to more data than we did, that she had subconsciously processed that data and subconsciously chosen her course of action based on that data.

That makes sense.

Though the meta-joke I'm reading out of this is that not even the cosmic superintelligence can come up with a logical justification for what happens in Novels 10-11.

"I must say I'm quite surprised that your superiors have put forth this offer."

That Koizumi addresses Nagato directly in the scene after feels a bit weird. I didn't see Nagato as being particularly open with Brigade members beyond Kyon, and then I see that it's in the context of one of his typical conversations with Kyon -- I'm genuinely not sure if it would make sense for Koizumi to consistently talk about Nagato in the third person in this scene.

I will keep playing this silly game until we've proven if it's mathematically possible for the second player to win

*scratches head*

Should that be 'mathematically possible', or 'mathematically impossible'?

Especially when they're using specific instances of the game for their 'proof'....

She thinks Nagato try going out on her own, only to come back to them because she can't handle it.

Probably should be "Nagato will try going out on her own".

We were going to read a book as part of brigade activity. I was going to read a book with the Man. To that point in time, I had only ever read a book on my own. This would be a shared experience. The others would bring their lifetime experiences to making sense of what they read, and I would benefit from their insights and understanding.

It was an unexpected feeling that I experienced at that time, as I sat in the Witch's chair. Was it anxiety? Anticipation? Nervousness?

I came to believe it was all of those things. It was excitement. I was affected to the point that it took me several seconds to realize the computer was waiting for my input, and I had given it nothing to do.

This was a scene I found cute and heartwarming.

I stepped through the door to the outside, not wanting to believe her. I had already made a great mistake in the past. I was careful not to repeat it, but the Doll was right: only when I was alone, cut off from the rest of the Choir, did I see the world as vast, large, and bright. It was more than I could imagine. It was more than I could understand, for all the animals and people in it. I didn't know what I would do in that world.

This general scene was also very good at conveying something Nagato felt at being cut off, quite intensely. And, despite my logical quibbles with the prior narration, the prior narration is definitely close enough to how Nagato is presented in canon to make this ending to the prologue an exciting contrast that still develops naturally out of what came before.



So far, this seems to be a solid intro; and indeed, in terms of having an emotional hook, it came across as a lot stronger than anything in your prior outline. I'm not sure if your plan now is to spend most of the time working forwards from the past to the revelation in the opening scene, or if the plot of Haruhi revealing the existence of aliens will be a larger part of the story and you'll jump back and forth between the two points in time.

The choir metaphor is interesting, since it's something that's more commonly associated with the Sky Canopy entity. It seems like instead of emphasizing the differences between the two entities, you've decided to emphasize their common points. This takes things in a different direction from canon (which seemed to hint more at a vast gulf between the entities, that made even basic communication between them almost impossible, let alone mutual comprehension).

The use of aliases to refer to all the main characters is a stylistic choice that took a bit of getting used to. I'll be curious to see if there's some deeper thematic reasoning behind some of the names (the ones whose choice isn't immediately obvious to me).

I pointed out a few rough edges in the narration style, which are more likely to come from the use of a different (but probably valid) interpretation of canon and Nagato's character than I'm used to; and this interpretation is definitely used to pretty great effect, even at the beginning. It even made me feel a bit more appreciative of being human, which is a pretty neat thing to manage to evoke :-)

So, if Nagato's narration is not 100% spot on to how I expected her to be judging by her external behavior in the canon series, it's still very close and the imprecision is used to great effect. Which itself is kind of appropriate to how Nagato feels in the story about wanting to be more than a mindless cog in a machine, now that I think about it.

[Muphrid]

Okay, it's been a while since I was able to do any writing or C&C....

Since it looks like you've changed the idea sufficiently that I can't count on any assumptions from your old outline, I haven't bothered to refresh my memory of what you were going to do earlier; since that planning may no longer be relevant anyway.

Yeah, that's the case.  Maybe some of that old stuff will be reused in some other story.  Thanks for taking a look at this.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Strange. I didn't think young people were so dedicated to cleaning.

Even stranger: the man referred to "strange weather" like it was common knowledge, but the Choir had no data on this phenomenon. Perhaps it fell beneath a relevance threshold.

Or perhaps it was deemed irrelevant to me.

Nagato at this point already comes across as more human (in some ways) than she was in canon. I'm not sure if that's an intentional divergence that comes from her narration style, or if the style is leaking back from the far-future scene into the flashback descriptions. At some points -- the one quoted above most noticeably -- she talks in a way that suggests humanlike thinking at that specific point in time, rather than just in how she perceives the event afterwards.

I agree.  It is definitely intended that the narrative is written from the perspective of a much more human Nagato at the time of writing.  Thus, there is also intended to be a strict separation in time between Nagato the narrator, who makes observations, and the Nagato who acts within the story.

But I agree that anything that gives the impression of too humanlike thought at the time of action can be jarring.  I've changed this small passage to the following:

Curious.  Statistical demographics told me young adults were not usually so dedicated to cleaning.  There was an inconsistency in their story, but I couldn't detect the root cause.

More curious:  the man referred to "strange weather" like it was common knowledge, but the Choir had no data on this phenomenon.  Perhaps it fell beneath a relevance threshold.

Or perhaps it was deemed irrelevant to me.
.

"Is sending a message through a middle-man as insulting for data beings as it is for humans?"

The Choir hoped not to emulate humans, but I thought he was right. It had that much in common with them: the capacity to be petty.

This is a nicely chilling scene, but the logic here is kind of hard to follow. Is it really so difficult for the Choir to notify Nagato directly? Or is there really some point of alien non-etiquette that Nagato is expected to grasp, from the fact that the Choir refuses to talk to her directly?

Absent other explanation, I'll assume the IDSE has firewalled Nagato to keep her from infecting the rest of it with her crazy :-P

Yeah, perhaps the implication was left too unclear here.  I decided to be a lot more direct about this:

"Is sending a message through a middle-man as insulting for data beings as it is for humans?"

I did not interpret it as insult.  The Choir shares necessary information with its components based on levels of trustworthiness, reliability, and need.  That I had received a message so indirectly told me a great deal about my status.

The Choir did not trust me.  It did not consider me reliable.  It had only a fleeting need of me, and it wouldn't expose itself to me any more than it absolutely had to.

It'd be a lot better if he just left us alone,

Would Kyon really refer to the IDSE as 'he'?

I had thought Kyon did so repeatedly, but that could be a quirk of translation or a mis-recollection on my part.  Will consult source material.

Third, without the resources of the Choir, the SOS Brigade would be more vulnerable to crisis. The Witch's abilities might've made us immune to any threat, but they were unreliable. In dealing with the Other Ghost, she bifurcated the universe and manifested an alter ego. Not even the Choir could understand how this solution represented the best and most direct means to disable that threat. There had been speculation that the Witch had access to more data than we did, that she had subconsciously processed that data and subconsciously chosen her course of action based on that data.

That makes sense.

Though the meta-joke I'm reading out of this is that not even the cosmic superintelligence can come up with a logical justification for what happens in Novels 10-11.

That is exactly what I'm saying.

"I must say I'm quite surprised that your superiors have put forth this offer."

That Koizumi addresses Nagato directly in the scene after feels a bit weird. I didn't see Nagato as being particularly open with Brigade members beyond Kyon, and then I see that it's in the context of one of his typical conversations with Kyon -- I'm genuinely not sure if it would make sense for Koizumi to consistently talk about Nagato in the third person in this scene.

I've changed this so Koizumi starts off by talking to Kyon and only later addresses Nagato directly.

I will keep playing this silly game until we've proven if it's mathematically possible for the second player to win

*scratches head*

Should that be 'mathematically possible', or 'mathematically impossible'?

Changed to "...proven it's possible for the second player to win."

So far, this seems to be a solid intro; and indeed, in terms of having an emotional hook, it came across as a lot stronger than anything in your prior outline. I'm not sure if your plan now is to spend most of the time working forwards from the past to the revelation in the opening scene, or if the plot of Haruhi revealing the existence of aliens will be a larger part of the story and you'll jump back and forth between the two points in time.

More the former.  At present, I only plan to get back to that initial scene at the end of the piece.

The use of aliases to refer to all the main characters is a stylistic choice that took a bit of getting used to. I'll be curious to see if there's some deeper thematic reasoning behind some of the names (the ones whose choice isn't immediately obvious to me).

Definitely for all the Brigade, though the weakest one is, in my eyes, Kyon's; I remain somewhat unhappy with that one but can think of nothing else that captures his quality of being ordinary.

I pointed out a few rough edges in the narration style, which are more likely to come from the use of a different (but probably valid) interpretation of canon and Nagato's character than I'm used to; and this interpretation is definitely used to pretty great effect, even at the beginning. It even made me feel a bit more appreciative of being human, which is a pretty neat thing to manage to evoke :-)

So, if Nagato's narration is not 100% spot on to how I expected her to be judging by her external behavior in the canon series, it's still very close and the imprecision is used to great effect. Which itself is kind of appropriate to how Nagato feels in the story about wanting to be more than a mindless cog in a machine, now that I think about it.

I think some of this results from a deliberate choice on my part to try to steer clear of what I feared might be common pitfalls for this kind of story: overly robotic narration (which could be as painful to write as to read) in particular.  I think a lot of how human Nagato comes across already stems from that choice (as well as that of the future Nagato as a narrator), but it also means that I get to duck having to have Nagato discover emotions.  Instead of treading that well-worn ground, I get to look at a different aspect of her growth as a person.  As Kimidori hinted, this has to do with finding purpose in life.

Still, I'm keenly aware that I may have stretched the bounds of what is reasonable to expect from Nagato.  I take your concerns that Nagato is too human in places very seriously.  That said, I think this will only be an issue for the first couple chapters.  As larger timescales are involved, I think I'll have a bit more leeway with Nagato's characterization.


Thanks again for your observations.  I'm glad the chapter could evoke so much so quickly.