The Coin - Chapter Nine and Epilogue notes

So this is it. We get a little technobabble to start, explaining what Haruhi’s done to the Entity, but the main focus of the first part is Nagato. When I conceived of this passage, I came in with the idea that Nagato would be somewhat cold toward Haruhi, yet in writing it, I realized that couldn’t entirely be the case. I think she must care for Haruhi at minimum through caring for Kyon, but to go through with exposing her inmost wishes, there must be more than that, too. At the same time, there’s a contradiction: Nagato clearly has felt oppressed by Haruhi’s methods and demeanor and the need to be fixing things when Haruhi breaks them. As it comes out, her feelings seem complicated, and I thought that was good. Real people have complicated feelings, too.

The piece Nagato plays on her stereo set is, of course, Gymnopedie No. 1 from its use in the Disappearance movie, and what we have here is someone with that Disappearance Nagato’s basic personality but also our Nagato’s knowledge and experiences. Central to this scene is how Nagato thought she was experiencing an error that didn’t reflect anything about herself, but only through this program did she realize her feelings and how she had denied herself. That, ultimately, will connect with how Koizumi and Asahina have done the same.

The Japanese as a rule tend to have more emphasis on personal boundaries and a lack of physical contact, or so I’ve read. I won’t pretend to be an expert in this respect, but this was why I chose Haruhi touching Nagato’s hand as the trigger for Nagato’s negative feelings toward her to come out. It’s tough enough for Nagato to speak her mind and expose herself that way. To be touched or invaded in an unwanted fashion is too much to expect of her.

Naturally Kyon is the first person she’ll turn to when she’s in need, and it’s no accident that Kyon ends up kneeling on one knee in front of her as she sits on that park bench. Well, maybe an accident on Kyon’s part. What must Kyon be thinking here? The way I see it, Kyon is not spontaneous. Haruhi is his spontaneous half, and he appreciates being around her because it pushes him into things he otherwise might not do. Nevertheless, there’s some resistance, but being kissed by Haruhi isn’t something you can ignore.

And the one thing Haruhi can’t stand is the thought of hurting Kyon the way she’s hurt everyone else.

So we go back, and the old woman is here to find Haruhi because the old woman is Asahina. I know quite a few people saw that coming, but if you didn’t, a quick recap of the hints: Asahina bought a cap at the stadium. The old woman gave Haruhi a cap right before, seemingly with the same initials on the inside of the brim. They’re the same cap. The old woman and Asahina (big) both refer to Asahina (small) as mousey in chapter seven also.

This is where it may get a bit complicated. The idea of resonance is some artistic license on quantum mechanics and time travel. Basically, quantum theory says any event has a variety of possible outcomes. A die can come up with anything between 1 and 6. A coin can come up heads or tails. You might think that, when you go into the past, everything you don’t influence will stay the same. I merely contend that any quantum event can turn out differently—not because you influenced it but just due to quantum probability. This, in turn, makes any closed timelike curve (a paradox, etc.) unstable. It’s an old idea I had for another story, but it fit well here.

One of my prereaders remarked on how Haruhi’s powers in this story seem to work just exactly the way she wants without fretting about details, so it’s natural, in a way, that she would go even further, to the time when she gained those powers, without knowing right away when that was, but this scene should be familiar. It’s in chapter three—after leaving the hospital and Taniguchi, Haruhi remembers a certain dream. The paradox and resonance are as follows: something may have given Haruhi powers at first, but that set off a chain of time travel events that made an unstable loop. Now, the only way to seal that loop is for Haruhi’s powers to make it so, or instead she could choose to break it. And she is tempted to break it, though she’s not as certain she should as I originally envisioned. That would be really unsympathetic—to be so sure the world should change without doubts, without recognizing how enormous of a decision that is.

Really, this final scene of chapter nine is the driving force of the whole story: the younger, middle school Haruhi represents all she’s forgotten about why she was looking for extraordinary things, and it comes as a breath of fresh air.

The epilogue goes after things a bit quickly; there are several ends needing tying, but the basic thrust should be easy enough to understand. Haruhi’s show of mercy to the Entity, in the hope they’ll learn what she has, was originally more than that. She would’ve given them a piece of power, maybe to teach them that that wasn’t everything, but given the dangerous deeds the Entity’s committed, I judged that to be a bit too much.

And then there’s the future Haruhi who accompanies the old Asahina. Remember when Asahina (big) says someone else told her to wear the baseball cap, that she thought Haruhi was being nostalgic? Originally, there was a lot more scene here and interaction between Haruhi and her older self, but that ended up feeling like too much exposition when things should be left open-ended. Conversely, there were some unanswered questions—about Rooter, about people hurt at the stadium and the future of the human race—that I thought Haruhi would feel unqualified to answer, but it would be wrong not to acknowledge them at least.

I was going to go with an ending where Kyon had the beginning manuscript for the novels, but that had been done, so instead, I went with a call back to the end of the first book instead.

Overall, this story has turned out very differently from what I first envisioned, but that’s a good thing. I had the benefit of good, intelligent feedback to tell me where I was steering too far too quickly into darkness. I’ve set out to do what I wanted—to have Haruhi learn of her powers and realize what she truly wants out of life. It may be some time before I’m back writing Haruhi, but I feel I can do it passably, so I have no aversions to doing so.

Until next time.

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The Coin - Chapter Eight notes

When I was starting this chapter, I found it quite difficult to get going. I’m a big fan of fluidity, so just going to the next action, in my mind, misses the point of a chapter break in some circumstances. That’s why I use this opening device a great deal—starting with an anecdote that seems unrelated textually but is relevant to Haruhi’s state of mind.

Of course, the strange girl Haruhi knew in primary school is Sasaki, here through a somewhat convoluted approach to getting two kids in different classes to work together on a project. In a lot of ways, Haruhi and Sasaki are similar, though, in that they have unique outlooks on the world, but what’s really important is that even they can come to a mutual understanding, respect, and admiration when they were brought together reluctantly. That’s what Haruhi tries to take away from this. And when I made some revisions to the final confrontation of this chapter, I found the perfect place to put Chekhov’s gun.

As Haruhi walks back to class, I tried to avoid having too much reliance on Kyon here, as he threatens to dominate Haruhi’s thoughts if we give him too much of an opportunity. Kyon’s nonchalant confidence can be comforting on one hand, but it’s Sakanaka’s outside perspective that gives Haruhi a concrete idea of how best to act. In writing this scene, I wanted to emphasize how normal Sakanaka is. Her anecdote about cheering up a friend is meant to feel typical—just the sort of thing that happens if you’re not in the SOS Brigade. The names of students are drawn from a thread on AnimeSuki, though the list and class seating chart are associated with first year.

Originally, I didn’t plan for Haruhi to address the brigade after that chat, but as I approached the scene, it seemed an appropriate time to try to make something different, to have a bit of hope and positivity with which to go into her meeting with Taniguchi. Haruhi’s suggestions should show some element of thought, following how she perceives the others and what they want. Kyon, ironically, is the easiest to please.

Haruhi’s visit to Taniguchi here may be a bit overdue. I felt Haruhi would still be a bit nearsighted, as humans are often guilty of being, and not realize that Taniguchi might not even remember what happened (or that he might react strongly to remembering). It’s nearsightedness with the best of intentions, which I hoped would feel somewhat tragic. It’s a fun moment when Taniguchi is suspicious Haruhi would really visit him, but it is hard to see Haruhi be rejected like this,even out of gut reaction, from something Taniguchi didn’t even realize he was doing and didn’t understand in the heat of the moment.

And so, Haruhi walks away, wounded and hurt. Just the idea of Haruhi limping along a sidewalk with no one bothering to ask what’s wrong is a tough image to take but typical of how people tend to stay out of others’ business, particularly—I think—in Japanese culture. Kyon’s seeking her out here is really meant to lift her spirits. It’s a bit roundabout in what he admits, but that’s okay for now. Haruhi can feel the warmth in the deed just as well. And, in deflecting his intentions, Kyon unwittingly leads us to the Piggy planet once more for a final confrontation with Asakura.

When I wrote this segment initially, I went all the way with it. Haruhi erased Asakura and Kimidori, and that was that. Readers of this draft felt it was a bit much, that Haruhi has more imagination than that and wouldn’t reach for the cosmic sledgehammer, so to speak, when she could divine a less drastic solution. There were other issues with the draft, too, as to justify Haruhi’s actions I felt the interfaces needed to know what Rooter had been given before confronting Haruhi. This led to a good moment where Asakura appears to break through Haruhi’s powers in a moment where she should be frozen in time, but for logic, for consistency, and for eliminating that overkill moment above, I settled on this version. It’s 99% as good for punch, in my opinion, as playing up Haruhi’s vindictiveness with eternal punishment is still satisfying, and it’s much better on other fronts.

Of course, I’ve let Nagato’s secret stay secret this long, and a savvy reader probably could tell it would come back to bite in some way. I tried to subvert the expected reaction, with Haruhi doing the right thing even though she feels very betrayed. I tried to make this as understandable as possible—that Kyon feels very sensitive about having chosen this world over Nagato, in particular. We all have our limits, after all. This is something that guides me in my writing: people do make mistakes. They’re not always savvy or do the smartest thing. Writing that without turning people off toward those mistakes is to make them feel like mistakes we could make, or to avoid disproportionate consequences that don’t follow, that make the mistake feel like an excuse. It’s a fine line, and I don’t always get it right. That much I must concede.

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Finished once more

The Coin chapters eight and nine and the epilogue are drafted. The end shall come soon. All things in good time.

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The Coin - Chapter Seven notes

The feelings of shame and guilt that result from having lost faith in Kyon, even for a moment, are where we begin this chapter, and it gives an immediate opportunity to confront the lowest point in Haruhi’s depiction over the course of the series. I felt more comfortable doing this after revisiting Melancholy in chapter five. The thing that can be a bit fridge-logic-inducing from canon is that we never get the impression that Haruhi realizes she was wrong. Kyon just forgives her when he realizes he was being a negative Nancy, and it’s done. From Haruhi’s perspective, that can’t be enough. Hence, she has to confront the part where her expectations of reality and reality itself aren’t the same.

But what Haruhi is feeling gives her a sort of nearsightedness. She alone knows what she’s feeling. That doesn’t mean anyone else can. Kyon can tell something’s amiss, but it’s not going to bother him that Haruhi went alone, nor does it really occur to him. The act doesn’t have the same significance to him as it does to Haruhi.

For these criticial opening scenes, I iterated a lot, both before and after sending this chapter out for feedback. It’s difficult to capture Haruhi’s thought processes as they were back then without making it seem like that that’s still her thought process now. I’ve tried to strike a balance, but I won’t say it’s entirely perfect. For the purposes of emphasizing Haruhi’s growth, Haruhi does realize she has to apologize for what she thinks she’s done.

It’s about this point that we have to get to Koizumi. Initially, I wanted to have this scene before school, so Haruhi would be thinking about it until lunch. I moved it back because Haruhi being avoidant and not coming to class until the very last minute made a lot of sense. Koizumi’s desperation is set up last chapter, and at first, it all sounds reasonable. Koizumi has valid concerns, and Haruhi does the gracious thing to try to fix her past mistakes.

But valid concerns aren’t what really bother Koizumi. At long last, the mask of Koizumi slips off, even if only for a moment. I admit, I was tempted to expand on this here, but part of Koizumi is that he’s mysterious. He really is. All along, you don’t get a good sense of how the man really ticks and how much of his behavior is put-on. To me, it’s very unappetizing if all his mannerisms are an act. The easiest fiction is one close to the truth, after all. I think Koizumi must be very fond of philosophizing and games and mysteries, but as an esper, he’s not wholly free to indulge those pursuits. Koizumi, in my mind, is very admiring of Haruhi, and hence he feels like his dedication hasn’t been rewarded. At the same time, he knows he’s been privy to a wonderful experience and feels like he shouldn’t refuse that.

Having gained insight into three members of the brigade out of four, only Asahina is left. The question is simple: does she want to be there? And to Asahina, that’s a question she’s never been asked. How she feels about being so far from home is irrelevant. She doesn’t have an option, and talking about these issues only puts her in an unbearable position. She’d rather run than anger Haruhi. It could even be standard operating procedure, so to speak.

Haruhi doesn’t get the chance to stew on this conversation, though. The old woman is here. Remember her from chapter three? Her appearance at this juncture is a bit of a hit-and-run, but it seeds the idea that the time-travelers are more concerned with preserving the timeline than exploration.

Kyon’s attitude toward the older Asahina stems largely from the spot of resentment he feels toward her at the end of book 7, the need to “play a prank” from time to time and spoil the otherwise deterministic interactions of closed time loops. To some extent, Asahina’s manipulations are necessary and justified from her perspective. Still, leading Kyon and herself around on vague hints and implicit coercion are something Haruhi can’t fathom Asahina of being capable of.

With this training facility, I wanted to avoid wanton conjecture about what the future would actually be like. I’d known since this project’s inception I wanted a passage where Haruhi visited the future, and I briefly considered how that future could be different from our time, but I realized that that wouldn’t engage Haruhi’s emotions—only, maybe, her enthusiasm for the unusual, but that’s not what’s in focus here. Having such a massive training facility plays on Haruhi’s aversion of undue attention: she can’t view herself as being unusual or special, and so it bothers her.

Now, we have the old woman, who makes a couple appearances in this chapter. Her goals are explicitly counter to those of other time-travelers, and I think she fancies herself as a guide for Haruhi toward something, as she says, less constrained by the demands of causality and time. She’ll be back, one or two more times, before all this is over.

At last, Haruhi gets to meet the older Asahina, and there are a lot of clues and hints here that one should think about. Why is Asahina wearing that hat, for instance? Let me not tease too much, but there’s a definite answer to that question, at least. Recognizing the changes in Asahina’s personality and behavior is something that emphasizes how Haruhi doesn’t know her friends as well as she thought. That applies to Koizumi; that applies to Asahina, too. When Asahina takes Haruhi back home and so easily convinces her to do what’s needed to protect the future, she realizes Haruhi was right—she has become manipulative, she has used her position and friendships to push people in the direction she wanted. She’s deprived her friends of happiness, of choice.

This is a long chapter, and a lot of stuff has happened, but the end is in sight. Only two more chapters and an epilogue to go.

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The Coin - Chapter Six notes

As I said with the last chapter, I originally planned for the visits to Mori and Asakura to be presented together. The main benefit of splitting them was that I could refocus and make this chapter a lot tighter in terms of theme and message. Here, it’s not the visit to Asakura by itself that forms the main basis of the chapter. Rather, we see the effects of Asakura’s words as they slowly take hold in Haruhi’s mind. This is a concept that really appeals to me—the notion of being persuaded and manipulated by words even when you don’t want to be. It’s all psychology. And it has the benefit of presenting Haruhi in a sympathetic light (she has the same loathing and disdain for Asakura that we do) while opening her to persuasion.

Presenting Haruhi sympathetically is still something I have doubts about. I think, without doubt, it makes Haruhi easier to take from a reader’s perspective, but how does one explain the questionable things she’s done? Right now, the way I’ve presented her is to avoid those issues by suggesting she’s grown out of the most egregious behaviors, but still I sense some inherent contradiction. I don’t want to make Haruhi so unambiguously likable that she no longer resembled the canon character.

But that is a question for another story at this point, as it’s far too late to do an about-face with her. For this reason, I tried to have Haruhi make a conscious effort to be understanding, almost excessively so, even while she inwardly feels differently. That said, I shouldn’t jump ahead. Let’s start at the top with Asakura.

Asakura’s a character I really like writing because she can be menacing and sinister all while wearing a pleasant smile. Here, I tried to play up the idea that Asakura can imitate humanity but can’t fathom the meaning behind what people do. She thinks she does, but she doesn’t. She honestly believes she can reach Haruhi somehow, and when that fails, she opts for the most obvious tack—if she can’t get Haruhi to relate to her, she’ll drive a wedge between Haruhi and the brigade, specifically Nagato.

The idea for this scene at the café came from Arakawa Seijio, and as before with Mori, it was sorely needed to get the right angle on what Haruhi had learned. I’ve learned to be very cautious about people withholding information from one another, lest it come off as just asking for bad things to happen, but coming from Nagato, I hoped it would be acceptable. Of course, we all know what Nagato did and why. Even knowing what Haruhi can do, I felt Nagato would be very reluctant to admit her intentions. Even with Haruhi having learned what she can do, Nagato should be cautious at stirring up Haruhi’s jealousy or possessiveness. Of course, one can guess that Nagato still might not understand what she did (at least, in a way she can articulate with words), but that’d be a bit boring. At the least, I hope Nagato has learned to understand herself to that extent.

Much is made of Nagato’s loyalty to Kyon that seems to supersede all other authority. Through this is how I interpret her offer of food to Haruhi. Nagato knows that Haruhi is important to Kyon. She goes to find Haruhi when Kyon calls Nagato up and tells her that Haruhi’s missing. And, when she perceives that Kyon is in trouble and that Haruhi is dicking around rather than helping him right away, she slows time down to mitigate that effect.

Nagato comes off a bit cold to Haruhi in the process. To me, I thought this unavoidable. She didn’t just make a world for Kyon that was totally normal. She took Haruhi away from him. Perhaps that was necessary since she couldn’t adjust memories beyond a period of one year prior, but we never got a good explanation for that anyway. I think there must be some part of Nagato that resents Haruhi for what she puts Kyon through. That’s not to say Nagato totally hates her. She should respect Haruhi in some ways for having qualities she lacks and respect her for taking care of her when she was ill. Human interactions aren’t totally black-and-white that way, even if they involve an alien.

Anyone who’s savvy can probably figure out that the stereo set and CD will come into play sooner or later. I leave to the reader to guess what may be on that disc.

For a while, I contemplated writing an extended scene where Haruhi would’ve met Kyon at his house, but it didn’t seem to add very much.

The rest of the chapter is where Asakura’s influence is slowly realized. This, to me, is the fundamental difference between Haruhi and the others in the brigade. Haruhi is impulsive. She wants to do things right away, spur of the moment, and no one else in the group is really like that. Kyon shares her overall sense of wonder and awe. I think that distinguishes him most. But Asahina, Koizumi, and Nagato all have different priorities. The first two, to an extent, have been dedicated to monitoring the situation and ensuring the status quo. Nagato’s had a hand in that, too. And while Haruhi can be understanding and polite all she wants, lack of overt enthusiasm she senses from her friends sticks with her. I tweaked this rationale based on feedback, and I think now it’s very logical, very tight.

The Piggy planet scenes are adapted from similar scenes originally written for the first draft of chapter four. These are only slightly adjusted to account for the different circumstances. Originally, Asakura took Haruhi there as a demonstration of the universe’s wonders, and the distinct implication was that the Sickness the Piggies experienced was deliberately given to them by the Entity. Of course, the name Rooter and the Piggies come from the Ender’s Game series by Orson Scott Card.

The chapter is pretty long by this point, but necessarily so. The effect of Asakura’s insidious words isn’t realized until Haruhi’s back and realizes the mistake she’s made in misinterpreting a lack of overt enthusiasm for a lack of true desire. This, I feel, is the moment when Haruhi realizes just how different she is from the others—not in the sense of being an inhuman creature or anything like that but in having such a different outlook on the world, one that the other members of the brigade don’t necessarily share.

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The Coin - Chapter Five notes

When I conceived of this chapter, I thought this part with Mori and Arakawa would only be half, where the promised confrontation with Asakura would make up the rest. As this part grew longer and longer, however, I realized there was no good way to connect the two parts thematically, and I decided to make this passage work on its own. I admit that, going into the writing of it, I was a bit at a loss for what could connect Mori and Haruhi, for the message that should come across in this chapter.

I was still struggling with that point when I made it to the closed space scene, and I realized that that was a natural time for Haruhi to remember when she’d been in that place before—with Kyon at the end of Melancholy. This gave me an opportunity to confront Haruhi’s feelings for Kyon, which to that point had been very oblique. Haruhi had admitted nothing, even though we saw clearly what she wanted. In that, I think Haruhi has a dichotomy, or at least I’m writing her like she does. There are some things Haruhi can be unabashedly straightforward about. Perhaps that description should extend to most things, but in my mind, the only consistent description of Haruhi’s feelings for Kyon, with everything before already written, was one of tacit acceptance yet refusal to act. It troubled me somewhat to do this without really planning it very far in advance, but I felt it was the best direction to take, given what I had.

And, in doing so, it gave me an angle to draw parallels between Haruhi and Mori, and parallels are something I like to stress in my work: look at Echoes and how Imi’s powers mirrored Rockman’s, look at Identity and how Kohl and Tilaka mirror Ranma and Akane in importance to each other (though the dynamics of those relationships are very different). I find the psychology of people, of how they justify their actions and sometimes deceive themselves, very attractive to study. Perhaps I find it too attractive, thinking people will convince themselves of things that are too outlandish to be seriously considered. That was a major problem with the first draft of chapter four. But here, I think this is relatively straightforward and not unexpected. Having Haruhi convince herself she’s fine with whoever Kyon wants or is close to him is a step up from being jealous at slight provocations. Having Mori tell herself that this it’s a wonderful experience being an esper when it’s nothing she really wanted is understandable. I only regret that I couldn’t show more of that here.

Arakawa Seijio pointed out that the ending of last chapter didn’t really give a clear idea what would come next, and as a result, we’re not certain what Haruhi’s motives are—at least, outside a very, very general statement of intent—until she goes to Asakura at the end of this chapter. On the one hand, I definitely understand the confusion, and as I told him, some of the weakness on that front may stem from splitting this chapter in two. In doing so, the sense of conclusion from Haruhi having confronted both Mori and Asakura, the people who manipulated her, is delayed. I admit that I felt the ending of four would’ve been too weak if we got to Mori’s theater and just ended there. In hindsight, I may change that, but I don’t think I will now, while people who have already read four may be confused.

If I had better background in international theater, I would’ve tried to do something to start this chapter using, for example, Nō, as is mentioned, but I really just don’t know enough about Japanese stage to do that convincingly, or at least not to the level of knowledge and confidence that I’d want. The Crucible is something I at least have familiarity with, and the role of Abigail Williams just jumped out at me for Mori. It also builds on the theme of acting and deception. How Abigail fools the court at the witch trials is so very much like Mori’s performance for Haruhi at the station. It’s theatrical, and it’s done with full knowledge of the act being committed.

After the monstrous deed Mori did, intimidating Haruhi, I wanted to paint this woman as sympathetic but still not someone we can completely accept. Where others in the esper community are frightened by Haruhi’s power (see how Arakawa immediately says that Mori should apologize?), Mori isn’t. Mori, I think, only fears for the consequences that may result. And while Mori’s method depended on Haruhi being a fundamentally good person (which is something I wanted to emphasize), it still misses that in the end, Mori didn’t trust Haruhi enough to tell her the truth (or think that she’d be believed). That’s why this doesn’t turn into a blithe love-fest. There can be only…an uneasy respect, a mix of compassion and guilt and wariness on the part of Haruhi.

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The Coin - Chapter Four notes

This is not, I must confess, anything like the first version of the chapter I envisioned. That version was done about two weeks ago and, thankfully, I had the benefit of fellow authors to tell me that it was, in short, a colossal blunder. While I've tried to exercise due caution regarding taking others' opinions too seriously, I've also endeavored to take those criticisms seriously and reconsider what kind of story The Coin would become.

Without getting too much into specific details (as the events that I have planned for the future are still largely the same, though their interpretation and meaning have changed), I had in mind a story about Haruhi realizing that all along she'd been searching for fellow believers like herself more than aliens, time-travelers, or espers themselves. Haruhi would've become isolated from the rest of the brigade in a prison of her own making, so to speak. She'd convince herself (and not without reason) that the people around her she didn't really know and, most egregiously, that they were people who didn't share her vision and, hence, weren't really friends to her at all. To some extent, I think there are elements there I can still use, but the path I had Haruhi working toward--as was pointed out to me and that I understand now--was one just too far off the deep end to make the story work.

Ironically, that's a story that might actually work had it been told, say, from Kyon's perspective. In a tale where Haruhi is more opaque and subject to interpretation, Kyon's narration and attempts to understand her would serve as a mouthpiece for the author's interpretation and ability to give context. When Haruhi herself is the narrator, though, everything said about her motivations and feelings has to be regarded as unreliable and subject to immense bias. Indeed, this is a technique I like quite a bit, for I feel it gives a great deal of depth. A lot of what I've written Haruhi to think and do contains that subtext--a dissonance between what she says her actions mean and what the audience should understand they really signify. That said, there's a big problem if that subtext is too subtle or dwarfed by the actual text. That's a mistake I think I've committed. I gave Haruhi many chances to, for example, cover up her feelings for Kyon, but without some admission that she actually thinks positively of him (and not in some backhanded way), all that subtext had nothing to feed upon.

But let me not dwell too much on what won't be. Let's talk about what is. One of the things I definitely wanted to avoid with this chapter, having so many facts revealed to Haruhi, was the dreaded infodump. Hence, the cafe scene is largely glossed over, with only glimpses of the conversation in detail. I felt this was the best balance of things, as this scene really isn't the focus of the story. It's what Haruhi does with the knowledge that will come into play. Hence, while she will inevitably refer to what she learned there frequently, the natural flow of information is for Haruhi to confront what she's learned and explain why she's confronting it, rather than to do a huge bout of exposition and see what sticks.

Of course, a good bit of this chapter depends on things getting spaced out, on sequencing and timing. Tsuruya's timing in interrupting Kyon and Haruhi is what drives the limousine section of this chapter, and while I like it quite a bit, it would be wrong not to recognize that there is a plot device being used there to drive the story, as opposed to characterization or goals. I consider this acceptable in the sense that it only changes the dramatic nature of how Haruhi is being told instead of what and why, but it still needs to be considered.

Then there's the matter of Tsuruya herself. I struggled for a bit to find Tsuruya, just as I've struggled to find Haruhi because they are so different from the norm. Ironically, while Haruhi can be a source of comic relief and embarrassment from Kyon's point of view, I thought it would be apropos for Tsuruya to be the same from Haruhi's point of view, though clearly not to the same extent.

Nevertheless, though Kyon and the brigade spill the beans here, there are lingering questions. How long would the have kept things under wraps had Haruhi not discovered her powers? Would they ever have told her? If there had been no danger from Asakura? These are big points of contention to me, and while Kyon has no choice but to express considerable faith in Haruhi--faith, I think, he really does have--the question still remains. Personally, I think without some inciting event, the status quo would've held and it would've been quite a while before Haruhi learned anything about who she was or what she could do or what the other brigade members were. And that's a point that can't be avoided. And while the brigade may have trust in Haruhi, there is some aspect of that that's forced. It's the only good thing for them to say. It may be genuine on Kyon's part. As for the others, I think their feelings are more complex. Koizumi has genuine insight into Haruhi's state of mind, but he's also done the most to keep her mindset tame and stable through manipulation. Asahina takes her orders from the future. Nagato has the most freedom thanks to the threat of Haruhi's powers keeping her safe, but remember Disappearance. She didn't just renovate people's memories. She actively tried to push Haruhi away from Kyon.

But, for the moment, Haruhi's journey of discovery doesn't pertain to any of them or to Kyon. Her goal is to make a statement to old enemies, and that she shall.

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The Coin - Chapter Three notes

It really is a world of difference when you have people reading and offering feedback even before a story is released to a wider audience. Considering I wrote Echoes and all of the first book of Identity without that (and most of Before and After, too), I can only imagine the possibilities had I been in this position then. What is done is done, however. At best, books two and three of Identity I'm considering posting to FFML when I get back to them. For now, I can only make The Coin the best story it can be.

I imagined the opening paragraphs as a way for Haruhi to cope with what happened--that by finding information about lightning strikes and relating it to the reader, she could better understand what she'd done. Functionally, it served to lead us in without too much of a jolt, so to speak. This is an extremely humbling experience for Haruhi, and considering how much the scene with Mori later on plays on that, I actually considered Haruhi being a bit more resistant and unsympathetic here--or at least, giving her a stronger sense of denial. Ultimately, I stuck with how this passage originally came out, with Haruhi repentant but coping and not utterly broken. Taniguchi's parents I threw in because it seemed unavoidable to meet them. Guilt is more powerful than anger. Haruhi could've proved her power to Taniguchi's mother and explained herself, but she doesn't want to be feared, and that's exactly how any reasonable person, after learning their son had been attacked by some magic-wielding girl, would react, isn't it?

After a brief stop at Haruhi's home, we get a chat between Haruhi and Mori. I admit, I deliberately pulled a fake-out here, making it sound like Asahina (big) was coming to talk to her. Make no mistake: the many faces of Mikuru Asahina will play a big part in this story, but not in this passage. Originally, I'd planned for something much quicker, shall we say---that Koizumi would go with Haruhi to show her closed space, trying to show her the consequences of her actions without revealing himself as an esper. Over time, I decided against that. We're all savvy here. We know that any sustained deception against Haruhi pulled at this stage is likely to have catastrophic consequences. Koizumi being involved in that would be exceedingly dangerous. On the other hand, the Agency isn't likely to want Haruhi to know what she is, but they definitely want to keep her under wraps and maintain the status quo. They would see this as an opportunity to lock her down for good. Hence, we have Mori, and her presence here both protects Koizumi as well as signals his lack of overt approval. Yeah, this isn't Koizumi's idea. He's already stated he'd go with the brigade over the Agency if push came to shove.

So we have Mori, and I definitely wanted Mori to come off sympathetic on one hand while still pushing Haruhi with a horrendous lie on the other. This is dramatic irony, so the audience has to do a little reading between the lines. Of course Mori isn't losing sleep over Haruhi just because she's seen her powers--the knowledge of what Haruhi can do has been beamed into her head. How can she be an actress if she's constantly having to bug out and kill a celestial? We can definitely sympathize with Mori, knowing that this is nothing she volunteered for but was chosen arbitrarily. But as I said, the Agency would see this as an opportunity to end the recent volatility, and in that, Mori is a reluctant but assured actress, playing on the sense of innate morality she knows Haruhi must have. That's what makes Mori's ploy so insidious. I hesitated for a moment to give this character the task. We know so little about her in truth, but if you're going to go for breaking Haruhi, you're going to go all the way with it. Mori does. And that's why I like this scene.

The next major scene is in the club room, which, combined with a change I made to the above, I was able to fix up from a rather confused initial draft. Originally, I had Koizumi find out what Mori had through Haruhi by himself. Then, I had Kyon get involved, punching Koizumi in the face for his seeming involvement. I think as written now the scene is much improved and more organic in the flow of events. By this point, Haruhi has sworn off her powers to protect the world from herself, but how long can that really last? How long can she be satisfied with that, knowing she's just put all her hopes for an amazing world aside?

That's what makes the baseball half of this chapter powerful. It brings all these memories back to Haruhi, forcing her to confront what she wants with what she's chosen to do. Who is this old woman? Who's the one who sent those tickets to Tsuruya's home? As Kyon says--it's someone who means to mess with Haruhi, to force the dissonance to the forefront of her mind. I did what research I could into the process of going to Koshien Stadium to see the Hanshin Tigers play. I picked the nearest home date on a weekend in mid-June from this year, which conveniently happened to be against their arch-rivals, the Yomiuri Giants from Tokyo. In the seventh inning, the fans really do blow up suggestively-shaped balloons and release them to sputter out their air. Koshien is a historic ballpark of just slightly a more modern vintage than Wrigley Field or Fenway Park. I know not everyone's a baseball fan, so I tried to focus on Haruhi's nostalgia rather than the strict experience of the game (which, admittedly, was a pretty boring game past its halfway point).

Then we get Asakura, and I admit, I hesitated to include her in this after using her as a tool from Mori's conversation, but Asakura is the natural, most sinister choice. You've got to love the way she goes about things. Threaten fifty thousand people? Sure, why not, it'll be fun right? Eheh. I struggled a bit to figure out how to end this chapter--just with Asakura revealing herself? No, we want to connect this to Nagato, too. Let's leave Haruhi with as many questions as we can, after all. Asakura's role in this story isn't finished, of course. There's much for Haruhi to learn about herself and her powers. Her world view is really going to get upended.

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The Coin - Chapter Two notes

Chapter Two on FFN

Ever since I changed the way I outline and stopped writing dialogue in advance, I've taken a hard look at the outlines, trying to ensure that they have sufficient material to give pacing and time. What I understand now, having written this chapter, is that often times it's not about what you had planned but what you didn't plan, what comes to you as you're writing. I think that's a big reason why this is a 12000-word chapter and not 6- or 8- instead.

With the initial outline, I didn't plan that Haruhi would call up Kyon. Rather, she'd just shut herself into her room and work on her powers all night. In this respect, I think expansion was necessary. There has to be a progression of thought process, and this way, we got to see a little bit of Kyon's reactions. What's Kyon trying to do here? Haruhi's exactly right: he encouraged her, and now he's backing off. I personally think Kyon is of two mind on this--that he's weary of the masquerade and doesn't mind if Haruhi realizes her powers, but on the other hand, while he likes the excitement around her, I think Kyon's pretty attached to the times in which he has a normal life.

Of course, this is the beginning of delving a little bit into Kyon and Haruhi's relationship dynamics. Haruhi's signals are pretty clear while Kyon is more evasive. Kyon's selective obliviousness powers are legendary, after all, and to really understand where he's coming from, one has to answer the age-old question: just why would he avoid a relationship with her? It's possible he's not attracted to her, of course, but there's also the unequal pairing dynamic that has to be considered. Someone who can will him to her bedroom just by thinking about it should frankly give him pause.

But let me not jump too far ahead. This scene with Kyon and Haruhi I changed a bit on Brian Randall's advice. There was an element of hostility that I'd thought was natural just from Haruhi's personality, but it didn't serve any real purpose, and it served to paint Haruhi as having "regressed" toward her antagonistic, book one personality. That's really not what I'm trying to do, though I think her frustration at finding people unwilling to embrace the unknown is absolutely essential.

The scene with Haruhi's father was something I inserted, adding upon the outline. When I visualize him, I see a guy in a green vest with black-rimmed glasses. None of that matters, of course. It's his advice to Haruhi that's meant to be pertinent: to make bonds with people, specifically with one person, but the general sentiment is the same. Here we start a veritable hurricane of references, which I don't generally get to do. Negima and Star Wars are just for starters. Originally, Haruhi was going to get control of her power in her bedroom, but the dishes scene was a good way to implement how I'd like her powers to be portrayed--with things just spontaneously changing off-screen. On a practical level, that probably won't stick (everything else in this chapter is very visual and in real time), but I thought it was a powerful way to do the initial realization. And then we have Nagato watching her again. The Entity is definitely looking on.

As with the Haruhi's father scene, the short snippet with Haruhi starting a stalled car I added to give a little pacing. We quickly get to the gravity scene in the classroom, and this one I thought about for a good while to make sure it'd work. The bulk of that calculation is detailed in the chapter notes on FFN. It's actually a good, basic problem in Newtonian mechanics, just to get a ballpark figure.

To give Haruhi some time to cool off a bit, I added this scene with Haruhi at the convenience store, since she'd need to go there anyway to set up the next scene. As I said, the Entity is watching, and it should come as no surprise who the mysterious, always-smiling girl might be. Haruhi realizing her powers is something the Entity must necessarily take a keen interest in, even if it means no longer simply observing.

Though it may not seem it, I think the scene in the club room is the centerpiece of this chapter because it really underscores the magnitude of what's changed. Dare I say no one was really prepared for it? Well, that'll change, as Koizumi, Asahina, and Nagato consider the best thing to do for achieving their ends: preserving the stability of this world, the integrity of the future, or learning the secrets to auto-evolution, whatever the case may be. Those are the goals of their masters, I should say. What these three exceptional people want for themselves may well be a different story. As for Kyon...well, we'll get to that in a few moments.

Like I said, I think it important that Haruhi have strong reactions to things, especially when they don't go her way, but to highlight her growth, I do feel like those reactions must subside quickly. So Haruhi has to, er, find a way to relieve her frustrations. I admit, this was a scene I hesitated to write at first, knowing the territory it would take the story if I followed through. Nevertheless, I felt like I thought things through, and this scene sets up the following as it should. I made a conscious choice not to be pornographic in detail here. Truthfully, such details don't appeal to me, and I didn't think they befit the scene, either. With Asahina, Haruhi's feelings may have a distinct physical component. With Kyon, I think the attraction is on a more intellectual level. There's an element of wanting to convert him to her mindset and feeling like there's a challenge in doing so. There's an element of appreciating that he sticks around, that he reminds her of John Smith (but that she uses that as an excuse, not really admitting to herself how she feels). There's an obvious duality being invoked here with the metaphor of the electron and the positron, reinforcing that, while Kyon and Haruhi act like opposites in a lot of ways, they're still very similar and very, very linked.

When I wrote the scenes that follow this point, Haruhi didn't realize she'd teleported Kyon to her room at all. Even here, she doesn't until the very end, mostly because I felt her realizing it and understanding the consequences was a more neutral sort of revelation than the one I originally ended with: Kyon rejecting her, albeit obliquely, and Haruhi storming off in a rage. Again, that's part of Brian Randall's influence, and I think it makes sense. It risks oversaturating people on Haruhi's anger if she were to do it repeatedly from this early in the work. The revised version here makes her more vulnerable and her reactions less disproportionate.

Something that bugged Brian was that Kyon wouldn't outright call her out on this or, more broadly, that he wouldn't just tell her the truth of things right now. For my part...that would cut through a lot of the story. Heh. But beyond that, I really feel like Kyon's trying to prepare Haruhi here, trying to get her to think bigger about consequences before he really lets the cat out of the bag and, in doing so, tells her she has power of that magnitude. It's a tricky balance, and as we see, it may be somewhat misguided, but in telling her he wants to be there (through the oblique retelling of Disappearance) and that he has faith in her, he's definitely trying to give her support and invoke a bond of trust. I think back to "Remote Island Syndrome" and how Kyon never seriously thought Haruhi could be responsible for a murder. It's ironic that she hits upon that line here, but I think Kyon's trust at that moment still stands. As much as Haruhi is wont to do whatever she wants, Kyon still believes her to be a fundamentally good person. Maybe this is something Koizumi encouraged him to do, and instead Kyon decided to go about it in his own way. Regardless, it almost works. Almost.

So we conclude with Haruhi looking for wonder in others and not finding it, and this time, Taniguchi's harsh words wound her because she's afraid he's right. Taniguchi's anger over this bag is, of course, set up in a passing comment right after Haruhi ends her gravity spell.

To come in chapter three, the lid comes off, and we'll see Haruhi humbled by what she's done. Not everyone watching her will be happy with that.

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The Coin - Chapter One

Chapter One on FFN

With a first chapter of a story, which I haven't had the privilege of writing since April of last year, it's all about setting the stage. In a lot of ways, I'm aware of how this story isn't like "Before and After," as while Rei was influenced and affected by others, Haruhi is much more overt in her feelings and opinions of people. Where Rei would learn from others, Haruhi's interactions with people have a distinct character. She finds what she likes and dislikes in them, and that's what lies at the core of her narration in this story.

Each scene is part of a progression in Haruhi's thought process. The first, in which she decides that this coin business is worth pursuing, is also a chance for Haruhi to be a bit of a showoff and interact obliquely with Kyon. Being a physicist, I enjoy the tidbits of science and mathematics that are sprinkled in the original books, and this was my attempt to work some of that in here. As I say in the note at the end of the chapter, this is a mathematically-valid limit and historically, it plays a part in the recognition of e as a special number. For my part, I think it's much better to look at the derivative properties of exponentials, but it's all about the same, at any rate. Haruhi, remember, is exceedingly gifted athletically and academically. Why is this? I could say it comes from a general thirst for understanding, for trying to find something amazing in the world, but I can't say for sure.

Something I knew I wanted to setup here was Nagato being outside their classroom. In a typical Haruhi novel, Kyon has to adapt to the developing situation, gathering advice from Nagato, Koizumi, or Asahina as it's available or necessary. Haruhi is never privy to this conversations, so this is the beginning of something going on behind her back. Nagato's exceedingly capable and powerful. She already knows what Haruhi's beginning to exert conscious control. While Haruhi leaves, Nagato is telling Kyon and he's thinking about what he's going to do. Kyon, at least initially, won't want the world to be upended, but it's also something he's going to consider greatly. What can he do? Dissuade her? Convince her it's all nothing? Nagato, for her part, is there to observe. While she and Kyon aren't in direct danger, she won't interfere, even if she wants to, for there's a great deal of scrutiny upon her from the Entity.

But Haruhi's not concerned with all of that just yet, even if she does notice it. She recalls here what Kyon told her in "Snowy Mountain Syndrome" and that Nagato fell ill in one of the divergent plots of Dissociation and Surprise. These are all things that Haruhi's knowledge of is incomplete, but what I hoped to get across is that the brigade and its members are intensely important to her. In Haruhi's mind, they've stuck together because they're kindred spirits. It's not just an inaccurate description of reality; it's just not true. While Koizumi in particular and the girls too may be loyal to her, they all have other motives. As I've said, they're not seeking the extraordinary; they already know it exists and are trying to understand it (Nagato) or contain it (Asahina and Koizumi).

Part of my effort to soften Haruhi a bit involved extending the club room scene here. As Haruhi prepares to dress Asahina, she asks the latter how she feels about that. Does Asahina actually enjoy it on some level? I think so. Does she also feel compelled to say yes regardless, in order to keep Haruhi appeased? I think so too. Perversely, it's an equal relationship of sorts. Their inequities are just so piled on top of each other that they cancel out. It's equally...not so good.

Of course, you can't soften Haruhi so much that her wackiness doesn't come out. It's utterly shameless for her to set up this scheme, and yet it's effective. Originally, Asahina would be approached by these two boys and Haruhi would actually kick one of them in the shins, sending him flying a few feet. Again, I toned this down, and her defiance manifests as a "natural" sinkhole. In keeping with "Remote Island Syndrome," where Kyon submits that Haruhi would never see someone killed, it would've been over the top, in my mind, to have her harm this brat with her power. She's not nearly angry enough to do anything of the sort. Yet.

This is also where Kyon returns, of course, and while he enjoys Asahina in her Santa suit, he's also trying to subtly trying to dissuade Haruhi, a symptom of his confused thoughts on the matter. At this point, Kyon's probably trying to see if anything really comes of this investigation. Maybe he doesn't need to dissuade her; maybe he's asked Nagato to make sure nothing really happens. I don't know if I ascribe to this theory, but I think it's fair for Kyon to be more passive and observant rather than forwardly engaging of Haruhi.

Haruhi's plan for analyzing these coins is, in my mind, quite logical. Asahina is going to be the slowest link in any assembly line. Better to have everyone else waiting than to have a load of work pile up on her at the end of the chain. Haruhi's "oversight" is a way for me to hedge this sympathetic portrayal just a little bit.

But in the end, nothing is found, and Haruhi returns to a state of melancholy. This, to me, is the pivotal Kyon moment. Screw logic. Screw what the others need him for. As much as Kyon snarks Haruhi--he's done it more than once this chapter--he's at least considerate of her feelings. He backs off. He tempers his earlier criticism and encourages Haruhi to pursue the matter if she feels she should. Perhaps Kyon is weary of the masquerade. Maybe he justifies this to himself. He might think it unlikely that Haruhi actually will, but some good credit from her will make his life easier later. Or maybe his thoughts are more aggressive than that--Haruhi's had the powers of a god for so long now, the people around her should accept that she has them. There are several explanations here. Part of the freedom of writing from this perspective is that we don't really know what Kyon's thinking here, and neither does Haruhi. While she appreciates him as much as she's willing to admit, the idea that their outlooks on life are fundamentally at odds is ingrained in her. To me, part of the challenge Haruhi puts to herself is convincing people like Kyon to look for the unusual. She just doesn't know that Kyon's already made that choice in Disappearance.

So we get home, and Haruhi's mother is a bit of a lethal chef, so all she does is prepare ingredients and let her daughter do the rest. Based on the current plan for chapter two, we'll meet Haruhi's father as well. But this is where a seemingly meaningless scene comes back from Chekhov's Armory to hit the point home. Originally, Haruhi was going to have thought Kan was interested in little girls and cemented that in reality by having some questionable photos come out, but I thought this would be a little better. There's nothing like the image of a politician freaking out in front of kids and shattering a wooden table for a few laughs. And while originally, I also had Haruhi realize what that meant explicitly before the chapter was over, her mother's line here seemed like an excellent hook for chapter two.

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The Coin - Prologue

The prologue on FFN

So a week ago I posed the prologue to FFN and to the Fanfiction Mailing List. It was to a good deal of necessary feedback that I retracted the FFN version and decided to rewrite the prologue anew. In my hate, I'd hoped to capture Haruhi's manic, eccentric nature. Instead, I rehashed old jokes and schemes, and I ignored the growth of this character from her initial sociopathy in Melancholy to the character we know at the end of Dissociation and in the as-yet-unfinished translation of Surprise. And while it wasn't my intention to paint Haruhi in such a negative light, I realized that if I couldn't get across her bizarre mindset, I'd have to find some other take on her instead.

What I eventually settled on was, instead of playing up her oddities in interactions, the strangeness of her thought process was just as well. More than that, I found an angle more appropriate for the direction of the story as a whole.

The basics of this prologue are the same as the first one, the ultimate point being that Haruhi has finally noticed the effects of her powers in a way that she can suspect, that she'll think about rather than dismiss. It's a small thing, but it'll take her far. The rest of the prologue as it stands is getting her to that point, showing her attitude toward the unusual and the extraordinary and how she sees herself as being different from others. It's entirely intentional that Kyon's name is not said, of course---I wanted there to be at least some doubt about who the narrator was until it became clear at the end. Naturally, most people are probably able to pick up on it, but there's value in not stating something outright until you want to. No matter how sure people are in their interpretations, confirmation needs to obey the proper timing.

Overall, I'm much happier with this prologue. It really does come down to likeability. If Haruhi is entirely unsympathetic, no one will care about the journey she's about to embark on.

Aside from characterization issues, it actually takes quite a bit of research to make sure you get details right with this series. By nature, those details will be spread out, and it took, in my view, some hunting around. In this respect, the anime is somewhat more useful, I think, than the novels. It's a lot easier to get a visual on things, to capture a lot of information in a short time.

As I said in the chapter body itself, this is my examination of who Haruhi is and what she really wants. All this time, the three factions around her have had their own goals, but most importantly, they want their own survival or the survival of the various worlds they live in. But this story hopes to probe at a more fundamental question: what kind of person goes looking for aliens, time-travelers, and espers like Haruhi does? Is the search for those fantastic creatures the goal? What does one hope to discover along the way, while one makes the journey? In a sense, it's about faith. Haruhi's conscious belief in the fantastic has never wavered, even if her drive and enthusiasm for the quest has been tempered by experience and time. Look at the people around her: they believe in those fantastic things because they themselves are fantastic, but to them, it's merely reality. It may be a thing of curiosity, but it's still something they accept not out of faith but knowledge. It brings into question, among other issues, whether one can ever find something truly fantastic. Once that thing is found, doesn't it become part of the greater world? Doesn't it become as accepted and ordinary as everything else?

That may be too much a question of psychology, but I think it relevant.

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