"if you can't tell your dreams from your reality, maybe this is your dream"

[yo_san]

So, I've still got a few things that need to be wrapped up via e-mail, but otherwise I've got a couple of weeks of vacation now. And it is glorious. ...Though I didn't have a heart to tell someone who is basically my mentor/father-figure at work when he asked that I am going to celebrate getting some vacation time by trying to come up with a witty

Comments

[saltprince]

RE: Haruhi-

1) Yes Kyon is very obviously with feelings for Haruhi he's in neigh-constant denial of. After Disappearance (book 4) especially it is almost impossible for you to deny this. A lot of people have issues with this ship and I don't see why, it's a generic and I myself don't find it terribly interesting, but alas. It's only moderately popular in fandom, but it's impossible to ICly play Haruhi without making her crush hard on Kyon, so a Kyon who wasn't cool with that would be very off-putting to me as a Suzumiya player.

Though to be fair most of his feelings for Haruhi are also in association with his feelings for the Brigade as a group of friends. He merely puts the most value on Haruhi when push comes to shove in practice.

2) ItsuKyon is popular in fandom. There is no canonical evidence for it ever except in the anime and that's mostly for the fan-service. It is hideously OOC because Kyon and Itsuki are bros even if they are huge jerks to each other at times (albeit Kyon more than Itsuki)

3) Kyon worships Mikuru and this never stops. I would personally find this hard to play out myself too.

4) Kyon never has feelings ever for Yuki whatever people try to tell you but she very obviously falls for him, which is should be at least vaguely aware of after Disappearance. This ship is probably (aside from maybe ItsuKyon) the most popular ship in the entire fandom even though it's stupidly boring and is hard to justify.

5) Itsuki has a huge crush on Haruhi which is made painfully obvious in the novels and (again) after Disappearance Kyon should be at least vaguely aware of. That said, he never says anything about it ever, much like his knowledge of Yuki's feelings for him.

[yo_san]

1) I'd have issues to play it out largely because I'm not sure why Kyon would like Haruhi back when I imagine his feelings started, in which I feel that Haruhi was a big jerk. ...Well, I can think of a few reasons, but they aren't things that make sense to me personally. I mean, the reasons I can think of make sense, just ones that I wouldn't find to be enough even if I can understand someone else feeling were enough. I don't really have any issues with it as something to watch, even if I'm not interested in it myself--it's just something I wouldn't be able to do convincingly. This probably ties in partially due to the fact that I don't know how convincingly I could play out romance in general.

2) Ah, I had wondered whether it might have just been in the anime. The way people talked, it sounded like Itsuki at least pretended to flirt with Kyon and I was wondering if I was being dense.

3) ...Thought that I may have gotten the names mixed up.

4&5) Well, I might debate on the crush part, but that's largely because I am often reluctant to consider something a crush without it being outright stated (otherwise, my instinct is to have permanent shipping goggles superglued to my face). I'd say the evidence is pretty darn convincing, though, on both accounts. If I did have to pick a ship for Kyon, I admit I'd be more inclined to pick Yuki, but that's only due to not really being interested in any of the options and I would be admitting to myself the whole time that it'd never happen.

[saltprince]

1) I can see it. For one she's gorgeous and for two she's everything he ever wanted even if he denied he wanted it. She's energetic, social, outgoing (all far more so than him), makes his life interesting, motivates him (something that no one else in the series can really do, including Mikuru), and generally adds something to his life that he wouldn't otherwise have. On top of that she's cute, smart, and funny. Even the bad parts of her personality (and there are a lot of them) for the most part aren't things overtly horrible so much as just a flawed world outlook and a tad of emotional distance from people which leads to things like possessive ownership with Mikuru (which leads to said molestation that he lets slide).

But then, every girl ever who has gotten into the series that I know has said they think Haruhi's a jerk so I guess that's expected from yo- /shot

5) Itsuki overly says that he "fancies" (likes/loves/whatever you wanna call it, I usually see it translated as fancies or likes) Haruhi in the fourth novel. To be fair this is a basically AU Itsuki but it is the same person albeit with slightly different circumstances. What's more, he says she's charming all through the first through third novels, jealously tells Kyon that she likes him repeatedly through those same novels, and in E8 during the fifth novel he regretfully (it's noted to be as such) says he isn't suited to be the one to say "I love you" to her.

[yo_san]

1) /blows off gunsmoke

Well, I agree with pretty much all of your reasons (though I'm not actually remembering anything where I'd count Haruhi as "funny" but it's probably because I haven't read it since last summer, probably). I guess I just tend to see her...I'd call it bratty, personally, way of getting her own way with not much empathy first, though it does get a lot better as time goes on. And that kind of slows me down when it comes to seeing her attractive points. Then again, I don't value the same things Kyon does and that probably slows me from seeing it in the same way.

5) Well, that's even stronger than I remembered (it's been a while). Granted, I tend to be unsure how much of what Itsuki says at face value, but I think I'd feel reasonably confident in thinking at least some of that is true.