Kyon: Big Damn Hero

Except Haruhi promised she wouldn't drink alcohol again.

If she doesn't fall asleep immediately, I think Kanae would start talking, pouring her heart to Kyon (or Haruhi given the recent events). A drunk Tsuruya would be... dangerous to Kyon.

Dangerous in the best way possible?

I almost get the feeling that Tsuruya is a crafty drunk. As in, she doesn't go wild, she goes subtle. It'd be pretty funny, actually.

Kanae... I can't imagine she holds her liquor well. She'd probably end up kissing Haruhi or something, the way she's been going with the sempais.

Get Kanae drunk, stat! Hilarity ahead!

Except Haruhi promised she wouldn't drink alcohol again.

And it's quite possible she forgot that promise given that someone appeared to die... hmm... the day after she made it? And all that's happened since then.

Or she might just pretend she never said it.

I almost get the feeling that Tsuruya is a crafty drunk. As in, she doesn't go wild, she goes subtle. It'd be pretty funny, actually.

I cannot imagine a particularly subtle Tsuruya. Well, when not trying to infiltrate somewhere. I just can't.

Kanae... I can't imagine she holds her liquor well. She'd probably end up kissing Haruhi or something, the way she's been going with the sempais.

We need to get Kanae drunk, then. :3

But Tsuruya would infiltrate somewhere. Inside Kyon's pants, for example.

In the prologue of Disappearance Haruhi said she won't have alcohol in the Christmas party for that very promise. And while I believe she can break a promise, she'd only do that for good reasons, and it has to outweigh the costs: not remembering anything after she gets sober (the reason she made the promise in the first place). I don't believe a party is a reason good enough.

edited 5th Nov '10 5:19:53 AM by Filraen

That raises then entirely new topic of what could happen to make Haruhi break her vow. Hmm... well, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was broken because someone died. Doubt that's likely to happen any time soon.

Tsuruya and Kanae don't know about that, do they? Well, that provides a lot of ways that someone could end up drinking. Probably not when going to watch Trope-tan. XD

I'm not sure... you'd think Haruhi would've mentioned it to Tsuruya at some point, even just in passing, but I doubt Kanae knows. Of course, she's not the one who's going to initiate the drinking, so with her it's kind of a moot point.

She could get drunk if her drink was spiked without her knowledge.

edited 6th Nov '10 12:15:26 PM by MarqFJA

Kanae, you mean? I agree, but Haruhi and Tsuruya, the ones who did that last time, have matured enough over the course of the fic that I doubt they'd do that to anyone again.

Who said it would be someone from the Brigade spiking her drink? It's the most likely possibility but it isn't the only one.

I should've been more clear that I was talking about Haruhi, not Kanae.

Wait, Kanae already had her drink spiked once? Why don't I remember that?

I think they were actually talking about the time Haruhi and Tsuruya gave Mikuru tequila. Not sure that counts as spiking someone's drink, either, they just forced her to get drunk.

edited 6th Nov '10 1:07:46 PM by RainyDaze

I was thinking a bit about how K:BDH is set up, and I noticed that there isn't really a single line of action or external conflict that carries through the entirety of the story. There are certainly recurring conflicts, but none of them really constitute a "plot" that everyone's concerned about all the time. Most genre fiction functions by setting up some big problem everyone has to worry about and then revolving around that problem in variously tight orbits until it's solved, but in K:BDH...

• Kanae's enemy sliders are mentioned in chapter 3, but don't actually do anything until chapter 30.
• The Anti-SOS Brigade is still wandering around... but the most hostile action they've taken so far is Mikuru's kidnapping in the canon books, and who knows what they're thinking now?
• Sasaki's interest in Kyon is a recurring conflict, but its terms and consequences are still so vaguely defined because they haven't crossed paths often enough to do more than set up the conflict.
• One of the earliest and the most sustained conflict, Tsuruya's investigation into the photography ring and the yakuza, was really more of a way to get Tsuruya into the brigade instead of a conflict central to the brigade, Asakura's unintentional involvement aside.
• A side effect of that, Akasaka Miyuki getting on Kyon's case, is mostly a misunderstanding, though one that neither side will likely be able to back down from.
• The very first conflict introduced—SOS vs. the IDSE—shows up in the prologue as Asakura and in the actual beginning as Yuki getting deleted. After that? Yuki's problem is fixed, Asakura hasn't shown up yet, and the IDSE barely gets more than the occasional mention about stable time loops or Emiri or whatnot to remind us they're still around. They'll be back—we'll reach the fight from the prologue eventually, and that will likely only be the first direct conflict—but like all the conflicts above, it's not a driving force throughout the novel.

This doesn't mean there isn't a driving force, though; it's just not a fight. It's the friendships between the SOS Brigade and their determination to stay together in face of rather large odds. Like Kyon said, the universe can bring whatever it wants as long as he has the SOS. I don't have the time to go back and check, but I'm pretty sure every single chapter has the SOS Brigade somehow actively working to build and maintain their friendships with one another, and the active conflicts like the IDSE, the NPA, the yakuza, and what not are largely just hung onto that framework; in this way, K:BDH is a lot less of an action/adventure fic than it is a slice of life story with a group that happens to have very adventuresome lives.

And that, I think, is one of the reasons I like this fic so much (apart from the great writing, humor, action, and fanservice :D). It's not just one fantastic conflict that gets solved, end of story; it's characters and friends. Building and maintaining friendships is one of the most important things in life for everyone, whether your universe happens to have aliens/espers/time travelers or not, and if you can get to the point where everything else in your life is serving your relationships with the people in your life, then you're in a pretty good place.

tl;dr: K:BDH doesn't use a traditional action/adventure format, it's a social slice of life with action/adventure tacked on, and I like that.

EDIT: Whoa, "tldr" with the semi-colon in the appropriate place automatically gets turned into "laconic version:". That is cool.

edited 6th Nov '10 2:13:46 PM by Silver

Yes, that is cool.

I'd still say the IDSE is a driving force, though, since they gave everything a really, REALLY big push. If they hadn't... well, Tsuruya wouldn't be around.

... Thank you for enlightening me on just why I really like this fic.

That's one possibility; we have no way of knowing if Kyon wouldn't have joined her investigation in some other way.

How could he? Without the IDSE making it so that Haruhi had to learn everything, there would never be any need for error correction... and Kyon would never learn martial arts.

Think about the Initial Conflict arc for a second. There's Fridge Horror there, I assure you.

What I meant when I said "driving force" was something that's an active, involved, present force, a conflict that everyone's constantly worried about and deliberately shaping their behavior and the story around. There's no doubt that the IDSE's shot at Yuki started off this whole thing, but it's more in the way a thrown pebble can start an avalanche, rather than something to fight against in every chapter as the main battle.

'Course, when that avalanche has time to build for awhile... yeah, I can see Kyon and Haruhi and company going toe-to-toe with a reality-spanning near-omnipotent entity as old as the universe. :)

'Course, when that avalanche has time to build for awhile... yeah, I can see Kyon and Haruhi and company going toe-to-toe with a reality-spanning near-omnipotent entity as old as the universe. :)

And in this little analogy, what is the IDSE if it decides that they're preventing it from learning what it wants to know?

edited 6th Nov '10 2:50:37 PM by RainyDaze

Hmm. Well, I was thinking of the avalanche itself as the story in general rather than one group in particular, so a fight with the IDSE is the big clash and clatter when the avalanche finally hits the housing division nestled right up against the mountains?

That or a ski resort.

@Silver: Nice points. I really hadn't stopped to think about that even if I was concious. Now I think I'm like Marq, as realising a great reason why I like this fic.

Also I reccomend putting that post into a fanfic review.

And about the sky resort, another tangent: it's curious how the whole "Kuyou's bosses are behind the Snow Mountain incident (thus, for a lack of a better term, injuring Yuki)" point has been forgotten.

edited 6th Nov '10 4:20:16 PM by Filraen

We have forgotten, haven't we? Well, it's not as if Kuyou has been doing much in this story. Help Kyon and make some people unnoticeable, really.

Also, she is good at make hereself unnoticeable, as Kanae can confirm.

So she's unnoticeable in a meta way as well? Nice.