The General Discussion of Haruhi Suzumiya

[Kogetsu Shirogane]

Obviously they live in Japan's version of Metropolis. Just to prove the point, there's aliens hiding in plain sight, one of whom actually wore glasses.

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Which makes you wonder...just how large are all these powers arrayed around Haruhi? And how come no one seems to notice aside from Kyon, who doesn't seem to notice a lot outside his direct contacts?

Kyon only noticed this kind of stuff because the powers that be came out and revealed themselves to him. If Itsuki/Yuki/Mikuru stopped filling him in he'd be hard pressed to notice most of these things.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by quigonkenny

That's why Mikuru is sent into this so blindly. The more she knows, the fewer options are available to her. The wonders of predestination ensure that whatever choices she makes blindly, with all the free will she's willing to exercise, will be the correct ones. There's no paradox in not knowing what your actions are going to be, and then doing whatever you were going to do; the paradox comes when you do know what you're predestined to do, because then your choice really matters. If you choose other than what you're predestined to choose, the future ends. That's why the time travelers are so deathly afraid of Yuki. She, like all the interfaces, has the opportunity to know everything she's predestined to do (thanks to her ability to synchronize with future versions of herself), but she also has free will, moreso even than the other interfaces.

It's lucky, then, that Yuki came to the same conclusion as Adult Mikuru; that there is no benefit in knowing the future if it has no effect on the choices you make in daily life. Not knowing your choices in advance is simply more liberating. Hence she locked away her time synchronisation abilities after Disappearance, reserving it for true dire emergencies only.

[ijuinkun]

Originally Posted by Kogetsu Shirogane

Obviously they live in Japan's version of Metropolis. Just to prove the point, there's aliens hiding in plain sight, one of whom actually wore glasses.

The analogy would only be complete if she was the Journalism club instead of the Literature club.

Hmmm that gives me a fanfic idea--Haruhi decides to start a student newspaper and subconsciously creates some of the "scoops" so that she will have something awesome to report on. Feel free to grab the idea for your own if any of you want to write it up.

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

I don't know why there are still people who still believe Time Travellers had any choice in anything they do. I guess what we need is a new animated season of Haruhi, in order to show what being a Time Agent is really about.

We get quite a bit of stuff like that in "Intrigues", and any 3rd group of episodes based on the novels will almost certainly include a 5-7 episode version of that story.

[wistfulloner]

Originally Posted by quigonkenny

You presume too much. All we know is that Itsuki stated that Tsuruya's family helps to fund his Organization. And we don't even know if they know just what they're funding, much less whether Tsuruya herself knows whether they're being funded or why. It certainly seems clear that Tsuruya's aware there is something odd surrounding Mikuru, Haruhi, Kyon, and the rest of the SOS-dan, but we have nothing to suggest that awareness is due to anything other than her own perceptive abilities. Besides, even if she's only in the know because of her family's involvement, she's hardly the type to just blindly follow their concerns.

Rambo got the gist of what I would've said. The family should at least know the intentions of the group they're funding. If you read The Scheme, you would know that Tsuruya at the very least knows that Mikuru and the rest are not normal,and she probably would have known through her family since its hardly seems new to her.

Remember that Itsuki holds firm to his agency's beliefs too. Him and tsuruya wouldn't get along so well if he knew she was siding with his rival.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by wistfulloner

Remember that Itsuki holds firm to his agency's beliefs too. Him and tsuruya wouldn't get along so well if he knew she was siding with his rival.

Itsuki was given explicit orders that Tsuruya is out of bounds for him. Tsuruya is the sole heir of the family; for all intent and purposes she is a princess in all but name. You don't mess with your sponsor's princess, who just might become your new boss one day.

[Ithekro]

Tsuruya-hime...sounds fun.

[wistfulloner]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Itsuki was given explicit orders that Tsuruya is out of bounds for him. Tsuruya is the sole heir of the family; for all intent and purposes she is a princess in all but name. You don't mess with your sponsor's princess, who just might become your new boss one day.

I don't think an agency full of espers and other supernatural dealings will be bothered much with a mere mortal family, however wealthy they are...

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by wistfulloner

I don't think an agency full of espers and other supernatural dealings will be bothered much with a mere mortal family, however wealthy they are...

You don't understand; Tsuruya's family pay Itsuki's salary!

Esper powers don't put food on the table. For one reason or another, the Tsuruya-clan decided that they would sponsor the Esper organisation. They control the purse-strings.

And one day, Tsuruya as the sole heir would inherit everything.

Now do you understand why she is kind of a big deal?

[Kogetsu Shirogane]

Just to add to this particular discussion, Espers don't have their powers 95% of the time.

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by wistfulloner

I don't think an agency full of espers and other supernatural dealings will be bothered much with a mere mortal family, however wealthy they are...

An agency full of espers/supernaturals who can only use their powers in an alternate reality, and otherwise have no powers in our regular plane of existence. And as has been said, the esper powers don't put food on the table...unless you decide to go public with your powers to make money as performers, except THEN Haruhi knows that the supernatural exists.


Also, your super natural powers won't help you if the Tsuruya's decide to pay a mob hitman (assuming they AREN'T the mob, and can't just order one of their own) to shoot you.

[dragon4dudes]

lol, Random statistic. Back to the grave.

[J the Drafter]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

That would have been plausible except for one tiny detail...

Time Travellers in the Haruhi-verse don't arrange events because they want to. They arrange events because they had to.

If Tsuruya was not recorded historically to have been Mikuru's friend, then young Mikuru would never have been allowed to befriend her. And if Tsuruya was always known to suppose to be young Mikuru's friend, then Adult Mikuru has no choice but to send her younger self to befriend Tsuruya.

After all, Adult Mikuru remembered Tsuruya; how would she be willing to destroy her own past and risk changing her own timeline?

I don't know why there are still people who still believe Time Travellers had any choice in anything they do. I guess what we need is a new animated season of Haruhi, in order to show what being a Time Agent is really about.

That's point I had overlooked. Still, there's nothing the Time Travellers from making sure history plays out the way it needs to AND meddling to gain a foothold on the Espers, unless the Time Travellers are absolutely unable to do anything besides what is already destined to occur.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by J the Drafter

That's point I had overlooked. Still, there's nothing the Time Travellers from making sure history plays out the way it needs to AND meddling to gain a foothold on the Espers, unless the Time Travellers are absolutely unable to do anything besides what is already destined to occur.

So far, yes.

A later event would:

Spoiler for very light and vague spoilers for the next unanimated story arc:

have a situation where the time travellers would intentionally try to do a mission that they know would fail. But they did it anyway because that was part of the recorded history. Don't you think if they had any way to do anything other than what's destined, that they would at least try to change the outcome?

[Ithekro]

Unless they have been mentally conditions to think they way for generations. Think that destiny is unchangable, even to the point were one that wants to change time would still think it was inevitable even if they tried to change it because history showed they tried to change it.

Makes me wonder sometimes...Are the events that happen in the "present" truly fixed, or does the future update each time something happens...to the point where the time travelers in the "present" don't really notice the change. It just that something happens, then they remember it to have happened already. Mikuru(BIG) possibly having the only real advantage, being in the "present" to remember as her (small) self.

[ijuinkun]

It is implied in the series that knowing the "correct" version of events (as opposed to having a mistaken knowledge or having been lied to) eliminates the actors' free will regarding the details that they have pre-knowledge of. For example, when Kyon

Spoiler:

goes back to rescue his earlier (Disappearance) self at the beginning of the seventh book

he is restricted in what he can say or do so that it matches what he already knows of the scene. Now, there's no indication that he actually tried to do things differently from what he already knew, but he clearly believes that it can't be any other way--not out of fear of messing up causality, but because the event has already been defined by what he already knows.

Beyond this, Fujiwara also implies that, much as he would like to be able to change events, he can't do so even if he wanted to--he could only alter tiny things that had no impact on the large scale events that he knew had/would happen. Instead, he is limited to convincing those who don't have such knowledge to act, but doing so without imparting knowledge of what they would have done had he not interfered. This would be why Mikuru (big) is so careful about how much she allows her younger self (and Kyon) to know--because the moment any detail about a person's actions at a particular time is known by that person (including the fact of them not being in a certain location), then that detail is no longer in that person's power to alter.

A convenient way to look at it would be as a sort of quantum observation principle. Just like a particle exists in multiple potential states until an observation defines it as a single state, time exists in multiple potential states until observation defines it. Any person can thus potentially take any possible path except those that are prohibited by existing observations. The interesting thing in Haruhi though, is that each person's timeline is personal--if Mikuru knows that Kyon will be in the club room at 4:02, but Kyon does not, then Kyon still has liberty to change his own actions--though he will not change them unless given some reason to change them--however this reason must be one that does not inform him that he would certainly have arrived at 4:02 in the absence of interference. In other words, he can change his actions, but only if he is not certainly aware that he is changing them.

[PastPrime]

Originally Posted by J the Drafter

That's point I had overlooked. Still, there's nothing the Time Travellers from making sure history plays out the way it needs to AND meddling to gain a foothold on the Espers, unless the Time Travellers are absolutely unable to do anything besides what is already destined to occur.

If you check you will find that every time Mikuru had to do something that affected the future in order to maintain the Time Line she had Kyon do it.

Spoiler:

Also, Mikuru Big has already told him, without giving him details, that he will have to chose between the alpha and beta time lines, and if he choses wrong it will be very bad for her. I actually got the feeling from the way she said it that it will be a very hard choice for Kyon where whichever time line he choses he loses someone important to him.

[Ithekro]

All hail the God Empress ("King").
(in Nichijou 9...the preview for Episode 10)

[OkamiNoKaze]

Is it a bad sign, when seening promo pics for the new PLayboy Club show, that I thought of Haruhi first.

Especially this one.

[Gamer_2k4]

Originally Posted by OkamiNoKaze

Is it a bad sign, when seening promo pics for the new PLayboy Club show, that I thought of Haruhi first.

I don't think so. In my life, Haruhi's been the only piece of media that's really made a big deal out of bunny girls. Obviously everyone is familiar with the "playboy bunny" concept, but it was Haruhi that really said, "HEY YOU ARE WATCHING THIS ANIME NOW WE'RE PUTTING ON BUNNY GIRL COSTUMES AND WILL BE WEARING THEM THROUGHOUT AND MAKING A BIG DEAL ABOUT IT."

To which your mind goes "bunny girls == Haruhi."

Originally Posted by OkamiNoKaze

Especially this one.

Ha! Totally see the resemblance. In fact, before I read your text, I thought, "Didn't I just close my 'Images of Haruhi Suzumiya' tab?"