Direction (post Rin neutral ending)(complete)

[cptngarlock]

Hey, Muphrid,

This is actually the second time I've read this, and it's only more entertaining the second time around. Thank you for providing such a compelling and well written story to the KS community. I was intrigued enough that I actually went ahead and read "The Coin" as well, and also loved it - gave a new perspective to a character who I never really liked before, and I think you captured Haruhi's thought pattern well. My question is that, in several places, you mention an ongoing work called "Unhandled Exception", centered around Nagato. However, a google search only turns up some forum posts of you discussing potentia story structures on soulriders.net. Is the story not posted at all, or...?

Again, thank you for all that you've done. Cheers!

[Muphrid]

I've known for some time that the next Haruhi piece I would write would be Unhandled Exception and that it would concern Nagato, but I've only started actually writing it properly in the last month, having spent most of my time on The Coming of the First Ones or the Identity rewrite project since finishing "Direction" here. That said, the first chapter of Unhandled Exception is nearly finished, and I expect it would only take a week or two with prereaders to get to a publication-ready state. So look for it soon!

[Sea]

Wow, this was fantastic. Usually I'm turned off by bad end continuums but this is far too good to pass up.
The level of detail surrounding both Hisao's physics aspersions and Rin's painting was phenomenal, if you hadn't already said you yourself were a physicist I'm have guessed, everything seemed in depth to a level not many other writers can capture. The whole Sumi - Ryou subplot kinda put me off as well but you developed it masterfully and I really got into it. And of course the hardest part about a Rin story is writing Rin herself, which was very fluid and thought out here. I could get a sense of the fact she's aged, while still retaining her Rininess. Over all, this is one of the best ones I've read in a good while, kudos to you sir!

[Oddball]

Lovely piece of work here. I think what I'm impressed most by isn't the characters or plot, but the way you captured the mood of Rin's route. In the game it felt the darkest and most depressing and this managed to keep things along a similar line, with Hisao taking the longest to really get out of his deep funk.

Your original characters were also welled used for the most part, although Hisao's various teachers and fellow classmates did kind of blend together to me. Having Mutou call out of nowhere seemed rather odd as well.

Ryou felt a little underused and that plot line seemed to wrap up a tad too neatly for my tastes but I can forgive that as he was never really the focus.

[Muphrid]

Yeah, I think in hindsight a lot of the side characters could've used a bit more time to make impressions and have more depth. Adachi in particular, actually--I continue to feel that I didn't quite do her justice in this piece. The Sumi/Ryou plotline only really got one beat for Hisao to interact with Ryou properly, to have Ryou's struggles complement Hisao's own.

Thank you for your comments, nevertheless.

[HoneyBakedHam]

Wow. Just...wow.

I had trouble connecting with Rin at first, but, over time, I noticed how we're a lot alike and this fanfic definitely helped me get closer to seeing how amazing Rin is, just like the other heroines in KS.

[VoiDD]

Registered here just to say thank you for such an amazing story.

[SuzuSuzuki_bestgirl]

Read this fanfic after replaying RIn's route, and damn its so good. Rin doesn't get enough fanfic love but you did such a good job of portraying her!

[Asoko_Desu]

Very engaging and thought-provoking - and enjoyable! It left me with questions, but, like Rin, I'm unable to put them into words right now .. how very appropriate. I think I'll bookmark this one and come back to it again after having had a chance to reflect on it.

And thank you for posting your notes; they're at least as interesting as the work itself "I’ve also realized there is no substitute for enthusiasm." - the truest words a writer could say.

--

[szkieleton]

came here after experiencing several day long Rin bad ending brainfreeze, and this scratched my need for closure quite adequately! potent metaphors and interesting poetic pararells are drawn, not dissimilarily to the original KS, so it wasn't that difficult to fool myself into considering this a part of the canon for a lot of the time. i particurarily enjoy the metaphors of the unfinished Tokyo Tower doodle, and the crazy scientific microscope that i'm too lazy to scroll up and check how was it called rn mirroring certain aspects of the Rin-Hisao relationship. pararells between art and physics are a fascinating concept to explore, and even if it wasn't all that deep in the end, i enjoyed it for what it was.

i really like what you did with the protagonist - i feel like his inner voice, full of unnecessary literature-isms and deadpan cynicism was successfully replicated, and then considerably warmed up. the catharsis i felt after the narration directly confronted the mistaken assumptions he made about Rin made me jump with joy a bit - i always knew the fucker had it in him to appreciate what he had with her, and stop striving for immediate comprehension of everything so damn hard. on the other hand, his drive to understand things always made me consider him to be a good material for a scientist, so the physics inclusion felt immediately right.

on the other hand, i'm a good bit more mixed about Rin herself; which is understandable, the gal's hard to grasp, and propably most everyone have their own top 10 lists of the Rin-iest character traits. i'd just say you missed some of my own. she became easier to understand, the penchant for weird semantic / philosophical tangents was significally toned down, when the wild and random metaphor silnging became a bit too pronounced for my tastes. it's understandable that she became more approachable when matured, but in KS it genuenly felt that she tried to grasp with words concepts that are so esoteric that they've never been considered by anyone before her, and it's a bit sad to see her kinda give up on that here (can u tell that "problems of self-referential logic" is my favorite KS chapter?) in the original novel she felt incomparable and incomprehensible; here she's just mostly autistic, with wonky / jokey tangents and random outbursts of genius. she listens too much, and needs too little. the more serious moments aren't quite there, although the first meeting in the painting studio almost managed to capture that feel.

i also don't quite enjoy how smutty this all feels. i can accept Rin making overt sexual innuendos in inappropriate moments as a joke, she matured and it's valid for her to change in that way, but i can't say i cared for Hisao's monologue to sometimes get so leery at the bodies of his female collegues. i get that it's compensation for the lack of visual element here, but it makes him feel like a bit of a creep sometimes; i miss the roundabout way he talked about enjoying the looks of his girl-friends ("my body is very much aware of hers" lol). i also didn't find much to appreciate about the sex scene - in KS it was impressive how they focused mostly on the romantic gestures, leaving most of the sexual acts themselves as euphemisms, making it all feel very classy. the dangling penises and dripping vaginas over here weren't exactly what i was looking for, and actually getting something close to that much anticipated footjob felt objectifying instead of fullfilling. i don't see anything wrong with catering to some fetishes on principle, but appreciated the lack of it in the original more in the end, to move it away from any sort of cripple exploitation porn as humanly possible (even though i don't think this scene is anything close to something that tasteless). it's not my area of expertise, it prolly would work serviceably as a sex scene in any ordinary romance novel - just didn't have much of that katawa-esque style which i came to appreciate greatly.

contrary to my esteemed co-commentators, i don't give a shit about the phone call from Mutou being a bit contrived; you wanted to make him into a giga-chad and you nailed it with flying colors. his speech about science rocked my socks off.

other than that, mitsuru one-note, sumi and riyou a good enough background story and another pararrel of the mutual understanding motive of Rin's route - a vailant effort, all and all. did exactly what was advertised