Kyon: Big Damn Hero/Headscratchers

• A really trivial one: in earlier chapters, couldn't Nagato just have called Mikuru, Kyon, and Kanae to come to her place for training? Just wondering.
  • Yes, she could have. But remember she also has poor social skills.
    • I mean, come on, isn't it simply easier to just tell them to come to her place? Is she that bad?
      • Well, she is still at later chapters learning social skills, and her source of information had become admittedly-still-kinda-Jerkass Haruhi, so perhaps a combination of said low skills and sudden urges to perform what needed to be done without considering others beforehand?
  • I'm sure it would have gone over splendidly with Kyon's mother for him to leave late in the evening when he ought to be going to bed in order to hang out at a female Brigade member's apartment where she lives alone, with two other female Brigade members also coming over. So as long as she's teleporting Kyon anyway, she may as well just teleport everybody. Plus it gives her a chance to see how Kanae handles teleportation and annoy Mikuru at the same time.
    • I thought she was okay with him going out late, judging by the second episode. Then again, you are right, considering that this is KBDH!Kyon's Mom... Hmm, come to think of it...
• I'm currently finished reading through Heroic Antics Begins arc, and Kyon's nightly training makes me scratch my head, a lot, and I need some explanation^[1].
  • First of all, after Kyon gets his training, his muscle mass increases, judging by the increased amount of food he eats...so does that means that he was supplied with food in that Metabolic Chamber as well, because as far as I know, you can't increase your muscles without extra intake of proteins. In that case, shouldn't anyone notice that Kyon is becoming a lot buff? I mean, by the end of HAB arc, it has been like, what, a week? Or was the training just exponentially increased his unconscious reflex? It gets real confusing to me.
    • He must have been supplied with food, or he'd have starved to death long before the year was out. Also, Yuki has a lot of control, for example keeping him young and making him forget the important parts, so she could make him end up just weak enough to not be noticed.
• What exactly did Kanae just do in The Storm Begins V?
  
  First, she jumped to "Kyon in Kyouko's closed space".
  Then, she jumped to "Kyon in real world" (in the car) and jumped with him back to closed space.
  And finally, both of them jumped to Kuyou's "Shadow Song".
  
  Is it right? And what exactly happened once she was back in the closed space - two "Kyons" (the one that was there before and the one Kanae brought there) just became one, or something?
  • Apparently, Kyouko can't jump entirely into Closed Space in front of Sasaki, so she could only bring Kyon partway there-- which worked fine for her because that left him even more inaccessible than just stranding him there entirely. Somehow Kanae managed to reintegrate Kyon's two halves once Sasaki wasn't looking any more.
• Given that they have God on their side, there's no (in-story) reason to allow conflict. For example, esper powers have been shown to be effective against the Combine. Haruhi could just give them to everybody. Out of story, the reason is that it would have been very short and not very Troperiffic, but it still bugs me.
  • Just because Haruhi's on their side doesn't mean she wants to make events boring. Pressing X to win isn't a very enjoyable method for her I'd suppose.
• Why is the Masquerade still in effect? As far as I understand, it isn't there to keep Muggles from finding out. It's to keep Haruhi from finding out. If she already knows, they may as well drop it.
  • It could be in effect to stop the Power Nullifier character from finding out and unconsciously aiding the enemies that work around her.
  • I see no reason to drop it and at least two reasons to keep it: being able to say "I don't know" as official answer to anything supernatural and preventing the reaction of Kyon's mother (I don't believe her reaction if she'd believe Kyon fights regularly against robots from another world would be the most positive for the brigade).
• In chapter 37, Kyon gets this text message from his future self: "Note to idiotic past-self: Nice work. Yuki does not like being left out. The special hell is a small price to pay after all she's done, and you know it." I've read the entire fanfic three times so far, and every time I get to this part I stop and think about it for a while, and I can't figure out how Yuki was deliberately left out of anything. The thing with Kuyou and Wataru happened so quickly it's not like he had time to call her to help. Is it being implied that he should have brought Yuki to meet with Sasaki? That doesn't even make sense to me, but it's the only alternative I can think of.
  • Kyon's cellphone has a special function based on paired particles that supports a communication channel with Yuki's cellphone in an emergency. Kyon could have called Yuki even after being transported to Kuyou's shadow-song (as he did in the chapter "Stranger Fronts") with the press of a button or a voice command but he chose not to.
  • Okay, but I already knew that. My question is, why should he have? He wasn't actually in any danger, aside from when the robot first appeared, and that battle was over so fast he only had time to be preoccupied with his defenses, not with making a phone call. After that, nothing actually happened that seems like it would require Yuki's involvement.
  • But you know that now, after the meeting. In that moment he doesn't know what will happen and he may not have time to call Yuki id "trouble" really happens. Add the fact his attacks were the least effective than any Haruhi or Koizumi the last time Combine attacked^[2] (Yuki didn't fight but her effectiveness is a given). Finally, I think the main point here is something like betraying the trust Kyon asked to the others by not asking help when he may have needed it: he likes to take everyone else's burdens but has trouble sharing his.
  • If that's the case, it could have been conveyed better. If Kyon had, in the narration, thought about calling Yuki but decided against it, then I could see that being raised as an issue afterwards. To me it just seems like things were happening so fast the idea just didn't cross his mind, and then the issue just comes out of nowhere after the fact.
  • That may very well be the case, but remember that even if Yuki agrees that he did nothing wrong, there's still nothing preventing her from feeling left out. Also, Kyon's future self might have deliberately worded the text message a bit stronger than necessary to drive the point home that, while it caused no catastrophe this time, he should make every effort possible in the future to involve Nagato when her assistance might be required.
    • That makes sense as far as it goes, but it seems like everyone else also reacts as though Kyon did something extremely stupid and wrong.
• Why exactly did Kyon's sister blame Sasaki for making Kyon unhappy? Based on what little we saw of him prior to meeting Haruhi he didn't seem to be particularly down.
  • Because Sasaki was the biggest influence to Kyon Nonoko didn't know. Kyon's sister knew her brother lost his smile some time ago, however nothing she knew had changed so the influence had to be from somewhere Nonoko couldn't see. When Sasaki admitted being with Kyon talking as a point of pride Nonoko just added 2+2.
    Now if you are asking how Nonoko found Kyon "lost his smile" it's another question, one I can't answer because there aren't any scenes of Kyon from before that time or some of the reasonings of Kyon's sister. While I don't like to give a fanfic as answer, I recommend reading Remembrance, Imouto's Tale, a preseries oneshot focusing in Kyon's sister and her thoughts on Kyon.
  • Alternatively, go back and watch the first few minutes of the first episode of Haruhi. Note the way the colors are washed out and dull until the second Kyon turns around and sees Haruhi for the first time. YMMV on whether this symbolizes anything or to what degree it symbolizes whatever it does symbolize, but Kyon making his way through boring everyday life, accepting reality as his monologue suggests but not really happy with it either, is one possible interpretation. The author may have taken that and run with it.
• I thought the alternate reality in Disappearance was actually the same reality, just altered by Nagato hijacking Haruhi's powers. BDH seems to consider it a true alternate reality, and chapter 50 even says that reality still exists. Did I completely miss something in Disappearance that explains this, or is this an intentional divergence from the original plot?
  • Both possibilities could be simultaneously true. What if Yuki rewrote the original reality to create the alternate version of world depicted in the fourth novel, but at the moment of the restoration she didn't want to just destroy that world and she put it^[3] in its own new alternate dimension before returning things to normal? All this is just guesswork, but currently (as of chapter 50) there isn't much to work with.
    • The rest of the fic up to that point seems to consistently refer to it as a separate reality as well (edit: I mean they refer to it as if it had been one all along, rather than was made one later), but that's an interesting possibility. Going a step further, what if the idea is to make The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan manga canon for BDH in this way, or at least imply this is the case? But I'm drifting into WMG territory now. (Edited to add: I actually just started reading again from the beginning, and in the first chapter Yuki says that Kyon found a way to restore reality to normal and created a parallel universe in the process. So it looks like you're right.)
• This might be a YMMV for other people, but for me, I'm somewhat baffled by some references used in this story. I love this story, don't get me wrong, but some of the references don't seem to work if they are actually speaking Japanese. Like when Kyon makes a joke while Haruhi's freaking out in her special area, when she says, "It's the end of the world as we know it!" Or when Kyon makes a reference to the My Beloved Smother trope, before correcting himself with Mother. I'm pretty sure the Japanese words for Mother and Smother don't sound similar enough for that to work.
  • While I'm sure the actual reason is just that it's better not to let the language barrier ruin possible humorous references, if you have to justify it, some English songs might gain popularity in Japan the same way some Japanese songs gain popularity here, and Kyon's English has been shown to be solid enough that he might lapse into English if he feels like making a really good(/bad) pun that wouldn't work in Japanese.
• What exactly does Haruhi's Memory Gambit cover? She seems exactly the same with or without it.
  • Most of what it covers is discussed before she implements it. It makes her forget that she has reality warping powers alone (rather than needing help from Yuki to access them), eliminates Closed Space by giving her telekinesis to take care of her frustration, makes Kyon have more energy, it also makes her a bit more accepting of trying to make everyone in the Brigade happy and not being selfish, and other things we aren't fully aware of. Such as Koizumi able to use his powers outside of Closed Space (but not other Espers). It seemed unlikely that we'll ever know everything that she changed so that's all we know for certain yet.
• In Chapter 42: The Meaning of Everything Kyon holds Aunt Rena back so she can't tackle/steal Yuki. But he is wearing his coat in disguise mode at the time. It has previously been established that disguise mode doesn't change the feel of the coat and the Rena is an expert investigator. So why didn't she notice that he was wearing a bulky coat, instead of the Ichigo cosplay he appeared to be wearing?
  • First of all I don't think it said how heavily Kyon had to hold her back. Second she was Distracted by the cuteness and might not have noticed. Finally Rule of Funny.

1. ↑ it's probably because I didn't read the thing thoroughly thanks to my short attention span so if anyone who read it thoroughly or read it more than twice, help me out here.
2. ↑ the first one, at the beach
3. ↑ (or a close copy of it)