Fantasy horror by Yuki Nagato

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Yuki Nagato is a fictional character from the Haruhi Suzumiya series. She is a humanoid interface created by a largely non-physical alien being which cannot communicate with humans itself for the purpose of observing Haruhi Suzumiya and given the ability to communicate with normal humans. She has very little emotional expression, but it's very likely she has real emotions and also real personal goals of her own. Her first name Yuki is a pun, in that it is both a girl's name and also the reading of the word for snow.

In one story, she was asked to write fantasy horror and I find it fascinating. This is someone with an unusual experience, which I identify with because of my own constant strong sense of alienation throughout my own life. This is from "Untitled1," a short story that she was asked to write within the story:

This is an interesting one here, an extract from "Untitled2" by Yuki Nagato (within the story of course). I think this actually gives insight into her personal experience, and possibly a background on her experience:

My interpretation is this: Yuki came to be in a hive mind, but she and the other "minds" came to develop individuality.

If you think about it, Yuki's initial expansive experience of there being many individuals and all of them being her is a way to experience being part of a hive mind where there is a loss of individuality, in contrast to the diminutive experience where you are nothing and are constantly intruded upon. Both experiences I think are possible in such a situation, where there is a loss of the most basic sense of self. In schizophrenia, such a loss of the most basic sense of self is said by some researchers to occur, in contrast to the higher level, more defensive level of experience involved in "mere" depersonalization, as Sass, et al. (2013), describe: "...(the very sense of existing as a distinct origin of awareness or perspective on the world)." This can manifest as, differently from depersonalization disorder (emphasis in original):



https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gatewa ... df&site=42

You can see both the diminutive (difficulty telling the difference between self and others, feeling of being intruded on by others' ideas, etc.) and the expansive views in that description.

Now, at the end of her description of her origin, she says, "Among them 'I' was also." This could be a
sense of existing as a distinct origin of awareness or perspective on the world," which Sass, et al., describe as the most basic sense of self. Perhaps in a hive mind, you would still maintain that most basic sense of self, meaning your sense of self would still be stronger than that of a typical person with schizophrenia. Perhaps instead, however, Yuki is simply imposing her current experience of the most basic sense of self and that, initially, she possessed not even that.

As part of a hive mind, with no sense of self, you are a mind ticking away. You communicate with other minds directly, but with nothing hidden from each other and with all pushed toward the same goal, no distinctions between self and other are made. You see no difference between other minds and your own. You are all a team, nay, you are all one. You are all you!

These fantasy horror stories written by Yuki in the context of the series give some interesting insight into the experience of being a humanoid interference created by a disembodied intelligence with no way of contacting humans directly for the purposes of observation and communicating with humans via language. Such stories may also provide insight into some experiences of being human, especially in the radically dehumanizing experience of schizophrenia, which as mentioned in the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience involves a kind of "de-subjectivizing" of the self; a tendency to view the self as radically different, like a robot or an alien; difficulty in constituting even the most basic sense of self; and a radical weakening of one's ego boundaries.

My initial reaction is of Yuki recounting her birth, describing the emptiness of what she was. If I had to guess the other "ghost" might be Asakura. And also mentions the snow, the first thing she starts to fill herself with getting the name "Yuki".