[Haruhi] Under Review

[Halbarad]

And so the hatted one finally decides to try writing some fanfiction.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7252550/1/Under_Review

What would happen if Haruhi actually did pay a bit more attention to the members of her Brigade... say, in an annual review?

Three chapters up so far, feedback and comments are welcome~

[Brian]

I already commented, but -- you can also use the creative writing section for feedback before posting to ff.net. :D

Anyway; I really enjoyed it, sorry I can't offer much more constructive at the moment.

Looking forward to the next chapter, after Ten Desires settles down a bit. ;)

[Halbarad]

New chapter is up.

[Brian]

Re-reading this now to see if I can have slightly fresher eyes for it, but mostly remarking to let everyone else know ... I thought this was awesome, still.  :)

Sorry I don't have any further constructive criticism, yet.

Spoke too soon; caught this:

I blink at the sudden halt, then look down at her hand again - she was doing something with that pen, I guess. And I definitely don't have to guess now - she's got a huge combat knife in it now! Well, more on it than in it - she's just holding it on her open palm, which makes me feel a little better about it.

Repetition of 'now' in the second sentence; I think you can omit the first one.

I take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds before blowing it out and looking at Yuki. "So... uh." Sensing that I'm not going to get much of anywhere with this, I shake my head before continuing. "Why haven't you said anything before now? You know I set up the Brigade in the first place to find people like aliens! Why is this only coming out now?"

Nitpicky, but two sentences ending with 'now' again.  You could replace the first instance with 'this'?

"I cannot provide information regarding Asahina Mikuru and Koizumi Itsuki at this time," is Yuki's answer. Dammit! I was this close to having the whole thing, too!

Just for flow, I'd suggest breaking Haruhi's reaction (starting at 'Dammit!') to another line.  It's not really dialog, but in some ways it acts like it.  It can attach to her actual dialog next if you like, but also works if it's separated out for emphasis.

Surprisingly, that one seems to stump her. It takes her several seconds before she responds, "I am aware that there may be romantic overtones to your question; however, I am uncertain to what degree these are present. He is my friend; I wish to ensure his safety."

In retrospect, this is a good opportunity to show how Haruhi's learned to read Yuki.  Maybe a little more showing on how Haruhi can tell Yuki's stumped?

I feel a lot calmer at that admission; it... shouldn't really bother me if Kyon wants to date someone, but it does for some reason. I guess I think he'll miss out on more amazing things if he ends up getting distracted by romance with someone else.

Just going to comment (again), on how much that single last word makes that whole bit so cute.

I kick open the door to the clubroom as usual on arriving; apparently she's either running late or I got Kyon moving faster than usual, since she's still just standing next to the costume rack.

Mikuru's introduced as 'she' instead of by name, here.

Kyon and Koizumi have both filed into the room at this point; Koizumi's digging one of the board games off the shelf while Kyon flops down in his usual seat at the table. That's not going to stand, at least.

I should have mentioned this, but that last sentence feels like it might be missing a word.

"Not bad, I guess I haven't completely lost my touch," I reply, sounding satisfied. Koizumi settles back, looking strangely satisfied with the outcome given the fact that he's lost. "Hmmm, another game?"

I think that the first 'not bad' should be offset with either a semicolon or a period (not sure about that one).

"I suppose that's no trouble," Koizumi replies easily. Good, then let's see how he handles this!

Going back to Haruhi's reply being in the same paragraph as Koizumi's dialog; it can be left as it is, but Haruhi's response could also be moved to be separate.

"Um... certainly, why not?" Koizumi says, sounding a bit uncertain.

Super nit-picky here; I'd suggest 'agrees' or the like instead of 'says', since he's evidently lacking in confidence (and it's a question).  Totally just my brain saying, 'you can't say something that ends in a question mark, can you?'

Okay. scanning through the rest, nothing else stuck out.

[Muphrid]

Hello Halbarad, I thought I'd take your invitation and drop by to give my thoughts on the latest installment.

Something I notice here that I didn't realize before is some unwillingness to use bare, untagged dialogue.  This is the sort of passage I'm talking about:

Be that as it may, though, I'm still not done with Mikuru, and I haven't got time to work this all out now. Her confession there does bring up one other thing.

"So, you can not only time travel, but you can take other people with you?" I ask to confirm.

"Ah... I have to get approval to time travel at all - with or without other people - but yes, I can," Mikuru admits.

"Then I want you to take me to another time so I can see this for myself!" I challenge her. Yuki was able to prove her abilities, after all, so Mikuru should be able to do the same!

"What- I, I, I can't do that!" Mikuru stammers.

"Get your authorization or whatever you need - I won't take no for an answer!" I stand up, hands on my hips.

In this part, it's clear Asahina is stammering just from the construction and that it's her speaking just from the surrounding sentences.  I do think that on occasion leaving dialogue untagged can improve the flow of the story, but I know not everyone would agree.  If that's how you feel too, I'll make no further mention of it.

On the "classified information" scene, I felt the structure of it was weakened by having Asahina explain the problem rather than, say, having Haruhi figure it out from context.  The audience already knows how it works, and full-on exposition in that case is...risky.  I guess that's the best word.  That said, I thought going back to deliver the completed movie was effective.  I'd never quite liked the idea that Haruhi finished it on her own with her powers, so that was a very good way to twist the interpretation of an event. 

The payoff of this chapter, though, is Haruhi apologizing to Asahina, and in that, I think you did well.  Haruhi reacts realistically to Asahina expressing her desires privately, knowing that she can't act on them.  That more than anything else resonates compared to Haruhi just reexamining past deeds on her own.

[Halbarad]

Credit has to go to Brian for the movie in this case; we were discussing busy-work for Kyon and he tossed the idea out - then it fit perfectly with the idea of Mikuru taking Haruhi on a time-traveling trip. Kudos to Mr. Randall, there.

As far as unmodified speech goes, you're right. I've been called out a couple of times on not providing enough framing description of the scene or what the characters are doing in long dialogue scenes (and boy does this chapter qualify), so I've been trying to find a better balance of that. Hasn't been working out quite the way I've intended, since I end up more with stuff like this. =\

As far as 'classified information' goes, the root of that comes from Mikuru's fear of Haruhi. Kyon she can let work it out on her own - she's confident that he'll be patient and thoughtful enough to pick up on what's going on in time. With Haruhi, she's more afraid that Haruhi will fixate on the fact that she's still hiding information and demand that she reveal what she's hiding, when she literally can't - leading to a cycle of Mikuru being stuck behind 'classified information' and a Haruhi who just gets more and more irritated at the fact that she can't get a straight answer. So to try to head that off before it even starts, she jumps straight to the explanation she never gave Kyon.

Whether it would be needed with this Haruhi? Eh, to some extent Mikuru's right, although Haruhi's not so stupid that she'd push it once she saw that Mikuru was clearly too terrified to be withholding info on purpose. At that point Mikuru was just a complete wreck emotionally, though, between the exposure and (yet again) vague orders from her 'superiors' - it's hard to spot in the story since we only have Haruhi's POV to go on, but she did actually receive instructions right in the middle of the confrontation.

[Brian]

As far as unmodified speech goes, you're right. I've been called out a couple of times on not providing enough framing description of the scene or what the characters are doing in long dialogue scenes (and boy does this chapter qualify), so I've been trying to find a better balance of that. Hasn't been working out quite the way I've intended, since I end up more with stuff like this. =\

Hmm -- thinking about this....  One thing I'd meant to comment on earlier is that the forming storm dropped out of the description somewhere around midway.

Did the weather blow off, or are there good opportunities to bring in references to the weather during the awkward silences and so on during Mikuru's interrogation? Or the storm lessening, if that's when it's happening....

[Jason_Miao]

Even though I'll read the occasional Haruhi fic (usually the ones written by Bri or recommended by someone here), I'm always a little reluctant to write C&C for Haruhi fics since I can't make myself finish the novels and have never seen the anime.  But since you're just talking about writing styles, I'll risk a few questions.

* Why are you discussing the weather at all?  Even in normal conversation, let alone fiction, discussing the weather is something you do when you feel the social need to say something to someone but have no topic of actual worth.  Even using a storm as a metaphor for a bad mood or relationship-in-crisis is cliche these days.  I'm not saying that you should never discuss the weather in your fic, but I think you should answer the question to yourself.  e.g, if the answer is that it is an excuse to keep Kyon from using a commitment to the baseball club to avoid having to work on the movie, you could write in a fuller description of him looking out the window at the gently falling rain, a glance at the baseball diamond at the far right, then a sigh before walking towards the computer.

* Is the fic supposed to be a denouemont?  If so, yay.

[Brian]

Er, not to answer for Hal, but I thought it was pretty clear the weather's there because Haruhi's causing it.  It's just a side-effect of Haruhi's mood (and then her pondering on it was to lampshade her obliviousness to the fact it was her doing).

Hence my wondering why the weather wasn't mentioned more during that tense discussion with Mikuru.

[Jason_Miao]

Er, not to answer for Hal, but I thought it was pretty clear the weather's there because Haruhi's causing it.  It's just a side-effect of Haruhi's mood (and then her pondering on it was to lampshade her obliviousness to the fact it was her doing).

Okay.  Then, since Haruhi's mood as gone through many fluctuations in the other four chapters, shouldn't the weather be following that too (and be described as such...or did that happen, and I was too dense to see it)?  Heck, take it further, and make it obvious to the reader (but not Haruhi) that the Brigade is regularly reading the weather to take cues on how to act to Haruhi, since they all know that she's an unknowing god - that takes it out of the realm of the overused weather-as-a-mood-metaphor, and turns it into part of the story.

...unless Haruhi-generated weather changes happens all the time in the cannon, in which case I'm probably just not getting it due to lack of familiarity with the particulars of the source material.

[Brian]

Kyon suspects that Haruhi is responsible for Summer dragging on as long as it did (beyond the Endless Eight), and that's part of why Winter was so short, but that's not backed up by anyone else.

Cannonwise, there isn't a lot to suggest she has much control over the weather.  The one time she does complain about the heat, it's an excuse to wear increasingly fanservicey outfits in front of Kyon.

[Halbarad]

Cannonwise, there isn't a lot to suggest she has much control over the weather.  The one time she does complain about the heat, it's an excuse to wear increasingly fanservicey outfits in front of Kyon.

Other than the typhoon during Lone Island. IIRC Kyon does mention that it seems to come out of nowhere, and I doubt his family would be cool with him heading off to a remote island if there was a typhoon inbound.

Okay.  Then, since Haruhi's mood as gone through many fluctuations in the other four chapters, shouldn't the weather be following that too (and be described as such...or did that happen, and I was too dense to see it)?  Heck, take it further, and make it obvious to the reader (but not Haruhi) that the Brigade is regularly reading the weather to take cues on how to act to Haruhi, since they all know that she's an unknowing god - that takes it out of the realm of the overused weather-as-a-mood-metaphor, and turns it into part of the story.

It's not really an absolute thing; I recall it being a possible connection far more in the anime than in the novels (largely because they -need- to show the weather there in some respect to frame the scene). Since you're not an avid follower of the series I'll avoid going off into a list of examples and counterexamples, but there are a few to support the idea either way.

In this case, she's more noticing it because she's that starved for something else to occupy her attention - she doesn't want to talk to Kyon, her business with Sakanaka is too private to deal with in class breaks, and class itself (as always) is boring as hell. So there's not much to do but stare outside and watch a storm roll in. And then once she's noticed it, she keeps tabs on it.

As far as using it during the scene with Mikuru goes, it's mostly a PoV issue. Now that she's got Mikuru in front of her and can really focus on what's been eating at her all day, she just doesn't -care- about the weather anymore. It'd be easy to slip in if I was narrating in third person, but Haruhi's the storyteller here, and she doesn't care at this point.

It'll get a brief mention in the opening of the next chapter, though, for much the same reason as it came up in the first place.

[Brian]

Other than the typhoon during Lone Island. IIRC Kyon does mention that it seems to come out of nowhere, and I doubt his family would be cool with him heading off to a remote island if there was a typhoon inbound.

Ooh, that's a good point.

Come to think of it, it snowed during the snow mountain mystery exactly when Koizumi had hoped it would (which he mentioned to Haruhi a few times).

[Jason_Miao]

In this case, she's more noticing it because she's that starved for something else to occupy her attention - she doesn't want to talk to Kyon, her business with Sakanaka is too private to deal with in class breaks, and class itself (as always) is boring as hell. So there's not much to do but stare outside and watch a storm roll in. And then once she's noticed it, she keeps tabs on it.

Okay.  Well, if it's a core Haruhi concept (like changing gender with water is a Ranma concept, or hot women being attracted to wusses is a Tenchi concept), then what you have makes sense.

It'd be easy to slip in if I was narrating in third person, but Haruhi's the storyteller here, and she doesn't care at this point.

I get the POV difficulties.  What I didn't get is, in a storytelling sense, what you want to accomplish by talking about the weather in the first place, since almost any trivial topic would get you the same effect without the literary baggage ("It was a typical, sunny, day in Nerima"; "It was a dark and stormy night").  Again, if this is a Haruhi concept, then my misgivings are misplaced, and you're likely okay, since you don't need to justify concepts - they're what the story is built upon.

[Brian]

Since Hal forgot to mention it, there's another chapter out.

I quite enjoy this take on Haruhi.