[Haruhi] The Coin

[Muphrid]

The Coin is something I've been working on for a few weeks after finishing an Evangelion piece.  I came up with it before the release of The Surprise but found a way to keep the basic idea even after those events.  The premise--that Haruhi discovers her powers--is likely nothing new, but I don't subscribe to the notion that what Haruhi wants most in this world is a universe full of time-travelers, espers, and aliens.  She'd like that, but it's not the absolute most important to her.  Hence, this is my theory of her mind and what makes her tick, and it all stems from a seemingly innocent event:  changing a coin at a vending machine to suit her whims.

The story so far can be found here.  Alternatively, a PDF is attached that includes chapter three, which I present for critique.   I'd had the text of that chapter reproduced below, but it seems to be longer than the maximum message length.  If desired, I can post it in two parts instead or attach it in some other more suitable format, since the PDF is admittedly visually cool and all but probably not well-suited for editing.

Edit: the pdf below is the complete version, and a gzipped tar archive of html versions is also provided for convenience.

[Anastasia]

I like it. I don't have the knowledge base in Haruhi to really make insightful comments about the plot, though one thing did jump out at me. In chapter 2:

Honestly, it makes a lot more sense than people would think. If everyone on Earth woke up tomorrow with special powers, they wouldn't have any clue what to do or how to use them. They probably wouldn't even know they had powers at all—it'd be awfully convenient if they did, at least. In stories, no one used to give that a second thought. Superman flies and sees through your clothes and stuff. They never questioned how he learned to fly or if he crossed his eyes to see x-rays or anything like that. Nowadays it's the opposite. Every story is about trying to learn the ropes, but they take it too far. Isn't it a little silly that there's only one way to shoot web from your wrists? It's like the writers tried too hard to get it right and made some things that should be easy to pick up way too hard.

It feels a little odd for Haruhi to be using American cultural icons to identify this with, rather than native ones. It was enough to break the flow of reading and make me think about it.

That said, I like your style and how your writing flows. Despite not being familiar with the novels or much of Haruhi's character growth, her narrative felt natural.

[Jon]

Ultraman!

I likes it. Waiting for Kyon to trust her enough to say "I am John Smith", though.

[Brian]

I likes it. Waiting for Kyon to trust her enough to say "I am John Smith", though.

Oh, we had that conversation. >_>

*cough*

Anyway!  I've commented on this, in e-mail, where line-by-line is easier.  Because I am somewhat lazy, I'll link to it here:

http://www.chez-vrolet.net/pipermail/ffml/2011-August/003198.html

Anyway, Muprhid, thanks again for sharing. :)

[Muphrid]

Glad to see people are enjoying the show.  As far as the Superman/Spiderman stuff, I think that's valid criticism.  I should do some thinking as to what Japanese equivalents there would be.

And as I said on FFML, Brian's been very helpful with this project, and I'm grateful.  I think the revised chapter three will definitely be better and tighter thanks to the criticism and advice given.

[Arakawa]

Note - sleep-deprived commenter alert!

How can you think Japanese superheroes and not mention Kamen Rider???

A couple of things I took issue with in the earlier chapters, sufficiently so that you might want to consider changing them:

"Haruhi Land?" I said. "You think we should have an SOS Brigade
theme park?"
"What? What on earth would give you—"
"We could have a roller coaster!" I said. "We could make a giant
Mikuru-chan ride, with the curves and loops going around her huge— "
Kyon slapped both hands over my mouth. Looking over his shoul- der, he laughed nervously. "It's all right!" he told the class. "Nothing to see here. Nothing at all!" He narrowed his eyes, whispering to me. "Be serious, will you?"
I pulled his wrists away. "I'm always serious."

This is frankly Haruhi at her most ludicrous, so when you don't explain the thought process behind this exchange, the story effectively shifts into third person for the duration. Is Haruhi actually serious at any level? (If so, where does the idea come from?) Does she just say that as a retort to Kyon, so she can have the last word? It obviously can't be both.

"Ah, what a wonderful surprise," said Koizumi-kun. "As you know, I'm a fan of mysteries. I've actually been consulting a collection of de- tective stories recommended by Nagato-san, starting with Edgar Allan Poe and his tales of C. Auguste—"

Nagato gives Koizumi book recommendations? That made me do a double-take, and decide this was probably Koizumi BSing on behalf of the alien. Not sure whether that was your intention here.. if so it might help to insert a hint to that effect.

"Then allow me to make a prediction. Suzumiya Haruhi, I see in your future a sleepless night of trying to make the universe bend to your mental will, but the universe, as devious a creature as there ever was, will merely conjure quantum magic to do strange things like make a car able to tunnel through a mountain. God does play dice with the universe, and to keep us lowly mortals from understanding it, He can rig the game, make the dice unfair."

Wait, so is the car able or unable to tunnel through the mountain? (looking at the PDF version here)

Since you're writing an erudite fic I'll say that a couple of things reminded me of other things that you didn't reference. I'm not certain if you don't know them, or if you know them but didn't find them interesting to reference, or if I'm just mistaken on something.

The whole setup reminds me of those reality checks you do to try to trigger a lucid dream. You know, you identify yourself to be in a dream by trying to catch things that your mind can't simulate very well - detailed things like machines, or writing, or hands. When those start behaving weirdly you can infer that you're in a dream as opposed to a physical reality.

This was especially brought to mind by your stated notion that Haruhi's powers work best when things change offscreen, which is also a reasonable assertion about affecting your reality in a lucid dream.

Your blog notes on Haruhi being attracted to the idea of changing Kyon's mind on things, rather than to Kyon himself, remind me vaguely of some themes in Plato's 'Symposium'. There's a certain 'philosophy as seduction' angle in the latter.

Now, then, Chapter 3, the one you wanted us to pre-read. Again, I'm late to this party; I'll just be looking for things other people don't seem to have complained about, so feel free to ignore all this:

it asked me something, the simplest question there is. Why? Really why, not just because I'm savvy or whatever.

Maybe I'm being overly snarky or my English skills have spontaneously shut off, but I have no idea what the last sentence in there was supposed to mean. Whatever you were trying to express there, it's not getting across to me.

I guess I'm one of those mysteries too, but for now, the lid's going back on Pandora's box to catch hope at the bottom.

Another muddled image. I can at least understand the point here because of the mythological reference. But then, knowing the details of the myth, the metaphor is really mixed up - so you've released all the nasty stuff from Pandora's box, but then you put the lid on so that Hope and Tears (I think that was the other nice spirit in the box) are still trapped inside? Um, ouch.

Make no mistake: baseball is a battle. No, strike that: base- ball is more like war. Battles are small. They tide of combat can turn quickly. Wars are grander, bigger. Whenever a battle is won or lost, the strategy of a war changes.

The baseball soliloquy seems to take a bit long to get to the point. Okay, baseball is a war, victory inspires players to play aggressively, then it's all governed by statistics, then it's all about accepting whether you've won or lost because you can't redo any of your previous plays, it seems like this might be related to what Haruhi is feeling in terms of her predicament, but instead of being tied in to the narrative it exists as this amorphous blob. Either that or she's just zoning out for a minute thinking about why she likes baseball. Maybe it's too late to fix, but if you have an elaborate metaphor like that it might be better to split it into chunks inserted throughout the previous/subsequent scene and develop things gradually.

This is stuff that doesn't *really* detract from enjoying the fic. It's just that when the writing is below a certain level I can tune out the author making an inapt analogy because, hey, two paragraphs down come the jollies. When the writing rises above a certain level I get curious as to whether the author might have some deeper point in mind, which is when I get inspired to read carefully and some of the carelessly constructed metaphors and analogies start to really break my brain.

I'll have to go back and scan your older chapters for similarly questionable moments. It took me most of two chapters to realize that this was going to be serious business, so before then I probably blew past a couple of similarly strange things without even noticing.

Again, forgive my snark since it's late where I am and it's probably best to post something right now as opposed to putting it off until God knows when tomorrow.

[Muphrid]

This is frankly Haruhi at her most ludicrous, so when you don't explain the thought process behind this exchange, the story effectively shifts into third person for the duration. Is Haruhi actually serious at any level? (If
so, where does the idea come from?) Does she just say that as a retort to Kyon, so she can have the last word? It obviously can't be both.

My opinion?  She's absolutely serious about exploring the idea, but she knows it would never happen.  That's why it's okay to explore the idea.

...or something.

Nagato gives Koizumi book recommendations? That made me do a double-take, and decide this was probably Koizumi BSing on behalf of the alien. Not sure whether that was your intention here.. if so it might help to insert a hint to that effect.

I don't feel like there's anything particularly unusual in Koizumi asking Nagato for a recommendation, honestly.  They may be watching Haruhi most of the time, but they can do other things to pass the time.  Detective stories would be like job research.

Wait, so is the car able or unable to tunnel through the mountain? (looking at the PDF version here)

In real life?  The odds would be beyond astronomical, but quantum mechanics is great that way.  Few things are ever truly impossible that way.  Really, even if Haruhi's power is inexplicable to science, an isolated event (like a car tunneling through a mountain--and by tunneling, this isn't boring a hole but rather simply passing through it with no change to either) could be explained as a quantum fluctuation or some other nonsense until Haruhi did it again and again.

Maybe I'm being overly snarky or my English skills have spontaneously shut off, but I have no idea what the last sentence in there was supposed to mean. Whatever you were trying to express there, it's not getting across to me.

This is probably a side-effect of trying to use too few words to get the point across (similar to how whatever it is that's speaking to her is communicating in a nonverbal way).  Why should middle school Haruhi shy away from the unknown when it stares her in the face?

The baseball soliloquy seems to take a bit long to get to the point. Okay, baseball is a war, victory inspires players to play aggressively, then it's all governed by statistics, then it's all about accepting whether you've won or lost because you can't redo any of your previous plays, it seems like this might be related to what Haruhi is feeling in terms of her predicament, but instead of being tied in to the narrative it exists as this amorphous blob. Either that or she's just zoning out for a minute thinking about why she likes baseball. Maybe it's too late to fix, but if you have an elaborate metaphor like that it might be better to split it into chunks inserted throughout the previous/subsequent scene and develop things gradually.

Yeah, the baseball analogy is a bit meandering on closer inspection.  I'll try to clean that up and make it more focused.

You make a very good point about quality and focus here, how people tend to skip when a passage doesn't hold their attention.  I'm guilty of that myself, but since I tend to sprinkle hints and clues in several places, there's a definite risk that one of those clues will be in a less well-constructed passage and be missed as a result.  So, consistent quality is important (obviously), but doubly so for me if I want to make a solvable puzzle (to touch on what we were talking about with your piece).  I like that viewpoint on things quite a bit.  Thanks.

[Arakawa]

My opinion?  She's absolutely serious about exploring the idea, but she knows it would never happen.  That's why it's okay to explore the idea.

...or something.

Then how about character thoughts to that effect? Even (for example) writing "well, someone in this Brigade has to think big." as a private thought right after Haruhi says she's serious would probably work to indicate all that.

<snip> could be explained as a quantum fluctuation or some other nonsense until Haruhi did it again and again.

Still concerned. The paragraph I quoted has Kyon basically saying "Haruhi, you're going to stay up all night trying to do something weird, and then the universe is going to oblige you by doing something weird (like making a car able to tunnel through a mountain)," which I don't think is what he's actually trying to say here. One would assume he's trying to discourage Haruhi.

This is probably a side-effect of trying to use too few words to get the point across (similar to how whatever it is that's speaking to her is communicating in a nonverbal way).  Why should middle school Haruhi shy away from the unknown when it stares her in the face?

Axndfefmg... still confused. Okay, let's start with a simple question - which of the two voices was asking her 'why?'

[Muphrid]

Still concerned. The paragraph I quoted has Kyon basically saying "Haruhi, you're going to stay up all night trying to do something weird, and then the universe is going to oblige you by doing something weird (like making a car able to tunnel through a mountain)," which I don't think is what he's actually trying to say here. One would assume he's trying to discourage Haruhi.

The universe will oblige her by doing something weird, but that doesn't mean you made it happen--that's what I was going for.  Keep in mind Kyon's on the spot here...but I can see it's not getting across, so it probably does need some work.

Axndfefmg... still confused. Okay, let's start with a simple question - which of the two voices was asking her 'why?'

The main one, the source of which she can't remember or see.  I'll put some language in there to clear that up, too.

Thanks.

[Muphrid]

So, after some painstaking debugging of perl, we now have a chapter of The Coin in HTML for convenience.

I think I mentioned before to Brian that the story could be broken by having Kyon come out and tell Haruhi what's going on.  I think I found a way for that not to break things as much, and I'm much happier for it.  Other than that, I do wonder if this would be better served as two separate chapters, stopping where Asakura takes Haruhi to the Piggy planet.  When I conceived of this as a single installment, I didn't think the exposition with Nagato and Kyon would take quite so long (hence, it also doesn't cover nearly everything that's ever happened, either).

This chapter also has some more breaks than the others (perhaps due to Brian's influence, perhaps from the nature of what's happening).  I'm not so sure I'm happy about that, either.  The ending is also...something I'm not quite so sure about.

Anyway, I think this parsed correctly.  If not, the only paragraphs that should be missing or weird would be ones with diacritics, accents, etc.

Edit:  apologies, it's been pointed out to me that some parts of this don't really make sense without considering a significant edit I performed on the last chapter.  I'd reworked the scene with Mori so that she invoked the Asakura incident from Melancholy, save for her own twisting of the truth to convince Haruhi that she must've erased Asakura out of jealousy.  The bulk of that revised scene is reproduced below.  -Edit x2: It also affects the later club room scene before the baseball game, but that change is comparatively minor and just follows from this.

Spoiler: ShowHide

When I got to the square outside the station, I was panting, but I'm not weak.  I stood upright, catching my breath as I walked.  If this woman had been outside the school, maybe I'd recognize her.  I trotted by the clock a couple times, searching, scouring the shops and the crosswalks.  Where are you, stranger?  You can't hide from me.  My eyes see everything.  Haven't I seen you before, orange-haired woman?  Yeah, I'm talking to you.  In the heels and the plain white, buttoned shirt—haven't I seen you before?

No, that doesn't make sense.  This person should be waiting for me, not browsing for bread or cheese at the sandwich shop across the way.  I looked around the triangular island between the three streets, and that's how I found her.  There was a cherry tree surrounded by a knee-high concrete wall.  She sat on a corner, a young sapling at her back.  She was casually dressed, wearing a black skirt with white socks and flat, shiny, dark shoes.  Her blouse was light blue, and the sleeves came just past her shoulders.  She kept a brown leather bag at her feet, and as she checked her watch, she fingered the strap with a pensive, worried look on her face.  She didn't look the way I was used to seeing her, but I'd know her anywhere.

"Mori-san!" I called out.  "What are you doing here?"

Her eyes went wide, and she stood up suddenly, bowing.  "Suzumiya-sama, good afternoon.  I worried, when we couldn't get through to you, that you might not show."

"You should've just left your name with my mother," I said.  "I'd have come right away!  Wow, it's such a change to see you dressed like this.  It's good, though.  It's cute."

She bowed again, blushing slightly.  "You flatter me, truly.  As you must know by now, I'm not a maid by profession, though I have experience with the duties the job requires.  Arakawa-san and I are part an acting troupe."

"Of course," I said.  "Koizumi-kun was lucky to find all of you for his mysteries.  You really made both of them feel real."

She bowed once more.  "Again, you flatter me."

"Well, let me stop before you hurt your back.  It's good seeing you, but why on earth would you call me out here?"

Mori-san's expression darkened.  Her smile faded away.  She looked aside.  "That's a difficult question to answer quickly.  I should apologize for making you come all this way, but the day does grow late.  Perhaps we could speak some other time?"

"No, no," I said.  "I won't hear of that.  You called me out here; the least I can do is hear what you have to say."

"But Suzumiya-sama—"

"I insist!"

"I see," she said quietly.  "Very well.  Please, won't you sit with me?"

I brushed some dirt off the retaining wall beside Mori-san, but for some moments, we sat quietly, with only car horns and train whistles to break the silence.  Mori-san entwined her fingers together, squeezing them.  At last, a sound passed through her lips.  She spoke.

"As I said, I'm an actress," Mori-san began, "but I leave that persona on the stage or in my work.  Here, I'm just Mori Sonō.  Or I would be, but even now, I still have a job to perform.  Do you know what that job is?"

I don't.  How could I?  I've only seen you twice, Mori-san.  I don't know anything about you.

Her eyebrows rose in surprise.  "Of course.  That's only natural.  I suppose I'm a mystery to you after all.  What should I say?  When I moved here, I'd just landed my first big role as Ophelia, and I thought it'd be a stepping stone to bigger and better things, but here I am.  Four years later, I've not moved on from this place.  I've tried different things.  I did kabuki for a while, until my manager told me, in no uncertain terms, I wasn't cut out for it."

No?  But Mori-san, you're amazing!  You had all of us fooled on that island.  You slip into character like it's nothing.

"It wasn't my skill he criticized," she explained.  "On stage, in the midst of a performance, I'd fallen asleep from fatigue, collapsing against the set.  He assumed I lacked the stamina, that performing and rehearsal had taken a toll on my body, but that's not what really happened.  I couldn't tell him the truth because no one would believe me.  I'd become obsessed with someone."

A boyfriend?

"If only.  That would've been much easier to explain away.  No, Arakawa-san and I—he was my mentor at the time—we began to realize something:  that the world we live in is subject to whims and flights of fancy.  The impossible can become reality.  If you tell people this, and they'll look at you strangely.  They'll laugh at you.  They'll demand proof, but you—this doesn't surprise you, does it?"

Mori-san...what are you saying?  Who is this person you became obsessed with?  Tell me plainly.  Don't wiggle around with it.

She sighed.  "Of course.  That's a fair request.  You see, Arakawa-san and I discovered that, to one person's wishes, the world would respond."  She opened her leather bag and took out a dark blue folder, laying a large-print photograph on top.  The cherry tree above us was weak and losing its blossoms.  The ones in the photo weren't.  It was a shot of the park by the canal.  The cherry trees were in full colors.  Two boys sat on a bench, watching a battle waitress, an alien witch, and their director marvel at the falling pink petals.  "If she wished for cherry blossoms to bloom again, even in the cooling autumn, they'd oblige her.  They'd make her visions real."

What are you talking about?  That was a change in the weather.  This photo of yours doesn't mean anything.

"You're right.  We've never caught this person in the act of making the world fit her image of it.  We can only infer, based on what she wants and what transpires, whether her wishes have come true.  Believe me, Suzumiya-sama, that's not the only piece of evidence we have.  Look."  Another photo.  A flock of white pigeons congregated at a shrine.  "She found these birds too dull in their natural gray color.  She made their feathers white instead.  You remember, don't you?  You've been to this shrine before."

That's ridiculous.  What kind of creepy stalker are you?  Making up these stupid stories like you can convince me I'm something I'm not?  Get out of here.  All you're showing me is proof of someone's cruelty to animals, painting a flock of birds to suit their fancy.  You can't tell me I made it happen.  I didn't have anything to do with it!

"Just like you had nothing to do with making a fifty-yen coin into a hundred to quench your thirst?"

I bolted from my seat.  How the hell do you know about that?

"I know because we always thought it was just a matter of time.  I gave up on moving forward with acting.  I devoted my life to watching you, to studying you and preserving your mental state.  There are so few of us who believe, who know for a fact what power you have.  We watch because no one else will, because no one else would believe the world heeds the thoughts and feelings of a simple high-school girl."

I don't know who you are, and I don't care to know, all right?  Get away from me, you creepy freak, you deluded woman!

"Or what?"  She held out a third photo—the gate to school, with me and Kyon and Kunikida standing all around him, that boy on the ground.  "You'll strike me down like you did Taniguchi-kun?"

I shuddered.  Stop that.  That's a lie.  You hear me?  I didn't do that on purpose; it was an accident!

"You've been doing it for years!  You did it just a few days ago!  Look over there!"  She pointed.  "Look at that, the broken concrete, the crack in the ground two meters wide.  You threatened a boy with power you didn't know you had!"

How is that my fault?  I didn't know!  I didn't want anything like that to happen!

"But you did!  You must've!  Whatever you want but are too stubborn to admit, you make happen!  That's why you're dangerous.  That's why this has to stop.  You need to control this power, Suzumiya-sama.  You need to control it, control yourself, or shut it off.  I know you're a good person.  You don't want to hurt anyone, but in the back of our minds, we wish death or suffering on people all the time.  I'm not asking you to be inhumanly good and moral, but do the right thing.  You can't use these powers you have.  You can't make me and my friends keep watching you and babysitting you, waiting for the moment you'll destroy the world!  You must end it!  Shut off your powers and never use them again!"

Like I even know how to shut anything off!  Like I'd not use them!  Really?  Maybe you've been watching me, but it sounds like you don't know anything about who I am or how I think.  What I can do changes the reality of the world.  You'd have to be a fool to give that up, and you're a fool for asking me to!  I don't care how it's ruined your life; you did that to yourself!  Leave me alone and never come back, or I don't know what I'll do to you!

"You'll erase me."

I turned my back on her.  Traffic was heavy around the station.  Could I get away from her?  Could I just disappear and pop back into my room?

"Isn't that what happened to Asakura Ryōko?"

Asakura?  The old class rep?

"You made her disappear, didn't you?"

You have no idea what you're talking about.  She went to Canada or some nonsense.

"To a lonely prairie house in Manitoba?  A strange place for a Japanese family to suddenly move to.  You never really believed that fiction.  Look at me."

I stood my ground.

"Look at me, Suzumiya Haruhi, unless you're afraid of what I have to say!"

I'm not afraid, damn you.  I'm not.  I turned, facing her.  She had one more photo to show me:  a shot of wilderness, with nothing but flat grasses as far as the eye could see.

"This is where the Asakura house should be," she said.  "It doesn't exist.  It never has.  She was removed from your school.  Her records point to nowhere.  Now tell me—what did she do to you?  Did she insult you?  Did she make you angry?"

I never had anything against that girl!

"Didn't you?  Don't you know what she was doing in her last hour before she disappeared from this earth?  She sent a note to a friend of yours, that boy you're so close to—Kyon-kun, isn't it?"

I don't know anything about that!  If I'd known Kyon were meeting with a girl after school, I would've—

"You would've punished him?  And punished the girl, too?  That's a human reaction.  Those are human feelings of jealousy, possessiveness—"

That's not how I feel about him!

"But it is, isn't it?  How else can you explain it?  You knew what she would do.  You knew she'd confess to him.  You knew she was charming and friendly, both of which you weren't.  You knew she'd win him from you, so you erased her.  You made it so she disappeared.  With your powers, you changed her records so no one would miss her.  And the best part?  You'd never even know you'd done it."

No...it's not true!  It can't be!  I didn't know about Asakura's note, and even if I did, I would never—

"You would never?  You'd never send a poor boy to the hospital by sending a lightning bolt through his heart?  You'd never smack a girl on the back of her head while she was drunk and helpless, hoping to make her contact lens fly out?  I do know who you are; do you know anything about yourself?"

I balled my fists.  I trembled.  You know what, Mori-san?  Fuck you!  I've not done anything wrong!

"Believe what I say or erase me."  She packed up her back, rising.  "I don't want to be in this world anymore, a world where I'm afraid your petty whims will twist everything I've ever known.  I want to focus on my acting again, but you won't let me do that.  Stop using this power.  Stop before you hurt someone again."

She bowed once more—a meaningless, insulting gesture after what she said—and she trotted along the crosswalk without a word.  I watched her go with a heavy glare.  Damn you, Mori Sonō.  I won't forget this.  I'll get you back!  I'll—

I'll make you disappear.

If I didn't stop myself, I'd make you disappear.  I'd prove everything you said about me absolutely right.

What am I?

What have I become?

Did I really make someone...go away?

This isn't how it's supposed to be.  It's supposed to be fun and exciting and incredible!  People shouldn't get hurt.  They shouldn't get blanked out like they were brushed over with correction fluid, never to be seen again.  I won't do that.  I shouldn't do that.  I can't...

"Young Lady?"

It was a stranger, a businessman.  He put down his briefcase and looked at me with a puzzled expression.

"Are you all right?" he asked me.  "Why are you crying?"

I'm not crying.  The water's just coming out of my eyes—that's all.

"Here."  He offered a white handkerchief from his breast pocket.  "You can keep it if you like.  I don't mind."

"NO!" I cried.  I batted that thing out of his hand.  Get away from me!  Are you stupid?  Don't you value your life?  You have to get away from me!  You have to get away before I get angry, before I erase you without thinking about it!  Don't you understand?  GET AWAY!

He scampered off in a hurry, nearly forgetting his briefcase and clutching his hat so it wouldn't blow away.  I left too.  Water clouding my sight, I ran through an intersection on the road home.  I burst through the door and kicked off my shoes, running upstairs before Mother could say a word.  I locked the bedroom door behind me and threw myself on my bed, and the tears soaked into the pillowcase.  It wasn't for me; it was for everyone else.  Stay away, Mother.  Stay away, Father.  Stay away, my friends in the SOS Brigade.  If something inside me gets angry with you, if it decides you should never be, I don't know how to stop it.  I don't know how...

I don't know how.

I don't know how.

[Brian]

A response, on my iPad, with all the spelling errors that entails:

http://www.chez-vrolet.net/pipermail/ffml/2011-September/003275.html

Apologies, Mr. Clark; as per Sarsaparilla's comments, I just need to see a character that powerful (and aware) be more responsible with it.  That and even if she has at times become more likable (very briefly), she doesn't feel IC much of the time.  You have an interesting story.

But....

Your protagonist keeps slipping into a hateful, easily despicable creature with an utter lack of redeeming qualities.  Just like she isn't in the canon.  I can't tolerate her any further, and believe me ... I tried.

Well.

Good luck, and I'm sorry again.

[Arakawa]

Okay, this was fairly concrete and didn't raise any 'oh my god what is the author even trying to say here' issues for me like the last one. (Incidentally, neither did the earlier chapters when I went back and read them.)

The below C&C is somewhat sleep-deprived and all over the place. Just a heads up.

Hammering in the complaint made by Brian because I had it *before* reading his disappointed rant: the very ending of the previous chapter (unless you changed it) made it very obvious that the person throwing the spear was Yuki. Since the reader can put two and two together, and this is first-person narration, I spent much of this chapter wondering why Haruhi kept thinking 'mysterious hero' when she had all the observations on hand necessary to determine that it was in fact Yuki. It makes Haruhi seem sort of thick. Since Haruhi isn't thick, I basically interpreted it as a glaring continuity error.

Another moment during the chapter that's similar is when Kyon cites Mori, Arakawa-san, and Tamaru brothers as espers, when he lists it that way I sort of wonder why Haruhi doesn't immediately consider appending Koizumi to the list.

And at the same time she takes a wild leap and starts insisting with absolute certainty that Kyon is a slider.

Yeah, right. Let's just say this hero had a grasshopper mask while we're at it!

Arbitrary personal preference: use "I might as well say the hero had..." instead.

"Like I said, are these real people we're people we're talking about?"

Repetition: "real people we're people we're talking..." should have been "real people we're talking...".

I'd figured it'd be pointless get him involved until I had something concrete.

Should be "getting him involved".

That's how I discovered the Light Music Club was a group of five girls who wanted to drink tea and eat cookies all the time and thought watching a music anime was enough to learn to be musicians. But that's not the important thing.

Don't write something and then turn around and say it's not important, especially if it's not important!! (Unless you're writing Mikuru-POV or something so she might always, um, oops... I'm not doing this C&C properly, am I? -- see what I did there?) Since you're not writing Mikuru-POV: If it's that unimportant but you're that attracted to the idea of showing what Haruhi thinks of 'K-On!', my instinct would be to drop the second sentence and put the first in parentheses.

looking for potential members and a place to make ours.

Awkward: "a place to make ours".

So Everything in the world is made out of data.

Capitalization: "So everything in the world..."

Honestly, it sounded a bit like Mother's bargaining habits. One time, we'd gone to Okinawa, and she wanted to buy a shirt to take back home. From three thousand yen to start with, she haggled the vendor down to one, scolding him for everything from shoddy workmanship to the scraggly shadow of his beard. I guessed two thousand yen was what he'd be willing to pay to make her stop. Everything has a price.

Earlier you had her absent-mindedly writing a Sailor Moon ripoff. Bipolar any? There's probably an interesting character buried here.

Since Haruhi's mom gets dribbled out like this over bite-size chunks it's hard to make the reader think of her as a character. If you want to seize the opportunity, might not hurt to go back and give the parents a more evident introduction so I'd have known all along to keep watching for tidbits about them. I only figured out that I could mentally index these things into a character description on re-reading.

... I'm making the best case assumption here, that you have actual characters in mind. Worst case is you're just pulling these off the top of your head because they illustrate story points. That's... not actually a bad thing. You can still go back and assemble these pieces into an actual character with interesting little contradictions.

he began early that morning

Wait, it's morning now? The last time point being mentioned was talking through the night, so it should probably be something that indicates that it's now morning, instead of 'that morning' (which we talked about already).

*reads below*

Asakura would be expecting us bright and early, so I called home to Mother, telling her I'd stay the night at Yuki's. That Kyon would stay the night too she didn't need to know. Some less wholesome people might think that two girls and a boy all alone in the same apartment a recipe for indecent behavior.

Spoiler: ShowHide

I happen to know that "less wholesome people" includes the entire Model UN organizing committee in New York (two boys and a girl in the instance I have in mind), but that's a completely different story. If we end up together in a bar somehow I'll tell it to you over a couple of beers.

Oh, I get it! You got the sequence of events muddled here, because it ended up looking like

• they talk into the night
• that morning (okay) Kyon bla bla bla
• Haruhi calls her mom (we jumped back in time here)
• You finally introduce 'that morning' properly

It's out of order.

Okay, I didn't expect him to keep an entire alien race from me, but that didn't change who he was, just what I realized he was capable of

Tense suggestion: how about "I hadn't expected him to keep an entire alien race hidden from me"? Or maybe 'be keeping' but that makes me think 'beekeeping' for some reason. Sleep deprivation any? Or "I didn't expect him to have been keeping...", actually, seems to work well.

That's not a bad idea. I took the full cup and poured it straight down my throat, piping hot. That burning sensation unknotted my stomach and made it just a bit easier to breathe.

That's kind of a reckless way to drink tea. Though, I can see Haruhi doing it, not to calm down, but as an antidote to boredom. She might have to reconstitute the inside of her throat afterwards.

Do Japanese people even brew their tea to be particularly hot? The hottest tea I've ever had was brewed by people from Ukraine and actually burned the inside of my mouth before I diluted it, although the correct thing to do there is of course to drink it out of a saucer... anyhow, the moment I saw 'piping hot tea' my instinct was to think back to the frankly traumatic experience I had that time. Cultural tea-drinking habits aside, I think Yuki would try to get the temperature of her tea just right.

Of course, if the reader instead thinks the tea you get at a coffee shop is 'piping hot', then obviously they won't have any problem with this passage.

Eh, it's just tea. I think this is a very personal sticking point that you can just ignore.

There was a low, warbling sound. The world went black.

Slider-Yutaka: "Did Asakura just manage to kidnap a self-aware omnipotent being in just 10 words of story time? Whatever she used, I want one of those!"

Let's not get excited about the possibilities, about thing you shouldn't do.

Should be "things you shouldn't do".

I know it was an alien planet, but as I walked over the rough, jagged surface of that yellow world, I had to wonder—just who would want to live on a rock like this? With acid clouds flying overhead and enough heat to make a summer day on Okinawa seem frigid by comparison, you'd have to be crazy to want to stay here. I mean, I pulled from my pocket a ticket stub from the ball game yesterday and tossed it. As soon as it left my hand, it burst into flame and withered like a dead leaf. These helicopter aliens should come to their senses and build a rocketship to get off this rock as fast as they can.

Boring, ordinary human type thoughts. The angle you've vaguely touched on that I find interesting is more along the following lines:

• Alien planets look monotonous and boring to human eyes.
• However, they're just as complex as interesting as human planets, if not more. You just have to know what you're looking for.
• Haruhi eventually realizes this fact. You could even have her learn to interpret what it is she's seeing exactly at the same time she learns the aliens' language.

The SOS Brigade is here.

Though, technically, only one of the members actually showed up today.

So, I'm sorry, Taniguchi.

I'm going to succumb to the temptation to echo Brian's heckling because it should be easy to just get rid of this or replace it with a line that actually makes sense. What does Haruhi talking to aliens have to do with Haruhi injuring Taniguchi? Is it somehow going to hurt him even further by doing it? Actually, would Haruhi not using her powers in this kind of situation somehow excuse what she did to Taniguchi? If Taniguchi heard the apology he'd be all "what the hell, Suzumiya, you expect me to give a damn whether or not you talk to aliens? Just don't freaking strike people down with freaking lightning! Okay??"

If anything she should be apologizing to herself for binding herself with arbitrary limitations that she has to break every five minutes and then feel bad about it for no reason. Heckling over.

It's fluttering wavered.

Should be "Its fluttering wavered."

I'm not called Rooter.

I'm calling you Rooter, so you are.

Thank you! For a brief moment we get someone who's actually Haruhi.

find a way to get it to you in a way that this planet won't incinerate

Awkward repetition. Suggest "find a way to get it to you so this planet doesn't incinerate it".

After all, you have to establish there are compatible pieces first.

Missing a word somewhere. "whether there are" or "that there are", or just "establish that they have" could all work.

These 'Piggies' are just the beginning. There are millions upon millions of planets with life, and the Integrated Data Sentient Entity is all too willing to help you visit them, to give you the opportunity to live the life of an adventurer, the greatest explorer humanity will ever know.

Waaaiit... your Asakura is negotiating this from the wrong angle. Why does Haruhi need the IDSE to take her to alien planets? It's not like she can't just follow that opportunity on her own. The real threat they're holding against her is that Asakura will be released on another rampage. I'm thinking of a scene like this:

Spoiler: ShowHide

Haruhi stumbles drunk out of a pretty sweet party.

Asakura pulls up in a bright, shiny taxi.

Asakura: "Here, take this taxi."

Haruhi (slurred): "You kiddin' me? I can't take a taxi!

Asakura: "See those pedestrians? If you don't take the IDSE's glorified taxi service and submit to our alien probing, I'm going to run them over."

Haruhi stumbles into the taxi, utterly defeated by this argument. Asakura drives her home, merrily lecturing her on the finer points of defensive driving the whole way. Haruhi finally stumbles into her apartment.

Haruhi (slurred): "**, I could've just teleported into bed and saved a whole bunch of time."

I'm going to be timing (in hundreds of words) how long it takes Haruhi to figure that out in your fic and at least lampshade it for us so we know she's not being taken in by arguments that a toddler could see through.

but will you really forsake the opportunity to see Rooter-san again?

Again, Asakura seems to be using Haruhi's low self-esteem and the fact that the Idiot Ball keeps Haruhi from realizing that she doesn't need Asakura to provide an interplanetary taxi service. This is a shaky basis for negotiations.

I guess the other angle they could use, actually, of Asakura constantly engaging in terrorism that Haruhi has to clean up after, isn't very promising either. Logically that's just a ticking time bomb since if Haruhi develops her powers and Asakura keeps pissing her off, Haruhi will eventually get tempted to go all Fury of a Time Lord on the IDSE. I'm guessing they don't want that to happen. Your fic actually makes me tempted to think that the front line interfaces are presently dicking around with Haruhi on their own initiative, while the decision process back in data space has reached complete deadlock and so the IDSE as a whole has no clue what to do.

I mean, the fact that they seem (?) to have solicited (?) the services of some human named Beckett-san to do what they can theoretically do themselves (? if I got the gist of that scene right ?) is already abnormal as all hell.

Have you considered the "do you want to be friends with Yuki" negotiation angle, by the way?

I learned a lot more about my powers and what I could do on that journey back to Earth.

... and Haruhi could probably travel between stars faster than Asakura could. If anything Asakura should be trying to prod Haruhi to come up with some new trick for interstellar travel at this point.

So dour you can be now.

Like Yoda I sound all of a sudden. Was that intentional?

I'm getting tired of people doing that—leaving without answering any real questions.

Wouldn't Haruhi suspect that Beckett just moved her to a similar but parallel universe or something? After all, it's already been established she's on the lookout for sliders.

So you could add "abruptly kidnapping me whenever they find it convenient" to that complaint.

Guess that's it. Hope you can use all the complaints that are useful and ignore all the ones that aren't.

Unrelated note: analyzing this chapter actually broke writer's block on a fic idea I sort of had kicking around. Hopefully I'll actually manage to post the first instalment of that later today!

EDIT (added later that morning): Great, and now Brian is hung over. I'm going to let myself go now and sort of rant below based on his objections, ignore anything I say that might be hurtful since I still really like your fic. Poking it apart, though, is going to help me with understanding the original story, among other things.

Regarding Brian's rant, I think Poor Communication Kills really killed him. (We get enough of that nonsense in Hollywood chick flicks.) Don't worry, you're still at 50% there since everyone was excited about the premise to begin with. Maybe (just speculating) the most immediate problem with Kyon's coyness in this chapter is that it serves mostly as pointless padding to delay Yuki's reveal as an alien (which should have been the very beginning of the chapter, with barely any impact to the flow of the story). e.g. Haruhi could just have saw Yuki in the apartment, said "Oh, she's the alien", reconsidered how she'd been treating her, saved a few hundred words, and been spared the indignity of fainting. I mean, she's a vigorous, athletic girl, it's actually a bit jarring to have her faint like that. Maybe if she'd just been in really intense personal danger (like: trapped with psycho Asakura in sealed room dodging spears being thrown directly at her for several hours) or if you'd emphasized much more earlier on that she was really out of her depth in the stadium and overwhelmed with adrenaline or something at being in the middle of an emergency, she might be so worn out afterwards that a sudden revelation causes her to faint but here... it's just one of many possible ways to segue into her thoughts regarding Yuki, and it's not the smoothest.

I say the padding in your fic is pointless because enough interesting stuff happens that you could still centre the story around it even with substantial deflation of the soap opera. The word count might shrink somewhat, which might be hurtful to Authorial Pride but actually eases the telling.

Actually, there is *one* issue which really bugs me in retrospect, which is that

Spoiler: ShowHide

Haruhi decided in the last chapter that she wanted nothing to do with her powers, and then nearly wound up letting a stadium of people go splat because to save them would be Crossing The Line which she just drew herself a couple thousand words of story ago. Which is a really heavy-handed tearjerker. The other "Haruhi arbitrarily restricts herself" stuff I could breeze through and just sort of ignore.

It's not so much an Idiot ball here as it is an Arbitrary Morality ball. Particularly arbitrary since in the books it's made clear Haruhi's powers are, on some level, an extension of her personality. They exist whenever it's convenient for whatever scheme she's undertaking and especially when she doesn't care about the consequences. Think back to how Kyon stopped Endless Eight -- well, at least that's one theory I'm considering. (It's implied in the most recent books that her powers start 'settling down' as she becomes more mature, which I guess is easy to mistake for a heavy-handed application of Growing Up Sucks but isn't *quite* that in my opinion.)

Now I know in your fanfic that you're just taking it as generic vaguely defined omnipotence, but given the books it feels a bit jarring to have Haruhi clam up just as she finds out about her powers. By the above logic, if Haruhi started to feel qualms about changing things, her powers would also clam up as a result, and it would lead into some kind of sappy Believe in Yourself thing where she has to be comfortable with her own hurricane-like personality (tempered with the maturity needed to Use It For Good) in order for her powers to return and be able to save the stadium of people or whatever. I don't think that's quite what you wanted to end up with... although in that case Kyon would have a more positive role to play in actually supporting her as she tries to regain her powers, as opposed to producing arbitrary conflict and romantic misunderstanding.

Your fic... it's like if you took Sasaki with her highly specific notions of when it is right and wrong to interfere (the nature of whose powers actually reflects this fact in the books!) and arbitrarily put her in Haruhi's position. Which, actually... oh wait, that was being considered in the books, wasn't it? And Sasaki hated that idea. You know those fic ideas being kicked around introducing a backstory where Sasaki actually discarded the cosmic powers in one contrived way or another (possibly by splitting herself in two people) and the powers ended up with Haruhi? That's another thing I might easily imagine your Haruhi, the way you're writing her, to be on the point of doing, if there was anyone who even looked remotely like a more responsible figure.

I don't know, I'm really conflicted about this all of a sudden. As I said, I'm going to go write my own fic to work it out for myself now.

Note to self: I'm going to make extra sure in the fic that people mostly trust each other. It will save everyone a lot of time.

[Muphrid]

I'm glad to have an extra opinion on this aside from Brian's because his alone left me uncertain what magnitude of revision should be done.  With your feedback largely coming from the same direction, Arakawa Seijio, I'm convinced that a rewrite of the chapter is needed to get across what I want to get across and without the problems that have clearly detracted from that.

Thank you both.

[Brian]

That's how I discovered the Light Music Club was a group of five girls who wanted to drink tea and eat cookies all the time and thought watching a music anime was enough to learn to be musicians. But that's not the important thing.

Don't write something and then turn around and say it's not important, especially if it's not important!! (Unless you're writing Mikuru-POV or something so she might always, um, oops... I'm not doing this C&C properly, am I? -- see what I did there?) Since you're not writing Mikuru-POV: If it's that unimportant but you're that attracted to the idea of showing what Haruhi thinks of 'K-On!', my instinct would be to drop the second sentence and put the first in parentheses.

My issue with the vast majority of the references (Portal, Enders Game, etc.) is:

The subject matter is far too serious to be joking about, IMO.  It (to me) makes the narrative/narrator feel even more callous/uncaring by throwing 'jokes' in this chilling/depressing exploration of an omnipotent sociopath who rejects empathy.

Only the Madoka one really worked for me, and that because it was started by someone else and felt like a real conversation.

Of course, if the reader instead thinks the tea you get at a coffee shop is 'piping hot', then obviously they won't have any problem with this passage.

Eh, it's just tea. I think this is a very personal sticking point that you can just ignore.

This is a canon trait of Haruhi.

And tea is pretty much 'to taste'; they don't take it (quite) as seriously as the Brits, outside of tea ceremony.  It easily can be quite hot!

Again, Asakura seems to be using Haruhi's low self-esteem and the fact that the Idiot Ball keeps Haruhi from realizing that she doesn't need Asakura to provide an interplanetary taxi service. This is a shaky basis for negotiations.

What can Ryouko do that Yuki can't?

And even Haruhi should know that.  I'm kind of at a loss for that.

I'm glad to have an extra opinion on this aside from Brian's because his alone left me uncertain what magnitude of revision should be done.  With your feedback largely coming from the same direction, Arakawa Seijio, I'm convinced that a rewrite of the chapter is needed to get across what I want to get across and without the problems that have clearly detracted from that.

I'm not really happy with my commentary and how this is working out; I'm sorry I couldn't enjoy your story more, and regardless, that last chapter was just too painful for me to keep doing this to myself.  Too much whiplash.

On the technical side of things, and in terms of research, you're doing great.  Your writing is really good.

I ... just think your grasp of Haruhi lacks her humanity.  I'm sorry about that.  I assure you; I wouldn't have been so vehemently bitter (and then got drunk for the first time in five years) if this story didn't really reach me.

I really did want to like it. -_-

Anyway -- best of luck; I look forward to whatever you write next; I don't feel I can provide anything else constructive here.

[Arakawa]

@Murphid: Just 'Arakawa' should be fine, actually. Or Arakawa-kun or whatever if you want to indicate my position on the food chain. If you're curious, my screen name is a severely mangled version of my real (non-Japanese) name.

Like I said, even severely flawed as it is, this fic is extremely thought-provoking and pushed me to try to figure out what my own perspective on these characters is -- i.e. I didn't just think it was flawed, I was curious to know why I thought it was flawed. I guess Brian didn't get that benefit out of it since he already has a clear picture of Haruhi in his head, and he just immediately sees all of the places where your portrayal diverges in ways that he finds unsatisfactory.

I think the first two chapters were really snappy and the rest of the fic is in the doldrums because after the initial setup you're filling up space throwing contrived problems at someone who, logically speaking, should be much better at handling them. None of these problems and misunderstandings seem to be essential to the ideas you're presenting. For example Haruhi could have just gone and saved the stadium, while still hating Asakura for forcing her into, say, using her powers faster than she felt ready to develop them, so that theme is still examined.

Right now I'm actually writing a self-aware Haruhi who's *the opposite* of your version in a ton of important respects. This isn't a belittling of your vision, Murphid, rather the opposite, since reading your Chapter 4 helped me clarify a lot of things.

Now to deal with Brian's comment.

@Brian: Wait, you got drunk *because* of the fic? I guess I had you pegged correctly (ever since 'Downfall') as someone who really takes this stuff to heart.

And tea is pretty much 'to taste'; they don't take it (quite) as seriously as the Brits, outside of tea ceremony.  It easily can be quite hot!

Regarding my Ukrainian bad tea day: I think the reason Slavic tea can get that hot is because the original technology used to heat the water -- before the days of electricity -- was completely different. Brits (and by extension North American colonists) had an open fire that they put the kettle on top of. I assume the Japanese do something similar. But Slavs used to use a samovar, which is just a fancy term for a tank of water with a pipe through the middle jammed full of burning tinder. The water absorbs *all* of the heat from the fire, not just what goes up top, and inside a sealed tank it can get to a pretty vigorous boil without evaporating at all fast. So piping hot in a samovar means pretty damn hot, as in 'kind of unusual to be boiling it that hard in a kettle'.

So I guess even when they stopped using samovars they (and some of their descendants) got used to the idea that their tea water has to be that hot.