[Haruhi] Sympathy

[Oroboro]

Stuff

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I don't still understand why Nagato tried to stab Kyon in the prologue, or even which Nagato that was.

I was never too clear on this myself, but I attributed it to something like - As soon as Kyon gets the power, it goes haywire, with every stray thought and emotion going out of control, and he has to forcibly reign it in. The Nagato was just a byproduct of that, or something.

Haruhi's reaction to the revelation doesn't appear to make any sense in the light of things she knows at that point, doesn't feel at all like Haruhi to me, and actually negates all the sympathy that she had managed to gain in my eyes during the story. I can't see what gives her the permission - or even reason when one considers the prologue - to slap Kyon on the face in anger, and that she does it anyway suggests that she's actually a worse person than before.

I thought it meshed well with Haruhi, but that's my opinion. As for the slap -- Kyon putting Haruhi through all of that was still kind of a dick move, even if it all turned out better in the end, and it's clear he regrets making such a hasty decision and feels pretty terrible about it. And Haruhi regrets the slap pretty quickly too, even if he did kind of deserve it. At least, that's the way I see things.

I can't understand Kyon's rationale for making the alternate!Nagato a special case based on the events of Disappearance. This Nagato here is neither that Nagato nor the real one, and having her around won't provide any solace to either.

He probably wants to avoid a http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DreamApocalypse  .

Anyway, I really enjoyed the story overall, and am glad I got to read it. It started off a little slow and confusing, but grew into something pretty awesome. I laughed my ass off when Kyon started re-narrating the novels. (God, he must've been talking for hours.)

I could probably say more, but my brain seems to be failing me at the moment. Great job, or something. Let's go with that.

[Arakawa]

Sorry for being distracted away from commenting on the latter part of the writing process. I wouldn't worry that much about the technical stuff of the universes and Haruhi's powers and what not -- the questions being raised are prominent enough to add significant tension to the final chapter, but whatever inconsistencies you're worried about are buried in the background rather than being immediately obvious. In general, the epilogue does a good job of directing the casual reader's attention away from the purely technical questions (which could probably spawn a discussion thread equivalent to reams of paper before they were resolved to satisfaction) and towards the characters. Which is, after all, the point of the ultimate payoff.

To address one concern of Brian's, Haruhi backsliding in the prologue, even relative to novel 11, is (cosmic irony) the one thing which didn't initially confuse/irk me when I first saw the story, since it was both obvious and essential to the setup, and thus worthy of just suspending disbelief.

The ending turned out to be a neat thought experiment -- things don't work out as neatly as in other Haruhi realizes her powers fics that I read, since Kyon and Haruhi are now getting thrown into this whole other dilemma...

So, congratulations on persevering to finish this!

Haruhi's suggestion that all the Endless Eight episodes were actually separate universes has potentially very serious ramifications, depending on exactly what their relation is to the base universe, but this issue is not explored at all, and both Haruhi and Kyon talk about it as if it were a good thing.

I'm guessing they're considering it preferable to a situation where... let me put it this way, having created 15,000 extra universes is probably preferable to having erased 15,000 universes (or, less extremely, having erased everyone's memories 15,000 times).

[Halbarad]

I don't still understand why Nagato tried to stab Kyon in the prologue, or even which Nagato that was.

This... didn't seem that oblique to me, although I do discuss these with Brian a fair bit on IRC so I might be a little biased. It's original!Nagato, and the IDSE detected the shift in control of the powers and is acting to try to eliminate Kyon before he can take them out (since he's already declared himself in open opposition to them). I read it as the IDSE assuming direct control of Yuki's interface/body and attempting to kill Kyon with it, and Kyon reacts by severing their control and returning Yuki to where she was.

Haruhi's reaction to the revelation doesn't appear to make any sense in the light of things she knows at that point, doesn't feel at all like Haruhi to me, and actually negates all the sympathy that she had managed to gain in my eyes during the story. I can't see what gives her the permission - or even reason when one considers the prologue - to slap Kyon on the face in anger, and that she does it anyway suggests that she's actually a worse person than before.

I... tend to disagree here. Haruhi is not an entirely rational person (neither is Kyon) and she's just been through a hell of an experience, which she can lay solely at the feet of Kyon - so she simply reacts out of anger without stopping to consider all the ramifications or getting all the facts. That actually seems very much like Haruhi to me - going off half-cocked is definitely something I see as a part of her character.

Once she stops to consider and -does- get the full story (that Kyon wasn't just sitting back and snickering at her floundering through his life), she does feel remorse for hitting him, which is where that initial growth is shown. She's better than she started out, but she's by no means perfect.

I can't understand Kyon's rationale for making the alternate!Nagato a special case based on the events of Disappearance. This Nagato here is neither that Nagato nor the real one, and having her around won't provide any solace to either.

I'd again chalk this up to him simply acting irrationally. "I destroyed Nagato before, I don't want to do it again." It doesn't logically make any difference, you're right, but he's not acting out of logic here - he's horrified at the thought of doing it again, and simply wants to avoid it no matter what - whether it makes sense or not.

Haruhi's suggestion that all the Endless Eight episodes were actually separate universes has potentially very serious ramifications, depending on exactly what their relation is to the base universe, but this issue is not explored at all, and both Haruhi and Kyon talk about it as if it were a good thing.

I don't really see them viewing it as a good thing? Haruhi's using it more as a way to relate to Kyon's situation, and because of that they both admit that they've screwed up and have some work to do to fix it. The only 'good' part of it is that it's a common ground between them, where they both feel like they can easily understand the other's motivations.

[Brian]

I think we can drop spoilers now.

Re: the Traveller thing. The 15,000 worlds just seemed to resonate with that for some reason. Can't put my finger on why.

Huh.  No, that was a reference to Endless Eight.

I thought that Haruhi's thought process involving splitting her powers rather than getting rid of them flowed naturally. It was indeed a suspenseful moment when I thought that Haruhi might be giving up the entirety of her powers, but I was also a little lost. Granted, re-reading it you can't really make it much clearer without hammering the audience in the head with it by having Kyon just outright state "No Haruhi, don't give up your power!" which would just be heavy handed.

Alright.  Then I'll let that one go.

Regarding Mikuru, I knew that you were going for a "Kyon tells Haruhi the contents of the books" stuff, but I was perhaps expecting some self censoring there. It makes more sense though that he's honest about everything, rather than trying to downplay what he felt at the time.

I feel as though it was a double-edged blade. It's nearly impossible in this situation to make both Haruhi and Mikuru sympathetic to the same degree, and because Haruhi is the more important character she honestly should receive the sympathy. For Mikuru it would take Haruhi and Kyon both divorcing her from her alt!self which is something they are incapable of doing since neither they nor we know just how much of Mikuru moe-moe is an act and to what extent she is being manipulated by herself and others around her.

Right, so ... I'm not entirely sure of what to do.

Regarding Asakura. Perhaps even just a line, something like "If I'd have known that doing this would have brought in Asakura (or just 'that deranged girl') again" sometime during his first apology it might go a long way towards both enforcing his guilt over the situation and also giving just enough explanation as to why she showed up again without outright stating that it was something that Kyon honestly hadn't thought of.

I'm ... not certain?  I kind of feel that all of what you want spelled out is already implied heavily enough.  Ah--  Reviewers, in general, thoughts on this?  I'm not sure how to proceed.

[Oroboro]

Regarding Asakura. Perhaps even just a line, something like "If I'd have known that doing this would have brought in Asakura (or just 'that deranged girl') again" sometime during his first apology it might go a long way towards both enforcing his guilt over the situation and also giving just enough explanation as to why she showed up again without outright stating that it was something that Kyon honestly hadn't thought of.

I'm ... not certain?  I kind of feel that all of what you want spelled out is already implied heavily enough.  Ah--  Reviewers, in general, thoughts on this?  I'm not sure how to proceed.

My impression was that it was more of a mistake, and Kyon doesn't really know how to use the power all that well. (It's not like it comes with an instruction manual or anything.) Something like -- Gets angry, sets up the scenario, realizes "oh fuck, Asakura!", it's too late to change it, so he sets up a failsafe.

At least that's one way of looking at it.

[Halbarad]

Yeah, this strikes me as him making a broad stroke ('have Haruhi live through what I went through at the beginning of the year'), just with an extra failsafe that he'd jump in if she was in danger of getting hurt. I suspect that he wasn't even thinking about Asakura when he set the idea up.

[Brian]

The serious discussion at the center of the last chapter flows well, and ties most threads together, making the final scene a natural point to end the story. The story as a whole stays fairly well together, and is concise enough considering the intended scope.

Good to hear.

I don't still understand why Nagato tried to stab Kyon in the prologue, or even which Nagato that was.

Hal explains it exactly.  However, you weren't the only one to get tripped up by that.

Also, now that I look back, the idea that the IDSE could just 'take over' Yuki like that kind of diminishes the seeming independance she's worked for in the canon.  I think it's not problematic to drop that and just make the movement of the chair significant enough that Haruhi latches onto that as the 'obvious supernatural event'.

Haruhi's reaction to the revelation doesn't appear to make any sense in the light of things she knows at that point, doesn't feel at all like Haruhi to me, and actually negates all the sympathy that she had managed to gain in my eyes during the story. I can't see what gives her the permission - or even reason when one considers the prologue - to slap Kyon on the face in anger, and that she does it anyway suggests that she's actually a worse person than before.

O...oh....  Well--  Halbarad summarizes what I was intending with that.  My concern is that if Haruhi doesn't have some moment like that, she comes across as practically a saint.  She is human and has failings--  Otherwise, she's pretty much just the perfect being, and that really defeats the point of Haruhi and Kyon finding any sort of balance between them.

*sigh*

Um ... what about Haruhi winding up to slap him and catching herself before she does it?  Can that work?

I can't understand Kyon's rationale for making the alternate!Nagato a special case based on the events of Disappearance. This Nagato here is neither that Nagato nor the real one, and having her around won't provide any solace to either.

Kyon feels terrible about what he's done and doesn't want to hurt anyone else.  Yuki happened to be in the room when he was done dealing with Asakura and trying to take responsibility for his mistakes.

I can have Haruhi ask him directly why she was brought along--  I suppose it would play to Haruhi's chapter three reveal to be somewhat uncertain around this Yuki, so she could even be slightly wary.  Kyon could then stutteringly try and explain that he's hurt versions of her in the past, and wanted to make sure that this one wasn't hurt, too.

Is that sufficient?

Haruhi's suggestion that all the Endless Eight episodes were actually separate universes has potentially very serious ramifications, depending on exactly what their relation is to the base universe, but this issue is not explored at all, and both Haruhi and Kyon talk about it as if it were a good thing.

Er--  Sorry, you may be reading a bit too much into that.  It's more that Haruhi doesn't like the idea of erasing people.  Even if it was just time being reset and they weren't alternate worlds, the hope was that they could find a way to go back (the power has no limitations) and turn each of those 'erased' worlds into their own separate copies that just go their own ways from that point on.

Elaborating on this too much raises more questions (does that mean this story's events happen in each of those worlds?  Do each of them go back and do the same thing, making n-1 new universes per iteration of the loop?  Are these other universes aware of the one?).

I want to end on the most optimistic note possible, where Haruhi and Kyon's resolve to fix the 'damage they've done' represents their resolve to be and work together.  The goal was to make it much more obvious here (as compared to, say, Hot Air), that Haruhi and Kyon love one-another (and both understand it) without simply declaring it.  (Well, that was one goal, anyway.)

Are you able to accept that?  Is there some form of compromise we can reach where the story can have what we both believe is a positive ending?  Or -- both in real life and in the story -- am I just being too optimistic?

It is a positive thing that they decided to try and fix things together; however, it isn't at all self-evident that the solution is workable -- though addressing that properly would require another story at least as long as this one.

At least one positive thing in all of this.  But I think....  You didn't like it, did you?  Curses.  :(

I'll consider it less of a failure, then, since I at least managed not to squick you (much) this time.   -_-

Okay--  If it's not too much, if you read this far, presumably you believed there would be a satisfactory ending.  Can I ask what you might have expected that to be?  I don't know if I'm able to throw away what I've done here, but I would really like to know what you were hoping for.  At least it will make things clearer for me in the future.

I'm really sorry I'm so slow to figure all of this out.  >_<

Thanks for the reply; I appreciate your comments. :)



I need to rest; today was exhausting at work; I'm afraid this is all of the replies I can manage for today--  But if I hold true to form, I expect insomnia will kick me out of bed in an unreasonably short period to finish replying to the rest.  Thanks to everyone who's replied, since I realize I've been very poor about thanking people for their input!  I really appreciate it. ^_^

[sarsaparilla]

O...oh....  Well--  Halbarad summarizes what I was intending with that.  My concern is that if Haruhi doesn't have some moment like that, she comes across as practically a saint.  She is human and has failings--  Otherwise, she's pretty much just the perfect being, and that really defeats the point of Haruhi and Kyon finding any sort of balance between them.

Um ... what about Haruhi winding up to slap him and catching herself before she does it?  Can that work?

One of Haruhi's most obvious traits is that she gets very physical and rough when she's playful, and (on the surface) calm and measured when angry. Lashing out verbally could be expected (but still not justified), violence not so, especially considering that the events that she just went through are exactly what she was wishing in the prologue and thus the person who's ultimately responsible is she herself. I just can't see her even trying to hit Kyon, but I seem to be in a very tiny minority here, so please feel free to ignore anything that I say.

I can have Haruhi ask him directly why she was brought along--  I suppose it would play to Haruhi's chapter three reveal to be somewhat uncertain around this Yuki, so she could even be slightly wary.  Kyon could then stutteringly try and explain that he's hurt versions of her in the past, and wanted to make sure that this one wasn't hurt, too.

Is that sufficient?

It's not rational but it's understandable. Yes, Kyon might do that. ^_^

Elaborating on this too much raises more questions (does that mean this story's events happen in each of those worlds?  Do each of them go back and do the same thing, making n-1 new universes per iteration of the loop?  Are these other universes aware of the one?).

I want to end on the most optimistic note possible, where Haruhi and Kyon's resolve to fix the 'damage they've done' represents their resolve to be and work together.  The goal was to make it much more obvious here (as compared to, say, Hot Air), that Haruhi and Kyon love one-another (and both understand it) without simply declaring it.  (Well, that was one goal, anyway.)

Are you able to accept that?  Is there some form of compromise we can reach where the story can have what we both believe is a positive ending?

Oh, I do believe that the ending is positive, the only real issue is the slap that felt like ... a slap on the face, to be honest. The rest is that instead of a 'happy' ending it's more like "we've messed up badly and aren't even sure in which ways exactly, but let's at least try to fix things from now on -- together". I was just suspecting that the mess is rather more severe than the ending would suggest.

[Muphrid]

So I came into this with a bit of a different expectation.  The prologue is clear--that Kyon has conscious control of Haruhi's powers before things get Freaky Friday'd and all.  Originally, I didn't process all of that, and I had the conception that Haruhi had set all this up instead of Kyon.  Granted, Kyon knows Haruhi's significance and is actually in a position to exact this sort of lesson on her, so it's all more logical, but it feels a bit vindictive or perhaps even reckless of Kyon to put her through.  Such recklessness we expect from Haruhi.  From Kyon, it comes off differently.

But I'm making issue out of my own misconception, so feel free to disregard that.  On to the actual story.

I did notice the slap on my first read through, and I felt a bit torn about it.  Has Haruhi learned anything, or hasn't she?  It may be the timing of it.  It comes right after Haruhi seems to forgive or understand Kyon, realizing he didn't play with powers.  She just jumps back into angry mode very quickly.

In the same vein, the kiss feels a little sudden also.  Haruhi realizes her attraction to Kyon, but it's disjointed from the action she takes based on it--there are bits in-between where she's hard on herself for not believing Kyon and justifies how he would give up trying to convince her of the truth.  I think, when these are put together, it feles like there should be one more step between realization and the kiss--a part where she fears that just as Kyon had given up telling her the truth, he gave up pursuing her, too?  Maybe not exactly that, but it would fit with what's there, and it gives Haruhi a more concrete reason to kiss him (hoping to find part of him that might love her back?).

Kyon seems a bit frazzled when he admits having erased Disappearance Land to Haruhi--or at least, too frazzled too quickly?  I'm not sure how to describe it.  His description that he "screwed up" before surprised me.  I do feel it's something he'd regret, but he's suggesting he made a mistake when I can't see how there were any other options.

Just out of curiosity, was there a particular bit you had in mind referring to flirting in 7?  I want to reread that part, but I'm not sure what it refers to.

"I'm not going to do anything stupid," I assure him, trying that smile again--  He settles almost instantly.  Yeah ... stupid power.  I bet without it clearing so many obstacles from my path, I would have learned that all it really took to reach him was just being freaking nice about things much sooner!  Come to think of it -- that's exactly what I was starting to realize just before running into Ryouko.

She seemed to refer to her as Asakura if only one name was called for in chapter six.

And ... Mikuru.  Mikuru's absolutely getting her personal space from me, from now on--  I want to learn more about who our Mikuru really is, just like the others.  With her, though....  With her it's probably going to be hard to be friends, considering that even Kyon admits it's hard to trust her future self.  Thinking of what her older self told Kyon, I guess she doesn't hang around us much in the future ... or Kyon changes a whole lot.

Or Kyon changes a lot?



All in all, though the ending requires a lot of careful thinking on Haruhi and Kyon's part, I think they come to a good solution.  My main concern, however, is that this predicament about doing right by many worlds only becomes known and is resolved in this chapter alone.  It's a logical conclusion to the story, but it doesn't feel like a thematic one.  I'm not sure what can be done about that, though.  It reminds me a little bit of what Arakawa had to say about The Coin's epilogue when it still had too much new stuff thrown in concerning older Haruhi.

That said, the most important thing is that Haruhi's learned something and come to an understanding with Kyon.  That was the overarching impetus, and it is resolved admirably.  I think this is a unique solution--sharing power--and that's a big strength of the ending.

[Brian]

One of Haruhi's most obvious traits is that she gets very physical and rough when she's playful, and (on the surface) calm and measured when angry. Lashing out verbally could be expected (but still not justified), violence not so, especially considering that the events that she just went through are exactly what she was wishing in the prologue and thus the person who's ultimately responsible is she herself. I just can't see her even trying to hit Kyon, but I seem to be in a very tiny minority here, so please feel free to ignore anything that I say.

Oh, insomnia.

Um, Sarsaparilla--  Is that Haruhi, or you, there?

Because Haruhi's reaction (as I percieved it) was not precisely calm or measured any time I can recall when she's been angry.  The most obvious was Sigh, naturally--  That's an angry Haruhi.  I can't....

...okay.  Not arguing the point.


Alright.  Haruhi doesn't tend to be violent.  (I see Muphrid disagreed with that aspect, too.)

Her reaction will be entirely verbal, then.  I'll need a bit to put together a new approach for that.  It's probably not a huge revision, but it's daunting enough at the moment I don't believe I'll be able to do it tonight.

It's not rational but it's understandable. Yes, Kyon might do that. ^_^

Okay.

Oh, I do believe that the ending is positive, the only real issue is the slap that felt like ... a slap on the face, to be honest. The rest is that instead of a 'happy' ending it's more like "we've messed up badly and aren't even sure in which ways exactly, but let's at least try to fix things from now on -- together". I was just suspecting that the mess is rather more severe than the ending would suggest.

As above, then.

[Brian]

I don't still understand why Nagato tried to stab Kyon in the prologue, or even which Nagato that was.

I was never too clear on this myself, but I attributed it to something like - As soon as Kyon gets the power, it goes haywire, with every stray thought and emotion going out of control, and he has to forcibly reign it in. The Nagato was just a byproduct of that, or something.

Yeah -- that'll be removed in the next draft.


Huh.  I'm making a 4Kids version of the fic -- all the violence removed.

Ryouko: All of it?  :D
All of the unjustified violence anyway.
Ryouko: >_<

Anyway, I really enjoyed the story overall, and am glad I got to read it. It started off a little slow and confusing, but grew into something pretty awesome. I laughed my ass off when Kyon started re-narrating the novels. (God, he must've been talking for hours.)

Glad you enjoyed it--  Thanks for the comments.

[Brian]

Sorry for being distracted away from commenting on the latter part of the writing process.

Entirely understandable; when inspiration hits me, the chapters can come very quickly.

I wouldn't worry that much about the technical stuff of the universes and Haruhi's powers and what not -- the questions being raised are prominent enough to add significant tension to the final chapter, but whatever inconsistencies you're worried about are buried in the background rather than being immediately obvious. In general, the epilogue does a good job of directing the casual reader's attention away from the purely technical questions (which could probably spawn a discussion thread equivalent to reams of paper before they were resolved to satisfaction) and towards the characters. Which is, after all, the point of the ultimate payoff.

Probably, yeah.  All of which is moot given Haruhi's power doesn't really have limits, anyway.  At least, that we know of.

The ending turned out to be a neat thought experiment -- things don't work out as neatly as in other Haruhi realizes her powers fics that I read, since Kyon and Haruhi are now getting thrown into this whole other dilemma...

Not as neatly?  Do you mean closing with the note of, "still work to do"?

I'm alright with that if the most critical character relationships (the main focal point, here) work well enough.

Haruhi's suggestion that all the Endless Eight episodes were actually separate universes has potentially very serious ramifications, depending on exactly what their relation is to the base universe, but this issue is not explored at all, and both Haruhi and Kyon talk about it as if it were a good thing.

I'm guessing they're considering it preferable to a situation where... let me put it this way, having created 15,000 extra universes is probably preferable to having erased 15,000 universes (or, less extremely, having erased everyone's memories 15,000 times).

That's what I was aiming for, yes.  I'll see if I can try to make that a bit clearer without skirting too close to that technical nightmare I don't really want the story to descend into.

Thanks for the commentary, Arakawa.

[Brian]

My impression was that it was more of a mistake, and Kyon doesn't really know how to use the power all that well. (It's not like it comes with an instruction manual or anything.) Something like -- Gets angry, sets up the scenario, realizes "oh fuck, Asakura!", it's too late to change it, so he sets up a failsafe.

At least that's one way of looking at it.

Hmm.  Except there's no such thing as 'too late' with that power.  Hal has it right (naturally, because we discussed this a lot in IRC, so he has something of an information bias as to my intentions):

Yeah, this strikes me as him making a broad stroke ('have Haruhi live through what I went through at the beginning of the year'), just with an extra failsafe that he'd jump in if she was in danger of getting hurt. I suspect that he wasn't even thinking about Asakura when he set the idea up.

So -- I will have Kyon be clearer about this between chapters six and seven.  I thought the 'failsafe' line was fairly clear, but more clarity probably wouldn't hurt.

(This thread is becoming my 'revision to-do' list....)

[Brian]

So I came into this with a bit of a different expectation.  The prologue is clear--that Kyon has conscious control of Haruhi's powers before things get Freaky Friday'd and all.  Originally, I didn't process all of that, and I had the conception that Haruhi had set all this up instead of Kyon.  Granted, Kyon knows Haruhi's significance and is actually in a position to exact this sort of lesson on her, so it's all more logical, but it feels a bit vindictive or perhaps even reckless of Kyon to put her through.  Such recklessness we expect from Haruhi.  From Kyon, it comes off differently.

But I'm making issue out of my own misconception, so feel free to disregard that.  On to the actual story.

On the meta level, it could easily be seen as Haruhi's doing:

What did Kyon do with her powers?  Exactly what she wanted.

I did notice the slap on my first read through, and I felt a bit torn about it.  Has Haruhi learned anything, or hasn't she?  It may be the timing of it.  It comes right after Haruhi seems to forgive or understand Kyon, realizing he didn't play with powers.  She just jumps back into angry mode very quickly.

The slap will be pulled in the next revision.  It'll just be angry words, and not many before her concern for Kyon's guilt overshadows that.

In the same vein, the kiss feels a little sudden also.  Haruhi realizes her attraction to Kyon, but it's disjointed from the action she takes based on it--there are bits in-between where she's hard on herself for not believing Kyon and justifies how he would give up trying to convince her of the truth.  I think, when these are put together, it feles like there should be one more step between realization and the kiss--a part where she fears that just as Kyon had given up telling her the truth, he gave up pursuing her, too?  Maybe not exactly that, but it would fit with what's there, and it gives Haruhi a more concrete reason to kiss him (hoping to find part of him that might love her back?).

I think it would be more that when he's in the depths of his self-recrimination, she can instead use it to pull him back.  I'll have to see where things go from the revision without the slap.

Kyon seems a bit frazzled when he admits having erased Disappearance Land to Haruhi--or at least, too frazzled too quickly?  I'm not sure how to describe it.  His description that he "screwed up" before surprised me.  I do feel it's something he'd regret, but he's suggesting he made a mistake when I can't see how there were any other options.

You can take the best option in a bad situation and still not feel good about it.  This was based off lines in the novels about him occasionally having nightmares about what happened in the Disappearance-verse.

Just out of curiosity, was there a particular bit you had in mind referring to flirting in 7?  I want to reread that part, but I'm not sure what it refers to.

The epilogue--  The very first lines:

The next day, after just making it to school on time I barged into the classroom, and ignoring
Taniguchi looking grumpy and Kunikida chatting with other classmates, I sat down and began
flirting with the person behind me,

"Hey, how's it going?"

"I'm fine, of course!"

She seemed to refer to her as Asakura if only one name was called for in chapter six.

My error, not hers.

Thinking of what her older self told Kyon, I guess she doesn't hang around us much in the future ... or Kyon changes a whole lot.

Or Kyon changes a lot?

Hey--  That's exactly what was suggested to justify the discrepancy in The Coin between Mikuru's dialogue in Melancholy and your ending, wasn't it?

Eh--  Not important, actually.  I'll just drop the entire clause after the ellipses.

All in all, though the ending requires a lot of careful thinking on Haruhi and Kyon's part, I think they come to a good solution.  My main concern, however, is that this predicament about doing right by many worlds only becomes known and is resolved in this chapter alone.

Yes, but until this chapter there's no in-character knowledge of other worlds to really develop that.  I don't know how else I might address that--  But the issue isn't resolved, anyway; the ending is about them realizing they've got a daunting task for themselves, not actually fixing things before the final line.  They agreed they would fix things (and with the power, it's really hard to see them not pulling it off -- though I wanted to emphasize a reliance on their other friends, as well), but they hadn't even actually started in this chapter.

That said, the most important thing is that Haruhi's learned something and come to an understanding with Kyon.  That was the overarching impetus, and it is resolved admirably.  I think this is a unique solution--sharing power--and that's a big strength of the ending.

Okay--  Glad to hear that it seems some of the most critical parts worked worked.

I might need some time to get the next draft out.  Thanks for the feedback, Muphrid.

[Grahf]

This honestly might be way off base, but might you consider having Yuki intercept earlier, to stop the first slap. I know that it might be a little difficult to write, and still has the implication that Haruhi would have hit Kyon otherwise, but I also think that it draws a parallel to the one time that Kyon had to be stopped from hitting Haruhi.

Kyon obviously wasn't in his right mind in that situation and Koizumi had to stop him from doing something he would have regretted for a multitude of reasons afterwards; I could see how Haruhi would go for a slap, only to be stopped, get angry, but then realize that he's already suffering as it is. Whether that still leads to a kiss or something different is totally dependant on you, but I thought that this sort of scenario playing out would be something to consider.