[Haruhi] Warring Realities

[Gotonis]

Right. My story.


The plot:
(I'm not sure if the spoiler tags are necessary, but...)

Spoiler: ShowHide

The basic premise is that Haruhi becomes jealous of Kyon and Sasaki, and decides that she wants to kill Sasaki. (It's cliche and a bit contrived, but...) Kyon sacrifices himself to save Sasaki, and wakes up in (is resurrected and teleported to) a combined Closed Space. He then learns that Sasaki's powers reawakened and the two are fighting via powers (Shinjin v. Shinjin), where whichever one wins will remake the world without the other in it. One of the two giants strikes the other down, and Kyon wakes up from a 'daydream' at his desk. Anyone who knows who Sasaki is can probably guess how this works, so I won't explain.


In alpha, he wakes up to find Haruhi behind him. In this reality, he'd been dating Haruhi since when the Brigade had originally formed, and there is no SOS Brigade, nor its members. Kyon is having a memory disconnect, and has to get his facts straight about his reality. HaruhixKyon fluff ensues.


Meanwhile in beta, Kyonko wakes up at an all-girls boarding school with Kyon's complete memories, as well as Sasaki, Tachibana, and Kuyoh/Kuyou/Kuyouh. (Cruelty mode activated). Kyonko makes references to Disappearance, and advises him/herself not to do the same thing, then starts panicking.


Basically, in alpha Kyon starts remembering some of his memories, while Kyonko panics in beta, then gets her head on straight and tries to figure out how to fix everything.
In neither is there any evidence of the SOS Brigade or its members, save Kyon and Haruhi. (Haruhi figured that Kyon didn't care about the Brigade or some such nonsense.)


Somehow, Kyonko breaks out of the boarding school and is followed by Sasaki to East High, where she finds her ungenderbent self. There is recombination after the name John Smith may or may not be thrown around, and somehow it gets to some different Closed Space in which Kyon is yelling at the two deities (mostly Haruhi) for their actions. Somehow the idea comes up to try putting them in each other's places.


A sequel series begins called Melancholy of Sasaki (insert surname here?). As a series it would follow the form of the Melancholy of Haruhi and such.
This AU would start on day one of Freshman year, with Sasaki behind Kyon. However, Kyon makes a Haruhi-like introduction instead of Sasaki. Basically, (this doesn't get explained right away, but) Kyon had been friends with Haruhi in cram school, and his interest in the extraordinary had been encouraged rather than dispelled. She had had her powers, but gave them up because she was happy as friends with Kyon. They go their separate ways because they want to spread the SOS Brigade to multiple schools. I plan to make the sequel its own thing, but draw enough parallels b/w that and the original for things to get rather interesting. However, we're not at the new series yet.

Anyway, I had posted the prologue and gotten some advice. It's revised, but it's not perfect yet. I also have chapter one ready for review. I'm more confident about that, but I'm unsure about names/titles/etc.


I'll be posting further as things go further.
Enjoy, and thanks for the help! Now to go figure out how to write that fluff section...

[alethiophile]

Looks interesting.

A note: the docx file format is remarkably inconvenient for anyone who's not running Windows; you can theoretically read it with free software, but it's annoying enough that I, myself, am probably not going to bother. I would recommend using a different file format; rtf is decent, plain doc is not as good but still better than docx. (I personally post as plain text, but that's harder to get decently formatted from Word.)

[Halbarad]

Converting to plain text is not actually that hard, although you'll lose any italics/bold formatting. Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, open Notepad, Ctrl-V. Save. Congratulations, you now have plain text.

I'll second alethiophile here; I'm running Windows, but I have nothing capable of editing a docx file, and so I'd prefer to see some other format in order to review (since I'll want to make notes in the fic itself as I go.)

[Gotonis]

Right. Sorry about that. It's now in rich text format.

[Muphrid]

Prologue:

Why do people fight? I guess it's because people want the same thing, but there isn't enough for everyone to have some, or some people want more than they're given. It's an irrational way to go about things. Usually, a war to gain more money, land, or whatever you're going out to war for isn't even worth it. The body count almost always outweighs the value of whatever it is that you want. You have to pay off your soldiers and pay out more than you gain. Your nation's economy crashes and nobody wins. It's unnecessary, so why do we have it?

You repeat the "whatever [qualifying phrase]" construction twice in this paragraph.  I would also suggest "why do we do it" instead of "have".

I wonder how she feels about war. Haruhi could end war forever, she has the power to do that without much difficulty, yet she doesn't. Is it because of her common sense? Considering that she summoned aliens and time travelers just by wanting them despite knowing that they can't exist, it's probably more complex. Maybe she's okay with war, because she wants, and is willing to fight for what she wants.

"forever," is a comma splice.  Personally, I find the implication that Haruhi is okay with war quite frightening.  There are many more nuanced possibilities, though I can't speak for whether they fit with your story.

Anyway, I had felt like something had been brewing. I ran into Sasaki on my way up as had happened a few times before. The last couple of times this had happened it hadn't ended well, but I felt it had been worth the risk. After all, I'm assuming Koizumi 'disposed' of that b*****d Fujiwara back in April, and Kuyoh probably just faded into the background. There would be no meetings with the Anti-SOS Brigade.

I had felt like there had been some violence brewing on the horizon, and we had segued into a conversation about violence in general.

Note that both of these paragraphs begin (more or less) with "I had felt like..."  I suggest varying one of these.  The second can be made much more direct:  "I suspected violance was brewing..."  That's probably best.

Before I could mention that consideration, however, our conversation was interrupted by the voice of our beloved brigade leader.

She's not Sasaki's brigade leader, so "our" in that sense doesn't seem appropriate.

I check the time on my phone. Typical Haruhi, calling me late when we don't even need to be at the station for another ten minutes.

Now we lapse into present tense?

The last time the two of them had met, Haruhi was rendered speechless. I mean, she shrugged it off after, but she could've just been burying it to protect her tough exterior. She could've been seriously upset by that.

This seems unusually direct for Kyon.  Even though he may actually think this, I'm not sure this is something that would get through the screen that separates what he would usually keep from the reader.  I don't think Kyon needs to realize (or rather, that Kyon needs to spell out that he realizes) that Haruhi might be jealous.  What he does is important.

"HURRY UP KYON! YOU'RE KEEPING US WAITING! PENALTY!"

Personally?  I don't think all the caps lock is really required.  Exclamation points get most things across fine.  But that may be a matter of taste.

Yup, Haruhi's definitely upset. I need to go talk to her. Now. The last time she was like this was that time I almost hit her while we were working on that movie. She must feel like I betrayed her or something. I need to go talk her down before things get bad. I start to jog over to do just that. However, a noise stops me dead in my tracks. I turn and see a truck barreling toward where I had just been talking to Sasaki at breakneck speed. My friend, however, was still there, staring at the truck like a deer caught in such a pair of headlights.

Mostly the same as what I said; while I feel Kyon can be this considerate, I don't feel like he would bother telling us so.


Chapter 1:

The first thing I notice is the sky. It looks like Closed Space, but not one I've ever seen before. It looks like a mix between the gray sky of Haruhi's and the sepia color of Sasaki's. However, the colors aren't blended together. Rather, the sky almost resembles tie-dye. However, rather than a curved pattern, it's all jagged. It almost appears as if the sky is at war with itself.

Repeated words/phrases are underlined.

I saw two Shinjin fighting. To further confuse matters, they were both the same color of blue.

But Sasaki doesn't create Shinjin.  It might help if Kyon at least acknowledged the fact.

"It would seem that Suzumiya-san became incredibly angry when you were talking to Sasaki-san. She was angry at and jealous of her, and snapped. She wanted her dead, and a truck appeared."

This is remarkably direct for Koizumi.  Not unduly so, as a bottom line, but.

"Anyway," continued Koizumi, "Notice the lack of buildings. The only thing they have to destroy is each other. They seem to only be getting stronger, so I'm not sure how long this is going to last. What we do know is that as soon as one wins over the other, that world will be created."

The last sentence is confused; I suggest something like, "What we do know is that as soon as one wins over the other, the victor will recreate the world."

In other words, it's not the worlds that are winning/losing.

Dang.

As Kyon is someone who employs grammatical correctness even in the face of common usage, I doubt he would use such a crude expletive if he could speak English.

"Now?"  asked Koizumi. "I don't think there's anything we can do but try to convert the new world back to the old one.

Missing a quotation mark.


So far, Kyon is simply an observer, being led through events out of his control, so there's not much to say.  It doesn't reflect well on Haruhi that she went so far as to try to kill Sasaki, but however much I may disagree with it, there's no story otherwise, and it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

I would probably end the chapter on a dash.  It's better than no ending punctuation at all.

Also, both the prologue and this chapter seem to be one scene each.  I know you said this is your first fanfic, so my opinion on the matter is this:  making 1 chapter = 1 scene is the kind of thing I see new writers often do.  Often times, scenes jump out at us clearly and write themselves, but a chapter can do something more--it can be a collection of scenes all with something in common, with plot elements that are introduced and resolved but that span more than a single scene.  You don't have to do that.  What is and isn't a chapter is always a writer's personal preference.  Not knowing how much of the long-term structure you have planned, considering how chapters could be a collection of scenes may give you a better idea of what's to come and how it all fits together.  Something to think about, at any rate.

[Halbarad]

Okay. I'll preface by saying I tend to be fairly brutal in reviews; I don't pull punches, and I'll call out what I see as being off. Since you're newer here, I'll state up front that my 'specialization' (if you can call it that) will be more towards characterization and plot issues; I do comment on technical errors as well, but the bulk of what I'll be looking at is your characters and your plot, since those are what will (or will fail to) carry your story.

I'll lead off by echoing one of Muphrid's comments. Seeing a story on ff.net that has a prologue this short would pretty much be an instant "don't even bother opening" for me. While chapter length is at the author's discretion, and there's no hard rule about how long a chapter should be, there are nevertheless some things that each chapter should accomplish.

- The chapter needs to introduce new events and plot threads, resolve old ones, and present a sense of progress for the story as a whole. For a prologue in particular, it needs to set up the central premise that the rest of the story is going to be based around, as well as present any necessary background information that will be needed to support that premise.
- Prologues tend to be shorter than actual chapters, since you're basically only setting up and presenting one plot thread, but it's the central thread for the entire story - so cutting corners, failing to support or provide enough setup for that premise, or giving the reader a solid hook to continue to follow the story, are all points which can easily set one up for failure.
- Each chapter should both answer existing questions (early chapters may not do this as much just by their position in the story) and present new ones. A lack of new questions tends to kill continuing interest in the story as a whole; failing to answer questions that have previously been opened results in the reader left with a giant pile of unresolved threads of varying importance. Simply continuing an existing plot thread throughout a chapter leaves the story feeling stagnant, if there's no sense of progress or resolution for anything.

While it's possible to do these things in a short chapter, it's very difficult. A single-scene chapter will at best introduce a thread or resolve a thread; it's almost impossible to get it to do both. Once the story's underway, single-scene chapters will most often be used to simply prolong an existing thread. Consider the way the writers you see as good handle these things; most good fanfic authors will span several scenes, sometimes several different character PoVs, and a fairly good span of time in a single chapter. Print authors will certainly take quite a bit of space in each chapter to explore events.

Note that these comments are based only on your chapter size; at this point, I haven't actually read over any of the story itself at all - it's just that given the length of what's already been presented, I can already predict that some of these points will present themselves as problems - if not here, then going forward.

On to the fic itself.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Author's Note:
This is my first fanfic.

As a reader, this doesn't help me at all with the story. It comes across as a plea just to go easy on you, and for myself personally disinclines me towards doing so. The story should stand or fall on its own merits, regardless of how many other fics you have or haven't written before.

Why do people fight? I guess it's because people want the same thing, but there isn't enough for everyone to have some, or some people want more than they're given. It's an irrational way to go about things. Usually, a war to gain more money, land, or whatever you're going out to war for isn't even worth it. The body count almost always outweighs the value of whatever it is that you want. You have to pay off your soldiers and pay out more than you gain. Your nation's economy crashes and nobody wins. It's unnecessary, so why do we have it?

This seems like an awfully short-sighted view about war; they're hardly only fought for selfish reasons. I can see the narrow view as something Kyon might hold as a high-school student, but there are certainly times when war is indeed necessary. Partly this is personal bias, but leading off with a semi-political statement is going to have a polarizing effect on your readers, one way or another.

Anyone who knows Haruhi knows that she can be violent.

Really? The only time I can recall Haruhi approaching anything actually violent is anime-only, and being played up for comedy - the drop-kick on the computer research society president at the beginning of Day of Sagittarius. She's certainly not averse to being physical, given the way she manhandles Mikuru and drags Kyon around, but physical is not the same as violent. She's also confrontational - she enjoys getting into fights (see Day of Sagittarius again, or the tangles with the student council) but again, confrontational is not the same as violent.

However, she is calming down lately, and she wouldn't actually kill anyone. She's not that kind of person.
I was about to be proven wrong in that conviction.

Okay. Speaking for myself, if I was reading this casually and came across this, it would be an instant indication to close the fic and move on. Intentionally killing or physically harming anyone is very much -not- any part of Haruhi's character, even in extreme flanderizations. She's selfish and short-sighted, proud, and even sociopathic to the point of not caring anything about anyone else around her, but she's never presented as malicious - only apathetic to extremes. Even the times where she's at her absolute worst (during the movie shoot in Sigh and just prior to the final dream in Melancholy) she never even attempts to physically harm anyone else - simply use them for her own ends without any concern or regard for their dignity or personal feelings on the matter. And at this point - well past the end of the novels themselves - she's grown considerably past even those low points.

At this point, you're no longer describing Haruhi, at least in any form that's recognizable to me. She may look the same and use the same mannerisms, but this is too much of a divergence from her canon presentation to take seriously. If you're shooting for slapstick or another pure comedic form this might be acceptable as a form of comedic sociopathy, but to be quite honest you're in the wrong place if that's your intent for the fic - pretty much no one here is a strong proponent of that particular style of Haruhi fiction, and the feedback you're going to get is going to be based on your premise as one to be examined in a serious or straightforward sense. And in those senses, the premise is rendered basically unusable by this, in any sense that tries to hold to the canon characters themselves.

There would be no meetings with the Anti-SOS Brigade.

This title is purely a fanon invention, and as such should probably not be used directly by the characters themselves. It's useful for fans discussing the 'verse, but shouldn't be extended beyond that.

Before I could mention that consideration, however, our conversation was interrupted by the voice of our beloved brigade leader.

'our'? He's talking with Sasaki, she's a member of the Brigade now?

"KYON, GET OVER HERE NOW! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LATE YOU ARE?"

Using all-caps should be avoided outside of extreme circumstances. You can relate the emphasis through speech indicators, which I note are completely lacking in the prologue. Haruhi can bellow, yell, holler, shout, etc. - all of which get the point across without relying on all-caps. All three of the times she speaks rely on this.

"Cool it Haruhi. I'm not late yet."

Kyon showing this much backtalk to Haruhi about being late, at this late point in relation to canon events? He's been well aware of Haruhi's propensity for penalizing the last to arrive, whether they're late or not, for months now; why now is he putting up a fight about it out of nowhere? He's been more or less resigned to it for ages.

That's strange. Haruhi seems a lot angrier than normal. I mean, she's used to the idea of me being late by now, so this is kind of ridiculous. I mean, I'm just talking to Sasaki...
The last time the two of them had met, Haruhi was rendered speechless. I mean, she shrugged it off after, but she could've just been burying it to protect her tough exterior. She could've been seriously upset by that.

Kyon's being remarkably forgetful or dumb here. Koizumi has flat out told Kyon that Sasaki prompted the formation of an entirely new kind of closed space; that much by itself should tell even Kyon that Sasaki has a very strong effect on Haruhi's state of mind. Even he's not so dense that he wouldn't realize that seeing him with Sasaki would be likely to cause a rather strong reaction. What form that reaction would take might be uncertain, but not the fact that it'd be severe.

Yup, Haruhi's definitely upset. I need to go talk to her. Now. The last time she was like this was that time I almost hit her while we were working on that movie. She must feel like I betrayed her or something. I need to go talk her down before things get bad. I start to jog over to do just that. However, a noise stops me dead in my tracks. I turn and see a truck barreling toward where I had just been talking to Sasaki at breakneck speed. My friend, however, was still there, staring at the truck like a deer caught in such a pair of headlights.

This paragraph is really choppy. While it's not necessarily bad writing to not use bridges and compound sentences, it does look terse and choppy when you do it. Bridge together sentences with common themes or ideas ("She must feel like I betrayed her or something, so I need to go talk to her before things get bad.") Kyon is also not particularly colloquial in his speech patterns; if anything, half the time he comes off as slightly stuffy himself. Hearing him lead off with 'Yup', given that, tends to jump out as out of place.

It felt like I wasn't getting anywhere, and that by the time I reached the road it would be too late. Nevertheless, I just barely make it. As I'm pushing Sasaki out of the way and preparing to die a death straight out of some poorly contrived soap opera, I get a glimpse at the driver. He's not much older than I am. He dons a face of shock only as I dive into the way, and he tries to steer to the left, which would place his truck closer to Sasaki. Or at least, that's what it seemed like. I could've been seeing things.

This is really reaching. Any driver worth their salt, seeing that they're about to hit one person out of two that are in the road, is not going to try to avoid doing so by steering towards the other person. I understand you're trying to emphasize that Haruhi's gunning for Sasaki here, but realistically the only way to portray the driver for that is either drunk and unaware of what he's doing, or Haruhi's basically overriding him and he should look almost zombie-like.

A minor point, though, compared to the implausibility of Haruhi actually trying to kill anyone in the first place.

Apologies, but I can't even say that you've got a decent setup here; the premise of renewing the split timelines (from reviewing your plot summary) doesn't seem strong to begin with, and the setup provided in the prologue stretches the bounds of credibility to the breaking point, to such an extent that your representation of Haruhi is completely incompatible with what's shown of her in canon. The premise might be salvageable, but you'll need to set it up in some way that doesn't necessitate turning Haruhi into a complete monster in the process for it to remain believable.

[Arakawa]

To add to what Halbarad said, a few things about the outline are just general warning flags for someone looking at a Haruhi fic. You could manage to pull some of them off, but having these elements creates extra work for you, the writer, to convince the readers that this fic isn't like other poorly-thought-out fics that have the same elements:

• A number of minor giveaways people have pointed out -- short chapters, "this is my very first fic". These things only make people give you a hard time because they've seen a hundred uninteresting fics with the same features. Nothing personal, just as a matter of basic statistics.
• Kyonko and the whole genderbending thing. That's powerful voodoo. In my experience, few people manage to do something interesting and non-squicky with it, so you really have to work to sell the audience that your attempt is going to be interesting.
• Haruhi killing Sasaki. That's... awfully impolite of her, isn't it? -_-;;

At least, those seem to be the biases common around here. They seem entirely reasonable to me.

In general, the deeper problem is that stuff happens in your outline and you haven't thought through the reasons stuff happens, and especially what it says about the characters that they do this and that. For example, supposing... that's a huge stretch... Haruhi suddenly does decide to kill Sasaki, what is the reason she does so now and not earlier, say, during the books? Beyond "because Sasaki shook hands with Kyon in front of her". Why didn't she ever apply such disproportionate treatment with regards to Mikuru, when canon-Haruhi was far more sociopathic in the early novels than in the later ones, and had far more reason to suppose Kyon was attracted to Mikuru?

Why does the genderbending happen? Sorry, let me rephrase that: Why does the genderbending happen? (Gratuitous genderbending is an effective way to alienate at least some of your audience. Not nearly as effective as 'one day, Haruhi decides to kill someone', but it's still somewhere down the list.)

What does it mean, Kyonko is panicking? What does that entail? What does it imply about Sasaki that her version of reality has Kyon turned into a girl just so they can attend a girl's boarding school together? And then Kyonko 'breaks out' of the boarding school... um. Unless we have to assume the boarding school is located in a Victorian England stereotype or in the mosquito-infested cottage country of Muskoka, you need to explain what exactly is so strict about the school that breaking out entails more than just walking out the front gate and buying a bus ticket.

Thematically -- in what sense are the realities 'warring'? How do they interact? How does Kyonko end up in Kyon's reality? Or by 'breaking out' did you mean she breaks out into Kyon's reality?

(You may have answers to some of the questions -- because some obvious ideas on how to answer them are coming to my mind -- but the answers don't come through in the outline.)

Beyond that, the outline is all "X somehow happens", or "insert some vague scenes of X here". But how well the fic turns out depends on how X happens and what X is in the first place. It's very hard to foresee from the outline that this is going to come together without some more thinking.

Things about the fic that I think are potentially interesting:

• A - Haruhi and Sasaki having a conflict which results into them going into separate realities -- one in which Kyon is with Haruhi, and one in which Kyon is with Sasaki. You really need to have a better reason for the conflict, keeping in mind that at this stage in the novels Haruhi is much more mature than at the beginning. (And it seems to me that it would take longer than just one scene to establish a conflict like that.)
• B - Sasaki and Kyonko at a girls' boarding school... if there is an actual legitimate reason for this happening and it's presented skillfully and it reveals something about the characters. If it's just window-dressing, then it's basically a turn-off.

I don't know. I'm interested in helping you brainstorm a more solid outline, but in practice having other people come up with ways to improve your fic idea can actually be a bit of a drag. (Mostly because other people have no idea what you find special about the fic that you felt inspired to write it, and will inevitably give suggestions that feel disrespectful of that essence.)

Still, keep in mind that you can always ask here for feedback on how you could improve an idea, especially given that you're in the very early stages of writing this anyways. It's your choice, since only you know whether or not it would be useful.

[Gotonis]

Wow.
That bad, huh?


You know, I'm really not sure why I had thought this idea had any merit in the first place.


You're right, Halbarad. It's really nothing that would be writeable at this point. Honestly, I really wasn't sure how to set it up, and I'm starting to see how off my interpretations really were.


I mean, yes, I actually do have moderately valid reasoning behind a couple of things. For example, Kyonko wouldn't be used for fanservice/squick/etc.; however, in retrospect, that's actually a reversal of part of Sasaki's personality. The story as a whole is too much of a stretch, and it's kind of cliche. I really don't see how I can set this up without demonizing Haruhi. I mean, it can probably done without bloodshed, but I still don't have the skill to try to pull off that type of story.
I've actually seen stories where Haruhi killed/almost killed pulled off quite well, (for example, The Coin,) but even if I had a good grip on characters I wouldn't be able to pull it off yet.


I'm thinking I'll just leave that story for anyone interested in trying to write it.
Meanwhile, I think I'm just going to try Melancholy of Sasaki out. I mean, I've seen something similar once, but it juxtaposed rather than reversed, and didn't exactly get very far.


Thanks for pointing out how bad of an idea Warring Realities was. Maybe if I figure out some canon friendly setup in the future, I'll look into it, but not yet.

[Brian]

Right. My story.

Okay; since you have some stuff written, I'm going to jump right in.  At a glance, there's a ... lot of focus on the content, so I'll probably try and stick to the technical elements (at least at first), just to keep you from being overwhelmed with way too much of the same feedback.[/quote]

Here's the prologue:

Spoiler: ShowHide

Author's Note:

Oops--  This won't be a problem if you're posting to ff.net, but the fic itself doesn't have a titleplate.  That's the title, the author's name, a disclaimer (which you do have -- that's always great, to see respect for the original creators), a chapter name/number, and then and 'before you read' type notes.

Again, if you're just posting to ff.net, then the title/author will be at the top anyway, and the chapter names will be on the pulldown menu, so you don't really need to worry about that.

This is my first fanfic. It occurs two months after the events of The Dissociation/Astonishment of Haruhi Suzumiya, and features characters introduced therein.

So, set just before the summer vacation?  Alright.

Enjoy!

*Update: I reworked part of the section in order to keep characters believable and in order following the suggestion of an anonymous reviewer.

Prologue

Hmm, there's the chapter name ... it feels like something is missing.  Ah -- a scene divider.  Let's see, you had this in .docx, so maybe that got stripped out?  I'm not sure how that'll translate to ff.net -- one thing I might suggest is instead of using .rtf, just use Word's 'save as .html' option.  That should give reasonably consistent output, anyone can view it here, and ff.net handles importing .html pretty decently.

Anyway -- the header.  A <hr> in raw html, or a Word divider (if that's what you work with) should work, and then saving as .html....  So, that's one approach.

Why do people fight? I guess it's because people want the same thing, but there isn't enough for everyone to have some, or some people want more than they're given. It's an irrational way to go about things. Usually, a war to gain more money, land, or whatever you're going out to war for isn't even worth it. The body count almost always outweighs the value of whatever it is that you want. You have to pay off your soldiers and pay out more than you gain. Your nation's economy crashes and nobody wins. It's unnecessary, so why do we have it?

There's also wars for causes, though.  I think this is a limited view of war, but I suppose to a teenager (Kyon) it's probably reasonable enough -- and that all aside, it's foreshadowing for the structure of your story.

I wonder how she feels about war. Haruhi could end war forever, she has the power to do that without much difficulty, yet she doesn't. Is it because of her common sense? Considering that she summoned aliens and time travelers just by wanting them despite knowing that they can't exist, it's probably more complex. Maybe she's okay with war, because she wants, and is willing to fight for what she wants.

Sentence two has an awkward splice (apologies if someone else already pointed this out); I'd replace the comma after forever with a semi-colon.

Anyone who knows Haruhi knows that she can be violent. However, she is calming down lately, and she wouldn't actually kill anyone. She's not that kind of person.

I was about to be proven wrong in that conviction.

Eh--  This is just me, and it's a personal gripe -- it's also something that Tanigawa himself does in the canon -- but I don't like 'and the narrator tells you what will happpen' much.  But -- that's me, and you can ignore it. :)

Anyway, I had felt like something had been brewing. I ran into Sasaki on my way up as had happened a few times before. The last couple of times this had happened it hadn't ended well, but I felt it had been worth the risk. After all, I'm assuming Koizumi 'disposed' of that b*****d Fujiwara back in April, and Kuyoh probably just faded into the background. There would be no meetings with the Anti-SOS Brigade.

First sentence has two instances of 'had' ... I think it would be a little less stiff if you dropped the first one?  After that, repetition of 'times.'  (Repetition isn't bad, per-se, but some authors like to avoid it -- like overusing the word 'said.'  This mostly comes down to personal preference.)

Not sure why 'bastard' needs to be censored?

I'd suggest separating that last sentence out for extra impact.  Also, the implications are that Koizumi killed Fujiwara ... I think that's pretty much canon, but also, kind of weird for Kyon to be so cavalier about.

I had felt like there had been some violence brewing on the horizon, and we had segued into a conversation about violence in general.

This echoes the begining of the previous paragraph very strongly.  You could reduce the clause before the comma a bit, something along the lines of 'thinking of conflict and the sense of building tension in the air' -- or reword it some other way.

Otherwise, we also have a dilemma when we consider that you were supposedly in her position at one point in time.

I think the 'also' may be extraneous?

Before I could mention that consideration, however, our conversation was interrupted by the voice of our beloved brigade leader.

'Our' being used twice implies that Haruhi is Sasaki's Brigade leader, too.

"Cool it Haruhi. I'm not late yet."

There should be a comma before Haruhi's name.

That's strange. Haruhi seems a lot angrier than normal. I mean, she's used to the idea of me being late by now, so this is kind of ridiculous. I mean, I'm just talking to Sasaki...

He's not actually late, so 'late by now' doesn't feel like it fits.

"Alright. I'll talk to you later, Kyon." Sasaki extends her hand as I turn to leave. We shake hands. It's a strange gesture, but not an overly surprising one coming from Sasaki.

Hum.  I guess it's just the setup you're going with, but it seems to me that given Sasaki's interest in Haruhi, she'd both play the role of peace keeper, and if Kyon wasn't late, actually go with him to include her in their discussion, if possible.  That'd be a more effective way to defuse the situation than just ignoring Haruhi, which is what she seems to be doing.

Come to think of it, is anyone else from the Brigade with Haruhi?  Or is she just alone?

"HURRY UP KYON! YOU'RE KEEPING US WAITING! PENALTY!"

Technically, should also be a comma before Kyon's name here (since he's being addressed).

Yup, Haruhi's definitely upset. I need to go talk to her. Now. The last time she was like this was that time I almost hit her while we were working on that movie. She must feel like I betrayed her or something. I need to go talk her down before things get bad. I start to jog over to do just that. However, a noise stops me dead in my tracks. I turn and see a truck barreling toward where I had just been talking to Sasaki at breakneck speed. My friend, however, was still there, staring at the truck like a deer caught in such a pair of headlights.

The 'breakneck speed' seems to be referring more towards the pace of Kyon and Sasaki's conversation than the speed of the truck.  For the last sentence, I think you can reword it; the 'such' feels a bit stiff.

Maybe something along the lines of 'My friend, like the proverbial deer, was staring at the truck as though she were caught in the headlights.

Time seems to slow down.  I turned around and did what anyone would do in such a cliché situation: I ran back. I mean, Haruhi needs me too, but it's not like she'll destroy the world in five minutes, right?

seems -- seemed
needs -- needed

It felt like I wasn't getting anywhere, and that by the time I reached the road it would be too late. Nevertheless, I just barely make it. As I'm pushing Sasaki out of the way and preparing to die a death straight out of some poorly contrived soap opera, I get a glimpse at the driver. He's not much older than I am. He dons a face of shock only as I dive into the way, and he tries to steer to the left, which would place his truck closer to Sasaki. Or at least, that's what it seemed like. I could've been seeing things.

Extra space at the start of this paragraph.

And ... I see you posted to SR. O_o?

I didn't quite finish the prologue (commenting on it, I mean) given your last post.

I'll ... need to read the rest of the thread and comment after I get the bigger picture.  I don't know that you should give up just yet, but ... well -- I'll look at this more closely and get back to the thread in the morning.

[Halbarad]

If your takeaway from my post was 'stop writing entirely'; I do apologize; that wasn't the intent at all. As stated, I tend to be fairly brutal, and I don't soften my opinions to avoid stepping on people's toes - Arakawa, for one, can freely attest to this.

What I get as an overall sense of your story idea is mostly that you came up what what sounded like a fun idea ("hey, what about running a story where Kyonko and Kyon are split parts from Kyon himself?") and then proceeded to jump into it feet-first without really stopping to consider all the implications. It's definitely a common error, particularly for new writers; having such an idea is by no means a bad thing, and as I said with my post, the premise may be salvageable - but you should really stop to work out at least a good chunk of what it implies before launching into actual writing.

The only real exception to this would be (as I mentioned) something where the goal is slapstick or gag-based comedy; in that, characterization and continuity get token nods at best, and so you don't actually need to spend much time worrying about them. The statement that you're in the wrong place for feedback on that is just that; you're not in the wrong if this is the kind of story you want to write, it's just that it's not what most people here are interested in, and any feedback you get here will be limited by that fact.

The best advice I can offer in reviewing and outlining your concept is a single word: "why?" For a serious concept, I'd say this is the most important question to answer; of the major questions (who/when/where/what/why/how), who, where, and when will be answered naturally in the course of the story.

The question that a writer focuses on of the remaining three gives an indication of where problems might arise in the story, at least in my view. What I'm seeing in your prologue is that you're focusing primarily on 'what' - the things that are happening to the characters. It's a common pitfall for new writers; you've got this great idea, and you want to get it out there, but in the process you focus so much on the idea that you lose track of other things - and so we get Haruhi attempting to murder Sasaki in order to justify the premise for the story you want to tell. 'What' is certainly not a question to be ignored - you don't have a story without it, after all - but it should be a secondary concern.

'How' can also be a common pitfall, but it's a step up from 'what'. Getting lost in 'how' tends to take you a level deeper, but it's more an indication that you're getting lost in the mechanics of the world - stuff like 'how does Haruhi's power work', 'how does the split between realities happen', etc. These tend to work a little better than 'what' stories do, and can work for original fiction where you can mold new characters to fill in the gaps, but doesn't work too well for fanfiction since you're still going to be focused more on what you need the preexisting characters to do and it leads to shoehorning them into unrealistic characterization.

'Why', by contrast, starts at the other end and works outward to the rest of the story. Once you have your basic premise, and have established some places it needs to go, step back and start probing the idea and the characters involved in it with 'why' questions like an inquisitive five-year-old. For each answer you're able to come up with, keep walking it backward - why is Haruhi splitting the world into separate timelines again? If Haruhi's splitting realities again because she's afraid of or jealous of Sasaki, that's going to color her reactions to Sasaki. Why is she jealous? If it's because she sees Sasaki as a rival for Kyon's affection, that's going to color the way she reacts to Kyon. Ideally, you want to walk this back - particularly for your characters - until there are reasons that you can ground in canon; at that point, they're supported by the weight of canon and you don't have to worry about justifying them further - just be careful that it's something that actually -is- in the canon, and not just a fanon interpretation, like Haruhi being overtly jealous of Sasaki. It's a reasonable interpretation, and it's common because it -is- so plausible, but it's technically not stated outright in canon.

You'll want to do this with pretty much every aspect of your concept, and if at any point you find yourself unable to explain why or come up with a reasonable justification, it's a good indication that part of your premise is weak. Having someone to bounce ideas off of or spot check you in this process is also helpful, as what can seem like a perfectly valid train of logic to you might cause someone else to cock their head on the side and go 'huh?'

Doing this might seem like a lot of work, and it may get into areas that you never actually cover in the story, but it will make a vast difference in the finished product. The whole process of 'why' is basically creating the skeleton for your story (in an anatomical sense): it provides a general structure for the story, makes a place for you to anchor things, and gives you a solid basis from which to move the story forward - the same way that your bones hold you up and give you a place to anchor your muscles. You never -see- that skeleton directly (except in rare circumstances) but you'd certainly notice a huge difference if it was missing.

Writing is good! I don't want to discourage you from doing so at all. But the best advice I can offer here is 'look before you leap' - take some time to explore the ramifications and implications of an idea, get some basic outlining done, flesh out the concept a bit before you jump straight into writing it and find yourself in an untenable position.

[Brian]

Okay.  I hadn't ... read the outline before, so that caught me by surprise.  Rather than pick holes in the entire thing and say 'throw it away!' and also because I'm ... not sure you want to jump into the Melancholy of Sasaki without at least giving this a try....

So, as a warning, I ramble a lot when I give feedback.  I also tend to throw out ideas that are pretty stupid -- but I find that frequently, people can take my ideas and come up with better ones on their own.  So, that thought in mind....

You can actually salvage quite a bit of your outline, as I understand the story.  There's still some missing elements/holes that you'd need to fill in, but it's not all a loss.  Before that, based on the prologue and the title (and your ff.net summary), I somehow thought your story was going to be about Sasaki (effectively) running off to an alternate reality that's less fantastic with Kyon to save him, and then her reality and Haruhi's coming into conflict because Haruhi doesn't want to let Kyon go.

The above could be done while keeping Haruhi sympathetic, and I think you really, really want to keep Haruhi sympathetic if she's going to match up with Kyon in some timeline, or else....  Well, unfortunate implications.

Anyway.  Some ideas, which you may or may not find useful -- ignore anything that doesn't help, absolutely.

It's hard to portray from Kyon's PoV, but the whole truck thing can actually be painted in a way that doesn't cast anyone in an awful light.  If Haruhi's wish is not that Sasaki die (which just feels too extreme), but that Sasaki go away, it could be played off as Sasaki's own powers (and rationality) not accepting any kind of banishment, but finding a truck plausible.  Then Haruhi can be more sympathetic because as she see's what's happening ... she wanted Sasaki to go away, not get hit by a truck.  She could call out to not just Kyon, but also the friend she met once before -- because Haruhi didn't want Sasaki to die (or even be horribly injured).

This does mean downplaying Haruhi's anger/resentment, and playing up her uncertainty.  How this plays out could be a few different ways, but I think one of the critical elements for your story is that Sasaki and Haruhi be opposed.  This actually is pretty easy given the above -- Haruhi subconsciously recognizes that Sasaki is responsible for the truck (which hurt Kyon), even if she only ever states it as something bland like, "She's bad luck," and Sasaki can recognize Haruhi's responsibility for some element of the conflict as well (even if the 'truck' aspect was just Sasaki reshaping Haruhi's wish into something she found plausible).  Both of them are then sympathetic (if a bit foolish, but let's face it, that's probably an inevitibility anyway -- they are fighting over a boy, pretty much) and yet still in conflict.

Given this approach, you can also cut out Haruhi's increased anger, and have her just watching Kyon and Sasaki without them noticing -- that gives her time to really get worked up about things (stressed/uncertain, not furious).  This makes the truck a bit out-of-the-blue, and it's really, really hard to convey all of that from Kyon's PoV.

So, the closed space encounter could be with both Koizumi and Kyouko, who are (to a lesser degree) mirroring the respective 'goddesses' they follow, and explain Sasaki/Haruhi's PoVs as best they can, given the situation.  A pair of shinjin duking it out is kind of neat, but just having the space itself conflicting around them (like at the end of novel 11) could also suffice.  Then the explanation comes down to (from the esper duo) something along the lines of, "They're fighting, because each thinks themselves better able to protect you."  They both make great excuses for exposition that Kyon can't/doesn't observe directly.

This lets them come across as feeling justified and at least portrays them both as well-meaning and well-intentioned in their actions.

The A/B timeline split can still come into play, but from this point -- I think the rest of the outline could bear some shoring up as far as determining where you would go from here.  I don't know what Kyon turning into Kyonko really adds; it's traumatic for Kyon, but if it's something that's not critical to the plot, I can't see a reason to keep it.  An 'all girl' school wouldn't work to keep Haruhi away, after all, so that doesn't add much, either.

It'd be easier for Sasaki's reality to have Kyon have decided on some whim to just go to the same school as Sasaki.  If you want to avoid unfortunate implications of mind-control, etc., then maybe she just overtly asked him when they were in middle school, and he decided he may as well (in that reality).

For the rest ... well, again, need to hear from you regarding what you would plan on doing, or if you come up with a different (possibly better) idea for how things work out in the prologue.  I'm not sure I'd suggest scrapping it and moving on -- in fact, that's absolutely not what I'd suggest.  You have a start here, and there's a foundation.  It could use some work, but instead of throwing it away, see what you can make it into; there's an entire community of people here who can offer advice and (dare I say it?) insight.

So ... my advice is to take a few bracing breaths, gird yourself, and pare your outline down to the bare minimum.  From there, start building it up -- ask yourself a lot of questions about the why and how as you build it.  If you're uncertain, then don't be afraid to offer up a revision and say, "What about this?"  Keep trying; I'm certain you'll get it.

You've already proven yourself better than the majority of writers just by being willing to listen to constructive criticism.  The next step is in your reach. :)

[Arakawa]

I mean, yes, I actually do have moderately valid reasoning behind a couple of things. For example, Kyonko wouldn't be used for fanservice/squick/etc.; however, in retrospect, that's actually a reversal of part of Sasaki's personality. The story as a whole is too much of a stretch, and it's kind of cliche. I really don't see how I can set this up without demonizing Haruhi. I mean, it can probably done without bloodshed, but I still don't have the skill to try to pull off that type of story.

I've actually seen stories where Haruhi killed/almost killed pulled off quite well, (for example, The Coin,) but even if I had a good grip on characters I wouldn't be able to pull it off yet.

*hehe*

The irony behind what you just said is that there's a C&C thread for The Coin on this forum where Muphrid got even more scathing pushback than what you just received. The final result is something like the second or third attempt by Muphrid to resolve the basic setup, and if I remember correctly it diverges a lot from what he thought he was going to write when he started the fic.

I don't know, it's of course better for Muphrid to decide if he wants to comment on this further, but I couldn't help pointing it out as the most obvious indication that you might be giving up far too early on this one.

I'm thinking I'll just leave that story for anyone interested in trying to write it.
Meanwhile, I think I'm just going to try Melancholy of Sasaki out. I mean, I've seen something similar once, but it juxtaposed rather than reversed, and didn't exactly get very far.

Melancholy of Sasaki has the problem that it's a "let's reset canon with some variables changed", so the idea isn't complete unless you figure out a scope and a logical endpoint for it. Maybe you're feeling more confident about this one (since you were confident enough to mention that 'Warring Realities' is intended to build up to it in your outline), but it's hard to say. How would you make it work?

Okay, now to throw out a set of suggestions that agrees with Brian's on some points and diverges in others.

In the 'Warring Realities' outline, one way I could see the conflict developing is if Kyon and Sasaki just see one another as friends, but Haruhi believes they are kidding themselves and that Kyon could easily find himself falling in love with Sasaki. This makes Haruhi understandably miserable, but she doesn't know what to do; the conflict comes to a close, and the reality warpers wind up in separate realities, each with their own copy of Kyon.

Kyonko could be brought in at this point if Sasaki were to become aware that Haruhi was thinking that way, and if she were to become permanently anxious that bystanders in general always judge her and Kyon as a potential couple, or (worse) that Kyon really might fall in love with her, which she would have trouble dealing with. Hence Kyon is a girl in Sasaki's reality, so they can remain friends without having to fear either of those things. That still runs into the problem that Sasaki is (unconsciously) forcing a gender swap on Kyon. Absent a few complex notions in my mind of how one might handle involuntary gender change without an associated horror factor, in that case it makes sense for Kyonko to be the one with the false memories. I'll have to think about how you would handle this sort of scenario before I can really feel comfortable suggesting it. It reflects a bit weirdly on Sasaki... I can almost see something like this happening, but not quite, it definitely depending on the details of how her conflict with Haruhi proceeds.

Moreover, it would place the burden to justify rejoining the timelines on the Kyon that stays with Haruhi. There has to be some reason besides "Kyon misses having the Brigade around" to justify him turning upside down Haruhi's life, Sasaki's life, and especially Kyonko's life and reverting what's starting to look like a workable solution. (Moreover, Kyon would be reluctant at best to repeat the exact same thing he did in 'Disappearance'.) Maybe Haruhi and Sasaki need to be in the same universe because their powers balance each other, and after they separate each of the split realities is thus incomplete in its own way, with dangerous repercussions.

(EDIT: Or maybe Haruhi's power still exists in Sasaki's universe and vice versa, but without a person to contain it; so it looks like Haruhi's powers are being unleashed uncontrollably on Sasaki's reality and Sasaki's on Haruhi's reality, which everyone misunderstands to be a war between the two 'goddesses'. That would turn the title into an interesting sort of red herring.)

At least, that's the way I see it. I hope someone comes along and points out the problems / (possibly) agrees with the above reasoning. (Especially since I have no reason to suppose my view of Sasaki's character is at all accurate.)

[Muphrid]

*hehe*

The irony behind what you just said is that there's a C&C thread for The Coin on this forum where Muphrid got even more scathing pushback than what you just received. The final result is something like the second or third attempt by Muphrid to resolve the basic setup, and if I remember correctly it diverges a lot from what he thought he was going to write when he started the fic.

I don't know, it's of course better for Muphrid to decide if he wants to comment on this further, but I couldn't help pointing it out as the most obvious indication that you might be giving up far too early on this one.

Eheh. Indeed, while I kept a lot of the same events that I'd planned for The Coin, the theme that comes across ended up very different.  I originally intended the piece to be one about temptation--about Haruhi embracing the primacy of the extraordinary to the exclusion of all else and feeling betrayed that her friends weren't so gung-ho about it, only to realize at the very end that this pursuit was giving her no real satisfaction either.  It didn't work, and I rightly was eviscerated for it.  It didn't resonate, and it was too much of a step backward for her to be reasonable, so I retooled it into Haruhi seeing that those around her, who'd all been involved in the extraordinary and forced to put aside what they wanted for the good of the world or timeline or whatever.  Haruhi slowly became horrified to the point where she would consider changing things to erase the negative consequences of her existence, but she rejected that and resolved to fix things the hard way, so to speak.

Let me give a concrete example:  Haruhi going forward to Asahina's native time and happening across the time-travelers' training ground would've happened in both the original and the current version of the story, but where in the current version, Haruhi just finds it sad that the time-travelers spend so much effort looking at her and not at other amazing things, in the original Haruhi would've condemned them for not really being interesting and extraordinary at all (or something like that).  Same basic event, different reactions and emphasis.  What to take from that is what you want to happen can (almost) always be rearranged or reorganized; you just have to find the angle that works.


Anyway, I want to second the notion that there's no need to give up.  It's just going to take some thought as to what it is you're hoping to accomplish.  In your outline, you talk about what was to happen, and I do get a good feeling you have some well-formed scenes or ideas in place.  But I also get the feeling that this story was all setup for "Melancholy of Sasaki"--the reason I say that is, while I looked through your outline for an overriding message or theme for this story and didn't find one (writing fluff for two cool couples isn't a bad thing, but the reason it's fluff is it's only mildly filling, so to speak), "Melancholy of Sasaki" seemed to have a clear driving idea behind it:  to get the two girls to understand each other's perspectives.  With that kind of goal in mind, I feel like that story is on much firmer footing, and I think what you really want (in my opinion) is just a prologue of some sort to establish the inciting action, the reason why Haruhi and Sasaki would swap their positions and get that story started.

Just some thoughts, at any rate.  Good luck!

[Gotonis]

Well, you guys have given me a lot to think about.


Sorry about the posting delay. I had wanted to step back for a bit and think some more before replying to your advice; I decided to skip the notepad step again and managed to delete over an hour's worth of written reply work. I then went to bed for a while and woke up abnormally late. Anyway, enough excuses; back to trying to reconstruct my reply.

If your takeaway from my post was 'stop writing entirely'; I do apologize; that wasn't the intent at all.

My takeaway was really more 'this isn't really a good story,' and 'may be salvageable' seemed to have a 'probably not' connotation. Still, I admit I was giving up a bit early, and I reacted a bit too strongly to your heavy-handedness.

The best advice I can offer in reviewing and outlining your concept is a single word: "why?"

Looking at the logic behind this, I agree. The 'why' is the most important part. I'm going to completely redo my outline (using the advice given below, of course), and I'm going to build the question of 'why' into it as the central question. The 'what' I pretty much have and the 'how' I'll make up as I go along.


But basically have the 'why's spawn 'why's until everything is mapped out. Seems like a solid technique. Thanks for the advice. The 'why' is going to be at the top of the list of things to put into the outline. That 'untenable position' you mentioned is pretty much why I almost ended up giving up.


Now on to Brian's and Arakawa's ideas on 'how'. (Hooray for immature-looking transitions!)

If Haruhi's wish is not that Sasaki die (which just feels too extreme), but that Sasaki go away, it could be played off as Sasaki's own powers (and rationality) not accepting any kind of banishment, but finding a truck plausible.  Then Haruhi can be more sympathetic because as she see's what's happening ... she wanted Sasaki to go away, not get hit by a truck.  She could call out to not just Kyon, but also the friend she met once before -- because Haruhi didn't want Sasaki to die (or even be horribly injured).

That sounds like a good way to do things. Having Haruhi want to banish Sasaki rather than kill her...


Now, there is a conflict there with what I had been planning, however. I was planning on having Sasaki's powers reactivate as a result of the truck/bus/train/falling rocks hit Kyon; changing that would unravel the explanation on how power transfer worked I had been planning on using somewhere in the MoS series; however, I'm sure there's a way around it.


Still, this also shifts a lot of the blame off of Haruhi and some of it onto Sasaki; I had wanted the end to basically be Kyon yelling at the two of them for their actions; they both meant well, but the execution was morally off on both ends. Kyon's mad at Haruhi for throwing a truck at someone (which ended up being him, of course) and at Sasaki for, well, rendering him female. He's also mad at both of them for fighting like this, and this leads to his wondering if they'd fight like this if they'd started in each other's positions. Wow, that segue went further off topic than I'd expected.


Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the banishment->truck conversion, but I'm most likely going to use banishment.

A pair of shinjin duking it out is kind of neat, but just having the space itself conflicting around them (like at the end of novel 11) could also suffice.  Then the explanation comes down to (from the esper duo) something along the lines of, "They're fighting, because each thinks themselves better able to protect you."  They both make great excuses for exposition that Kyon can't/doesn't observe directly.

The shinjin duel actually does have a reason. The duo provide a box for Shrodinger's reality-cat, if you will. I mean, the space itself conflicting is noted first, but I feel that the image of one shinjin delivering the killing blow to the other, followed by the closed space becoming one reality, actually give a more effective transition.


The protection angle is something I hadn't thought of. It makes a lot more sense on Sasaki's side, but Haruhi's goals aren't that altruistic. Sasaki misinterprets Haruhi and assumes she wants to kill or something like that; she also just generally wants Kyon with her in the new world she makes.


For the record, I do have a reason behind the genderbending, but I'll get to that.

It'd be easier for Sasaki's reality to have Kyon have decided on some whim to just go to the same school as Sasaki.  If you want to avoid unfortunate implications of mind-control, etc., then maybe she just overtly asked him when they were in middle school, and he decided he may as well (in that reality).

Where exactly does the mind control implication come in? I just had it almost assumed that in the 'past' of that world Kyonko had gone to whatever school it is with her friends Sasaki and Tachibana, and then wherever possible timeshifting lands them a memory transplant occurs with results similar to Disappearance following Kyonko telling him/herself not to make a scene like December.

So ... my advice is to take a few bracing breaths, gird yourself, and pare your outline down to the bare minimum.  From there, start building it up -- ask yourself a lot of questions about the why and how as you build it.  If you're uncertain, then don't be afraid to offer up a revision and say, "What about this?"  Keep trying; I'm certain you'll get it.

And that is what I shall do.

Melancholy of Sasaki has the problem that it's a "let's reset canon with some variables changed", so the idea isn't complete unless you figure out a scope and a logical endpoint for it. Maybe you're feeling more confident about this one (since you were confident enough to mention that 'Warring Realities' is intended to build up to it in your outline), but it's hard to say. How would you make it work?

Well, I have a scope, but not exactly an endpoint. I kind of just wanted to start a divergent AU and let it just keep going. How it would work would be something like this: Kyon believes in aliens, time travelers, espers, (sliders,) etc., as he had had Haruhi encouraging the idea rather than Sasaki debunking it. Haruhi would appear MUCH earlier in the series than Sasaki had in the original, and there would be quite a few plotline differences. There would also be explanation about how transfer of power works, and much more that I don't intend to reveal just yet, as it's not the time nor place.


But back to the topic at hand.

In the 'Warring Realities' outline, one way I could see the conflict developing is if Kyon and Sasaki just see one another as friends, but Haruhi believes they are kidding themselves and that Kyon could easily find himself falling in love with Sasaki. This makes Haruhi understandably miserable, but she doesn't know what to do; the conflict comes to a close, and the reality warpers wind up in separate realities, each with their own copy of Kyon.


Kyonko could be brought in at this point if Sasaki were to become aware that Haruhi was thinking that way, and if she were to become permanently anxious that bystanders in general always judge her and Kyon as a potential couple, or (worse) that Kyon really might fall in love with her, which she would have trouble dealing with. Hence Kyon is a girl in Sasaki's reality, so they can remain friends without having to fear either of those things

That's close my the reasoning behind the genderbend. Actually, there are points from your explanation that reinforce mine. Basically, I was just thinking in terms of how Sasaki uses the male form of 'I' when talking to guys (Kyon); I interpreted it as her not wanting to deal with social rules of conversation between a guy and a girl, and not wanting any possibility of romance or even the mention of it. I decided to exaggerate this a little and have her decide that she wants to be in an all girls environment so that she doesn't have to deal with any of that, with Kyon or anyone else.

That still runs into the problem that Sasaki is (unconsciously) forcing a gender swap on Kyon. Absent a few complex notions in my mind of how one might handle involuntary gender change without an associated horror factor, in that case it makes sense for Kyonko to be the one with the false memories.

The problem of her forcing this on Kyon is actually intended; again, it gives him a reason to be mad at her in the big climactic end scene (that I'm still wondering how to pull off).


Meanwhile, I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to handle the 'horror factor'. I had written it so that it was mixed in with the initial shock of 'the world I know is gone.' However, dropping the shock after the initial probably does belittle the issue. I really don't know how to handle it. I'm tempted to have Sasaki influence Kyonko to be okay with it, but that clashes with my notion that Sasaki would respect Kyon's mind enough to deliberately avoid changing anything about it, as opposed to Haruhi being a little more liberal in not changing his personality but being willing to change a few (months of) memories.

(Moreover, Kyon would be reluctant at best to repeat the exact same thing he did in 'Disappearance'.)

Where exactly does this come from? I mean, I can see him not quite enjoying Asakura sticking a knife in his back, but I do remember him saying in his big internal dialogue scene in the movie that he'd press that enter key in a heartbeat. (I haven't read 'Disappearance', so I'm not sure if there's a difference there, but I can't imagine there would be. I plan to read it soon, as I recently got my hands on an English fanlation, but until recently I'd only read 9-11, Wandering Shadow, and Snow Mountain due to the version I read being Google Translate+Spanish fanlation+moderate knowledge of Spanish.)


Anyway, I still plan on Kyonko resolving the reality swap, and for the same reason as Disappearance I can easily see her trying to fix this sans rogue Interface. (Also, she wants to be male again. That part's important.)
Kyon is going to have some memory disagreement, and he may decide to help, but...


On the topic of 'they need to be in the same universe', I think this may be my explanation as to how Kyonko can get across. I had been planning on the worlds somehow being in the same world, just separated by distance. Maybe they gravitate toward each other or something, and eventually fuse together; I'll leave it to Koizumi to BS some explanation after Kyon(ko) fixes everything.

Especially since I have no reason to suppose my view of Sasaki's character is at all accurate.

Does anyone? I think that considering her low exposure artistic licensing can be used to a degree.

I originally intended the piece to be one about temptation--about Haruhi embracing the primacy of the extraordinary to the exclusion of all else and feeling betrayed that her friends weren't so gung-ho about it, only to realize at the very end that this pursuit was giving her no real satisfaction either.  It didn't work, and I rightly was eviscerated for it.  It didn't resonate, and it was too much of a step backward for her to be reasonable, so I retooled it into Haruhi seeing that those around her, who'd all been involved in the extraordinary and forced to put aside what they wanted for the good of the world or timeline or whatever.

It would seem that the transition this one is making, at least for Haruhi as a character, is rather similar to yours. Instead of Haruhi feeling betrayed, she is more...not anti-people. They seem more similar in my head. Oh, I know. Instead of condemning others for their actions she's more saddened by their actions.

In your outline, you talk about what was to happen, and I do get a good feeling you have some well-formed scenes or ideas in place.  But I also get the feeling that this story was all setup for "Melancholy of Sasaki"--the reason I say that is, while I looked through your outline for an overriding message or theme for this story and didn't find one (writing fluff for two cool couples isn't a bad thing, but the reason it's fluff is it's only mildly filling, so to speak), "Melancholy of Sasaki" seemed to have a clear driving idea behind it:  to get the two girls to understand each other's perspectives.

You're right. I really don't have an overriding theme. Now that I think about it, that problem is just another form of the 'why' problem. It's being asked from a different perspective and on a different level, but the concept's the same.
MoS isn't exactly about trying to get the two to understand each other. I think it's really more about how Kyon wanted to understand the interactions better, and wanted to know if they'd come into conflict if they'd been in each other's shoes. The way I'm planning to have it work out, they wouldn't come into conflict.
Still, you're right. I do need to come up with a theme.
And no, it isn't about fluff for two couples. There shall be no SasakixKyon whatsoever. I mean, the HaruhixKyon stuff is fluff, and I admit it's more just to keep time flowing at the same rate between alpha and beta, but there is more to the story then just that. The fluff is also to encase Kyon having a memory crisis which I'm suddenly seeing as being bigger than I had before.


I suppose WR can be seen as a prologue of sorts for MoS, but I also want it to stand as its own story. I mean, it's only going to be one piece of a series, but it's going to be extremely different than the rest of the series. It may set nuances and such up, and there will be sneaky foreshadowing, but it's not exactly going to set up any conflicts, it's just going to explain why the situation is happening in terms of prefacing the MoS series.




I feel like I really haven't done a good job of responding adequately to everything that has been said.
Still, I want to thank you guys for your support and advice, especially the advice. (Not to downplay support, but...) I'll try not to disappoint, and hopefully the results of this foray into fiction will be worth helping me.


And now, to make an outline.

[Gotonis]

Right, I'm having a bit of a problem with my outline.


I think that, no matter how I handle Kyon's memories, I'm going to have to either normalize the members of the SOS Brigade or just make it so that the Brigade never existed in Alpha. I'd prefer the latter, but Haruhi would never unmake the Brigade, she's too devoted to it for that. Meanwhile, normalizing the members seems much more feasible, but I'm still not quite sure how to justify it with Haruhi's character. I mean, I'm tempted to just go with something along the lines of 'Haruhi is happy enough dating Kyon that she doesn't need to search as hard for the extraordinary, and she's content knowing they're out there but doesn't exactly want to find them and have them get in the way or something, or maybe have something about her blatantly disbelieving 'Hey Haruhi, the rest of the Brigade is extraordinary.'


Any suggestions?