[Haruhi][Downer] depellebar

[JonBob]

semovebar seems to be... quite a bit more than a companion piece. It's a lot meatier and weighty than depellebar. It might benefit from trimming, but cutting out a lot of it would mean having to cut the part with the screenplay, and I'm not sure how integral that is to the piece.

I do agree with Muphrid that it's more of a slow burn piece instead of an explosion of sadness (it's better to go out with a bang?)

[Halbarad]

Yeah, I don't think I could show Haruhi's side with the same brevity or sudden impact that existed for depellebar. I'd like to trim it down a bit, but I'm honestly not sure where.

Some general replies:

A big part of Haruhi's decision to break up with Kyon is not just that she feels stifled and held back, but she sees Kyon pushing himself hard to try to keep up with her and says it hurts.  Hence, she believes breaking up is the best thing for both of them.  I think, at that point, Haruhi could expect that Kyon will prosper without her.  The focus in the initial scene--and indeed, throughout the piece, I think--is largely on whether Haruhi will keep her nerve.

That's pretty much correct. From the very start, she knows that letting go of Kyon is a pretty big sacrifice even for her, but her hope is that the positives for both of them will outweigh the negatives - and she keeps that connection severed to keep second thoughts from creeping in, although they do anyway.

What strikes me is through the piece, Haruhi puts on many masks, but she seems...I'm not sure, but continually restless and unhappy?  I'm not sure if this is a function of Haruhi's own goals being nebulous even to her.  She goes where she wants and does what she cares to, and in that way, she seems insatiable.  In that sense, it seems reasonable that for all she does, she never finds real happiness becuase she moves far too fast to appreciate what she's done.  I thought it interesting that there isn't even an illusion of happiness, though.  If she enjoys acting and directing, I don't quite get the sense of it from the piece, even though these activities seem quite well-suited to her.

I could probably stand to improve on this. She's definitely proud of the work she's done and the accomplishments she's achieved, but that pride by itself doesn't have that much substance. I probably didn't touch enough on the pride part of things, focusing more on how things are feeling empty; I might be able to put more on that in the post-bad-date scene though, since she's still ascending and focused more on how high she can climb still.

Because Haruhi considers and then dismisses the idea of calling Kyon, I feel like the last scene of the piece might have been weakened.  It makes more sense that though she's come all the way to Nishinomiya, she lacks the nerve to call him, but I feel it's harder to distinguish that act from her earlier dismissals of the idea.  If she did call and found the number disconnected, it would feel like her isolation is really complete, but then, knowing she had the resolve to do it, it might also feel like there's a glimmer of hope where there shouldn't be.  So I'm not sure what to suggest on that front.

Do you mean because she considers and rejects it before the whole breakdown occurs? I was trying to position that as her never quite being able to let go of her memories of Kyon, but resolved enough to maintain her separation even when he comes back to mind - and then at the end, when she's finally weakened enough to make up her mind to call him, she finds out that she's crushed him again unwittingly, and the choice (as she sees it, at least) is taken out of her hands.

I'm not quite sure whether to tone this up or down, though - I can see merit to going either way with it.

Trying to think about it succinctly, Kyon had hope even when the silence was deafening and ignored a new opportunity, a chance to move on.  Haruhi, on the other hand, achieves success but never seems happy or in touch with people.  Haruhi's relationships are acknowledged to be superficial right off the bat.  To be honest, I'm not sure how she managed to keep going, knowing that so early in her career.  It doesn't surprise me that Haruhi would be capable of calculating maneuvers like that, however.

She never really stops hoping that she'll find someone else like Kyon. In the early stages, she's aware that there's not going to be much possibility of it - everyone around her is too focused on themselves, but her hope is that once she's able to get into a position of control, she can start being more selective.

The problem is that once she gets there, her reputation/fame/glamour/call-it-what-you-will is enough to keep the sincere folks away, and the only people that even try to get close to her are the ones who want something - and by the time we come across her again, she's pretty severely jaded from a few years of dealing with those types.

Overall, I don't feel quite as deflated as I did with the first part--perhaps because I had the benefit of seeing the outline and felt all the emotional impact then, so now I'm left only with logic and analysis to try to make sense of things.  I think part of what's different here is that because we see Haruhi over a long period of time, the tragedy of the piece is smoothed out.  It's like an aura; it's ever-present.  It doesn't hit so much as it simply is.

That's more or less my feeling as well. Haruhi's dissatisfaction is pretty much omnipresent, but she's attempting to defer it or cover it over until the end. The script rejection is supposed to punch through that veneer and make her confront just how empty and dissatisfied she really is with her life, but I'm not sure how well it actually accomplishes that. =\