[Haruhi] Harm's Way - concept and first chapter - talk to me!

[Irrational Behavior]

Hi there. I'm Irrational Behavior, and I'd like to introduce myself and my story. This is my first fanfic, but I'm written plenty of original fiction over the past few years. I only got into fanfiction a month ago, mostly because I wanted Haruhi season 3 and it wasn't there. I've seen Disappearance and read up to novel 11, so I'm caught up. A few weeks after reading The Coin and Under Review, I decided to try my hand at a Haruhi story of my own. I figured this was the best place to get some feedback, since the authors of those stories post here. So far I'm really impressed with the community here.

This story will be slow going at first; I'd like to plan exactly what happens, write it, and then maybe write it again. Finals week is coming up too.

I've attached a partial plot outline and Chapter 1. Hopefully you'll enjoy them! I'd like some critique for my literary skills as well as my plotting skills.

For most of the story, it's no hugging/no kissing. It's hinted that Kyon and Mikuru are paired up, and that's what causes the first closed space to appear in this story. There's some lime near the end, but I won't be writing that chapter for a while. That scene is described in the plot outline. I'll be creating a version without that scene so I can share it with my friends, but I do feel it adds something to the story.

Harm's Way is a decon-recon story told by an original character, Kurosawa Leiko. At first, her only contact with the SOS brigade is through Koizumi. It examines what might happen if teenagers were forced against their will to be espers. For them, Haruhi is nothing more than a death goddess plucking her favorite souls from the battlefield. For nearly everyone involved, it would be better if Haruhi had never been born. Eventually she decides to kill Haruhi and end everyone's suffering. In the end, Haruhi decides to recreate the universe without Leiko in it.

The main characters:
---
-Kurosawa Leiko, a girl who wants to be left alone to explore the world. She feels that life is an endless list of obligations. Openly resents her family, her school, and Haruhi. Can't sustain normal sleep patterns because of magical empathy with Haruhi.
-Koizumi Itsuki - yeah, that guy.
-Nakada Chie - Leiko's best friend. Warm, loyal and supportive, she'll go to great lengths for her friends' happiness.
-Robert Duran, an irresponsible transfer student who teaches Leiko boxing without knowing what she needs it for.

The supporting characters:
---
-Tachibana Kyoko - now an unaffiliated esper who advocates peace between the factions. Injured early on.
-Fujibayashi Kyou - Teaches homeroom and first hour for Leiko and Robert.
-The rest of the SOS brigade
-Parents and brothers of Leiko and Chie

[alethiophile]

It should be noted that the outline document isn't actually a PDF, but a .rtf document. To successfully open it, you need to rename it to .rtf and use an application that can handle those (Word or OpenOffice will work).

Haven't actually read either. Probably won't, since Haruhi isn't my usual fandom. I wish you good luck, though.

[Irrational Behavior]

Hmm? I'll fix the attachment problem now, thanks for the heads up.

[Halbarad]

Hi there. I'm Irrational Behavior, and I'd like to introduce myself and my story. This is my first fanfic, but I'm written plenty of original fiction over the past few years. I only got into fanfiction a month ago, mostly because I wanted Haruhi season 3 and it wasn't there. I've seen Disappearance and read up to novel 11, so I'm caught up. A few weeks after reading The Coin and Under Review, I decided to try my hand at a Haruhi story of my own. I figured this was the best place to get some feedback, since the authors of those stories post here. So far I'm really impressed with the community here.

Welcome to Soulriders! I'm Halbarad; I've been around on SR for quite a while, I've written a couple of Haruhi fics myself (one of which referred you here), and I'd say I'm the closest that Brian/Durandall has to a primary beta reader. He and I tend to bounce ideas back and forth quite a bit, so I've got some experience in picking apart ideas for flaws.

I'll go through what you've got posted; be warned that I tend to be pretty brutal in my analysis, however. If it comes across as mean-spirited, that's not the intent at all. We're always happy to see new blood around these parts, and deconstructing your idea isn't meant to run you off, just to take apart the idea that's being presented.

This story will be slow going at first; I'd like to plan exactly what happens, write it, and then maybe write it again. Finals week is coming up too.

I've attached a partial plot outline and Chapter 1. Hopefully you'll enjoy them! I'd like some critique for my literary skills as well as my plotting skills.

I'd hit the plot outline in a later post, but the PDF for it appears to be corrupted. As a general rule, it's best to post attachments in plain or rich text formats, as they're more universally compatible and you honestly shouldn't need a lot of formatting tricks.

For most of the story, it's no hugging/no kissing. It's hinted that Kyon and Mikuru are paired up, and that's what causes the first closed space to appear in this story. There's some lime near the end, but I won't be writing that chapter for a while. That scene is described in the plot outline. I'll be creating a version without that scene so I can share it with my friends, but I do feel it adds something to the story.

First stop here. Why, exactly, are Kyon and Mikuru paired up? Kyon has an immense amount of pressure pushing him towards Haruhi, between his own feelings, Haruhi's feelings, and pressure from Koizumi. For him to pair up with Mikuru is really odd, and it's even odder that Mikuru would go along with it, knowing the reaction it's likely to cause from Haruhi - as well as the restrictions she herself apparently has on having relationships in another timeframe. It'll take some extremely strong justification to explain why either one of them would do this.

Harm's Way is a decon-recon story told by an original character, Kurosawa Leiko. At first, her only contact with the SOS brigade is through Koizumi. It examines what might happen if teenagers were forced against their will to be espers. For them, Haruhi is nothing more than a death goddess plucking her favorite souls from the battlefield. For nearly everyone involved, it would be better if Haruhi had never been born. Eventually she decides to kill Haruhi and end everyone's suffering. In the end, Haruhi decides to recreate the universe without Leiko in it.

Remarkably grimdark look at Haruhi, particularly given that (assuming this is late canon) the incidence of closed spaces is next to negligible. Koizumi mentions late in canon that the only thing to really spawn major closed spaces is the sudden appearance of Sasaki, and the destruction caused is not all that great. An esper going rogue early in canon might be more feasible if they're coming out of her turbulent middle school years, but Haruhi's calmed down significantly in the aftermath of Sigh. Why would she strike now? Even if espers have been killed in her closed spaces (which seems unlikely, as Kyon's of the mind that Haruhi isn't that type of person per canon), it seems pretty unlikely that it's happened for quite some time.

This same unwillingness to kill also makes the resolution of the story seem very extreme and unlikely. The last person that seriously perturbed Haruhi (Sasaki) wasn't removed from existence by a random remake of the world, and in fact, as far as we know, Haruhi's never taken that drastic an action against anyone, even in her more sociopathic days. The closest she ever came was the Melancholy dream, and she's come a very long way from the person she was at that point.

Pulling in an OC as the main also has some significant issues, but I'll speak more to those a bit further on.

Also, 'Leiko' is not a valid Japanese name. No romanization system that I'm aware of uses the letter L at all; Reiko would be fine, Leiko doesn't work. Nitpick, but details do detract from suspension of disbelief.

The main characters:
---
-Kurosawa Leiko, a girl who wants to be left alone to explore the world. She feels that life is an endless list of obligations. Openly resents her family, her school, and Haruhi. Can't sustain normal sleep patterns because of magical empathy with Haruhi.
-Koizumi Itsuki - yeah, that guy.
-Nakada Chie - Leiko's best friend. Warm, loyal and supportive, she'll go to great lengths for her friends' happiness.
-Robert Duran, an irresponsible transfer student who teaches Leiko boxing without knowing what she needs it for.

Okay, this is a significant issue right here, particularly for a first fic. Of the four people you're listing as your main characters, three are OCs and the fourth is arguably the least-developed of the original cast, given that we have only the vaguest hints at what Koizumi's real personality is like.

OCs are not inherently bad, but they're a dangerous tool for an inexperienced writer, and should almost always be avoided as main characters. To put it bluntly, people are not reading Haruhi (or any other fandom's) fanfiction to find out about your OC; they're there for the characters they know and like already. By stuffing your primary cast with 75% OC and 25% near-blank-slate, you're likely to turn off a large chunk of readers simply for that alone.

I'll admit to some strong anti-Koizumi bias here (it's not hard to scan back through old forum threads here to find out exactly why), but even for people that are fans of his, I doubt they really care too much to see him primarily interacting with a cast of OCs rather than the Brigade itself.

The supporting characters:
---
-Tachibana Kyoko - now an unaffiliated esper who advocates peace between the factions. Injured early on.
-Fujibayashi Kyou - Teaches homeroom and first hour for Leiko and Robert.
-The rest of the SOS brigade
-Parents and brothers of Leiko and Chie

Same issue here, with a couple of added notes. Of the listed supporting cast, half of them are OCs as well; the pitch so far is looking very much like "I want to write a Haruhi story without having to bother with any of the established characters." I won't say it can't be done, but I can say that from what I'm seeing here I doubt I'd read this fic past the first chapter if it were to come up on a search. It has a lot of strikes against it just in terms of the concept, so even if the writing itself was stellar (and it may be, I'm posting this without having even attempted to look over the chapter draft you posted, so this isn't a knock on your writing ability at all), my personal judgement would likely be 'trainwreck in the making, drop it here'.

Kyouko is another canon character, but with her own separate issues; she may be an esper, but she has no connection to any of the ones we've seen here so far, other than belonging to a group that rivals Koizumi's. Why would she be involved here at all? Is she trying to support Leiko's plot to take out Haruhi so she can try to get Haruhi's powers for Sasaki? If so, is she really willing to go directly against Sasaki's will like that? For that matter, how does Sasaki play into all of this? If you're going to invoke the 'anti-SOS Brigade', questions are naturally going to follow about where the rest of them are.

To bring this all down to a point, the Cliffs Notes version of the plot that I'm getting from your pitch here is "Villain protagonist OC develops a plot to try to kill Haruhi and/or commit suicide by reality warper, and Haruhi's canon character growth gets ignored to justify it and thrown out the window in reaction to it."

The tone is also a very sharp contrast to canon's more generally lighthearted approach, and as such is going to be an additional turnoff for some readers. This isn't to say that a grimdark Haruhi story can't be done well, but it's not something I'd recommend for an author starting out - learn to walk before you run, etc.

• Shift the focus away from the OCs and back to the core Brigade. Stick with Koizumi as a main if you'd like, but have him dealing more with the trouble the OCs are raising in conjunction with the Brigade rather than dealing with the OCs directly. Your readers are going to be more interested in seeing how Kyon and Haruhi and the others are going to be reacting to someone making attempts on Haruhi's life than they are about finding out the motivation behind a random unknown that's making those attempts.
• Don't ignore canon characterization -- this is a very common pitfall with a lot of Haruhi fanfic authors in general. You're coming from a more solid foundation given that you've read the novels rather than just seeing the anime, but even with that you're falling into the snare of portraying late-canon Haruhi as being just as selfish and borderline sociopathic as she was in Melancholy, when the novels show some very dramatic character growth between those two endpoints.
• Support your significant plot points. Simply saying 'Kyon and Mikuru are dating' breaks suspension of disbelief rather badly, since there's no clear path for a reader who's familiar with the novels to draw a line from point A (the UST between Kyon and Haruhi on both sides in late canon) and point B, where you have Kyon now dating Mikuru. Granted, this also ties into the point above; late-canon Haruhi is a lot less likely to spin off closed spaces when she's upset than Melancholy-era Haruhi was, and by late canon it would take some extreme Idiot-Ball-holding on the part of both Kyon and Mikuru to have any kind of significant relationship within the range of Haruhi's awareness.

As I said, I hope you'll keep in mind that none of this is meant to say that your idea is terrible or you're wrong for having come up with it, but this board exists to provide comments and criticism (C&C) for fanfics and fanfic ideas, so that's what I'll provide.

[Muphrid]

I read through the first chapter here before touching the outline.  My comments are in red.

Spoiler: ShowHide

The hardest thing I did that day was getting up. No, I don't want to go to school, and couldn't you wake me up more pleasantly?

Already, we can see this character, whoever it is, is a bit sarcastic.

My mom has always been terrible about this. Four years ago, when I started having sleep problems, she decided to get creative. She started by singing while sitting on me, but she stopped that when she sprained my knee. She took away my blankets, and I started folding them under the mattress. Last year she slid ice cubes down my pajamas. I decided to sleep naked. I thanked the Seven Lucky Gods when we downsized our apartment and I could finally lock my door.

Sitting on people seems a bit extreme...

Even though it's an improvement, her shouting and banging is far more displeasureable than an alarm clock. I just laid there, convincing myself it was worth it.

"Are you up yet? Are you out of bed?"

"Yes, Mom..."

"Then show me your feet on the floor."

She doesn't even trust me to stand up by myself! She thinks I'll go back to sleep. Since I wake up at 7:40, I don't bother making my bed. I don't bother turning on lights or opening the window. It's all just a waste of my time.

Pretty cynical - "waste of my time"

"Just let me put something on."

I slip on some boxers and a bathrobe. I'm heading right for the shower. Mom hands me a towel and gives me a hug. She's strict, but really not that bad.

Something about this seems odd.  It seems like a sudden gesture, for the mother to hug her, unless the mother is herself a bit unusual.

"I'm making eggs for you, and hurry up or you'll be late. Later it might rain today."

Once in the bathroom, I turn on the water and wait for the shower to get warm. I stare at the mirror every morning while it fills up with steam. I'm skinny and I'm neither short nor tall. My figure is average, my eyes are light, and my nose is pretty big. I like stylish clothes, but I can't wear them at school. I just leave my sailor fuku hanging in the bathroom, since I use it every weekday.

Perhaps "wear" instead of "use" for "use it every weekday"?  I notice also that your sentence structure is short and simple--this is not a bad thing.  Rather, it just makes the character come off as a bit glib.

The mirror is clouding up and the water is hot enough, so I enter the shower.

The first time people stay at my house, they usually ask why I like it so hot. Doesn't it burn? The trick is to start it warm and gradually increase the temperature. It's supposed to make you skin tingle, and you can feel the grime melting off your skin. You rub it hard and you feel clean. I love washing my hair, which I suppose is my distinguishing feature. It's long enough to be a major pain, but not long enough to sit on.  My phone vibrates and I leave it alone - this time is mine. I can stand still and let my muscles relax. It's like another ten minutes of sleep.

Now our narrator feels a bit poetic, talking about grime melting away.  This is the first time she's sounded actually happy about something, and it does give her a bit of depth.  We know she isn't perpetually unhappy.

I'm ready to drift away again when my chest tightens up and my knees get weak. I steady myself on the guardrail. It's another burst of emotion that's not mine, a reminder of another job I don't want to do. The ringtone is special; I know it's from the Organization. The lights flicker out and the shower sounds cease, soon replaced by my red esper's glow.

I feel like the sudden feeling of weakness and such are too sudden.  This is an important moment, a moment when we realize our narrator really is special--aside from the hint earlier about four years ago.  I feel like there should be more focus on this moment?

"Damn you, Suzumiya."

So she's not happy with Haruhi.  That explains her sour attitude.

I throw the door open and get dressed in my fuku, not bothering to dry. Soon I'm on the roof and ascending.

The celestial is a magnificent creature, towering over the Shinko building while hunchbacked from the weight of his lanky arms. He moves like a rainbow at midnight, refracting starlight into a colorless sky.  He looks my way, then swings his arm like a blackjack and knocks down my high rise.

Again, our narrator lapses into the poetic.  It's an interesting contrast agianst her usually terse narration.

I shoot backwards, covering my escape with energy blasts. Before he can strike again, he has to shift his weight. A celestial's limbs are too long, so his center of gravity is up in his chest. If you hit him with a powerful blast, you can faze him for a moment. It's all I need to get clear. Once I'm out of reach, he returns to smashing my apartment complex. After three hits, it's nothing more than a hole in the ground.

She's very matter-of-fact.  Logical, detached, unfazed.

From my safe vantage point, I finally realize just how large this closed space is. Where are the other espers? The whole district is bathed in a homogenous, shadowless glow. Even with my perfect vision, I can't find a hint of the distortion that marks the barrier between this pocket dimension and the rest of the world. Soon another ruby steak appears on the horizon. I hear a shout as it approaches.

Is it necessary to emphasize her perfect vision?  It seems like a superfluous detail.

"Kurosawa-san! I'm here to help." I recognize the voice, it's Tachibana Kyoko. She's not a member of my Organization, but she always does her duty. "Just the two of us today?"

Reaction to this point: why on Earth would Tachibana be helping Koizumi's Organization?  What is she doing in what should be Haruhi's closed space?  Is Sasaki involved?  This is a major point that, well, I'm not sure is deliberate on your part or in error.  Tachibana cannot ordinarily enter Haruhi's closed spaces.

"Yes, for now. It's good to see you. " Tachibana smiles politely. She does her best to be pleasant, even in the worst situations.

"Well, now we can fight properly. Let's use the slicer right away!" I nod, watching the celestial trample our favorite stores and restaurants.

"Our" definitely implies Kurosawa and Tachibana are friendly.

"If you're sure, Kurosawa-san. A slicer only lasts for half a second."

Normally, five to eight espers can tear a giant apart in a minute. While two or three fire energy blasts, rest of us fly in formation and a particle beam forms between us. That can chop a limb right off, but without cover fire no one wants to approach it.

"Yeah, we'll have to get him to swing. If we can get rid of his arms, this one won't be a problem."

"Mmh, Kurosawa-san. Let's get this done and walk to school together."

"All right. I'll get in close; the rest depends on your skill."

They are really friendly, which seems somewhat unusual, but also somewhat sweet, for someone as seemingly cynical as Kurosawa.

Tachibana sends a flurry of bolts into the celestial's eye while I dip below his shoulder level. He could grab me with either of his hands, but I'm not in his field of vision. He takes the bait, swatting at her with enough force to make an audible whoosh. She activates the slicer, bolting up while I cross behind his shoulder. The celestial moans, which is the sound you get when you touch a live speaker cable.

This "which is the sound you get..." is a bit odd.

Losing his arm took away the celestial's balance. He's getting cautious, so I keep pressuring him withenergy blasts while he regains his footing. He stoops to pick up a house and Tachibana rushes, ready to take off his head. She reacts to his elbow thrust with an Immelmann turn, but he unfolds his arm at the climax of the strike! She collides with a building and drops to the pavement.

"Damn you, Suzumiya!" I lose it, using my powers to throw cars and mailboxes and anything else at the celestial. Anything to get his attention.

It's almost like a catch phrase.  Can objects move about in a closed space?  Really?  Or are they mostly fixed in place?

I don't know how long I hovered there, at street level, slowly leading him away while both of us destroyed the city. Eventually another group of red spots appears in the sky, and the six of them quarter the celestial while I laid on the concrete recovering breath. The first few rays of sunlight pierce the crumbling closed space dome.

The new espers touch down and one offers me his hand.

"Kurosawa-kun, I'm impressed." Once I'm on my feet, I thank him with a glare.

"You are?"

"Itsuki Koizumi, at your service." The leader of our Organization, a rawboned man who stands like a big one. He gives a once-over to his comrades, then looks into my eyes with vexing calm. My staring doesn't bother him at all.

#Name order is backwards here, inconsistent with "Tachibana Kyoko" and "Suzumiya Haruhi" later on.

"You should've been here sooner. I think Tachibana Kyoko was killed."

His smile disappears. "I...I must apologize. Kyoko-san, where is she now?"
I point and everyone starts running. Tachibana lays prostrate in front of the post office.

Kyoko-san--so he's on a first-name basis with Tachibana, now.  Conspicuous.

"So, you were distracting it to save her," Koizumi said evenly. He and two others turned her over to asses her injuries. She wakes up shrieking, her right foreleg dangling from its knee.

"All right, let's put her down gently. Taira-kun, please call an ambulance at the moment this closed space ends. Everyone else, you're going to stand and form a barrier around her. We shouldn't move her if we can help it."

It might be a bit weird to have all this dialogue be Koizumi's yet still be unbroken by others' words or actions.  I'm not sure how strict a guideline it is, but I try to avoid having the same person speak on consecutive paragraphs.  It may just be me, though.

I join the circle and her screams are still too loud for me to bear. Koizumi takes her hand, but she doesn't even see him. Finally, the closed space ends and we stand in bright, busy Kobe the way it should be. We link our hands to prevent Tachibana from being trampled, and not a single person asks if they can help.  Taira and Koizumi shout into their phones, barely overpowering the indifferent chorus of the crowd.

This reads a bit choppy; it kind of just goes from one description to another to another without break.  If Kurosawa is having trouble bearing Tachibana's screams, she could wince or turn away or do something else to cope.

"Kyon, I apologize for calling at this hour! My friend's been injured, so I'll be absent the whole school day! I'm counting on you to keep Suzumiya-san happy!" He closes the phone right there and approaches me, bowing deeply.

Having Koizumi address him by name is, well, very sticky.  Koizumi never addressed Kyon by name.  Over the phone, it would be reasonable to do so, but you'll have to decide on a convention for this interaction.  Overall, Koizumi comes off in this conversation as a bit too shaken, in my opinion.  He's generally pretty composed.  And Kyon would laugh in his face for the suggestion that he should keep Haruhi happy in Koizumi's stead.

"I'll take responsibility, Kurosawa-kun. I'm sorry about the way this turned out. You have my word that she'll receive the attention she needs. We partially control the hospital, so the doors will be open to you."

"Uh..."

"You should go to school now. Thank you, really."

I take a moment to collect myself. "That was the biggest closed space I've ever seen."

"Yes, it was. I'll certainly investigate it."

With that, I turn and leave. Tachibana screams until her voice gives out.

Might think Tachibana would get tired of screaming throughout the whole scene...

***

After entering my homeroom, I find myself face-to-face with a white kid in a brand-new uniform. He smiles, genuinely pleased to meet me.

"Hi there!" He beams, genuinely pleased to meet me.

#Is this "pleased to meet me" bit intentional repetition?

"Hello." I give a half-hearted smile and bow a little. Thankfully, the gracious Fujibayashi-sensei sends me to my seat and continues with her introduction. I'll have to stay awake until it's done.

Squaring her shoulders and projecting her voice, she announces, "This is Robert Duran-kun, from America. He'll be joining us this year as a transfer student! Please be helpful and I'm sure everyone will get along well. Is there anything you'd like to say, Duran-kun?"

"Of course. It's nice to meet you, everyone, and I look forward to knowing you properly." He surveys the class, making eye contact with each of us. "I like meeting new people, so I'll talk with anyone about anything. I'm a Christian, and my interests include boxing, wrestling, theology, cooking and airplanes. If you help me with kanji, I'll never forget it!"

Very religious, amiable kid.  Not sure what to make of him yet.

I find myself laughing despite myself. Fujibyashi-sensei tells him he can have any seat he likes, and he chooses the one directly behind me.

"Wouldn't you rather sit close to the board?" she asks.

"In America, the back row is a place of honor." The teacher shakes her head and chuckles.

"Alright, then. Let's get started with the lesson."

I have trouble zoning out during history because of the foreigner's room-filling presence. It tugs on my mind like sleep deprivation.

Even after Tachibana's injuries, I feel more apprehensive than upset. I don't need this esper 'empathy.' Isn't it enough that I fight monsters? My own mood swings and sleep problems are plenty to deal with.  My friend breaks her leg and I'm feeling what she feels instead. I can't even get mad about it.

Might want to emphasize she to make clear that Haruhi is being referenced.

She spends her time prancing around and making trouble, no responsibilities, no losses, no problems.  Her deepest desire is having more fun, so why does she feel afraid? What could she possibly have to be scared of?

This year, we're studying causes rather than effects. That's why we're starting with the occupation and working backwards through the shogunates. It's an interesting idea, but I've learned all this already.
We're getting homework, and I just have to do it.

Very sudden transition from thoughts about Haruhi to thoughts about schoolwork.

The tone rings and first period is over. The exchange student taps me on the shoulder.

"Hey, can you tell me what's the best coffee in the place?"

"I..." It slips my mind. "Sorry. I can show you."

"You all right?" He studies my face, which gives me the feeling he's been staring at the back of my head the whole class.

"Well, I'm really tired, and a classmate broke her leg on the way to school. I'm not having a good day." I yawn for effect, then stick out my hand. He shakes it.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yeah, I'm Kurosawa Leiko. You can call me anything except my name."

Leiko is a bit of an unusual Romanization.

"Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?"

I roll my eyes and turn away. "You can brush my hair for me. Then I'll look good when I get chewed out."

"No problem." He retrieves a comb from his pocket and gathers up my hair. I make a face, but I let him do it. One less thing to worry about. By now he's attracted a crush of students, introducing themselves, wondering about America, and asking does he know me? First day at school and he's already making news.

Making a face seems a bit mild.  This ought to be quite a scene for a Japanese classroom, a new boy doing something personal with a girl.

The tone rings and everyone goes back to their seats.

"So, who's the classmate who got injured?"

"I'll buy you coffee later, Robert-kun. "

Not even my shower went as planned. Damn you, Suzumiya Haruhi!

These last few lines don't seem to logically connect together?

--So, after reading that, I've now looked at your outline.  Big point: to someone like me, who has no idea what it is you're doing (this universe is not yet the one we're familiar with), it may need to be much more clear that that's the case.  This could be as saying it's an AU, or probably on top of that, you could investigate some things in the world that are pointedly different from the way they are in canon.  For instance: you could say Koizumi and Kyoko have been dating for several years, even before Koizumi transferred into Kyon and Haruhi's school.  Something like that would be obviously not true in the universe we know and clue people in.

Your outline is very detailed.  It reminds me a bit of what I do nowadays to outline scenes, but I never outline in full detail more than one scene in advance.  Stuff changes.  You think differently about things, and I detest figuring everything out only for inspiration to makeit no longer all fit.

Something I want to ask is, what is the point of this story?  The impression I get is that you want to explain some hole in canon about why Haruhi's closed space works the way it does. ("This is actually what happened!" in particular gives me this impression.)  I think this is a common motivation for fanfiction, and I think it's also something you have to be very cautious about.  Structuring a story this way means that your payoff is more intellectual than anything else.  You'd best be sure that that's what you want to do and that no one can poke a hole in your solution, if that's what you're intending.

The resentful esper is a compelling idea to me, don't get me wrong.  I liked it a lot, enough to use it for Mori in The Coin.  But I don't get a clear sense of purpose and goal to Leiko right now.  Is she just trying to get by, to deal with the lack of sleep and the emotions that aren't her own?  This seems most likely, I guess.  A big part of that is dealing with her pent-up anger toward Haruhi, which has moments of recession (as at one point she realizes Haruhi is not a bad person) and moments of explosive release.  I'm a fan of people struggling against forces they can't control, against internal drives and exterior pressures.  In some ways, I think this is the least problematic aspect of your plan.

The question I would pose to you, I guess, is, what is the point of putting this prior to Melancholy?  Why make Asahina into a basically different character to hook her up with Kyon?  Haruhi is plenty capable of anxieties.  She may not form a ton of closed spaces anymore (post-11), but you can choose a middle ground if that suits better.

In addition, what purposes do the characters of Chie and Robert serve?  I see what functions they perform, but to me, it seems like Leiko should be influenced by their presences, should either find strength from them or despair in her struggle to keep going.  Robert teaches her about boxing; is she basically learning from his American attitudes to stand up for herself?  To no longer passively snark at the situation she's in but actively try to change it?  Even then, boxing suggests only a violent solution, instead of any possibility of a constructive one.  Chie's purpose and how Leiko is affected by her seems even less clear to me.

Having read some more from your post, and having thought about it a bit more, it does seem you want to have Haruhi come across to Leiko as more or less the uncaring god who has appointed them as her agents without asking, without consent.  It's not unreasonable for Leiko to see things that way, but having chosen the time of the story conveniently makes it so that Haruhi is at her worst point.  It also seems to avoid the question that, while it's bad Haruhi chose the espers the way she did, it may well have been much worse if she hadn't chosen any at all (admittedly, I don't find this very convincing, but I think it will come up).

For all that I've said so far about the outline, let me say this: your technique with prose is actually pretty good.  Some of the sentences lean on the short and choppy side, while others show the poetic flow I mentioned.  It's very readable, though, and it's not just utterly boring on the sight of it like some authors'.  You have the LEGOs and the ability to fuse them together; now the question is, what is the best shape to use?

I think this piece could work, but you'll need to think critically about what's important to you and what you want to accomplish.

[Irrational Behavior]

Thanks for the speedy and thoughtful feedback. I came here to hear your thoughts, so I certainly won't be bothered with harsh feedback. Please don't think of my replies as defensive either; I'm just answering the questions the best I can.

I've fixed the problematic attachment and I can post RTF files from now on. I've had problems with corrupted RTF files too, but I'll use whatever is preferred.

I'll respond to your posts in order, then.

-Leiko/Reiko: Apparently Leiko is a name used in Hawaii. It was listed as Japanese in a baby-name book, but I can't believe I didn't catch that. I mean...I should have known. I'm torn, though. I can change her name or stick with the odd Romanization. There are some Japanese people who write their names that way (I found a seiyuu and a sculptor).

-This is not late canon. The incidence of closed spaces and some other things lead to that conclusion, but I should have made that more obvious in my own first post.

I know we only met Kyoko in the later novels, but she was around before that. We don't know how long she had been associating with Sasaki and Fujiwara either. There's no reason to include them if it takes place before they ever met. This is probably my fault for using "now unaffiliated" in my first post.

BTW, one thing has always bothered me. Why does Sasaki hang out with them anyway? She doesn't even seem to like them. That entire arc is kind of off if you ask me.

First stop here. Why, exactly, are Kyon and Mikuru paired up? Kyon has an immense amount of pressure pushing him towards Haruhi, between his own feelings, Haruhi's feelings, and pressure from Koizumi. For him to pair up with Mikuru is really odd, and it's even odder that Mikuru would go along with it, knowing the reaction it's likely to cause from Haruhi - as well as the restrictions she herself apparently has on having relationships in another timeframe. It'll take some extremely strong justification to explain why either one of them would do this.

I suppose it was my first idea for a suitable stressor. If you want to suggest something else, I'm totally open. This part of the story isn't important, except that it leads to a conversation which reveals that Mikuru and Kyon were able to travel back in time before Tanabata.

Remarkably grimdark...

It sure is :D. The idea of the universe being subject to a high school girl's whims is actually pretty terrifying, isn't it? The aliens, time travelers and espers all have large factions that just want to keep Haruhi as stable as possible. Basically, a sizable portion of the people who know about her powers are already scared stiff. I always felt this series had its dark side just below the surface. For example: If Kyon believed Koizumi when he mentioned "bloody battles taking place behind the scenes," the decision to revert the world in Disappearance was ultimately a very selfish one where Kyon trades the safety of others for a more interesting life.

I think Haruhi would be willing to kill Leiko and start over - Mikuru gets stabbed, Koizumi gets his head blown off with a point-blank energy blast, and Haruhi herself would have died if not for her powers. Grimdark, but I think it's reasonable for her to do this in my scenario. The unreasonable part would be how I get to that point - I do need a lot of help with that. In particular, something concrete that the rival faction of espers is fighting for. They have to have some sort of short-term goal.

I have thought of telling the story from the Brigade's perspective, but the whole point of this is that Haruhi's story affects way more people than Haruhi and her friends. I could write two versions of this story, one following the Brigade and one following the OCs, but I'd like to tackle one at a time. Even if I go that route, it's the OCs who drive the action and I have to write their version first.

----------

I read through the first chapter here before touching the outline.  My comments are in red.

Yeah, thanks for reading it :)

Spoiler: ShowHide

The hardest thing I did that day was getting up. No, I don't want to go to school, and couldn't you wake me up more pleasantly?

Already, we can see this character, whoever it is, is a bit sarcastic.

My mom has always been terrible about this. Four years ago, when I started having sleep problems, she decided to get creative. She started by singing while sitting on me, but she stopped that when she sprained my knee. She took away my blankets, and I started folding them under the mattress. Last year she slid ice cubes down my pajamas. I decided to sleep naked. I thanked the Seven Lucky Gods when we downsized our apartment and I could finally lock my door.

Sitting on people seems a bit extreme...
My mom used to do that to me. If yours didn't...you were a lucky child ;)

Even though it's an improvement, her shouting and banging is far more displeasureable than an alarm clock. I just laid there, convincing myself it was worth it.

"Are you up yet? Are you out of bed?"

"Yes, Mom..."

"Then show me your feet on the floor."

She doesn't even trust me to stand up by myself! She thinks I'll go back to sleep. Since I wake up at 7:40, I don't bother making my bed. I don't bother turning on lights or opening the window. It's all just a waste of my time.

Pretty cynical - "waste of my time"
Yeah. I wanted to solidify Leiko's character very quickly. It only makes sense, since we're with her for the whole story.

"Just let me put something on."

I slip on some boxers and a bathrobe. I'm heading right for the shower. Mom hands me a towel and gives me a hug. She's strict, but really not that bad.

Something about this seems odd.  It seems like a sudden gesture, for the mother to hug her, unless the mother is herself a bit unusual.
Since Leiko pushes her family away emotionally (we see this in the next chapter), she tries to have as much physical affection with her daughter as possible.

"I'm making eggs for you, and hurry up or you'll be late. Later it might rain today."

Once in the bathroom, I turn on the water and wait for the shower to get warm. I stare at the mirror every morning while it fills up with steam. I'm skinny and I'm neither short nor tall. My figure is average, my eyes are light, and my nose is pretty big. I like stylish clothes, but I can't wear them at school. I just leave my sailor fuku hanging in the bathroom, since I use it every weekday.

Perhaps "wear" instead of "use" for "use it every weekday"?  I notice also that your sentence structure is short and simple--this is not a bad thing.  Rather, it just makes the character come off as a bit glib.

The mirror is clouding up and the water is hot enough, so I enter the shower.

The first time people stay at my house, they usually ask why I like it so hot. Doesn't it burn? The trick is to start it warm and gradually increase the temperature. It's supposed to make you skin tingle, and you can feel the grime melting off your skin. You rub it hard and you feel clean. I love washing my hair, which I suppose is my distinguishing feature. It's long enough to be a major pain, but not long enough to sit on.  My phone vibrates and I leave it alone - this time is mine. I can stand still and let my muscles relax. It's like another ten minutes of sleep.

Now our narrator feels a bit poetic, talking about grime melting away.  This is the first time she's sounded actually happy about something, and it does give her a bit of depth.  We know she isn't perpetually unhappy.
Everyone loves creature comforts. Hopefully, she'll be seen as a likeable character for the first half of the story. I need to stretch that as far as I can.

I'm ready to drift away again when my chest tightens up and my knees get weak. I steady myself on the guardrail. It's another burst of emotion that's not mine, a reminder of another job I don't want to do. The ringtone is special; I know it's from the Organization. The lights flicker out and the shower sounds cease, soon replaced by my red esper's glow.

I feel like the sudden feeling of weakness and such are too sudden.  This is an important moment, a moment when we realize our narrator really is special--aside from the hint earlier about four years ago.  I feel like there should be more focus on this moment?
I've been focusing on brevity for this story since I think that fits her character the best. Maybe I can make this more dramatic, but I had trouble with it earlier. If I expound on this, I want to do it without resorting to redundancy or purple prose.

"Damn you, Suzumiya."

So she's not happy with Haruhi.  That explains her sour attitude.

I throw the door open and get dressed in my fuku, not bothering to dry. Soon I'm on the roof and ascending.

The celestial is a magnificent creature, towering over the Shinko building while hunchbacked from the weight of his lanky arms. He moves like a rainbow at midnight, refracting starlight into a colorless sky.  He looks my way, then swings his arm like a blackjack and knocks down my high rise.

Again, our narrator lapses into the poetic.  It's an interesting contrast agianst her usually terse narration.

I shoot backwards, covering my escape with energy blasts. Before he can strike again, he has to shift his weight. A celestial's limbs are too long, so his center of gravity is up in his chest. If you hit him with a powerful blast, you can faze him for a moment. It's all I need to get clear. Once I'm out of reach, he returns to smashing my apartment complex. After three hits, it's nothing more than a hole in the ground.

She's very matter-of-fact.  Logical, detached, unfazed.
Very perceptive of you. That's a major part of her character as well. Maybe she has trouble differentiating her feelings from Haruhi's?

From my safe vantage point, I finally realize just how large this closed space is. Where are the other espers? The whole district is bathed in a homogenous, shadowless glow. Even with my perfect vision, I can't find a hint of the distortion that marks the barrier between this pocket dimension and the rest of the world. Soon another ruby steak appears on the horizon. I hear a shout as it approaches.

Is it necessary to emphasize her perfect vision?  It seems like a superfluous detail.
I remember thinking this was important earlier, but it's not anymore. Will remove.

"Kurosawa-san! I'm here to help." I recognize the voice, it's Tachibana Kyoko. She's not a member of my Organization, but she always does her duty. "Just the two of us today?"

Reaction to this point: why on Earth would Tachibana be helping Koizumi's Organization?  What is she doing in what should be Haruhi's closed space?  Is Sasaki involved?  This is a major point that, well, I'm not sure is deliberate on your part or in error.  Tachibana cannot ordinarily enter Haruhi's closed spaces.
Really? I might be in error, but I thought her powers hadn't been laid out for us one way or the other. IMO, all the espers came from Haruhi. Her espers immediately knew who they were serving and what her powers were, and they turned out to be correct on all counts.

That 'Sasaki's' espers revise their stance on her means they really didn't know in the first place. Besides their word, the only evidence of Sasaki's powers are her closed spaces. Sasaki's knowledge is suspect because she's so influenced by Fujiwara. A mock closed space wouldn't be hard for Suyou. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but from what I remember it doesn't seem likely that everyone is being honest. What about Kyoko's canon claim that Koizumi leads the Org?

"Yes, for now. It's good to see you. " Tachibana smiles politely. She does her best to be pleasant, even in the worst situations.

"Well, now we can fight properly. Let's use the slicer right away!" I nod, watching the celestial trample our favorite stores and restaurants.

"Our" definitely implies Kurosawa and Tachibana are friendly.

"If you're sure, Kurosawa-san. A slicer only lasts for half a second."

Normally, five to eight espers can tear a giant apart in a minute. While two or three fire energy blasts, rest of us fly in formation and a particle beam forms between us. That can chop a limb right off, but without cover fire no one wants to approach it.

"Yeah, we'll have to get him to swing. If we can get rid of his arms, this one won't be a problem."

"Mmh, Kurosawa-san. Let's get this done and walk to school together."

"All right. I'll get in close; the rest depends on your skill."

They are really friendly, which seems somewhat unusual, but also somewhat sweet, for someone as seemingly cynical as Kurosawa.

Tachibana sends a flurry of bolts into the celestial's eye while I dip below his shoulder level. He could grab me with either of his hands, but I'm not in his field of vision. He takes the bait, swatting at her with enough force to make an audible whoosh. She activates the slicer, bolting up while I cross behind his shoulder. The celestial moans, which is the sound you get when you touch a live speaker cable.

This "which is the sound you get..." is a bit odd.
I think I can leave this detail out.

Losing his arm took away the celestial's balance. He's getting cautious, so I keep pressuring him withenergy blasts while he regains his footing. He stoops to pick up a house and Tachibana rushes, ready to take off his head. She reacts to his elbow thrust with an Immelmann turn, but he unfolds his arm at the climax of the strike! She collides with a building and drops to the pavement.

"Damn you, Suzumiya!" I lose it, using my powers to throw cars and mailboxes and anything else at the celestial. Anything to get his attention.

It's almost like a catch phrase.  Can objects move about in a closed space?  Really?  Or are they mostly fixed in place?
It's totally a catch phrase. It could have even been the title of the story :lol:
Objects in closed space must be able to move. Buildings fall down once they're broken, right? In my version, the reason there's no wind is because the enclosed area is to small to have any. This is a bit nitpicky, but everyone can breathe in closed space so the air is another inanimate material that moves.

I don't know how long I hovered there, at street level, slowly leading him away while both of us destroyed the city. Eventually another group of red spots appears in the sky, and the six of them quarter the celestial while I laid on the concrete recovering breath. The first few rays of sunlight pierce the crumbling closed space dome.

The new espers touch down and one offers me his hand.

"Kurosawa-kun, I'm impressed." Once I'm on my feet, I thank him with a glare.

"You are?"

"Itsuki Koizumi, at your service." The leader of our Organization, a rawboned man who stands like a big one. He gives a once-over to his comrades, then looks into my eyes with vexing calm. My staring doesn't bother him at all.

#Name order is backwards here, inconsistent with "Tachibana Kyoko" and "Suzumiya Haruhi" later on.
Will fix.

"You should've been here sooner. I think Tachibana Kyoko was killed."

His smile disappears. "I...I must apologize. Kyoko-san, where is she now?"
I point and everyone starts running. Tachibana lays prostrate in front of the post office.

Kyoko-san--so he's on a first-name basis with Tachibana, now.  Conspicuous.
Yes. Or maybe, he once was and isn't anymore? Haven't decided on this point, but Koizumi and Tachibana seemed to know each other in canon too.

"So, you were distracting it to save her," Koizumi said evenly. He and two others turned her over to asses her injuries. She wakes up shrieking, her right foreleg dangling from its knee.

"All right, let's put her down gently. Taira-kun, please call an ambulance at the moment this closed space ends. Everyone else, you're going to stand and form a barrier around her. We shouldn't move her if we can help it."

It might be a bit weird to have all this dialogue be Koizumi's yet still be unbroken by others' words or actions.  I'm not sure how strict a guideline it is, but I try to avoid having the same person speak on consecutive paragraphs.  It may just be me, though.
Not a strict guideline, but a good habit. He says it all at once, though, and no one even does anything else.

I join the circle and her screams are still too loud for me to bear. Koizumi takes her hand, but she doesn't even see him. Finally, the closed space ends and we stand in bright, busy Kobe the way it should be. We link our hands to prevent Tachibana from being trampled, and not a single person asks if they can help.  Taira and Koizumi shout into their phones, barely overpowering the indifferent chorus of the crowd.

This reads a bit choppy; it kind of just goes from one description to another to another without break.  If Kurosawa is having trouble bearing Tachibana's screams, she could wince or turn away or do something else to cope.
Alright.

"Kyon, I apologize for calling at this hour! My friend's been injured, so I'll be absent the whole school day! I'm counting on you to keep Suzumiya-san happy!" He closes the phone right there and approaches me, bowing deeply.

Having Koizumi address him by name is, well, very sticky.  Koizumi never addressed Kyon by name.  Over the phone, it would be reasonable to do so, but you'll have to decide on a convention for this interaction.  Overall, Koizumi comes off in this conversation as a bit too shaken, in my opinion.  He's generally pretty composed.  And Kyon would laugh in his face for the suggestion that he should keep Haruhi happy in Koizumi's stead.
I agree with you on Kyon's response. It just seemed like something Koizumi might say.

"I'll take responsibility, Kurosawa-kun. I'm sorry about the way this turned out. You have my word that she'll receive the attention she needs. We partially control the hospital, so the doors will be open to you."

"Uh..."

"You should go to school now. Thank you, really."

I take a moment to collect myself. "That was the biggest closed space I've ever seen."

"Yes, it was. I'll certainly investigate it."

With that, I turn and leave. Tachibana screams until her voice gives out.

Might think Tachibana would get tired of screaming throughout the whole scene...
Yeah, that was a bit too much.

***

After entering my homeroom, I find myself face-to-face with a white kid in a brand-new uniform. He smiles, genuinely pleased to meet me.

"Hi there!" He beams, genuinely pleased to meet me.

#Is this "pleased to meet me" bit intentional repetition?
Just a typo.

"Hello." I give a half-hearted smile and bow a little. Thankfully, the gracious Fujibayashi-sensei sends me to my seat and continues with her introduction. I'll have to stay awake until it's done.

Squaring her shoulders and projecting her voice, she announces, "This is Robert Duran-kun, from America. He'll be joining us this year as a transfer student! Please be helpful and I'm sure everyone will get along well. Is there anything you'd like to say, Duran-kun?"

"Of course. It's nice to meet you, everyone, and I look forward to knowing you properly." He surveys the class, making eye contact with each of us. "I like meeting new people, so I'll talk with anyone about anything. I'm a Christian, and my interests include boxing, wrestling, theology, cooking and airplanes. If you help me with kanji, I'll never forget it!"

Very religious, amiable kid.  Not sure what to make of him yet.
My biggest fear here is Gary Stu. Even though he gives Leiko bad advice, he's a good guy, really strong, and smart (by virtue of being a transfer student). He's actually interested in Leiko's friendship. How much of that is due to his hair fetish remains to be seen.

I find myself laughing despite myself. Fujibyashi-sensei tells him he can have any seat he likes, and he chooses the one directly behind me.

"Wouldn't you rather sit close to the board?" she asks.

"In America, the back row is a place of honor." The teacher shakes her head and chuckles.

"Alright, then. Let's get started with the lesson."

I have trouble zoning out during history because of the foreigner's room-filling presence. It tugs on my mind like sleep deprivation.

Even after Tachibana's injuries, I feel more apprehensive than upset. I don't need this esper 'empathy.' Isn't it enough that I fight monsters? My own mood swings and sleep problems are plenty to deal with.  My friend breaks her leg and I'm feeling what she feels instead. I can't even get mad about it.

Might want to emphasize she to make clear that Haruhi is being referenced.

She spends her time prancing around and making trouble, no responsibilities, no losses, no problems.  Her deepest desire is having more fun, so why does she feel afraid? What could she possibly have to be scared of?

This year, we're studying causes rather than effects. That's why we're starting with the occupation and working backwards through the shogunates. It's an interesting idea, but I've learned all this already.
We're getting homework, and I just have to do it.

Very sudden transition from thoughts about Haruhi to thoughts about schoolwork.

The tone rings and first period is over. The exchange student taps me on the shoulder.

"Hey, can you tell me what's the best coffee in the place?"

"I..." It slips my mind. "Sorry. I can show you."

"You all right?" He studies my face, which gives me the feeling he's been staring at the back of my head the whole class.

"Well, I'm really tired, and a classmate broke her leg on the way to school. I'm not having a good day." I yawn for effect, then stick out my hand. He shakes it.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yeah, I'm Kurosawa Leiko. You can call me anything except my name."

Leiko is a bit of an unusual Romanization.

"Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?"

I roll my eyes and turn away. "You can brush my hair for me. Then I'll look good when I get chewed out."

"No problem." He retrieves a comb from his pocket and gathers up my hair. I make a face, but I let him do it. One less thing to worry about. By now he's attracted a crush of students, introducing themselves, wondering about America, and asking does he know me? First day at school and he's already making news.

Making a face seems a bit mild.  This ought to be quite a scene for a Japanese classroom, a new boy doing something personal with a girl.
Will revise.

The tone rings and everyone goes back to their seats.

"So, who's the classmate who got injured?"

"I'll buy you coffee later, Robert-kun. "

Not even my shower went as planned. Damn you, Suzumiya Haruhi!

These last few lines don't seem to logically connect together?
Leiko was avoiding Robert's question. Is that unclear? The last line does seem pretty random.

to someone like me, who has no idea what it is you're doing (this universe is not yet the one we're familiar with), it may need to be much more clear that that's the case.  This could be as saying it's an AU, or probably on top of that, you could investigate some things in the world that are pointedly different from the way they are in canon.  For instance: you could say Koizumi and Kyoko have been dating for several years, even before Koizumi transferred into Kyon and Haruhi's school.  Something like that would be obviously not true in the universe we know and clue people in.

Thanks. I have clues like this later on, but on second thought later on isn't good enough. Leiko talks to Koizumi for a long time in chapter 2. Do you think that's early enough?

Your outline is very detailed.  It reminds me a bit of what I do nowadays to outline scenes, but I never outline in full detail more than one scene in advance.  Stuff changes.  You think differently about things, and I detest figuring everything out only for inspiration to makeit no longer all fit.

I write shorter works like that. The first few novels I tried to write, I realized that I had to plan my plot in advance because it wouldn't feel natural otherwise. Unlike yours, my works become meandering and disjointed if I don't already know what I'm going to do. A good plot is the most difficult part of the creative process for me, but it's very worth it.

what is the point of this story?

There will be some intellectual payoff near the end, but mainly I wanted to write a story about Haruhi's world instead of just Haruhi. Her powers have the potential to affect everyone, but even in canon they've affected ancient thought entities, billions of people in the future, and enough espers for an organization more powerful than some nations (plus their families). In canon they're only hinted at.

what is the point of putting this prior to Melancholy?

I'm not opposed to putting Asahina in a more traditional role. For putting it before Melancholy? I suppose it was a good explanation for the reason time travelers can't go back further than -3. It's also a great launching point for a story about Fujiwara if I decide to do one. It's not essential, but it should improve the emotional impact of the ending if we know it still affects the canon Haruhiverse in some way. I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds Mikuru's 'classified information' really disturbing. Imagine the classical conditioning she must have went through to become that way!

I see what functions they perform, but to me, it seems like Leiko should be influenced by their presences

That's what other characters are for, right? I have no idea what you mean by that.

Is she basically learning from his American attitudes to stand up for herself?  To no longer passively snark at the situation she's in but actively try to change it?  Even then, boxing suggests only a violent solution, instead of any possibility of a constructive one.  Chie's purpose and how Leiko is affected by her seems even less clear to me.

She's learning the idea of standing up for herself and the means to actually do it. The chat on gun control is the initial reason I made Robert an American; Leiko paritally justifies her actions with his thoughts on the imbalance of power in a violent society. This wasn't in the outline, but he also talks to her about positive things. He boxes because he loves it, and knows that the confidence and physical ability he gives her will help more in the long run than fighting itself. He's completely wrong,  but hey.

Chie? I realized Leiko's only friends were Robert and Kyoko, who spends most of the story in the hospital. She's there to be a truly normal human (Robert hardy is) and a friend to the end. Chie and baseball are the only parts of her life which are truly good and pure, and even those get ruined. Umm...thoughts? She's definitely the least developed so far, but maybe has some staying power?

------------------------

General questions, then.

-Am I overplotting? This story could be done with less, but I'm not sure it should be. The part with the therapist could go, but I thought it strange that her family would do nothing for her mental health).

-How's the pacing so far? I don't want to have too many boring conversations, or have the same pattern of action-conversation-exposition again and again.

-What do you think of an idea of a fanfic that centers on the setting rather than the characters?

[Arakawa]

Welcome to the forum; I'm a bit late to the feedback party, but here is some additional feedback to think about.

The basic story premise as I understand it -- The Organization as seen from the point of view of an utterly rank-and-file esper -- seems very sound and promising, such that you shouldn't have trouble getting readers curious to take a look.

To my mind, the primary problems are as follows:

Leiko's character

Spoiler: ShowHide

Really torn on this one.

When I ignore the outline and just reading the chapter, I really like your character. She's snarky, but in her own distinct way (not like Kyon), she starts out with a reasonable attitude towards her situation (simmering resentment), and has a number of interesting quirks.

However, you say this girl eventually goes postal, has vicarious and desperate sex, wounds Mikuru (or does Mikuru attack her?? not clear from the outline), slices Haruhi's throat, and then flies off into the closed space to meet her oblivion. I'm... really not seeing how she gets to such a state, from reading your outline. Her psychosis is evidently going to be described in gruesome detail, right down to a claustrophobia attack, but you haven't convinced me why it happens in the first place, or how it serves the story.

First of all, it takes pretty significant trauma to drive a person to such a state. Hating Haruhi, even fighting her with a rock and fearing subsequent retribution from Koizumi isn't quite enough. I'm left to conclude that either the necessary trauma happens in the middle of the story that you haven't outlined for us (which suggests that you don't really have it figured out yourself), or it comes from fighting the celestials (if so, your initial chapter completely fails to get that across), or the character is just initially unstable such that the minor traumatic experiences drive her over the edge.

Now, if you have a character going crazy like that, keep in mind that it becomes difficult to keep her sympathetic and keep the typical reader interested. If I wanted to read about psychotic people being psychotic, I can pull up some psychiatric case studies, or the 'bad trips' section on erowid.org. For a Haruhi fic I need something more to keep me interested. Either her insanity should not be as bad, or she should at least struggle against it enough to attain some outcome better than "totally succumbs to it and slashes Haruhi".

the Organization and pile of OCs

Spoiler: ShowHide

I see Hal complained about this; basically, you have a lot more original characters than is typical for a fanfiction. You've started out doing original fiction, so presumably your habit is to freely create new characters as needed. However, people in fanfic are rightly wary of OCs, since we have seen far too many examples of them being done wrong. And in general, as the number of prominent OCs rises linearly, the suspicion of jaded fanfiction reviewers rises exponentially, and they're more likely to skip over your fic. So people try to limit themselves to adding OCs they _really_ need for the story, and try to reuse existing minor characters in creative ways when they can.

e.g. not everyone will look forward to reading your protagonist's interactions with an American transfer student with the multiple scenes expositing his Americanness. To me they're just wasted potential story-wise; if you want to have them, then why does all the Americanness fail to inspire Leiko to do something besides spiral into insanity? If, for instance, you make Robert have an influence besides teaching Leiko enough boxing to eviscerate Koizumi, then these scenes will have more purpose, and you will have some reason to keep him in the story. As-is, he'd actually be easier to remove than even Chie, in spite of having more scenes.

(Minor aside in your outline: American food. What exactly do you mean by 'American food'?)

e.g. Kyou is fine (though her name is too similar to Kuyou, Kyouko, and Kyon), but it took me some reading to realize she's effectively a minor character, much like the mother. It might not create any problems to keep her, without spending much time on her, but putting her so prominently in the outline and initial post made the story seem more cluttered than it is.

Having OCs is somewhat inevitable in a fic about the espers, but I'd just like to point  out that your Organization is very underdeveloped. There is no sense of the conflicting factions, no senior espers shown, basically less than the bare minimum. There is a definite missed opportunity to use some of the minor espers for this (e.g. Mori and Arakawa, or the Tamarus). This is especially worthy of note since I read your fic idea and my initial expectation is that we will have a glimpse of all those conflicting esper factions and conflicts that Koizumi darkly hints to Kyon about. Leiko's dislike of Haruhi? There's probably a faction that shares her point of view, actually!

I'm open to just having a very vague suggestion of there being a vast Organization Leiko belongs to, with its actual workings ignored in favour of Leiko's story, but that's also not what you're doing. The impression I get from your outline is that Koizumi basically runs absolutely everything, all on his own; no wonder that he can't manage to foresee or prevent Leiko from doing what she does! Of course, you have to deal with the fact that the Organization in canon probably has some kind of measures in place to anticipate and restrain their insane espers *before* they attack Haruhi.

(And as I explain below, you can't handwave this problem by _just_ saying "oh, the Organization becomes more complicated after the reset", since there's no clear reason why the bad end in the first timeline would lead Haruhi to make the Organization *more* convoluted and internally divided than it used to be. In fact, since the espers are free to form whatever sort of Organization they wish, it's not necessarily clear how she'd even cause them to do something different the second time. The more differences you introduce, the more work you have to do to explain how they follow from the reset.)

character development

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Is, ultimately, not in evidence. Instead, Leiko goes insane and dies, and perhaps Haruhi learns a lesson -- however, having to reset the universe to act on it is wildly out of proportion, and so that totally destroys any feeling of development for her whatsoever.

This is probably not the best thing to neglect in your story. If you want to focus on worldbuilding instead, it winds up requiring some _incredibly_ interesting worldbuilding to compensate for the incredible sense of futility the reader gets from the character dynamics. Perhaps injecting some character development into the fic is actually the easier path.

the whole thing ending in a reset

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If you manage to put character development into your fic, it will all be nullified by your reset, since Leiko is obliterated no matter how much she struggles, and the other characters are rewritten by Haruhi. The most they suffer is incidental changes such as, say, Mikuru's altered history due to the time barrier.

If you want to have the reset, there are of course options to make it more satisfying. e.g. off the top of my head you could have some screwup by the Organization play an important part in the chain of events leading to the reset, and then in an epilogue have Leiko survive to the next world and take it on herself to supervise the Organization to keep them from screwing up again. You could suggest, e.g. that she doesn't fight celestials, even though she could; she's had enough of that. She doesn't take much of an active role in running the organization; she's the strange lady who sits silently in their secret meetings and looks balefully at Koizumi, and when she chooses to override someone's decision, it is damn frightening to watch. Depending on what you do with the character, and how plausible you can make it for her to take a powerful role in the next world's Organization, that might work as a sufficiently constructive resolution. (From what I understand, in your fic, espers+boxing is a lethal combination to the point that she is very powerful at the end.) That's just one idea, though. and I should go on the record as saying that five minutes later I'm already dissatisfied with it. But this should give you the idea that some very different outcomes should be possible.

Another very important point regarding the reset is that you cannot use it to handwave every single divergence between your timeline and the Haruhi canon. Unless it's directly caused by the reset in a very obvious way, any divergence will be a point of massive confusion that you will wind up having to waste time explaining to your readers, mostly within the scope of the first timeline -- not an easy task. This is why I said earlier that the structure of the Organization in the two timelines would be substantially the same, i.e. the Organization should match Koizumi's hints in canon, since I don't see you giving compelling reasons why not.

But, it sounds like your primary reason for having the reset is just to make some unrelated bits of world building fall neatly into place. (e.g. if I understand your idea correctly, that causes the time barrier, and Fujiwara in the next books is a survivor trying to take revenge for the death of the first iteration of Mikuru). So it does not seem like a terrible idea to me to get rid of that element and come up with a more reasonable resolution to the whole thing.

Other people giving feedback had other biases and priorities, so they probably emphasized different things. Be sure to pick and choose advice that helps you and ignore advice that doesn't -- the tidal wave of feedback might be overwhelming.

General questions, then.

-Am I overplotting? This story could be done with less, but I'm not sure it should be. The part with the therapist could go, but I thought it strange that her family would do nothing for her mental health).

I don't think you're overplotting, so much as you haven't figured out the logic for your story's backbone yet. Once you've figured out what is actually essential, you have leeway to hang many or few additional details on it, whichever you like.

-How's the pacing so far? I don't want to have too many boring conversations, or have the same pattern of action-conversation-exposition again and again.

Can't figure it out with the outline as written. Judging by how the outline for the first chapter matches up to the actual chapter, I would guess that pacing will not be a major problem.

-What do you think of an idea of a fanfic that centers on the setting rather than the characters?

The characters are the part of the fic that the reader will tend to notice, so you can't do this at the expense of their story. e.g. as I mentioned above, the reset seems to come from a logic of the setting, but completely kills the development of the characters unless you start adding awkward contrivances like what I suggested.

Here you've come up with a potentially interesting character you could centre your story on (modulo further development). It would make sense to me to sacrifice some of the emphasis on the setting to develop your character better. Developing the character while keeping substantial plot points such as the reset strikes me as possible, but likely to be incredibly tricky and frustrating to pull off in practice.

I will comment on the first chapter later; as a basic introduction to the premise of the fic, it strikes me as much less problematic than your outline.

Best of luck!

[Grahf]

I'm not really sure that I can say too much that hasn't already been said, but I do have some thoughts to add.

Looking at your outline, I have to say that the ending bothers me. Not because it's dark, that's your choice and your prerogative as the writer. However, the idea that Leiko just sits there and calmly accepts her very erasure from the universe can't help but strike me as at odds with her character. It's true that death can be seen and thought of as cathartic, but based upon her actions and reactions she seems to me at least to be someone who's very bitter about how Haruhi has circumvented her life in many ways. I can't see her just being silent at the end. You could use her to spur the changes to the next timeline, be a catalyst for change for the positive instead. Have her tell Haruhi that the pressure she's put on the espers is too much for them to bare, and to remember that for next time. At the very least I think that there should be a verbal confrontation between the two at the end.

That brings me, even if only meanderingly so, to my second point. This fic is already starting to touch upon the idea of where the line is to be drawn between Haruhi the girl and Haruhi the powers. This is a touchy subject in a lot of ways, but is by no means one that should be shied away from. I would advise to tread with caution, but there are a myriad of questions that can be asked if this approach is taken from an outside perspective. If you want to be intensely pessimistic then in the end Haruhi is a malevolent force, even when unaware of her powers, that only cares for her own pleasure and amusement and maybe that of those with the privilege to get close to her. On the other extreme you have Haruhi as the victim of her own powers, unknowingly sentencing people to awful lives while at the same time being observed by groups that ultimately wish to manipulate and control her to their own ends, the espers included.

Where does Haruhi fall on this scale? One extreme, the other? Somewhere in the middle? None of the above? There's a lot of room for that sort of exploration in this fic. Let's say for example that Leiko comes to think that Haruhi, although somewhat rough around the edges as an individual, is a decent enough person but is ultimately unaware of the suffering that she's unintentionally causing. Does Leiko try to break the masquerade? If so does Haruhi brush her off, harshly enough so that it changes Leiko's mind about her. Or does Haruhi remain skeptical, asking for proof that Leiko can't provide. Does The Organization catch wind of this, bringing Leiko into a full-blown confrontation with Koizumi about the limits of such interactions?

That's only one possibility, and hell it might not even be a very good one. It is something to consider though.

Hope this was helpful, at least a little.

[Irrational Behavior]

Hope it was helpful, if at least a little.

It certainly was. You've given me a bit of direction, which is what I need right now.

I'm happy to get this many replies. Never before has any group of writers ever expounded on a simple premise like this. I can tell you guys are passionate but also really friendly. Your criticism won't bother me; the fact you're replying at all is really encouraging.

For now, my plan is to compile a list of things that seem to work and those which don't work/need work. If I can keep that handy I'll be able to remember what to focus on and what to avoid. I'm happy to write within most of these guidelines; they're only going to help.

[Empyrean]

Relative to my preferences, there are too many OCs and entirely too much grimdark. Good luck; I'll be skipping this one.

[Muphrid]

Re: the Leiko/Reiko thing.  I don't think it's a huge deal; again, it is a valid Romanization.

BTW, one thing has always bothered me. Why does Sasaki hang out with them anyway? She doesn't even seem to like them. That entire arc is kind of off if you ask me.

I think because Sasaki is a lonely person.  Even somewhat disingenuous "friends" were better than no one at all.

Re: Kyon/Mikuru aspect.

I suppose it was my first idea for a suitable stressor. If you want to suggest something else, I'm totally open. This part of the story isn't important, except that it leads to a conversation which reveals that Mikuru and Kyon were able to travel back in time before Tanabata.

As I thought, this is more functional (in the sense of helping things work) than a goal of the story.  I think this is all tricky because the POV means Leiko will learn of it all second-hand, which means it will come off as telling rather than showing.  If, say, you were writing from Kyon's POV, things would be more drawn out and more gradual, which would lend the plot points credibility, but that would lose Leiko's unique perspective.

On the other hand, I think I'm of the opinion that writing this piece from outside of Leiko's POV might be a good thing.  I'll elaborate on that in a minute.

I have thought of telling the story from the Brigade's perspective, but the whole point of this is that Haruhi's story affects way more people than Haruhi and her friends. I could write two versions of this story, one following the Brigade and one following the OCs, but I'd like to tackle one at a time. Even if I go that route, it's the OCs who drive the action and I have to write their version first.

Yeah, it's a tricky thing.  You could compromise with a rotating POV, but this can lose impact, too.  The reason I think you may need to have at least some Brigade POV is that Leiko is too far removed from them to see some things first-hand.  Because some of these events and plot points are critical (and, I think, require a good bit to persuade the audience they're not implausible), it's a very tricky situation.

"Kurosawa-san! I'm here to help." I recognize the voice, it's Tachibana Kyoko. She's not a member of my Organization, but she always does her duty. "Just the two of us today?"

Reaction to this point: why on Earth would Tachibana be helping Koizumi's Organization?  What is she doing in what should be Haruhi's closed space?  Is Sasaki involved?  This is a major point that, well, I'm not sure is deliberate on your part or in error.  Tachibana cannot ordinarily enter Haruhi's closed spaces.
Really? I might be in error, but I thought her powers hadn't been laid out for us one way or the other. IMO, all the espers came from Haruhi. Her espers immediately knew who they were serving and what her powers were, and they turned out to be correct on all counts.

That 'Sasaki's' espers revise their stance on her means they really didn't know in the first place. Besides their word, the only evidence of Sasaki's powers are her closed spaces. Sasaki's knowledge is suspect because she's so influenced by Fujiwara. A mock closed space wouldn't be hard for Suyou. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but from what I remember it doesn't seem likely that everyone is being honest. What about Kyoko's canon claim that Koizumi leads the Org?

Koizumi claims he doesnt lead the espers, but it's not implausible that he was lying, which is why I gave that point a pass (we can't know one way or the other).

The point I'm trying to make more here is that there's significant room for interpretation.  Short of writing a direct author's note to people explaining who was telling the truth and who was lying, I worry this idea of Tachibana being able to enter Haruhi's closed space needs some more focus, if only to get the audience used to the idea of it.

Not even my shower went as planned. Damn you, Suzumiya Haruhi!

These last few lines don't seem to logically connect together?
Leiko was avoiding Robert's question. Is that unclear? The last line does seem pretty random.

Yes, the last line is pretty random.  The other two are fine.

to someone like me, who has no idea what it is you're doing (this universe is not yet the one we're familiar with), it may need to be much more clear that that's the case.  This could be as saying it's an AU, or probably on top of that, you could investigate some things in the world that are pointedly different from the way they are in canon.  For instance: you could say Koizumi and Kyoko have been dating for several years, even before Koizumi transferred into Kyon and Haruhi's school.  Something like that would be obviously not true in the universe we know and clue people in.

Thanks. I have clues like this later on, but on second thought later on isn't good enough. Leiko talks to Koizumi for a long time in chapter 2. Do you think that's early enough?

It's possible.  I think first chapters in particular are very tricky; they come out the easiest (at least for me), but I'm still concerned that people are going to look at this first chapter and not really have any idea that this is not (yet) the canon we know, turning their sense that things are wrong from just "oh, the author made mistakes" to "this is part of the author's new world, not a mistake".  It's a problem unique to fanfiction, I guess, where crappy writers make mistakes on details all the time (as opposed to good writers, who make mistakes only some of the time, heh).

Your outline is very detailed.  It reminds me a bit of what I do nowadays to outline scenes, but I never outline in full detail more than one scene in advance.  Stuff changes.  You think differently about things, and I detest figuring everything out only for inspiration to makeit no longer all fit.

I write shorter works like that. The first few novels I tried to write, I realized that I had to plan my plot in advance because it wouldn't feel natural otherwise. Unlike yours, my works become meandering and disjointed if I don't already know what I'm going to do. A good plot is the most difficult part of the creative process for me, but it's very worth it.

True enough.  The Katawa Shoujo piece I wrote from Thanksgiving to Christmas was a lot shorter and I could plan things out in more detail from the get-go, so there's obviously no hard and fast rule.

what is the point of this story?

There will be some intellectual payoff near the end, but mainly I wanted to write a story about Haruhi's world instead of just Haruhi. Her powers have the potential to affect everyone, but even in canon they've affected ancient thought entities, billions of people in the future, and enough espers for an organization more powerful than some nations (plus their families). In canon they're only hinted at.

I see.  I think as an aim for things that's reasonably concrete.

what is the point of putting this prior to Melancholy?

I'm not opposed to putting Asahina in a more traditional role. For putting it before Melancholy? I suppose it was a good explanation for the reason time travelers can't go back further than -3. It's also a great launching point for a story about Fujiwara if I decide to do one. It's not essential, but it should improve the emotional impact of the ending if we know it still affects the canon Haruhiverse in some way. I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds Mikuru's 'classified information' really disturbing. Imagine the classical conditioning she must have went through to become that way!

Yes, if it does affect the canonverse in some way, if there's a lasting effect, then I would feel there's some payoff.  Having it explain why time travelers can't go back further than that specific time...I'm not sure that really fits thematically with the piece.  Since that plot point isn't even really in focus, it just feels tacked on to me.

I see what functions they perform, but to me, it seems like Leiko should be influenced by their presences

That's what other characters are for, right? I have no idea what you mean by that.

Put another way, do they move the story along, or do they help the story (and Leiko) develop?  It's just not so clear to me (yet) how these two characters in particular (Robert and Chie) help influence Leiko's state of mind, her internal struggle.  Robert more than Chie, I guess, may be all right, what with his advice and opinions, but Chie literally (just based on the outline) doesn't seem to do anything influential until Leiko decides to sleep with her.

Is she basically learning from his American attitudes to stand up for herself?  To no longer passively snark at the situation she's in but actively try to change it?  Even then, boxing suggests only a violent solution, instead of any possibility of a constructive one.  Chie's purpose and how Leiko is affected by her seems even less clear to me.

She's learning the idea of standing up for herself and the means to actually do it. The chat on gun control is the initial reason I made Robert an American; Leiko paritally justifies her actions with his thoughts on the imbalance of power in a violent society. This wasn't in the outline, but he also talks to her about positive things. He boxes because he loves it, and knows that the confidence and physical ability he gives her will help more in the long run than fighting itself. He's completely wrong,  but hey.

Chie? I realized Leiko's only friends were Robert and Kyoko, who spends most of the story in the hospital. She's there to be a truly normal human (Robert hardy is) and a friend to the end. Chie and baseball are the only parts of her life which are truly good and pure, and even those get ruined. Umm...thoughts? She's definitely the least developed so far, but maybe has some staying power?

That all strikes me as logical, then, so I can see the role Robert plays.

Chie as giving Leiko a grounding in normalcy makes sense, too.  She could be a constant reminder of the life Leiko would be able to put all her energy toward, were she not an esper.  I think what Leiko takes away from her friendship with Chie highly depends on Leiko's opinion of Chie herself.  She could reasonably aspire to be like Chie, who would represent what she wants on the level of finding self-satisfaction with her life.

That could then be subverted in knowing that Chie wants something she can't have, too, especially if Chie is, as I interpret, attracted to Leiko from the start?  (It may be you didn't intend that.)

General questions, then.

-Am I overplotting? This story could be done with less, but I'm not sure it should be. The part with the therapist could go, but I thought it strange that her family would do nothing for her mental health).

-How's the pacing so far? I don't want to have too many boring conversations, or have the same pattern of action-conversation-exposition again and again.

-What do you think of an idea of a fanfic that centers on the setting rather than the characters?

No, I don't think you're overplotting.

The pacing, hm.  It does seem like it's not clear yet what the conflict of the piece will be by the end of chapter one.  Leiko hasn't made up her mind to try to cope better with being an esper, either constructively or destructively.  That's something that you might consider, to give the piece a clearer focus.

You're focusing on a character, just not a canon character.  There is nothing objectively wrong with that.  Whether it will match with people's tastes is another question.

Ultimately, I think the bigger issue is how you make everything fit to get to the story you want to tell.  First, you have an inciting event--Haruhi's confession to Kyon that is rejected--but it doesn't seem really important what that inciting event is as long as it makes Haruhi (and Leiko, by extension) suitably stressed.  I think you have considerable freedom here to play with what exactly this event is to minimize the amount of stuff you have to justify explain (the Kyon/Asahina relationship that serves to make this an inciting event is particularly difficult to explain quickly).

Later on, Leiko holds Haruhi personally responsible for the murder she witnesses, and in turn, she attacks Haruhi and is punished.  But this punishment--which is physical and traumatic--is distinctly at odds with Haruhi's established characterization.  She has never used her powers to explicitly inflict harm.  Is that enough of a distinction from making nanofilament cutters that are plenty dangerous?  Possibly not, but I think there is a shade of difference there.  Remember, Kyon rejected immediately the idea that Haruhi could murder someone for her own amusement, even with her powers.

Is Haruhi evil for creating espers against their will?  Perhaps by the very premise of this story, yes.  One cannot know if there exists such an esper who is so unhappy with what Haruhi has asked of her.  Maybe Haruhi would not choose such a person to be an esper at all, guaranteeing that Leiko's unhappiness would never come to pass.  But if that's not the case, then it is pretty morally gray, I agree.  There are plenty of people out there; why use a person who will not enjoy it at all?  But again, we know espers fill a vital role in relieving her stress and keeping her emotions in check.

Overall, I think you need to consider carefully the plot points used to force the story to work.  It's a problem I find in my own work frequently and don't always get right.  You want X to happen and you look for ways to justify it, but that doesn't mean those justifications are in character or without significant consequences that ripple throughout the story.

[Irrational Behavior]

Finals week is over! I have free time once again.

So, while I try to piece together a decent story, what do we actually know about the espers and the organization? I know I'll have to invent a lot of it myself, but I have to start with what's already established.

[Muphrid]

Hm, there was some discussion about that very thing about a week ago.  Let me see if I can put all that together in a condensed, sensible form.

It may be easier, though, to determine what you know so far about espers and how those points are relevant to the story as you've developed it.  We might be able to clear up any misconceptions that way in short order.

[Irrational Behavior]

That's not a bad idea.

If you don't want to condense the discussion, it could still be helpful in an 'insensible' form.

[Irrational Behavior]

All right, I made a list of the things I know and I'm going to post it in the ideas thread. I searched the forum and was unable to find last week's discussion. I assume it was on IRC?