No subject

intent was that Mori is deliberately misrepresenting a truth she knows
well.  Changing the cherry trees is ultimately harmless.  Putting her
friends in danger with the Mikuru beam (regarding below) is serious
business, but Mori's going for broke and trying to paint Haruhi as not
just having crossed a line but having leapt headlong over it.

Now, that's not to say I'm 100% happy with it.  Having Asakura appear at
the end of this chapter weakens the effect of this ploy significantly,
in my opinion.  If I stick to how it is and Haruhi isn't told anything
(hypothetically), she'd conclude that Mori lied, and that's what I
wanted to be apparent here, not that Mori was merely mistaken.  I admit,
I'm not sure how to make it more clear that Mori knows what she's saying
is false without making that apparent to Haruhi, too.  This point I
consider a major issue to resolve for final draft.

> Missed opportunities to point out Kyon and the Mikuru beam.  Must be
> intentional on Mori's part.

I'd actually planned to do that too.  It may be better than the pigeons,
actually.

> "There'd be no supernatural rain," -- this is a good sentence to start
> a new paragraph.
>
> "Even in a short life" -- this is another one.
>
> And, I'd break that last sentence out on its own for impact again (but
> I wonder now if I space things out too much).

I think I just went overboard with big paragraphs.

> > "I heard you fine," he insisted, "It's just... where's all this
> > coming from?"
>
> Haruhi: Kyon, do you remember what happened yesterday?  Kyon:
> Evidently, I didn't expect you to care, even though it seemed pretty
> obvious you did.  Haruhi: Maybe it was because I turned over a new
> leaf and still opened the conversation with an insult to you.  Kyon:
> That could be part of it.
>
> I think Kyon would be concerned, but I'm not sure this leadup to the
> following revelation really works.  I'm also noting that, effectively,
> the promised Haruhi/Kyon conversation doesn't happen (in this entire
> chapter).  Unless this little bit is all that there is, but that
> seems, er....
>
> Anyway.  I think he would attribute it to the very obviously traumatic
> experience of seeing Taniguchi suffer significantly more (physical)
> trauma.  Haruhi can let some other clue slip that leads to an esper
> getting punched.

Let me respond here to the whole issue of this scene because I
considered going about five different ways with it, and I feel like, in
doing so, I didn't really think through any of them.

Originally what I planned for was just for Koizumi to take Haruhi aside
and find out what Mori had done.  Then I got the bright idea that if
Kyon found out, he'd rightly want to punch Koizumi in the face, thinking
Koizumi had everything to do with it.

As for the promised Haruhi/Kyon conversation, it's probably better if
the line at the hospital is cut and this one referencing it is cut, too.
I have mixed feelings about that.  Would Kyon just stand by, effectively
doing nothing?  Past history tells us he very well could, but we the
audience know things are hitting the fan vigorously, and it makes him
look silly to stand by, working to fix things off screen (at best) while
Haruhi is in the foreground.  I try to follow a maxim that the things
that break a story are almost always the things that should happen
because usually, it means you're just trying to cover up an obvious
flaw.  I won't lie:  Kyon spilling the beans to Haruhi all in one go
basically breaks the story.  My problems with that basic idea aside
(always feels like there's little drama doing it that way), it just was
never in the plan.  I wanted the revelation of facts to be organic,
natural, and sequential.

So really, where that setup and lack of payoff comes from is that I
spent several days trying to work in a big reveal without having it
break the story... and I didn't adequately clean up the dangling threads
I put in to do it.  They probably just need to go.  Better to never put
the idea in people's minds than to plant it and not do anything with it.
Comparatively speaking, I've already done a lot of reorganizing with
this story.  Looked upon against my original outlines, this is
dangerously close to winging it, as only the starting and ending points
have remained really, really fixed.  If I'd stuck to the plan, so to
speak, the Koshien scene wouldn't exist, the Mori scene wouldn't exist,
and Koizumi would be in a special level of oblivion.  That's just how
much has been put in and rearranged.  I knew the Mori and Koshien scenes
had really great emotional potential; what remains to be seen is whether
I've worked them in without too much logical cost.

At any rate, this scene in the club room is probably the second major
point I need to work on for final draft.

> > It was a woman's voice--low and gravely, distorted with age.  She
> > wore a red _yukata_ and had long, flowing hair--all gray, but still
> > beautifully kept.  She walked slowly, easing her weight on a single
> > steel rod with rubber ends, a baton-like cane.
>
> Not sure I get this reference.  Actually ... I'm sure I don't. >.>

Yeah, I guess that's the danger of throwing references out like candy;
this actually isn't a reference.  Now, how on earth am I going to make
that clear...?

> Suggest starting a new paragraph with, "It doesn't hold", and again
> at, "you can hear".
>
> Also, you can be subtle about it, but this is a good opportunity to
> put in a detail about Mikuru actually putting her initials on her cap
> before she wears it.  Easy enough for Haruhi to roll her eyes at
> Mikuru both for taking the precaution before she even wears it once,
> and to also be carrying a marker in her purse.

Yeah, that was something I'd wanted to do.
>
> > The game got off to a quick start.  After Iwata put Yomiuri down in
> > the top of the first, Hanshin went to bat.  Murton led off, watching
> > a third strike fly by.  The center fielder, Hirano, singled up the
> > middle.  Then, Toritani came up and hit a weak ball to short, which
> > was thrown past first, giving Hirano third.  A walk and a sacrifice
> > fly gave the Tigers a one-run lead, and let me tell you, though it
> > was still an out, the crowd roared for it.  You could feel the
> > excitement around you.  It was electric.  Seeing almost
> > fifty-thousand people stand and cheer, you can't help but feel like
> > the world is so much bigger than you.
>
> I gotta admit, baseball is incredibly boring to me.  Always has been.

I figured for a lot of people it would be.  That's why I tried to spend
no more than this paragraph doing play-by-play.  This is actually based
on a real game from mid-June (...aside from the humanoid interface
making a disruption in the seventh inning, of course), and by even a
baseball fan's standards, it would've been pretty dull after the fourth
since no one scored after that and the threats to do so (from the recap
I found) were weak.

> > Without even a hint of anger in her voice, the invisible girl
> > answered.  "You're as single-minded as ever, Suzumiya-san.  Tell me:
> > would you walk away even if that makes me kill every person in this
> > stadium?"
>
> I just can't believe that Ryouko _really_ thinks anyone is going to
> let her get away with killing the entire stadium (if nothing else,
> Yuki will protect Haruhi and Kyon anyway).  Not that Haruhi has anyway
> to know that.

Just imagine her telling Haruhi later, "But really, you have so much
power.  Those people were never in any danger at all!"

> > The crowd murmured--a panicked, sudden cry.  People gripped their
> > seats, clawed for something to hold on to.  Those who couldn't rose
> > from the stands--not on their own two feet but from inertia.  The
> > earth beneath them was spinning, yet its pull of gravity no longer
> > held them to the ground.
>
> The way you describe it, sounds like they're stationary, relative to a
> rotating earth.
>
> Maybe, "The earth beneath them hadn't fallen apart," or something like
> that?

I'm going to have to figure a way to explain this, yes.  It's like
riding a spinning carousel and letting go of the handlebar.  A child who
does such a thing will fly off the carousel, maintaining linear momentum
from the moment they let go.  That's basically what's going on here.
All the people in the stadium keep going in a straight line.  Relative
to the rotating earth (the point of view of the carousel, so to speak),
it looks like they're flying away, but that's not really what's
happening.

Ah the conflict of physics and good writing.  I'll have to think about
this one, too.

> >> The timing of that game has always bothered me. It gets squeezed
> >> out so that neither Sasaki nor Taniguchi notices the change.
>
> That's because it happened during Golden Week, IIRC, not long after
> the start of Haruhi's first year of middle school.  Sasaki wouldn't
> have been there to see it, and Taniguchi would only have known her for
> a month.

Is it Golden Week and is it in middle school?  I've got the Brown
translation of book 1 in my drawer here; it says she was still in
elementary school.  Then again, it wouldn't be the first error or
awkward thing that that translation has.


Thanks a bunch.  This is really more helpful than you know.

-MC