Character Information
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Canon Format: Anime
Character's Name: Haruhi Suzumiya
Character's Age: 16
Conditional: If your character is 13 years of age or under, please clarify how they will be played. N/A
What form will your character's NV take? Her red armband will have suddenly become a multimedia communication device with video, audio, and speech-to-text (for text input) capabilities whose origin is frankly unclear. (But it was her reality warper powers.)
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: As mentioned, Haruhi can be best summed up as a reality warper--that is, she can change the world in ways that are extremely unpredictable, and which canonically disobey some fundamental mechanics of the world. She can change some things that even the 'data entity' Yuki Nagato can't (hence why Yuki has to steal her powers to change the timeline, for instance). In other words, technically, she can do almost anything. However, she is never aware of this, and as far as I'm concerned, it'll be better if it stays that way. Therefore, her powers would be limited as such:
- Obviously, she can't affect the Core or other game mechanics.
- As in canon, her basic belief in the rules of reality will lead her not to be able to rewrite large chunks of the world. That belief will be shaken somewhat by the supernatural things in the city, so maybe sometimes there'll be fun plot potential, but in general, her wishes are only fulfilled if they are on a relatively small, believable scale--something like the 'don't blow up more than one block' rule.
- She can't/won't do anything that would make her powers unavoidably and consciously known to her.
- She doesn't seem to affect other people's autonomy/free will, which is handy to avoid godmodding.
Otherwise, in general, she has the ability to make her subconscious wishes come true. That encompasses things from making pigeons turn into doves and other things that affect the environment, to conveying bizarrely large amounts of information (in the SOS Brigade logo) or things that mostly just affect nothing, to temporarily giving people abilities (like the Mikuru Beam) and other things that can affect people directly. Of course, I'll put up a permissions post if she gets in.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? N/A
Weapons: None
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: The Haruhi wiki is quite detailed.
Point in Canon: Post-Disappearance, currently the endpoint of the anime.
Conditional: Brief summary of previous RP history: N/A
Character Personality: (The word 'tsundere' will not appear here!)
Haruhi wants the universe to be as exciting as she is excitable. The titular 'melancholy' she suffers from--at least, the conscious part of it--primarily comes from her sense of ennui. The world, she constantly declares, is boring; that is, it isn't as exciting as fiction, and living in the ordinary course of things--going to school, sitting through lessons, playing sports--is stifling. She's lived with the regular laws of the world for years--physical laws, ethical laws, and most odiously, the laws of social structures, and she's tired of it. She's 90% id; combine that with her native intelligence, athleticism, and general god-(or self?)-given talent at whatever she tries, and what comes out is a girl who isn't challenged by anything normal, grew to hate things that were normal, and constantly sought out the exceptional, only to find them ultimately to be banal. Of course, she doesn't know everything about what the 'normal' way the world works is--but she sure feels like she does. It seems to Haruhi that if she could just break out of the routine of sameness, dullness, and pettiness that is a peaceful Japanese school life, she would be happy.
Unfortunately, that's not quite true. No amount of temporary excitement can keep Haruhi quelled for long, after all. As Koizumi points out early on, if Haruhi did find out that aliens, time travelers, and espers existed in their world, she might come to think of that as an ordinary thing--and while he goes on to conclude that the effects on the world might be dangerous and unpredictable, that also implies that no amount of things that she thinks she'll find interesting will ever suffice to occupy her. The problem isn't with the world; the problem is with her. She's had it easy in life materially; she's always been excellent and never respected anyone around her. She's learned the social customs of respect--as she demonstrates to Kyon's surprise, when in the course of an investigation, she is polite to an old man who keeps on blathering--but, like many women, she's learned how to fake it without actually feeling anything. (Sorry.)
Associated with this lack of empathy is not really understanding or caring about the relationship between actions and their consequences in the world. Her sense of morality is quite undeveloped--though she's gotten better over the course of the series; for example, she's stopped making open proclamations that her club members are her 'toys', and she's quite solicitous to Kyon when he's in the hospital at the end of Disappearance, refusing to leave his bedside. Theoretically, of course, she knows that her actions affect others--sometimes (frequently) negatively. And even practically, when the things she does cause her to actually face their consequences, she recognizes that and becomes either quiet and withdrawn or resentful and angry (or both)--as in the climax of the first series, when she is faced with the fact that Kyon likes the current world more than he would like a prospective new world with her, or the ending of the second series (Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya), where Kyon stands up to her over her poor treatment of Mikuru. However, before consequences happen, she really doesn't think anything about what they might be. She barrels headlong into whatever new situations she encounters, with her supreme confidence and excitement.
Of course, Haruhi's actions have another dimension to them--the effects of her powers, driven by her unconscious desires. As a result, her subconscious mind is as prominently on display as her conscious actions in the series. Her boredom or unhappiness frequently results on the creation of 'closed spaces' that threaten to tear the world apart; but her excitement also manifests in the form of changes in the world around her. These demonstrations of her powers are something she's often almost strangely oblivious to. Koizumi theorizes (in Lone Island Syndrome) that at bottom, Haruhi has a bedrock of common sense which almost refuses to find the aliens, time travelers, and espers which she purportedly wants to have fun with. Her powers' effects are frequently focused on the somewhat banal--small-scale phenomena that affect the brigade's current activities, like turning pigeons into doves after she expresses a desire for the latter. But they also reflect her subconscious state of mind in general, as in the Endless Eight series, where her unconscious sense that the summer is 'incomplete' causes her to create a time loop that gives them another chance to finish it... thousands and thousands of times. Haruhi's subconscious is no more likely to give up than her conscious, when pursuing her goals, and it is often quite counter to what she'll consciously say.
Broadly speaking, that goal is to do whatever it takes, selfishly, to live a unique life, one that can be filled with wonder, so to speak. In the first series, she tells a story about how when she was young, the first time she went to a baseball game, she was stunned by the number of people there--and then further, by the small proportion of the population of Japan it represented. After that, she felt the world had lost its 'flavor'. She'd been satisfied with her life until she realized how many people were living the same life, and from that point on, she decided she had to be special--that she had to live life on her terms, and she would find things that were truly unique in the world, rather than things which anyone could do. Really, this is an ultimately existential concern-- the search for meaning in a life that's permeated by falseness and collectivity (boring social norms).
Despite this, it's worth noting that Haruhi is frequently a lot more bluster than anything actually backing it up. Her authority over her brigade is rather tenuous when it comes down to it--people tend to turn to Kyon in emergencies (see, for example, Lone Island Syndrome, when Yuki refuses to open the door when Haruhi asks, but does so readily when Kyon asks her to; and in general Haruhi is kept oblivious and concerned with minor matters most of the time). Kyon believes that (as he states, once again, at the end of the murder mystery plot) even subconsciously, she would never actually wish for anyone to be killed; and that's corroborated by the fact that when the 'actual' fake murder did occur, she wasn't callously excited, but rather shocked and taken aback--all the more so when she deduces the supposed solution. She rarely pushes the boundaries of authority to the point of open rebellion. For example, she grumbles about being forced not to wear bunny suits to advertise the Brigade, but she stops anyway; and her alternate version, in Disappearance, after she discovers Kyon has a mysterious identity, is more than receptive to his story--she starts wearing the ponytail that he asks her for nonchalantly, and even shuts up when he says so (in basically those words), while he's trying to decide whether or not to revert the world.
As the course of canon has progressed, her relationships with her brigade members have become somewhat more than the superficial fulfillments of anime tropes that they were originally (i.e., Asahina was selected for her looks, Yuki for being 'the indispensable silent member', and Koizumi for being a 'mysterious transfer student'). The most salient examples of this are with Yuki, in the books, where Haruhi tends to rush around trying to take care of Yuki when she gets 'sick' (which happens twice, and it's actually alien combat of some kind, but whatever). Asahina and Koizumi are more distant, since the former is still frequently the target of Haruhi's costuming antics (though she seems to have grown to like it) and the latter carefully maintains the most agreeable facade he can for her. The primary development is with Kyon, who is the only person in the series who really stands up to her. It's made fairly clear that she has subconscious feelings for him, but refuses to acknowledge them for several reasons--ranging from typical romantic fears, to a belief that a normal boyfriend is part of the banality she's trying to escape, to her belief that 'love is a kind of mental illness' and disrupts the proper pursuit of the alien and unexpected. Kyon represents something about normality that Haruhi does want, and someone who has posed a challenge and an interest to her--whether through an initial favorable impression, or because she's reminded of the ... time-traveling version of him that she met three years ago--despite his 'normality'.
Conditional: Personality development in previous game: N/A
Character Plans: Haruhi is probably going to get into a lot of trouble. She's a really proactive character, so she'll get in a little over her head in some of the sordid parts of Siren's Port. She might start a new SOS Brigade here--giving it some other ridiculous name, though, since I think she's attached to the Brigade itself--but that's a bit of a cliche and I would have to gauge interest first. And of course, she'll possibly provide the venue for interesting plots involving reality alteration.
Appearance/PB: In action, wagging a finger.
Writing Samples
First Person Sample: [One Haruhi Suzumiya is looking very annoyed while staring into her NV, evidently having not noticed that in the process of fiddling and toying impatiently with it, she's turned on the video. She starts muttering to herself as she sees the records of Kyon and Yuki's appearances here.]
...If that stupid Kyon was here before and didn't tell me, I'll issue nine hundred and fifty punishments! Nine million and fifty! Hmph!
[It's around now that she notices that the thing is on and recording her.] Huh, so it works like that? Fine! [And now her face is way too close to the camera.]
Siren's Port! As the supreme overlord of the SOS Brigade, I demand to meet with your leader! And furthermore, where are you all hiding Kyon and Yuki?! I've seen the records! If you've done anything sinister with him, heads will roll like bowling balls. Bowling balls on a greased pan!
[She withdraws with a satisfied nod.]
Third Person Sample: Haruhi swept a glance around the Tower Apartment lobby. No one wandering around at this hour, apparently. She crept to the door--rusty and damaged-looking. That was fascinating enough as it was! If a little bit -- well, not scary, but it hadn't looked like this earlier. They had said it would change, but Haruhi hadn't really believed them.
Not that it mattered, because there was something more solid as proof! Something more fun--Dangerous monsters! Out at night! In a city turned into a nightmare! This place was weirder than Haruhi could've hoped for!--Except that everyone seemed to think that that was normal, which was not part of the plan. But she wouldn't let that get her down. It was definitely weird. Totally!
...And also, her brigade wasn't here to back her up--and what had been the point of all that effort assembling them if they were just going to disappear when the aliens abducted her and took her to Canada? But Canada, that was definitely a running theme! Asakura was in Canada. This must have been what happened to her! Kind of an annoying girl, really, but Haruhi would have to find her to figure out what was going on. It would be one thing to hear it from random people in lab coats and quite another to hear it from Asakura... unless she was dead or a zombie or a monster by now. And, well, she certainly wasn't afraid of that.
Everyone had told her not to go out in the Darkness. Well, that had been a bad idea on their parts. No one was going to stop her from going outside! Nothing at all. She would just -- get a drink first and then go out.
Oh, the water was disgusting sludge. Right, well, then she would just -- she would go out in just a couple minutes, then. She went to the door and cautiously peered at it. It suddenly felt much quieter to her. Some strange noises emanated-- was that a buzzsaw? A scream? A...
The lobby was rather big to be alone in right now. She tensed and immediately berated herself. This behavior was unbecoming of the leader of a brigade. Any leader. The supernatural might be right at her doorstep. Striding forward, she pulled at the door handle--
Locked! Well, no one could say she hadn't tried--!