Character: Kyon
Series: The Melancholy of Suzumiya HaruhiCharacter Age: 15-16
Canon: If you ask Kyon when he stopped believing in Santa Claus, he will say with confidence that he never believed in him at all. Even as a preschooler, he couldn't accept that a grown man could only work on Christmas for a living - and as for aliens, time travelers, or espers, though deep down he wished for those supernatural things to appear, he always knew they weren't real too. By the time Kyon entered high school, he'd grown out of those childlike hopes and accepted reality as reality. Fantastic things didn't exist, the world was governed by physics and logic, and he was an ordinary human whose small life wasn't ever going to change the world.
Then he met Suzumiya Haruhi, and slowly learned he was right about one thing. The "ordinary human" part.
Haruhi enlists Kyon to help her in a quest for the extraordinary, and his realistic take on life is completely upturned. He quickly befriends a stoic bookworm alien, a beautiful time-traveler, and a smooth-operator esper that constantly breaches Kyon's personal bubble. He's dragged - often by his tie - into candid adventures ranging from sexual blackmail to breaking and entering. He even becomes the target of assassination attempts and King Kong-size cave crickets. But Kyon lives through all of this just as he's always lived - with a tolerant sigh, a few winces, and a hell of a lot of rambling, narrative-style dry sarcasm. The opposite of Haruhi, Kyon is laid-back, content with shadowing, easily pushed around, and satisfied with the world as it is. He only says a fraction of what he thinks, but he does speak his mind when he wants to, usually as a voice of reason. Overall, he's an extremely well-adjusted guy. He sure wishes people would stop calling him Kyon, though. Too bad he never actually clarifies his real name.Sample Post:If you want the story of how I got here, my first instinct would be to start with the classic phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night."
That would be a lie; it was Sunday afternoon, and the weather was nice. But right now I'm in the middle of the woods, surrounded by zombies, armed with a stick, and seriously horrified. You're supposed to start a story that ends with a character like this with "a dark and stormy night," right? A tried and true pretense for a slow unraveling of reality.
Anyway! ... It was Sunday afternoon and the weather was nice, and I went on the scheduled S.O.S. field trip as planned. "Meet at the train station or heads will roll! Those mysteries are just waiting to be discovered!" Haruhi had announced as usual. In fact, everything about this morning was normal! I paid for my ticket, dozed a bit on the train, arrived at the moment of destiny, and. . .
Nobody was there. The station was abandoned. You could almost hear the cue for a low piano note, or a rising shrill violin. Everything was quiet, until I heard the muffled
thump, thump of footsteps behind me. I spun around instantly - please forgive me for losing my mind there and not just running away - and saw a forest. Of all possibilities, a bleak forest wasn't anywhere near what I expected, and at this point in my life I've learned to expect glowing blue giants. But there it was! And here I am. And I've lived in the modern age long enough to know a horde of zombies when I see one.
So it'll only be natural if I find Haruhi is in the middle of it. I can just see it now. Attention, everyone! Suzumiya Haruhi has arrived with her shotgun, infinite ammo at her disposal (of course, she's the lead character), and she's aiming perfect headshots at the swarm of enemies in the name of justice to bring victory to the human race. That's the sort of scene I'll walk in on.
Maybe she's already established herself. "Camp Fuck You Die" is exactly her naming sense, so she probably bullied the director into changing it. It's just as incomprehensible as "S.O.S. Brigade," though I suppose if she really did name the camp, it would be named something like " S.O.Z. - Stop a boring camp experience by Overloading it with Zombies."
This is probably goodbye, boring school year. You were a nice, tranquil haven while you lasted.
Voting was here.