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Fanfic: And If That Don't Work
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And If That Don't Work? by Sunshine Temple is a Neon Genesis Evangelion and some Team Fortress 2 fanfic where with enough gun, even an Angel can be destroyed, AT field and all, without an Eva. Of course, this tactic usually means wiping out a fair chunk of the surrounding area. And you definitely don't want your pilot and Operations Director getting caught in the blast. Nevertheless, with a proven alternative available, NERV's political position has changed big time. And Shinji? Well... Currently And If That Don't Work? clocks in at more than two hundred thousand words over a mere 11 chapters; it was started in 2008 and is still going. Shinji rapidly becomes either unrecognizable or more "natural". A bit of Author Appeal with the militarization of NERV and the way a certain character dresses. The OCs are a lot of fun. By the same author is The Return, a Ranma/ Sailor Moon cross which does much the same thing with those franchises.
This fic contains examples of:- Abusive Parents - Neither Gendo or Dr. Insana are hostile to their children, but it's hard to categorize their parenting to either as anything else.
- Alice Allusion - Shinju's got the hairband, dress, and morbid cuteness.
- Asteroids Monster:
- Israfel keeps splitting and doesn't stop until it numbers in the hundreds. Then they start using tactics, proving that, yes, the Angels are getting smarter.
- Matarael uses a very similar tactic in its attack.
- Badass Adorable - Shinju, just Shinju
- Band of Brothers - Used and Deconstructed. In ch 9, Shinju gives the Saint Crispin's Day speech from Henry V to invoke this trope as part of a plan to get the public to accept the Hollywood Cyborg, half Evangelion Asuka/Kiko.
- Beehive Hairdo - Asuka (yes, Asuka) is talked into wearing one of these to a victory party.
- Likely a case of Author Appeal, especially given the dress◊ she wears with it.
- And now it's a permanent feature.
- BFG - The Evas are equipped with rifles built from Iowa Class Battleship guns.
- Body Horror - Asuka basically gets partially liquefied by Matarael's acid attack in ch. 7. Practically Gorn.
- Cloning Blues - Shinju and Misako (and of course Rei).
- There's no way to make this make sense without major spoilers, so here goes: Shinji and Misato are lethally irradiated by the nuke that kills Sachiel. Gendo has Ritsuko use the soul transfer technology to dump their souls into differently-aged Rei clones; thus, Shinji is now 12-year-old Shinju, and Misato is 19-year-old Misako. They are passed off as Rei's sisters.
- A common theme is just how much Misato and Shinji really are in the clones. Especially given how Shinju acts.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror - Asuka is subjected to operand conditioning to keep her functional after being burned by acid down to a "screaming potato" and then rebuilt as a cybernetic human-Evangelion hybrid. She happily notes that she doesn't get nightmares about it, ever.
- Plus Brainwashing for loyalty, obedience, and discomfort with old bodily functions.
- Creepy Child - Shinju has two settings: this or Moe...especially when she's happily cleaning her various weapons.
- Creepy Doll - In keeping with the above, most people think Shinju's doll collection is cute. Asuka on the other hand...
- Elegant Gothic Lolita:
- This is essentially Shinju's default state outside of combat.
- Asuka also gets touched with this; see the Beehive Hairdo entry.
- Fembot - Visually at least◊ Kiko straddles the line between this and Robot Girl
- First Episode Resurrection
- Flower Motifs - Shinju is sent an unusual bouquet in ch. 6. As a Genius Bonus, the flowers can all be negatively interpreted as Death, Revenge, Suspicion, and Loathing. This is a warning of Mikki's true intentions.
- For Science! - "Sciencier" Insana's motivation / Catch Phrase.
- Fountain of Youth - A side effect of what happens to Shinji and Misato; see Cloning Blues above.
- Four is Death - This time Shinju is the Fourth Child. To ram the point home: after her fifth kill she gains the nickname "Ace of Spades."
- Gatling Good - The YA11 Dreadhog has a nuclear powered one of these.
- Gender Flip - ...and an especially twisted one, at that.
- Half-Human Hybrid - The Ayanamis and Kiko.
- Humans Are Bastards - From the Angels' perspective. They just want to rescue "mother".
- Humans Are Cthulhu - Another part of the Angels' views on humans.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes - From ch. 5 on, the fic is starting to feature scenes from the Angels' perspective. For them, humans are Complete Monsters that consort with Eldritch Abominations and perverted Angelic flesh to make war machines. Nuclear weapons are particularly horrifying to them, being machines capable of destroying souls.
- It's Raining Men - Nerv hard drops far more than often than canon. Such as the Ramiel battle. Unlike the canon this time the pilots regularly sing paratrooper songs. It's that kind of fic.
- Loss of Identity
- Shinju is unrecognizable as Shinji after a couple of chapters and is picking up bits of Rei.
- Misato is mostly herself, but she does refer to "Katsuragi" as another person.
- And poor
Asuka Kiko. Shinju even encourages her to give up on her old self.
- Mad Scientist - Given all the cloning, Angel-killing nukes, and the Evangelions themselves...seems to be a theme.
- Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter - And the man that embraces the above to the fullest just happens to be Asuka's father. Former MIT Professor Tino Noah Insana. You can guess his nickname. Arguably a
worse weirder father than Gendo, and in charge of S2 research. - Meaningful Name - Dr. Insana. Hoo boy.
- Meaningful Rename - Asuka —> Nigokiko/Kiko after Asuka was turned into a human/EVA-02 hybrid.
- Mildly Military - NERV is seen as this by JSSDF and Azazel. One of the key themes of the fic is NERV being forced to become more transparent.
- Mnogo Nukes - The Russians drop the Bomb on an Angel.
- Newsreel - The Azazel and Nerv pilots are frequently in these.
- Nuclear Weapons Taboo - Very much averted, though the political (and other) fallout of using nukes keeps NERV in business.
- Nuke 'Em - How Sachiel meets his end.
- OC Stand In - Arguably what happens to Shinji and then to Asuka.
- Oxymoronic Being - Kiko is a miniature giant robot. That is, she's half Evangelion but human sized.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child - In chapter 5, Misako uses this exact phrase when discussing the dummy plugs.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning - All three Ayanamis
- Reds With Rockets - Azazel
- Remember When You Blew Up a Sun? - Asuka is constantly reminded that she blew up a mountain as a high point of her first battle, despite her complaints of it being covered with Angels and rather small.
- Shinju too, just ask about Operation Excelsior around her.
- Robot Girl - Subverted by Kiko, who is a human/Eva hybrid .
- Shout Out - Team Fortress 2, Firefly, The Spoony Experiment, The Venture Brothers, Portal
- Shovel Strike - The Evangelions have Spetsnaz-style prog shovels.
- Soviet Superscience - Mostly averted. The Angel Buster nukes are slight modifications of real weapons.
- Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids - Nigokiko was designed to be a Sapiency Driver for Unit 02... to enable Asuka to Pilot Unit 02, being able to generate AT fields is just a side effect.
- Survival Mantra / Madness Mantra - Latching onto a bit of advice from Rei, Shinju has "Open your heart" which she chants while gutting Angels.
- Tailor-Made Prison - Ever wonder where Nerv was planning to put Sandalphon? Enter the Caina Containment Complex, a prison for Angels. It's secured by a nuclear Sword of Damocles Dead Man Switch, much to Iry's chagrin.
- They Called Me Mad! - Ritsuko says this exact like in the first chapter.
- Token Human: Toji is currently the only pilot who is not partly Angel/Evangelion.
- Unusual Ears - Kiko, as expected.
- We Can Rebuild Her - This is Insana's plan to save Asuka's life after the Matarael battle.
- White Void Room - Where Mikki and the other Angels plot.
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