All Purpose Evangelion Fanfiction Thread

OK, this fic sounds like it's going to be a long string of Hilarity Ensues.

Title: Human Immortality Project.

Official summary: Shinji refuses to pilot Unit-01, and finds himself in the command center instead. Now he must fight on an unfamiliar battleground, wading through the lies, deceit and secret agendas behind NERV and the third impact.

My summary: Instead of being given a Sadistic Choice by seeing the injured Rei being rolled out to pilot Unit 01 in the face of his initial refusal, Shinji for some reason decides that he'll escort her to the Eva so that she goes out and face the Angel, while he watches the whole thing as part of his self-proclaimed quest to prepare himself for eventually becoming a pilot himself. Which, incidentally, involves grilling an increasingly annoyed Ritsuko about the technical details of the Evas. I guess Gendo is now regretting the fact that he never had his son given any sort of Eva pilot training all those years, huh?

edited 15th Jan '15 11:43:02 PM by MarqFJA

Huh, not bad. Shinji's inner monologue sounds almost like he's going for "Shinji and the Methods of Rationality". Anyway, let's see how it turns out.

Oh, and since quoteblocks have been fixed, here's my contribution:

edited 16th Jan '15 7:42:43 AM by TheNobody

Shouldn't that be "wedding ring"? I can't think of a reason why Shinji would propose to someone at a church, unless she either works at a church (which has a whole slew of problems if her denomination is one that upholds celibacy rules for the clergy) or he couldn't find a better moment to propose except when she's inside a church for some reason or the other.

... Heck, how often do non-Christian Japanese people go to church for hold their weddings in the first place?

Regarding story composition: I start at the start of the chapter, write it through to the end and edit accordingly. I've tried typing out the perfect ending that comes into my head and writing the middle to get to that end, but I write by the seat of my pants and usually make a big enough change that any ending imagined halfway through the chapter would need a significant reworking to fit with the final product.

Good point. Editing.

Oh, and the H.I.P.? Shinji is acting very un-teenager-like for three chapters already, and no backstory explains why. Really, if the author dropped at least "his father's genes awakened the drive" somewhere, I'd be more likely to buy it.

I think it's meant to be taken as quasi-Crack Fic, or something like that.

I think you're giving it far more credit than it deserves. EVA fandom is rife with people who don't grasp the teenagers are teenagers.

With me being one of them, unfortunately.

So yeah, chapter 4 and Shinji is so Rational Harry that it gives me a bad feeling. All he needs to complete the picture is a complete victory in chapter 5 and a crazy tournament somewhere around chapter 20. This being NGE, damage amounting to millions of yen still counts as "complete victory", as long as current Rei lives.

You might have already guessed, but when I compare things to Rational Harry, it's not a compliment at all.

I don't generally find your work interesting because the content/plot doesn't appeal to me, but you give yourself too little credit here; you remember that better than most.

edited 16th Jan '15 11:59:11 AM by Night

Except for the part where my teenage characters have beliefs and mannerisms you would never find in a teenager.

It's not out of self-deprecation that I'm not giving myself credit. It's just that no matter what I do, the end result doesn't feel right. Then there's also the fact that most of the time, even I have trouble realizing what drives me while writing; hell, I've only realized SCE's underlying message/tone about half an hour ago and I'm the guy who wrote that crap! How pathetic is that?

Even that message is contradictory to my very personality. I mean, I say I hate character deaths and that's true... then I go ahead and write a story which, at its very core, is basically saying that the world needs to burn to the ground because no new era can begin while the old one still exists to corrupt it. I just caught myself acting out of character. And the worst part of it? I mean every single word of that.

I think I now know how Anno felt like when he made the original series...

edited 16th Jan '15 12:31:47 PM by amitakartok

We-ell, trying to defend Amita, I'll say that there are teenagers and there are teenagers. In the past, people have been known to assume (or fall into) positions of high responsibility while still technically teens. And even now, there are still teenagers who adopt the mature, adult mannerism.

As always, there are stories where wise teenagers are out-of-place, and where they actually fit.

You underestimate the teenagers; and more directly, you underestimate the level of not-a-teenager present in most works. I'm by no means praising you for being perfect, but you are definitely better.

Fictional teenagers rarely act like real teenagers.

Especially in Japanese related works.

...this discussion about un-teenager-like behavior actually gave me what I needed to finish the currently under-rewrite SCE chapter, by making it a Discussed Trope^note Yui is considering giving Rei and Kaworu bonus pay for getting their Evas back in one piece and providing the AEL with valuable combat data. Kaworu is said to be unusually conservative with money to the point he only spends on basic necessities like food, despite him making more than a high-ranking commissioned officer and thus has more than enough cash to expand his Limited Wardrobe. Rei is similarly stated by Yui to be uncaring of her income.. I felt I was missing something but with this, the chapter finally feels complete.

Thanks, guys.

Also, a question. Do you think it would be funny and/or appropriate for Yui to do a Gendo pose when he's brought up in a conversation?

edited 16th Jan '15 5:05:42 PM by amitakartok

Amita, humans are contradictory people. We think and act in contradictory and irrational ways.

re:Gendo pose: Yes.

Hmm, sounds good.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn they are still on good terms, by the way.

I wouldn't exactly say they're on good terms. She basically got him fired and the guy she's talking to in the above quote, upon hearing that Gendo worked on the Evangelion project, specifically brings up the risk of Gendo getting back at her by copying the Evas and selling the copies to the military for a lower price to undercut her.

Luckily, no such thing happens. Besides, Gendo's company is manufacturing weapons for the Evas and later on Yui sells an obsolete Eva prototype to them for study and retrofitting, so their relationship is not exactly hostile either.

Had the idea of trying a Devilman crossover.

Mulled it over. Realized that, without giving a Zeruel-sized Idiot Ball to NERV as a whole, the only character I could plausibly use as a Devilman protagonist is the Red Devil herself.

Chapter 18 for SCE now updated. Dayum, I'm actually approaching the end of the section that needs to be rewritten... eight more chapters and I can finally start with the good stuff.

And you still haven't shared the old chapters with us yet, despite us expressing willingness to share our e-mails with you for this very purpose.

I haven't deleted it yet, so don't fret.

OK, I'll take your word for it. Just make sure you have a backup somewhere safe, in case something catastrophic happens to the main storage.

BTW, a question to all of you guys... Which number do you think would fit better than the other into NGE's themes of religious and scientific symbolism: 14, or 17?

I don't know how long it will take but SCE's chapter 19 is in progress. Is this conversation in-character (and non-stereotypical) for Asuka?

edited 27th Jan '15 8:08:51 PM by amitakartok

I haven't had the time to read your fic post-rewrite, but I have no complaints as-is.