All Purpose Evangelion Fanfiction Thread

No problem. The key here is to correctly understand the underlying problems that led to their relationship being doomed before it could've even started properly. Shinji obviously operates under the idea that if someone cares for someone, they would treat them kindly and be upfront about their feelings; of course, he probably also recognizes that he's technically a failure because he can't bring himself to be vocally upfront about his (romantic) feelings due to a crippling fear of rejection, so settles for being kind, helpful, and just plain trying to please everyone while hoping that someone else would make the first move.

Asuka, on the other hand, thinks that by acting abrasive and generally hard-to-get, the guy she wants would be motivated to be proactive and impress her. The problem with her approach is that 1) she more often than not gets too bossy and bitchy, turning off most people, 2) she's bad at comprehending the idea that someone may not want her (case in point: Kaji), and 3) people like Shinji would inevitably misinterpret her behavior as her being actively hateful towards them, i.e. the exact opposite of what she's trying to convey. #3 is especially a problem because she seems to consider admitting her feelings to her Love Interest first to be a sign of weakness on her part, which she may consider to have a potential risk of turning off said Love Interest because she prides herself on being a strong and independent girl/woman who is out of Joe Average's league.

So Shinji merely rejecting her advances by giving her the cold shoulder (which is what you seemed were implying) won't really work, if the goal is to show her that there's a big problem with her approach that needs to be rectified; he needs to bluntly articulate his confusion about the mixed signals that he keeps getting from her and especially how she comes across as hating him, i.e. showing her that she's achieving the opposite effect of what she wants. That should shock her sufficiently into rethinking her entire methodology from the get-go, because up until that point it would be believable that she completely did not expect such an outcome even in a worst-case scecnario. Sure, she's likely to make up something on the spot to cover up her blunder, but afterwards when she's alone I wouldn't be surprised if she gave a lot of thought to everything she's been doing and where she went wrong.

edited 25th Feb '15 1:43:13 PM by MarqFJA

You know, I was actually trying to avoid Shinji making the first move. He is a passive character by nature; proactive behavior is not his thing, no matter what over-romanticized shipping fics say.

Plus, why must it always be the guy who has to court the girl instead of the other way around? It feels sexist.

edited 25th Feb '15 1:51:51 PM by amitakartok

Final snippet before the chapter goes up.

Y'all's thoughts?

Godzilla Threshold, much? Or is Lucy merely having an Oh, Crap! moment?

Also, I've finished the fight choreography for Kaworu's fight scene. It's only two paragraphs long, but there's no point in drawing it out, as he's a Combat Pragmatist. To wit:

• Kaworu catches Bully 1 by surprise by jumping across a five meter distance In a Single Bound, punching him in the face hard enough to momentarily make him airborne.
• Bully 2 tries to hold Kaworu down from behind while Bully 3 beats the crap out of him. Kaworu responds by Groin Attacking Bully 3 hard enough to instantly incapacitate him from the pain.
• Kaworu elbows Bully 2 in the ribs to get free, backhands him while turning around then grabs his shoulders and knees him in the stomach thrice, causing Bully 2 to throw up on the spot and be incapacitated due to not being able to breathe.

• Finally, Kaworu grabs Bully 1 by the hair and bashes his head against a wall before educating him, as described on the last page.

edited 25th Feb '15 5:27:11 PM by amitakartok

There are some Fusion Fic shenanigans going on, that changed the origin story for Diclonii so that they're now a result of Second Impact... something like a naturally-occuring offshoot subspecies from Nephilim, which pretty much gives every Diclonius ever a level in Adaptational Badass. But most critical to the scene in question, is that when Lucy or any other Diclonius uses their vectors, it gives off the same reading as an Angel's Blue Pattern AT Field. Gendo already chose to deploy EVA-00 a chapter ago, independently of Lucy dominating the UN task force just then.

But to answer your original question?

Yes.

edited 25th Feb '15 9:29:11 PM by EvaUnit01

Launching even one Evangelion is always a case of in-universe Godzilla Threshold. Do you remember that rival corp's comments about how astronomically expensive Project E is?

...I had totally and legitimately forgotten about that. But in hindsight, I'm not surprised.

...ah well, it's still justified in-universe since the MAGI pick up Lucy's vectorspam as near-identical to an Angel's AT Field, so as far as anyone at NERV knows (SEELE having kept the knowledge abou Diclonii to themselves instead of informing Gendo), Lucy is legit an Angel. And after the way she's about to throw down with Unit-00 in the next chapter, they certainly wouldn't be less inclined to think so...

I wasn't criticizing you, actually.

Hrm. In any case, the fic proper is now up.

Now to just sit there and let it accumulate reviews. Hopefully the semi-sudden tonal shift won't turn too many people off...

Unit 01, what do you say to the thought of Rei pulling an I Have The High Ground Stealth Hi/Bye with a concrete fencepost?

I'd ask where she got those Batman comics she must have been reading.

Secondary questions are 1) how high is the fencepost, and perhaps as a follow-up 2) what's she wearing to keep from giving the people around her a Panty Shot? Modesty Shorts? Pants? A Badass Longcoat? Or is she just not giving a damn?

edited 26th Feb '15 9:31:34 PM by EvaUnit01

1) About two meters tall. The fence is a fully solid and opaque construction, like this◊.

2) Badass Longcoat and jeans. No Panty Shot is possible due to the fact that she's stated to be Going Commando at all times.

Technically, it still counts as a "Panty Shot" even if she doesn't wear underwear, so long as the outerwear would've allowed for a Panty Shot if she was.

To be true, I'm thinking about altering the scene due to lacking inspiration for writing a meaningful dialogue for it: instead of her stealthily appearing on a fencepost in front of Kaworu and Toji, calling Kaworu naive then stealthily departing the moment neither he nor Toji is not looking her way, I might make it so that she only makes her entrance after the boys split up due to living in different directions, appears on a fencepost Kaworu just passed a few seconds ago and doesn't announce her presence, instead only watching him from behind. Her presence does cause a reaction from Kaworu's dormant Psychic Powers, to give more credit to her statement in the next chapter that he felt different from other people (and Fridge Logic about what she was even doing there, considering that she came to school with a motorbike but is on foot here).

I have a very important question.

What in this scene makes you think any of what you've described is remotely like Rei?

Rei's personality here is mostly the result of a What If? scenario. Due to not being controlled by Gendo (thus being able to learn normal human interaction) but not having anyone to lean on either (thus having no one she can trust), she grew up bitter and asocial. She's not distant because she was told to be, she's distant because she chose to be.

This is an excerpt on chapter 19, the one I'm currently working on:

In this regard, Rei is actually a bit like canon!Asuka too: they both push other people away because they're scared of being used and betrayed, masking that fear with a hard exterior. Rei's coat is a physical metaphor of the shell she wraps around herself, symbolic of the Ice part of her Sugar-and-Ice Personality. Ditching that coat for a sundress will be symbolic of her coming out of that shell, revealing that underneath that shell she is actually caring and polite towards people she likes.

edited 27th Feb '15 1:17:39 PM by amitakartok

This Rei is from Strategic Cyborg Evangelion, IINM. She's quite different and yet not dissimilar from the canon Rei. For one, she's a Walking Armory who is a little too obsessed with guns and knives, has Improbable Aiming Skills, and a good deal of Charles Atlas Superpower (she can fire an M82 anti-material rifle while rappeling down a rope, i.e. one-handed and with little in the way of support againt the recoil).

EDIT: Ouch. Poor SCE!Rei. There's no Shinji in this story, right?

edited 27th Feb '15 1:11:29 PM by MarqFJA

That's a double ninja there. I updated the post a second time while you composed yours.

Shinji will come in play later and has an important role in the aforementioned ditch-coat-for-dress scene. Namely, the scene plays out during the summer. When the gang is out on a friendly outing, Asuka notices that Rei is sweating like crazy in her coat under the summertime sun, so she and the other girls drag Rei off to get her into something more suited for this time of the year. While she only gets a simple, white sundress, it is enough to send the boys' jaws straight into the ground. Rei doesn't react at first...

...until Shinji breathlessly mutters that she's cute, causing the girl to immediately manifest a Luminescent Blush. Yeah, he's completely smitten with her. And she knows. And later reciprocates.

edited 27th Feb '15 1:27:50 PM by amitakartok

So... Shinji exists as a character since the beginning of the story?

I always intended to bring him in, although not immediately. He'll join the cast sometime between Israfel and Sahaquiel then briefly leave shortly after Bardiel due to being recalled by Gendo, only to steal Unit-04 (with some help from Gendo) and come right back, this time for good.

Among the pilots, Shinji fills the positions of The Conscience and The Smart Guy. Why the latter, you ask? Because Shinji designed most of the Evas' guns and equipment, all by himself. His raw intelligence is on par with his parents' but while they do genetics and biotech, Shinji's primary field of expertise is mechanical engineering, complete with a master's degree at age 16. Granted, he's basically cheating by having a cybernetically augmented brain, but still.

edited 27th Feb '15 1:44:07 PM by amitakartok

You are Rei Ayanami, currently piloting EVA-00 into battle.

You are fighting a girl who looks about your own age, and is picked up by the MAGI as having a Blue Pattern AT Field.

You're in a giant deathborg, she is on foot.

And while you know you can reduce her to a bloody smear on the street if you could get in just a single clean hit, she's kind of starting to kick your ass. She's hiding in buildings that you have to smash up in order to get at her, she's wantonly tossing assorted motor vehicles at you, and is about to drop a goddamned building on you (it's a really big building).

What is your reaction?

Flat "What" mixed with This Is Gonna Suck. Rei is still keeping her composure but is visibly unnerved.

edited 27th Feb '15 2:04:19 PM by amitakartok

My first reaction would be a few moments of complete and utter confusion in the wake of the first disproportionately powerful attack from her, in which I slowly blink my eyes in what may be my first time blinking ever.

Becoming slowly unnerved as the fight goes on and my ass getting kicked continues, but not showing it overtly unless my enemy has somehow managed to be on the verge of actually killing me (not just disabling my Eva, but killing me — e.g. she successfully ripped through the Eva's armor and body all the way to my Entry Plug's interior), is what would follow.

PS: For the record, I seriously doubt dropping one of Tokyo-3's skyscrapers would do much to any Eva. Even blowing up a totally-not-a-nuke while standing within the ground zero radius did less critical damage to Unit 00 itself than what Zeruel did to it after the explosion.

edited 27th Feb '15 3:24:23 PM by MarqFJA

EVA-00 doesn't actually sustain too much structural damage beyond Lucy tossing the mech over her shoulder (a la Raiden pulling similar stunts with RAY and Exelcus), shoving a bus through its eye, ripping apart the armor plating on an arm as she runs up said arm, and then using her vectors to tear its throat open.

Much of the battle is more about Lucy being a huge pain in the ass for Rei to even hit and tossing cars at her.

From Lucy's perspective, it's very much a contest of speed, power, and ruthlessness.

But for Rei, it's more a psychological battle, because her opponent is extremely small, difficult to target much less hit, will not goddamned die, and then Lucy starts pulling moves like the aforementioned EVA flip, taking out the eye (heaven knows what kind of head trip that would be for Rei, what with feeling the loss of 00's singular eye when she herself has two), and having her/EVA-00's throat slashed open, as well as Lucy's vectors breaking apart EVA-00's AT Field at least once or twice. Some of this being exacerbated by the fact that unlike the Angels she and her comrades have fought before, Lucy is intelligent and capable of strategic planning.

The main advantage Rei has in this fight is that for Lucy to pull most of this crap, she's really putting a huge strain on her body, just about putting her out of action for the next while.

edited 27th Feb '15 3:53:59 PM by EvaUnit01