All Purpose Evangelion Fanfiction Thread

"WE CAN'T SHUT IT DOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWN!!!"

Hey, I was just struck by this realization that I wish to share with you. You know how canon evidence leans towards the position that Asuka is more petitely-built than Rei, Mana, and especially Mari (who may very well outclass all of her peers in that department), right? But has anyone ever considered that possibility that her lack of "endowment" is not an inborn trait?

Think about it: We've all heard about the common complaint that the global movie and fashion industries' increasingly obsessive promotion of stick-thin figures as an ideal of beauty has driven way too many young girls and women to similarly obsessing over dieting and reducing their body weight (even if it's well within medically healthy limits) to match the ridiculous standards of that ideal, more often than not to the deteriment of their personal health. It's especially a concern in the US, which Hollywood — the capital of the world's movie industry — calls home.

Asuka has an American father, and thus it's not of the realm of reason to assume that she may have spent in the US a considerable portion of the time that she did not spend training her ass in Germany. Or at least, that her father may have imparted some of American culture's values to her, whether directly or indirectly, knowingly or unknowingly. She's also a nigh-obsessive perfectionist who has the Fatal Flaw of Pride — pride in her abilities, pride in her (self-perceived) womanliness, pride in her self-perceived "superiority" in general... You get my drift.

Now connect the dots. Is it farfetched to believe that Asuka's petite build is caused by her specifically dieting to obtain a "Hollywood-standard figure" in a misguided belief that this is what real men like Kaji would want/appreciate the most and/or that this is what a "real, superior" woman should look like?

edited 9th Jun '15 2:24:03 PM by MarqFJA

Not farfetched in my opinion. Asuka can easily be that vain.

Possible.

Nice to know that I wasn't grasping at straws. Heck, this could easily be used as a justification for why Asuka is considerably curvier than anime!canon or manga!canon in spin-off manga where the setting is not a Dysfunction Junction: Having Mama Kyoko not only alive and well, but caring for her like any good mother worth her salt is (even if embarrassingly doting, as she apparently is in Shinji Ikari Raising Project) must be doing wonders for Asuka's physical healthiness. And that's not taking into account that this incarnation of Kyoko is very stacked; assuming that the spin-off was done with at least some cursory supervision and/or advisory input from Gainax, it may very well be that it's a semi-official hint that canon!Kyoko is rather attractive as a woman (though most probably not as curvaceous as SIRP!Kyoko is, given that almost every female character of note in SIRP is more buxom than her canon self is, to one degree or another).

edited 9th Jun '15 8:54:54 PM by MarqFJA

Kyoko is Asuka's mother in all continuties.

9/10 times in anime, being hot is In the Blood.

I know, but... Yui in canon was nowhere near as busty as her SIRP incarnation is. Did you see the size of those things?! No wonder SIRP!Rei has a bit of a complex regarding her bust size; she probably worries that Shinji prefers women with similar proportions.

And for good measure, here is what Kyoko looks like in SIRP.

edited 10th Jun '15 3:43:18 AM by MarqFJA

And what if Asuka is simply a late bloomer? Kyoko might have been too.

That's also a possibility. Or heck, maybe she's a late bloomer because she was underfeeding herself!

Ugh, don't even say... underfeeding in the context of Asuka reminded me of an old post-3I story where Asuka tried to induce a miscarriage on herself by voluntary starvation. Didn't work.

Ah, yeah. Second Try. A really sweet piece of work. Really, really sweet.

I've been meaning to ask this for a couple days, but it keeps slipping my mind.

On fanfiction.net, there's an ongoing fic called Advice and Trust. I'm interested in reading it - it's an Asuka/Shinji story, and you all probably know that I have some less-than-positive opinions on the pairing, but I don't mind a decent Asuka/Shinji story once in a while (to the point where I have one or two in my meagre "Ship Fics" tab on my favorite bookmarks bar) and my own fanfic started like a month earlier, so I've seen a lot of it in the Evangelion fanfic listings as I've checked on my own story.

If anyone's read it, would they recommend it? The wordcount-to-chapter ratio is a bit intimidating, but I don't mind the sound of it. I might sit down and get through some chapters if anyone's read it and thinks it's alright.

I haven't read it, but I am acquainted a bit with the author. He is a moderator at a forum I go to.

From what I saw of him, he tends to be pretty respectable to the characters and he seems to like the idea of making them act just a bit nicer than their canon portrayals.

Dunno if that translates to writing quality, but there.

@SIRP images: ...I don't like how Kyoko appears to be blonde in the grayscale images.

Also, thank you for reminding me that I need to actually read the 12-ish volumes of that I have dl'd....

She is actually blonde in the colored covers, actually. It's especially noticeable in the one where both she and Asuka are featured◊.

EDIT: Turns out that she's similarly blonde in Sadamoto's manga. However, her depiction as a ghost-like vision here and in this strange shot here◊ (where does this one come from?) makes it look like she has the same shade as Asuka's hair, unlike the previous image.

edited 11th Jun '15 5:37:40 AM by MarqFJA

Sohryu women should be redheads.

NO EXCEPTIONS EVER.

So you don't approve of Asuka's Adaptation Dye-Job in the manga or in Rebuild?

In Rebuild, Asuka is still "close enough" to redheaded that it doesn't bother me.

I didn't realize that the manga even had Adaptation Dye-Job.

Asuka's hair color's varied so much even in Sadamoto's own art that I think the general idea is for the audience to just know that her hair has at least some amount of red to it and leave it at that.

Actually, Sadamoto!Asuka's hair color is closer to red, since it's described as "strawberry blonde". Rebuild!Asuka's hair color, though, looks more like it's a darker shade of straight-up blonde with no redness to it (described often as an "auburn brown").

edited 12th Jun '15 11:21:56 AM by MarqFJA

Auburn implies redness, Marq. It's literally brown-red.

Well, you take a look at the following pics and tell me where's the redness in them:

[1] [2]◊ [3]◊ [4]◊ [5]◊ [6]◊

The question is not "where is the redness" about those pics.

It's "where is the auburn". That's a flat brown, or perhaps a burnt sienna.

edited 12th Jun '15 2:32:46 PM by Night

Really? What is "auburn" supposed to look like, then?

On another note, there is something about Adam Kadmon's Soloist (which I had previousy mentioned and mostly summarized here) that I would like to discuss with you guys.

Personally speaking, I can see how it can be trivially easy to just write off the premise as a case of turning Asuka into a Villain Sue Protagonist with a dash of Draco in Leather Pants and thus part of the 90% of fanfics that Sturgeon's Law predicts to be total garbage. However, I beg to differ with such a superficial assessment. The more I saw of Asuka's thought processes, behavior and backstory as I read through the story, the more that a terrifying realization dawned upon me: This Asuka is essentially a very likely possibility that could "evolve" from the canon!Asuka if Kyoko was not the Good Parent that she is implied to be in canon, but rather a misandric, amoral elitist whose idea of "motherly love" took the form of using genetic engineering and only her genome to predetermine all of her daughter's physical and mental traits that can be manipulated through such techniques so that she is born a Child Prodigy, then pushing said daughter throughout her formative years to prove her aforementioned built-in talentedness, while largely neglecting to attend to developing proper social skills (foremost among them a sense of compassionate empathy). All of that while keeping in mind that Asuka has the Fatal Flaw of Pride. She's like a Miranda Lawson, only she's more or less unknowingly "brainwashed" by her mother's upbringing to be completely uncaring towards "lesser" people (i.e. everyone not her or her mother).

Such a scenario would naturally have a very high chance of turning Asuka into an irredeemably heartless, nigh-sociopathic Alpha Bitch who'd walk on everyone around her if she could get away with it, and wholeheartedly believes herself to be entited to anything that strikes her fancy because she's innately superior to everyone not her (or her mother) by virtue of her mother's scientific intervention (essentially, she thinks she's a Uberfrau, and builds her behavior around how she believes such a person would/should behave).

Your thoughts?

edited 15th Jun '15 3:52:52 PM by MarqFJA