All Purpose Evangelion Fanfiction Thread

Tossing another idea here—-I will admit, it's more of something tossed to a wall to see what happens once it hits, or if it sticks.

Evangelion/Numenera Crossover. Third Impact was the end of the "First" world. A large amount of technology that the other Seven Worlds made had some basis on Evangelion technology (not all of the equipment, of course, but a lot of gizmos that appear on the story would have their apparent origins from Eva technology).

And the other Angel species out there are either coming to Earth... or after a billion years, Yui is coming back to see how Earth has fared....

The characters are either OCs that obviously will be dragged into the situation (who may or may not have some kind of connection to the original characters), or are the Eva characters themselves moulded to the latter setting (of course, this means that the Evangelion series as we know it went... differently), or they are the Eva characters, who have somehow appeared on the Numenera world (dunno how... maybe Leliel tossed them here, or they have lasted THIS long to re-emerge from the Sea of LCL, or the "Curse of Eva" has made them last THIS long, "Highlander"-style. Could also be that they are something like the Changing God or the Last Castoff from the "Torment" video game. This is definitely up to the individual writer).

I could've sworn I mentioned somewhere that they're not the same race that built the starship. My mistake.

Or maybe Reincarnation is a thing.

---

BTW, I've settled on a name for the race in question: Xengelim, derived from Greek (xenos, "stranger, alien, foreign"), German (engel, "angel"; ultimately from Greek angelos, "messenger"), and Hebrew (pluralization suffix -im, common in the names of groupings of angels like "seraphim"). If it sounds too ridiculous to you, blame it on Lorenz's religious xenophilia and blatant disregard for linguistics.

On a different note, like several of my story ideas, this one surprised me by quickly going beyond being an Evangelion AU story and into a straight-up megacrossover. Can we say Nanoha Takamachi and Fate Testarossa in a "modern human girl meets Nubile Savage alien girl, with a dash of 'she had such pretty eyes, I could not help trying to be friends with her'" kind of romance? Try guessing who's who.

edited 23rd Mar '17 2:38:13 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Fate is the Earthnoid Hot Scientist and Nanoha is the hot half-Broken Bird Not-So Stoic Woobie alien chick.

Because the other way around is BORING.

Actually, no, wait, let me raise you one better: Nanoha and Fate are BOTH modern Earthnoid girls, and "the alien with the sad eyes" is Yuuno.

edited 23rd Mar '17 8:34:56 AM by EvaUnit01

Or maybee Reincarnation is a thing.

Half-correct. Short version: Fate is indeed human, but not a scientist. Nanoha is indeed Xengelim, but a half-Broken Bird (or a Broken Bird, anyway).

Long version: Fate is the 12-year-old daughter of Presea Testarossa, a preeminent exobiologist who is one of the leaders of NERV's sister-group in the Exophia consortium¹, the Midchilda-Belka Institute for Exoscience and Xenotechnology (often shortened to "MidBel Institute" or just "MidBel"), with Alicia as her twin sister (who, incidentally, has a weird growth abnormality that froze her growth around age 8/9). Presea's husband and the father of Fate and Alicia before the twins were born, and in the interim years Presea fell in love with fellow widow Lindy Harlaown and the two eventually got married, with Lindy and her son Chrono quickly being embraced by the twins as a second mother figure and an older brother, respectively. Lindy, BTW, is also a member of MidBel, specifically a high-ranking executive manager in the institute's bureaucratic side (she's done wonders raising lots of funding for the science side's programs); basically, Lindy and Presea hold the highest-ranking positions in the institute's dual hierarchy.

Now, little Fate has a not-so-little problem. You see, her two moms have been unintentionally neglecting her over the last few years (e.g. repeatedly missing Parent's Day, or even forgetting to celebrate Fate's birthday a few times when Alicia never suffers the same) due to an ever-increasing workload. That wouldn't have been so bad... if it weren't for her older and more mentally/emotionally mature twin Alicia also becoming quite distant from her (again, unintentionally) due to focusing on applying her Child Prodigy-ness to the huge supercomputer project that MidBel is working on to rival Nerv's own Magi, and Chrono as well being quite busy with... whatever he's doing (what does Chrono do in non-magical Nanohaverse settings???). All four were genuinely unaware that the other two/three were not keeping Fate company like they were expecting. There may be other contributing factors, but I can't think of any.

So in comes the whole deal with ES-0001L and the Xengelim that Exophia discovered within. Lucky for them that they had just managed to figure out how to control a certain system of machinery that basically holds a massive alien ecosystem within a Pocket Dimension, with lots of exotic means to observe, interact, and explore said habitat (from relatively mundane airlocks and huge viewports to straight-up wormhole gateways). For their part, the Xengelim are rather placid and equally curious about the strange, usually pink-skinned bipeds that look so much like them yet also so much unlike them, and are thus content to simply watch their watchers back most of the time when they're not being persuaded to participate in some harmless experiments (e.g. a rubik's cube test were solving the puzzle gets them a tasty treat^note The cube in question is delivered into the habitat via a robotic drone, rather than say luring a Xengelim to an enclosure.), with the more curious ones (like the juveniles) going right next to the viewports for an up-close look. Well, so long as they aren't harboring malevolent intentions, because the Xengelim are all empaths, so you can't fool them unless you're a psychic yourself and put a decent mental barrier before you entered the range of their empathic sense; the sociopath who previously led a CIA-backed US-American former member of Exophia (I say "former" because it's been dissolved) found this out the hard way after resorting to Loophole Abuse to kick out NERV and take over the operation, then proceeded to attempt really unethical "experiments" on the Xengelim on the sole rationale that "neither human rights nor animal rights apply to extraterrestrial life" (which is technically true; at the time there was a lot of legal wrangling and foot-dragging in both the US Congress and other countries now that alien life has been proven to exist). The Xengelim codenamed Lilith made sure to drag out the bastard's death for daring to assault Yui in their last heated argument (right in front of the observation deck's "main" viewport) over the bullshit he pulled to sideline NERV just before he had her forcibly removed from the premises.

... Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. So poor little Fate was feeling bitter over the familial neglect while also knowing it's not really intentional, but having given up trying to tell them about it because 1) she's a good girl who didn't want to bother people with her problems, and 2) every time she did muster up the courage to say something, she'd get interrupted and consequentially lose that courage. She didn't even think her moms inviting her and her siblings to the facility to see honest-to-God aliens would lift up her spirits (give credit to the moms for noticing that Fate was feeling depressed; they were just wrong about why and how bad it was).

Then through one viewport, she saw the most beautiful pair of blue eyes looking back at her with a mix of infinite, childly curiosity and equally fathomless sympathy (remember, empath). They belonged to a juvenile Xengelim, roughly about Fate's biological age (she's about the same proportions, at least), who had been jokingly nicknamed "Momoko²'s White Imp" after she unintentionally scared the shit out of a few researchers by popping into their view unannounced. And Fate knew what first love was like (though at the time she didn't know that it was "first love" in that sense).

Unfortunately, Fate's newfound first love kept being stumped at how to get through the strange barriers that separate her from Fate. Luckily, Fate had another solution: Put herself inside one of the boxes intended to deliver a batch of bio-engineered xeno-food³ while the newly-employed-and-thus-inexperienced worker was busy listening to music from his smartphone on earplugs as he was waiting for the lift to come up (the security camera there had conveniently malfunctioned that day, with the filed repair report not being handled yet).

Imagine how panicked Lindy was when she realized that Fate was missing. Imagine how hysterical Presea became when she inevitably discovered that fact too. The entire facility got turned upside down, with Presea alternating between wailing in grief and screaming in rage at everyone and nobody... until Yui called them from her side.

Bad news: Fate is not inside the research facility. Good news: Fate has been found and is alive and well. Not-necessarily-good-or-bad news: Fate inside the alien habitat; specifically, she's right in the middle of a Xengelim tribe's current nesting grounds, as viewed by one of the team's robotic drones... and she's having the time of her life play-wrestling with Momoko's daughter.

Long story short (because this gone on for longer than even I had expected at the beginning), Fate and her family had a long-overdue argument with the drone serving as intermediary, with Presea trying a melodramatic "I'M A HORRIBLE MOTHER WHO'S HATED BY HER PRECIOUS DAUGHTER! WAAAAAH!" routine (which is technically sincere, she's just exaggerating to the point of comedy because it proved a potent weapon against Fate the few times she was unreasonably stubborn) only to be shut down by Lindy calmly twisting her arm, and eventually a compromise is reached: Fate gets to do as she pleases within the habitat for one week, partly as a "vacation" of sorts and partly because as Fate herself points out it's a perfect opportunity to see how well Xengelim take to interacting with human children (the adult human trials were already concluded with great success; they just were wary of trying to put children on the line For Science!, for admittedly good reason), since she's spent several hours with them already and they've been nothing but wonderfully nice (Momoko in particular adores the golden-haired girl). And they're to call White Imp by the name "Nanoha" from now on; when asked why that name, she shrugged and said "It feels right."

Oh, and Nanoha tried to attack the drone out of overprotectiveness when she felt Fate was getting upset by the sounds coming from it (it was a heated part of the argument). The looks on the researchers' faces from how big the energy beam she spat out (which missed the target by a wide margin, to Nanoha's consternation) were priceless; Momoko and her mate and other children just looked on proudly over the girl's evident talent. It made the humans if the Xengelim are truly contained within habitat, or they're just voluntarily staying inside because they actually like it in there and don't have a reason to leave.

... Man, I'm good at visualizing scenes and giving summarized descriptions of them, so why do I find it so hard to turn it into an actual narrative?

1. Exophia^note Portmanteau of exo- and sophia, literally "outer learning/wisdom/knowledge" and effectively intended to mean "Learning About Extraterrestrial" is a global umbrella organization for many multinational research groups with similar portfolios as NERV and MidBel.

2. The Xengelim version of Momoko Takamachi, who had been also named "Momoko" by MidBel because peaches were the one Terran food item she settled on as her favorite (she was involved in an experiment to observe Xengelim food preferences... after it was determined that there's no risk of dangerous allergic reactions). Oh, and she's one doting and protective mom.

3. Replicated from a genomic encyclopedia recovered from ES-0001L's salvaged supercomputer database.

edited 23rd Mar '17 5:17:20 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Y'know, I had this really strange experience just now.

I was reading your post, and then I felt as if I were in the center of a wrestling ring somewhere in a major stadium, with something like 100,000 people all passionately chanting in unison, "AGE THEM UP! AGE THEM UP! AGE THEM UP!"

At least the voices in my head are unified in purpose, yeah?

Also, I'm honestly disappointed that you were willing to sink to a literal Die for Our Ship just to facilitate Precia/Lindy. Alas!, Mr. Testarossa, we never even knew ye!

You said you made them twins, you stupid idiot! That kind of means that they have the same birthday.

Most authors accidentally on purpose forget that he exists. In your scenario, I would probably put him as a high-ranking figure in base security.

<cue obligatory comment that Jerkass Woobie!Precia is 'best Precia, save only for the hypothetical Holy Grail of Precias I've never seen before, "Jerkass Woobie who seeks atonement via her greatest second chance".

Because - as you have said before - you're scared shitless of writing yourself into a corner you can't get out of, so you spend 101% of your time "planning things out" and absolutely zero percent time ever writing the actual freaking story.

And on the occasions that myself, Napoleon, or others have pointed that out to you over the years, I feel I must add, your response has pretty much been to completely ignore and disregard it.

And while you know - or I trust you know - that not a single word I've posted here has been out of malice, surely you realize (even if you don't seem to hang around on SV that much) that talking about MGLN fic is the surest way to bring out my salty side?

Hey, we know zilch about Mr. Testarossa in canon, even in INNOCENTS. I just decided to stick to his status as a Posthumous Character who is The Ghost because I can't find any motivation to include him as a living character.

... You're right. <Face Palm> I guess I focused too much on the fact that they're practically identical in appearance and that Fate is Alicia's clone and thus technically her twin. Nix the "twin" part for now, OK?

But that would require specifically aging him up with respect to everyone else, wouldn't it? He's biologically only five years older than Fate in canon.

INNOCENT!Presea is not crappy! REPENT, HERETIC! REPENT!

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

You say "we know zilch about him in canon", and I hear "Fanfic Fuel!".

If "not actually the twin of 12-YO Fate after all" Alicia is child prodigy enough to be working on a MAGI-tier supercomputer, then I see no reason that 17YO-ish Chrono can't be wise beyond his years enough to manage base security.

I repent of nothing, and regret nothing!

<rolls eyes in exasperation> ANYWAY! To get this back on Evangelion... You remember Napoleon's fanfics where Class 3-A end up in the Joker and Harley Quinn's hands, who raise them as their kids, twisting them into villainesses in the process, right? And Negi, Kotarou, and Tsukuyomi become Robin, Nightwingwolf, and Batgirl?

... Well, try applying a similar idea to the Evangelion cast: Which Gothamite character would each Evangelion be the most plausible candidate for playing their role? For example, Rei seems like she could stand in for Mr. Freeze, and Mari seems like an obvious shoo-in for taking the Joker's place... or being the Bane to Asuka/Shinji's Batman, alternatively.

PS: Note that "role" does not necessarily mean they'll retain their backstory.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Idea for a crossover.

Drakengard/Nier franchise crossover.

Ending E of Drakengard happens at the same time as Third Impact.

is humanity fucked, or is Humanity fucked?

Watch Symphogear

Keel is obviously Ra's, and Gendo fits the Freeze mold better than Rei does - to the point that even [Mike 313] had Gendo end up going that route in comparison to Mayumi's Batwoman.

If anything, I'd book Mari as more of a Catwoman-analogue than a Joker or Bane type. As much as I tend to pay more attention to her Blood Knight tendencies, she really isn't all that malevolent. I think I'd have her as, at worst, a somewhat self-absorbed adrenaline junkie with a heart of gold.

If anyone would be the Joker, I'd actually bet on it being Shinji, with Asuka/Rei/Mana being the champion of justice that's trying to stop him.

I was assuming that Mari would've been put through metaphorical hell (or, in Joker terms, "one bad day") before becoming the Bane/Joker analogue.

And IMO, Mana seems more suitable to be the Catwoman to Shinji's Batman.

edited 25th Mar '17 4:55:50 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Except that Shinji being Batman completely breaks my WSOD.

I direct you to the Shinji from Sadamoto's manga, and remind you that even Bruce Wayne would almost certainly not grown up to become Batman (or at least, the one we know) had it not been for Alfred Pennyworth and, to a lesser extent and mostly in some continuities, James Gordon^note Arkahmverse's Gordon first met Bruce Wayne while he was a regular cop... and Bruce had just lost his parents. The one honest cop in GCPD comforting the traumatized child probably ensured that the boy wouldn't completely lose faith in humanity..

edited 25th Mar '17 2:34:06 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

If I'm allowed to interject with unrelated stuff...

---

First, I feel I should be getting back to SCE. I realized minutes ago that there's an opportunity for some bonding between the pilots. Should I take it?

Namely, Asuka is so hungover that she can't possibly go to school. By original plans, she stays home to rest with her father watching over her while Kaworu goes to school - but there's also the option of Kaworu staying home as well to watch over her so that her dad can go to work, the option of Rei staying with her instead so that Kaworu can go to school, and the option of Kaworu staying so that Asuka's dad can leave and Rei staying as well because she doesn't give a damn about school anyway.

If either of them stays, the topic of bonding conversation would be Asuka expressing resignation at her father constantly being away from home due to work and whoever's with her expression jealousy at that, but for different reasons. For Rei, it's the fact that Asuka and her dad get along so well, unlike Rei and Yui; for Kaworu, it's the fact that Asuka even has a relative to expect back.

Which one should I take?

---

Secondly, I now have a second plot bunny for a magical girl version of Evangelion that swaps the deconstruction elements of my first idea for mercilessly making fun of genre conventions instead.

@Marq: The thing about Shinji is that if he's not too hesitant (anime/EOE) to be Batman, then he's too reckless to be Batman (Rebuild/manga). If the Rebuild/Manga Shinji were a Green Lantern, he'd be more like Guy Gardner than any of the other Sector-2814 ones.

This is why I say that if Shinji were anyone in Gotham, he would be the Joker.

@amita: I am 101% excited for any development that gets Asuka to behave less antagonistically toward her fellow pilots.

I'd say go with both Kaworu and Rei staying.

First, you will have to explain how manga!Shinji is reckless (well, for his age at least; being in the middle of adolescence is bound to act recklessly at times due to hormones), since the only reckless canon!Shinji I know is the Rebuild one.

Second, you do realize that Shinji becoming Batman would take place over a two-decade long period, from the day he suffers the traumatic event that serves as his driving motivation to the day when he finally completed his hellish self-training around the world but is struggling over how to apply it (and having found that doing it legally doesn't work, in part due to the rampant corruption in the city's police department despite the current commissioner's constant attempts at reform). At least some of those masters he would've trained under would recognize sooner or later any undesirable traits in him (such as recklessness) and take steps to rectify the matter, even if they had to resort to unkind means.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

See, the thing is that you can technically theoretically justify anything with "But Character Development!"

Except I don't play that game. There comes a time at which point a character stops recognizably being themselves - In Name Only, if you will - and in my opinion, there's no way to get any iteration of Shinji from "recognizably Shinji Ikari" to "recognizably Batman" without crossing the In Name Only barrier in one direction or the other.

I probably will. Kaworu would want to owe up to what he sees as his fault and Rei is around because she's been taking him to school in the morning for a while now.

And this could be another source of foreshadowing, I just realized. Namely, the trio need an excuse for why they missed school. Rei already has one in the form of work, since the school administration already knows that she has a side job at the AEL, for which Yui can excuse her. However, the school administration does not know about Kaworu and Asuka also working for the AEL, since the AEL tend to schedule sync tests and such outside school time so as to not interfere with the kids' civilian life.

So what I'm thinking is that Yui comes clean to Keel about the pilots' identities in order to ask him to have the ministry of education lean on the school administration so that no questions will be asked about why Kaworu and Asuka are absent from school with no explanation. And the foreshadowing part is that Keel is not the least bit bothered by the fact that Yui basically admitted to using child soldiers to operate weapons of mass destruction. In fact, he's too un-bothered by it, which sets off alarm bells in Yui's head but she can't quite tell why.

edited 28th Mar '17 9:23:18 AM by amitakartok

@Eva:

One: Evidently our thresholds for when something becomes In Name Only are quite different. Yours seems to dangerously veer close to the "Original Flavor uber alles!" attitude that I've repeatedly voiced my staunch rejection of.

Two: In Name Only — which, for the record, is mainly a trope about works rather than one about characters — explicitly says that Tropes Are Tools applies to it as well, immediately after saying that it "is not automatically They Changed It, Now It Sucks!." You are supposed to assess each example "on its own merits", alongside or even instead of measuring "how faithful it is to the original".

Three: Batman himself is a textbook example of how radically one's personality can change as a result of a single event. There's very little in common between the Bruce Wayne before his parents' murder and the Bruce Wayne after said murder in terms of personality; in effect, adult Bruce Wayne is indeed already In Name Only in relation to his pre-traumatized child self. Having Shinji Ikari go through a similar childhood trauma that puts him on the path of becoming The Cowl and end up becoming very morose in comparison to his 4-year-old Cheerful Child self does not seem any less plausible than that in my eyes.

Four: At no point did I ever say that I envision Batman!Shinji to become a carbon-copy of DC!Batman in personality. Hell, DC!Batman himself is depicted differently from one incarnation/medium/continuity to the other despite always sharing the same origin story, so I would ask you to first specify which version where you thinking of, because I definitely had none in particular in mind. Furthermore, what of Bat!Mayumi in that SOE story? How different is she from Shrinking Violet!Mayumi, and how (dis)similar is she from the DC character she's based on ^note I'm not clear on whether she's based on the Batman, one of his sometimes-temporary successors/substitutes, one of the Batgirls, or one of the Batwomen?

---

@Amita:

Well, technically he is right, because he was the one who gave in. He could've just threatened to inform Asuka's dad that his daughter stole from Kaworu's cache despite his warning against such. Both of them know that Asuka's dad is not one to blindly take his infamously egotistical and stubborn daughter's word over everyone else, right?

It's a pity that she wasn't around for the drinking contest. It would've made it the blow to Asuka's pride even worse to have "Wonder Girl" handily beat her too... she would, right? I forgot what you said on Rei's alcohol tolerance.

Yeeessssss. The plot thickens. Nyahahahahaha!

edited 28th Mar '17 3:16:26 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Do take note that Shephard's also not realistically likely to take a random nobody's word over his daughter's. And that Kaworu has a habit of underestimating his own rapport with other people, hence why he'd consider the worth of his words equal to a random nobody's when it comes to Shephard.

(Which isn't something I planned beforehand, but I'm rolling with it anyway.)

Same as Kaworu's. And Asuka's pet name for Rei isn't Wondergirl this time around, it's Blueberry.

Fair point. What about after this incident, though? What would Shephard think of Kaworu in light of his ultimately failed attempts to stop the fiasco?

"Blueberry" is appropiate, but why no "Wonder Girl"? It actually fits this Rei even more than it did the canon one... well at least "Wonder Girl" was used in the TV series' English dub; the original Japanese had the nickname being Yuutousei — i.e. "Honor Student" — in the original continuity and Ekohiiki — roughly "Ms. Favorite" — in Rebuild.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

How should I put this.... really, it's a lot like porn.

I don't exactly know where the line is, but I can damn sure tell when the line has been crossed.

Also, I have no idea what the fuck "alles" means. Put a translator's note with your Gratuitous Foreign Language, why don't ya.

If there is no clarification, by default I assume that one is referring to one or more of the "modern" Darker and Edgier versions of Batman (Dark Knight Saga, BVS, etc.).

Which, there's no question in my mind that Shinji has the insanity potential to be a denizen of Gotham City. The thing is that to be Batman, you need a certain mix of "broken" and "unbreakable", and if there's one word that I could never, ever see applying to Shinji - the kid whose entire story amounts to suffering one Heroic BSoD after another until it finally breaks him so completely that he decides, even if he changed his mind later, to kill EVERYONE - it would certainly be "unbreakable".

Secondary point — Batman is a loner, and if he does work in/with a group, usually he leads or is at least immensely deferred to within his realms of expertise. He has a dominant kind of personality. Shinji is passive, 95% of the time. He might try to strike out on his own, but he'd never be able to survive by himself. He's more of a follower, by nature.

Whether it's the verse's equivalent of what happened to Jason Todd, or The Killing Joke, or Knightfall, or who knows what else, sooner or later, a Bat-Shinji would break down and either quit, or turn evil.

And yes, I'm aware that Tropes Are Tools can apply to In Name Only. I am very aware of that. The difference is that I've seen too many shitty "what if Shinji was a manly badass instead of a wimp?" type of fics over the years, so if you're pushing a premise that sounds even superficially similar ("Shinji is Batman"), then you're going to have to work a hell of a lot harder to sell me on it than just "Shinji went through a similar-ish origin story to what Bruce did".

Kaworu's side of the story: "Don't blame yourself. She had to learn her lesson."

Asuka's side of the story: "Hangover's a bitch, ain't it? You brought this on yourself, you know."

Basically, the only one blaming Kaworu here is himself.

It was a spontaneous thing on Asuka's part; to me, it felt more... natural. Less forced. As if her voice actress just ad-libbed it on the spot, rather than being scripted.

Way back when the two first met, the very first thing Asuka said was a comment about Rei's hair color.

---

I also had another idea, but it won't be coming up in this generation.

edited 29th Mar '17 4:41:24 AM by amitakartok

@Amita:

Well, nothing should be stopping Asuka from having two or more nicknames for Rei. At least in fanfics, Asuka often refers to Rei as both "Wonder Girl", "the Doll", and some other nickname(s) (depends on what the author thinks of how she sees Rei; e.g. "Miss Perfect" if Rei seems too perfect in Asuka's eyes) within the same story.

@Eva:

Yeah, well, just like porn, where the line should be placed is, in practice, largely a matter of subjective opinion.

... It's a play on the Deutschlandlied, which starts with "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" ("Germany, Germany above all else"). The association with Nazi Germany — particularly since the Nazi regime used only the first stanza and focused on the first phrase a lot — tainted all but the third stanza of this song, even though it predates the Nazi Party's rise to power.

My point still stands: The Darker and Edgier versions of the character are not mutually interchangeable.

News flash: Batman slipping into a Heroic BSoD after the Knightfall saga proves that he can be broken not just physically, but psychologically (Bane purposefully worked on pushing the Bat to his very limits on both accounts, because he's smart enough to know it's the only way to ensure the man's first true defeat). It's just really, really, really hard to do it, since he became Batman in the first place because hs mind and innocence were horribly shattered to pieces by his parents' death in front of his eyes. And it's really, really, really hard if not nigh-impossible to keep him broken, as evidenced by him returning from his unplanned bout of retirement post-Knightfall. And I'm pretty sure we could find more examples of similar cases throughout his career; his first brush with Bane is just the first and most iconic one.

Batman's signature trait isn't being unbreakable. It's that even when you somehow manage to break him, he will eventually pull himself back together (usually with the help of a Bat-Family member's moral support in his psychological Darkest Hour) and become stronger than before.

Moot point, since I already proved above that "Batman is unbreakable" is false. Instead, there are even more parallels between Shinji and Batman, because both were broken at least once, and both eventually pieced themselves back together (in Shinji's case, when he eventually rejected Human Instrumentality after all of his psyche's accumulating cracks finally result in him truly breaking down in the wake of Kaworu's death at his hands).

"Batman is a loner" is a weak argument considering the existence of the Bat-Family. Even from the earliest days of his career, he was never alone; he had his trusty butler and father-figure Alfred, waiting to dress his physical wounds, offer advice and moral support whenever something stumps him, as well as make sure that the Caped Crusader does not push himself too far (He will take a few hours of sleep every night, come hell or high water!). And just how many sidekicks has he taken under his wing by now? If he really was as much of a lone wolf as he likes to claim so often, he would've at least stopped after his first one became estranged from him and struck out on his own and his second one suffered a gruesome, slow death by pipe-bludgeoning at the Joker's hands.

As for Shinji, while his TV self may be as you described, his Sadamanga self seems considerably less so, if at all.

Well, good thing you're not the only one around for me to hear feedback from, right?

... Hey, I'm sorry if that sounds unexpectedly harsh and dismissive (unintentional, I assure you), but it's true. I never expect everyone to like whatever story idea I bring up for discussion, but that does not mean that I have to pander to every single critic's gripes about the idea, especially if they are quite subjective in nature. Case in point: Your heavy bias against "what if Shinji was a manly badass instead of a wimp?" stories; I've seen my share of shitty executions, but I didn't let all that shit color my assessment of the idea's own merits nor its potential to be well-executed. And who knows, perhaps some of the fics you deem as horrible executions of the idea are only so in your eyes; God knows it wouldn't be the first time opinions were heavily divided on a story's quality. None of us here are anywhere near being professional authorities on fanfic-related matters, even if most of us do have such considerable experience on such matters that we can identify both obvious and not-so-obvious pitfalls, offer constructive feedback, etc. We're all just fans who are storywriters (or would-be ones, in my and some others' cases).

And yes, you are starting to come across as if you believe yourself to possess actual authority to judge whether or not a story idea should be condemned as "Bad Writing waiting to happen". I believe it's unintentional on your part.

edited 29th Mar '17 6:22:09 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.