All Purpose Evangelion Fanfiction Thread

Have you ever discussed that other plot line with me in our PM conversations? Because the "there's two directions I could go down and I'm undecided on which to choose" thing sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't remember any details. All I remember is that I did not like any of the options you discussed with me.

Regarding ... I'm ambivalent, considering all I know. If I did not know what I already know, though... I think it's decent.

I'm pretty sure I did, because now that I think about it you didn't like that one either despite (almost) Everybody Lives being in effect on account of my basing Gendo in that route more on the manga version.

But part of it, on my end - regarding my tendency to more heavily favor Original Flavor in NGE - is that I don't believe in happiness. Or more accurately, I don't believe in things "just working out". More often than not, any event outside of your ability to control is more likely to play out in a way that screws you over than helps you. That's just how life goes, in my experience. The very best ending I believe a person can achieve is Earn Your Happy Ending, and even that's a Luck-Based Mission in my perspective.

I've realized over the last few weeks, however, that Burning Vengeance is unique among my stories in that it actually has a Cosmic-tier Big Good who can "cheat" that law of reality in favor of the protagonists (even if just by virtue of already knowing who the worst instigators are and directing people to eliminate them super-early). With that in mind, why shouldn't it have a more optimistic tone compared to some of my other NGE fics?

Edited by EvaUnit01 on Jul 26th 2018 at 1:54:57 PM

I'll have to dig up my copies of our messages to refresh my memory, but not today; a bout of intense nasopharyngeal allergy (sneezing, coughing, nasal cavity burned like a wildfire and yet leaked like a waterfall) has tanked my energy reserves since yesterday.

... Say, has anyone written a fanfic that puts on the Evangelion characters in one of those isekai-genre fantasy worlds? Like, dropping the character into an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, or having them reincarnate as a snow-white bear who apparently is a guardian spirit of a forest inhabited by kemonomimi girls?

Had a subplot idea for SCE literally minutes ago.

I was planning a plot point where Shinji is recalled along with an incomplete Unit-04 to somewhere else, which sets up his discovery of SEELE's misdeeds and hijacking of the Eva to go warn the heroes. What I lacked, however, was a reason for the recalling. It was supposed to take place after Bardiel - but why would one loss against an Angel warrant Gehirn from pulling out of the project?

Then I realized one thing. Against Sahaquiel, the Evas need to operate in space despite not having been designed for it and therefore, not having zero-gee maneuvering capabilities. The Tridents, however, do. So I was thinking, what if Shinji's desire to help (motivated by an unhealthy desire to be of use to his parents) drives him to steal the prototype Tridents' zero-gee avionics software and adapt it for the Evas?

Thing is, Shinji basically commits industrial espionage with this stunt by giving classified corporate intellectual property to a third party. This is why he and Unit-04 get shipped back to Gehirn HQ pending an official investigation when the engineers notice the highly similar coding. Even if he wouldn't defect, his career is all but over because while he used to be Gehirn's golden boy and allowed to do his thing with very minimal supervision, he's most definitely not going to be allowed to do anything without constant supervision anytime soon. And that's if he's not getting tried for treason for pirating classified military software.

On the other hand, this also means that Shinji wanting to help indirectly ends up fucking SEELE over and killing billions of people down the line. Wonder why that sounds familiar...

Technically, my NGE x FFTA was one although I applied the Original Flavor to it so Shinji went to the crappiest Crapsaccharine World version of Ivalice.

How would he even pirate the software in question? Hacking the computer systems of a military organization isn't something I'd expect anyone could do.

He didn't have to hack it. As a high-level employee, he has full access to Trident development materials, including software and schematics. But by leaking said software to a third party, he committed misuse of company property and since said software was intended for the military, can also be tried for theft of military property, which is high treason and he can get sent to a labor camp or shot by firing squad for it.

The only reasons that doesn't happen is 1) he's still underage and thus cannot get the firing squad, 2) he's physically disabled and thus medically unfit for corrective labor and 3) Keel gives him a presidential pardon ex post facto because he's fully in the know of what's at stake if the Evas aren't up to the task of fighting the Angels and Shinji helped with just that, even if he broke the law in the process.

... OK, here's an even bigger question: What was stopping the tech from being legally shared? The survival of humanity is at stake, that automatically trumps all considerations of copyrights and Interservice Rivalry if that's the only reason. Or are those stakes not known to both the public and the parties involved?

The public knows giant kaiju are roaming about, but until after Sahaquiel, the government is not saying anything other than assurances that the situation is under control. The battle against Sahaquiel is televised live across the world for propaganda purposes; afterwards, Kaworu receives the local equivalent of the Hero of the Soviet Union award as a publicity stunt (he saved a damaged frigate from crashing by grabbing onto it with his Eva and using his own thrusters to flatten out its reentry trajectory despite knowing full well that his armor isn't rated for reentry) and the kids are introduced to the public at a state-held ball.

Even so, the full scale of the Angels isn't known by anyone, even the protags, until the colossal clusterfuck that is the battle against Zeruel, which kills hundreds of thousands and leaves tens of millions homeless. That drives the point right at home that this is nothing less than a fight for survival.

But to return to Gehirn. While the AEL are working on the Evas as a Superweapon Surprise for the military, Gehirn are working on a Navy contract to develop a new bomber aircraft, for which they came up with the Trident as a Transforming Mecha that can shift into a humanoid form to maximize RCS torque in zero gee by way of moving the RCS thrusters further away from the center of mass (thus allowing higher torque at the same reaction mass expenditure), yet at the same time can also assume a non-humanoid form to reduce air resistance during atmospheric flight. Thus the two are technically competing projects, even though Gehirn also provides the Evas' equipment because the AEL, being a biotech company, lack the heavy industry and mechanical engineering background to do it themselves while Gehirn have plenty of experience designing and building mechs, so they're the obvious choice.

Yui at the AEL didn't know about the Tridents until their official unveiling but suspects that at least some of the engineering that went into the Evas' armor was reused for the Tridents but since development was done internally, the AEL cannot prove anything. At the same time, Gendo doesn't officially know about the Evas but the concept was already in preliminary stages by the time he left the AEL and he's not stupid enough to put two and two together. Handing the software over to the AEL as-is would give away too much of the Trident's capabilities to civilians and is a national security risk because it means whoever wants to steal that software can steal it from them instead and no Gehirn cybersecurity can do anything to prevent it. At the same time, Yui does not want to ask for any more help from Gendo than she absolutely must because she treats her completion of the Evangelion project as a matter of personal pride, especially considering their shared past (she was the one who kicked him out because she felt the two of them went too far with playing god in their experiments and put the Evangelion project to the forefront of the AEL's efforts to do things right this time).

I would never underestimate the capacity for human beings to get themselves worked up over petty shit instead of focusing on the giant monsters hellbent on exterminating their entire species.

If there's ever any mention in the story of politics or economics involved, then multiply that sentiment by twelve.

Edited by EvaUnit01 on Aug 1st 2018 at 9:56:54 AM

From what Amita has already shared with me when asking for my opinions on things he's thinking of putting into his story... Yes, politics and economics are mentioned. And more.

... What do you guys think of Rei and Shinji in the shoes of Tatsuya and Miyuki Shiba, respectively? No, I did not get the order wrong; I'm matching them up based on actual similarities. Rei and Tatsuya are both "emotionless", though very different in how (Rei would be horrified at realizing Tatsuya's actual condition^spoiler He's been literally stripped of all emotions save for love towards his little sister Miyuki. And when I say "stripped", I mean that his capacity for all other emotions has been destroyed. To paraphrase him, you cannot "fix" something that isn't there to begin with.).

Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 1st 2018 at 5:49:26 PM

Don't know anything about it.

Wondering if Zonderization and the rescue therefrom (given several Victim of the Week examples in that series) would be sufficient to help the NGE cast overcome their assorted problems in a Super Robot Wars setting.

Pretty sure it would, it'd just be a matter of writing it out properly.

Listening to the cut tracks of the S2 Works album for several hours straight (haven't had proper internet access since Wednesday night and won't have until Monday at least, forcing me to set my phone to broadcast mode, shell out cash for extra data and be conservative with my browsing, so no Youtube) made me think of combining some of my past AU ideas.

Namely, two.

• There was that idea I frequently tossed around where the Evas are conventional mechas with Iruel-copied nanotech, the Wunder has been mass-produced as an Eva delivery platform, the story takes place in the early 22nd century and SEELE are kinda-sorta good guys, except a small group whose attempt to go ahead with Instrumentality accidentally ends up resurrecting Adam into a semi-intelligent flying fortress that puts Ramiel's firepower to shame.
• I once wrote a low-quality story where the Evas are powered armor made of a semi-intelligent metal (it was supposed to be a Battlezone crossover), Tokyo-3 is a floating city in the style of Atlantis due to Second Impact's tectonic upheavals devastating the world so badly that floating cities are being built to escape the earthquakes and tsunamis. Oh, and Shinji is a bitter and mouthy tomboy while Asuka is a male adrenaline junkie.

So I was thinking: take the first idea and add the following.

• Tokyo-3 is not aquatic, but airborne, hijacking Lilith's AT-field to mess with gravity. This is what's drawing the Angels there.
• Gendo is the one who died instead of Yui, it happened earlier in Shinji's life and it was explicitly due to SEELE sabotage meant as a warning to Yui to toe the line or Shinji is next.
• Shinji is still a girl, but not a mouthy one. Instead, Yui's response to the above was to fake Shinji's death in an accident and send her to an adoptive family to live under a fake name. Shinji doesn't even know she's adopted until the beginning of the story.
• Instead of being so Book Dumb that she can't even understand thermal expansion, Shinji is actually highly gifted to the point of having been the top student of every school year she went to, but no one ever praised her for it so she didn't think it was a big deal, hence why she was never singled out for special education like Asuka was, but remained under the radar as nobody special.
• Rei is explicitly Shinji's twin, but they were separated at an early enough age that they don't remember each other. Yui put Rei into the Eva program as a pilot so that SEELE will leave her alone.
• Yui's endgame scenario is not to become a goddess. She has one and only one goal in mind: fuck SEELE's plans up for messing with her family. She doesn't just want them to fail, she wants nothing less than an Epic Fail to rub in their faces and make them know they failed because they fucked with the wrong bitch and she fucked back.

The one thing I seriously question about that is why Shinji's (she needs a feminine name, BTW) exceptional academic performance never earned her any praise, even in private. You'd think that at least some of her classmates would express envy towards her over that.

Maybe they did. But her adoptive parents did not care about her any more than Shinji's caretaker in canon.

And that would negate the attention (positive and negative) she gets from classmates, how? At least in canon, it's implied that Shinji's gift for the cello was a private hobby that only his caretaker(s) knew about, and thus it made sense that he didn't take pride in his talent due to said caretaker(s) not caring either way about it (though I think he really did know that what he was doing is special, it's just that he's self-esteem was so abysmal already from other factors it led to him not taking any pride in it anyway).

There is always a runt in every class no one cares about.

Only if the "runt" doesn't stick out for one reason or another. Clearly proving to have talent in something that the average member of the local "population" cares about (in this case, both students and teachers care about academic performance from students, for different reasons) by definition makes the talented person stick out, which consequentially makes them liable for both wanted and unwanted attention; in Shinji's case, teachers may reprimand other students with lackluster performance for noting being more like her, while students with high scores themselves would likely see her as either a rival or a kindred spirit (depending upon how competitive they are), and bad-performing students would resent her for her academic excellence, either out of envy or perceiving her to be trying to become a teacher's pet and/or insult them with her very existence.

What I'm trying to say is, your Shinji not getting any sort of attention due to her academic excellence would require deliberate manipulation of the environment surrounding her; I could find it more plausible in canon for Gendou to have used agents to coerce Shinji's caretakers, the school faculty and even the students (directly or indirectly in the last case) into completely ignoring any sign of unusual talent in Shinji, just to ensure abysmal low self-esteem.

Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 5th 2018 at 7:57:20 PM

Ugh, that last part is soooo "let's have everyone conspire against our hero just becuz evul" that it sounds like some bad Harry Potter fanfic.

Anyway. Then how about Shinji being the one to refuse special treatment due to pressure from her caretakers, possibly because said caretakers were specifically instructed by Yui to not let Shinji stick out of the masses? Not because Yui wants Shinji to have a low self-esteem, but because sticking out means possibly being noticed by SEELE. I mean, if it turns out Shinji is still alive, SEELE would immediately realize Yui wouldn't have hid the girl if she didn't care.

That's more plausible.

Whatever the case, Shinji's intellect allows her to pull off some really crazy shit with her Eva's AT-field.

Such as....?

Floating and flight is considered a rather basic skill for Eva pilots, as is shielding oneself from attacks.

Shinji powerlevels straight to Air Jousting. And also knows Razor Floss. And figures out how to use the AT-field for telekinesis, which includes ripping entire skyscrapers out of the ground for throwing them, crushing or ripping apart foes, redirecting incoming attacks rather than just deflecting them... think of her as the Eva pilot equivalent of Nanoha, experimenting to figure out what her power allows her to do on her own rather than being told and ending up unlocking straight-up Matrix-level shit.

...and now I'm having the mental image of Tokyo-3 being not a Floating Continent, but a Sleeper Ship carrying the last remains of humanity after Second Impact rendered Earth uninhabitable. The Eva kids are periodically woken from cryo to safeguard the ship from Angels, made harder by the fact that they and the support crew don't go back to cryo at the same time, so they age at different rates. That, and the cryo in question is... not entirely modesty-compliant.

Edited by amitakartok on Aug 8th 2018 at 1:17:32 PM

Just put mechanical blinds on the cyro-pods (with fail-safe unlocking mechanisms) to preserve modesty and have sufficiently sophisticated robots/AIs assigned to each pod (or group of pods) to make sure that none of the human crew tries to abuse the cryo'd people's vulnerability to indulge in perverse voyeurism.

On a different note, I keep getting Imagine Spots of Shinji and his Love Interests as centaur-style Spider People... with the Huge Girl, Tiny Guy trope in full effect due to staying true to spiders typically exhibiting size sexual dimorphism where females are significantly larger than males, sometimes by as much as a factor of 10 (here's an example◊, courtesy of the species Nephila pilipes^note That's one big female surrounded by multiple males of the same species, for those still wondering.). Besides the kinky implications, this is a perfect setup for a Cub Cues Protective Parent scenario...

For those wondering, I envision "Arachnians" as being covered in highly resilient exoskeletal pseudo-chitin all over their bodies; it's just that the portion covering the humanoid parts of their bodies is significantly less rigid and more skin-like, yet is no less durable for it. As a result, they're practically invulnerable to any gunfire that doesn't pack the power of a .50 caliber sniper rifle... and even then you'd to fire full auto (a la the Misaka Sisters' Metal Eater) to have a chance of surviving, let alone winning a straight-on fight.

Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 8th 2018 at 5:15:40 PM

...you can't recognize fanservice unless it's explicitly pointed out?