The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Guys, I just hit upon a perfect solution for the problem that is Keel Lorenz's given name. We know that Keel
was chosen to fit into the nautical theme that pervades most of the cast's names, be it via names of WW 2 ships or names for ship parts, right? But of course, German-savvy people have noticed that not only does Keel not exist as a German name or even as a mere word in the German language, the digraph ee can only be pronounced as /eː/ (as in English may) rather than /iː/ (as in English keel). And we can't handwave that by assuming that he has part-Anglophone ancestry or for some reason was given an English given name despite being for all appearances an ethnic German citzen of Germany, because Keel as an English name is only a surname, with no known given name form.
However, while digging in Behind the Name to see if the rather frequently used-in-fanfics alternate spellings Kiel and Kihl actually exist in any form as German names (they don't), I hit upon a completely different German name that solves the entire problem: Kilian.
- It's a German name, thus fixing the language issue.
- It's pronounced as /ˈkiː.li.an/ or /ˈkiːl.jan/; the first syllable of the former almost perfectly matches the pronunciation of English keel (/kiːl/), while the latter perfectly matches it. By happy coincidence, the kiːl syllable is stressed in either pronunciation, as denoted by the stress mark (ˈ).
- Kilian is a derivative of the Irish name Cillian, which unexpectedly adds several layers of appropiate significance:
- It's the name of an Irish missionary who was sent to Germany in the 7th Century AD. He was martyred there in Würzburg, Franconia, and in honor of his sacrifice he was made the city's patron saint, as well as his name adopted by several Germans to give to their own children henceforth. The name's etymology suggests it's derived as a diminutive of either Gaelic cill, which means "church", or the Irish name Ceallach, which means "war" or "strife".
- Lorenz is a (presumably ethnic) German who leads a secret society with a German name that has noticeable religious overtones and symbolism, especially regarding its Human Instrumentality Project; additionally, he and this secret society essentially drove the world to global strife and war through engineering the cataclysm that is the Second Impact, just to secure enough power and influence to push forward with the aforementioned Human Instrumentality Project.
Kilian Lorenz... I like the sound of it. What do you think?
Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 12th 2018 at 2:30:41 PM
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Me too, although I had the impression Lorenz was his given name.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
That's the most common mistake with his name that I've seen in fanfics. Apparently there are a lot of fans who don't know that non-Japanese names are written/said in their native order in Japanese writing/speech. That's so nice and respectful of the Japanese, to not force their own naming order tradition on other cultures.
Fun fact: Hungarian names follow the same surname-first order as East Asian cultures do, making them unique among European cultures in this regard. It might be a relic of the Magyars' ancestors originating from the Eurasian steppes (i.e. they were more closely related to Central Asian peoples like the Huns and Mongols than the peoples of Europe).
Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 13th 2018 at 7:05:12 PM
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That's the problem. Keel's full name is never spoken anywhere in the show. Fuyutsuki says 'Keel' in episode 21 in the context of a flashback as a name he heard rumored to be connected to the hush-hush stuff and I don't think everyone would refer to such a big shot by his first name.
Edited by amitakartok on Aug 13th 2018 at 6:45:40 PM
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Yeah, well, back when Gainax still had that page for official Evangelion character profiles, his name was listed in full, and it was clearly "Keel Lorenz" (キール・ローレンツ); furthermore, from what I gathered, supplemental Evangelion materials also mentioned his full name several times (presumably in sections talking about either the cast in general or Seele as an organization). And I'm betting we'd finding "キール・ローレンツ" in the character/VA credits for the episodes in which he had actual speaking roles (whether "in person" or as a featureless monolith).
That being said, you make a good point about Fuyutsuki referring to him by his given name despite having no reason to do so and every reason to use his surname instead. I'd chalk it up to a gaffe on part of the script writer forgetting / not knowing which name was the actual surname.
Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 13th 2018 at 12:59:40 PM
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(they/them)
I just came up with an utterly ridiculous fanfic idea (which I'll almost certainly never have the time or inclination to write, so anyone who wants to take this and run with it, feel free): Instead of getting a degree in whatever unspecified STEM field Asuka studied in canon, Asuka gets degrees in international humanitarian law and child psychology. This causes her to gradually realize how abusive NERV's treatment of her is, and she blows the whistle to the UN. Several strongly worded letters ensue, with extensive citations to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Rome Statute, and NERV's official charter... along with actual proper oversight, aided by Asuka's completely unsurprising vindictiveness in documenting every war crime, illegal act, safety hazard, and policy violation she can find.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
That immediately run into the following problems
- What do exactly mean by NERV being "abusive" towards Asuka — at least, in the sense that they're doing something the UN doesn't know about that would get them into hot water?
- To blow the whistle on NERV's abusiveness toward her means that Asuka has to confront and admit to the fact that she's helpless and cannot solve the problem on her own (i.e. admit that she's weak and not perfect)... which, going by her canon personality, would require such a herculean effort on her part to shut off her Inferiority Superiority Complex that it's highly implausible without at some very effectual outside factor helping to push her towards that outcome. And no, I don't believe a degree in child psychology is anywhere near enough for that.
- Seele and Gendou must have been keeping tabs on Asuka's activities from the moment she was chosen to be EVA 02's pilot to ensure that she doesn't deviate from what they want in her. They will not stand for her getting the kind of knowledge that would make it more difficult for them to subtly control/influence her actions.
(they/them)
Oh, I totally agree that the premise has lots of problems. I don't think it'd work as an entirely serious story. But I also think it's very plausible that the UN wasn't aware of a lot of the morally questionable stuff NERV was doing. Their treatment of the pilots seems like it definitely runs afoul of real-world international law prohibiting the use of child soldiers—and even if the UN granted some sort of exemption (which is reasonable given the emergency circumstances of certain children being the only ones who can fight the Angels), one could plausibly expect that there should be more UN oversight, better mental health care, and generally some things to prevent the numerous psychological train wrecks in canon from getting anywhere near that point.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 14th 2018 at 4:44:56 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Has anyone here watched Game of Thrones or read the A Song of Ice and Fire novels that they're based on? I've been watching some videos and reading a bit on the wiki in recent months, and I can't help but imagine Asuka in a story similar (though not identical) to GOT, in the role of Daenerys Targaryen.
The last known scion of a royal family that is the sole remnant of a dragonlord dynasty that forged a long-fallen Roman-esque empire and thus the sole legitimate claimant to the throne that rules over an entire alliance of otherwise separate kingdoms, spent her most of her life being manipulated and abused by a cruel relative, eventually got fed up with being a pawn and rebelled, in the process awakened to her destiny as the first person to become a Dragon Rider in well over a century, ended up taking over an entire slavery hub and overthrowing its regime while undertaking her quest to take the throne that everyone and their mother is vying for, all while struggling to cope with the fact that the world does not run on Black-and-White Morality like she assumed it did... Asuka really fits in this, doesn't she?
... And then a major shock to the plot happens when a caravan rushes into the former capital of slavery and pleads for audience with the Liberator Queen, bringing before her Shinji, Asuka's Love Interest and one of her very few allies that ultimately stayed behind in her homeland to work for her behind the scenes, but unfortunately was scapegoated for a completely unrelated crime and subjected to Cold-Blooded Torture that left him the catatonic physical wreck that the merchant band have presented her with note . It's from this point that another primary objective is added to Asuka's list: take her dragons, her army of ex-slave supersoldiers, and the horde of Mongol-esque nomadic horse-lords that swore loyalty to her due to Asskicking Equals Authority, and raze the capital city of the dynasty that's responsible for Shinji's condition, and utterly erase their name and legacy from history.
Thus ends my Imagine Spot.
Also, cross-posting from the Rebuild thread.
You know how many find it suspicious that not only had Mari been given a Japanese warship's name (and a modern one rather than a WW2 one) for her surname that ends in nami (波 "wave") just like Rei, but Asuka had her own Japanese warship namesake changed such that she now shares the same second kanji?
Well, I've been thinking... If someone wanted to make a fanfic — or Khara decided to make an actual remake of the original TV series continuity (whether as a TV series as well, an OAD series, or a movie series) — that incorporates Mari into the story, then assuming they don't retcon Asuka's own surname to the Rebuild one, perhaps it would be more appropiate to give her a new name that avoids Rebuild's Theme Naming in order to solidify the distinction between the two settings.
Conveniently, there is one IJN warship whose name is simply one kanji different from Mari's Rebuild namesake: Makigumo (she's even in the same class as Makinami!). This way, we don't stray too far from the original.
Or maybe you'd prefer Mikuma, one of the few Japanese WW2 cruisers whose name starts with an M that isn't already taken by an existing Evangelion character (the only other one is Myoukou). Since Rei is named after a destroyer and Asuka is named after an aircraft carrier, I say it's fitting to name Mari after a ship whose type stands in between those two... and I'd rather avoid battleships because they were made obsolete during WW 2 by the rise of carriers, which would clash with the fact that Rebuild!Mari is evidently more bite than bark as an Evangelion pilot.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
... Please tell me I did not somehow kill this thread.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Emissary of the Void
Nah, I lurk the thread mostly because I like the back and forth ideas that bounce around. Admittedly, I am not so well versed in writing that I can reasonably set up stories like these can be. Either that or it's just a bad case of Real Life shenanigans.
[DATA LOST]
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
You didn't. I just don't care much about fantasy to begin with.
Question involving SCE, as trivial as it might sound. How should I make SEELE dirty enough to face execution if their dirty laundry were to become public? Specifically, what should said dirty laundry be?
As things stand, SEELE didn't just infiltrate the government, they are the government and got that position through legitimate means. Their ultimate endgame scenario was still supposed to be Instrumentality but due to certain changes in this AU, they have the instructions (the Dead Sea Scrolls) but not the components (the local equivalents of Adam and Lilith are not on Earth, the Evas are too distantly descended from not-Lilith to be usable as Her substitutes and the Angels are impossible to capture for cloning as not-Adam's substitutes). Thus, SEELE cannot ever achieve Instrumentality and they've known that for a while, but the emergence of both Angels and Evas in accordance with the Scrolls have reignited their interest.
Question is... if they know Instrumentality is a no-go, what else should be their long-term objective? Why else did they put themselves in charge of an authoritarian regime over humanity? What do they need that power for?
One thing that's definite: their desire for Instrumentality is a desire for immortality, first and foremost. Add in the fact that SCE starts 43 years after Second Impact and all of them are well on their way to death by old age, to say nothing of the fact that Keel is perfectly willing to ditch the whole scenario if he has an alternative available. So I thought, what if they're so driven to be the top dogs because they resorted to using certain life extension technologies from a less-than-publicly-accepted source they themselves outlawed later on and are running the show to remain above suspicion? But that doesn't sound severe enough to warrant a manhunt for crimes against humanity.
Edited by amitakartok on Aug 29th 2018 at 12:28:14 PM
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
What about the whole "Mari's surname" thing? Or did you accidentally gloss over it due to the lengthy story idea before it?
Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 30th 2018 at 8:25:22 PM
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I'm not really interested in theme naming to begin with.
I just had some brainstorming about my above post, since Marq's post feels... kinda extreme. Namely, the reason why Keel's exact date of birth is classified is because he's actually around 120 years old. He was born in the 1920s and survived the Holocaust as a young man, then subsequently got into metaphysical research because he heard about the Nazis' own interest in it and wondered what could it offer to lead man so horrifically astray. It is unknown when he and the rest of SEELE got their hands on the Dead Sea Scrolls which seemingly validated and expanded their theories but when they began actively searching the Earth, they failed to locate the White Moon anywhere on Earth and the structure that seemed to be the Black Moon did not have Lilith in it, casting doubt on the actual feasibility of Instrumentality.
When Second Impact and the subsequent Occupation rolled up, they collaborated to gain access to Combine resources and see what the aliens knew in the field of metaphysics they could use for Instrumentality, but found little to nothing of value. It was at this time that they all received cybernetic implants to improve their biological functions, especially since their age was starting to catch up with them. When the Combine were kicked off Earth, SEELE quietly mixed in with rebel scientists and worked their way up into being top dogs. However, it's been 23 years since and it turns out their implants are not designed to last this long without active maintenance (note that the Combine kept their lowest-ranking human minions in line by scooping out their entire digestive tract to make them unable to survive for long without artificially administered nutrient solutions, so planned obsolescence for implants is perfectly in-character for them) and nobody knows how to provide that maintenance due to all research into the matter having been outlawed by SEELE themselves (since humanity being able to exceed their natural limitations through science contradicts the dogma spouted by SEELE's hardcore fundamentalist members that humanity is doomed to stagnate and die out without Instrumentality; it is these fundamentalists that consistently fuck up everything, out of both zeal and senility).
Keel in particular has spent the past few years living with pancreatic cancer which has recently entered terminal stage and due to his extremely advanced age (current real-life research indicates 125 is the maximum biological age a human can reach), he'd die either from the surgery itself or from his endocrine system going haywire from the surgery. Hence why in the alternate timeline, Keel voluntarily becomes a Brain in a Jar when he concedes that his time has run out.
SEELE can already be nailed by the law for having their implants, but their wetworks assassinations of visionaries like Kyoko means that they're also implicitly sabotaging humanity's technological progression, which under their own regime would get them dragged away by commissars.
...I just had a moment of revelation. While thinking about the latest chapter of SCE, Israfel felt far too wimpy being a master of AT-field optical manipulation but folding quickly in direct combat. Just felt far too much like a Saturday morning cartoon bad guy of the week.
Then I realized that nothing is preventing me from turning him into a user of Full-Contact Magic in the style of Doctor Strange.
As in, it's not just optical illusions that Israfel can do, but all kinds of freaky AT-field manipulation: AT-fields for cutting, AT-fields as stepping stones in mid-air, active gravity manipulation ranging from Shockwave Stomp to twisting the direction of gravity 90° for his opponent to send him flying, Flash Step via seamless teleportation... one-on-one, he would've kicked any of the kids' asses. But being outnumbered three-to-one is more than he can handle, which is why he gets overwhelmed badly enough to need Zeruel's backup.
What do you guys think, yay, nay? Because my brain thinks "ALL MY YAY" but I still need a second opinion before committing.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
You're basically doing what Marvel did to Sue "Invisible Girl/Woman" Storms, when they graduating her from being a "useless" superheroine whose only "move" was turning invisible into one of the strongest contenders for most powerful superhero in the Marvel Universe, period.
In other words... YES!
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
To clear things up, Israfel learned his craft from his master Harachel, who's even better at it to the point of being able to twist and fold space like a ball of yarn. For reference, Harachel can No-Sell the Spear of Longinus thrown at him (which is noteworthy because the Spear will infinitely follow its target for as long as said target physically exists anywhere in the universe and continuously accelerates mid-flight, potentially hitting at very high c-fractional velocities if the target keeps running away long enough).
Israfel is also very nimble and athletic compared to the average Angel, but not as much as Zeruel.
And if anyone wonders, no, Kaworu or any other human character will not learn Israfel's tricks. Kaworu can have the Spear of Longinus replicate some of it, but he doesn't actually understand how it works and he wouldn't understand even if he had a doctorate in astrophysics or quantum mechanics. Harachel spent literally billions of years experimenting with the AT-field before passing it on to Israfel and Israfel spent at least several tens of millions of years mastering it. A human learning it in their lifetime (even Kaworu's thousand-year lifespan)? Hell no.
That said, Israfel also tends to overestimate how good he really is, hence why he went into a 3-on-1 fight with no backup and didn't back off upon realizing he bit off more than he could chew because although the Evas can't match his tricks, he can't multitask in three directions at once if it's literally a matter of life and death.
Evangelion with a change to its world... it's an Ocean Punk setting. Second Impact, the melting of the ice caps, and all other apocalyptic messes that happened afterwards meant that living on the continents is all but fully impossible, so survivors live on boats, floating colonies and underwater bases.
We see how Angel fights go in the ocean in the original show and the third Rebuild of Evangelion film... of course, as a standard. Probably a lot of changes can be done if it's obviously one of the ways to fight that will see a lot of use.
Maybe have the Children undergoing some kind of modification to be more adapted to this kind of environment... could be anything from regular gills to full-blown Aquaman/Namor the Sub-Mariner mods.
So it's Evangelion meets Sea Quest with some Waterworld.
((())
As a variation of the above, a Superwomen of Eva story (or regular Super Fic) with one of the characters being Aquawoman or Sub-Mariner. The idea is... well... Angels being more sneaky and doing more damage from the bottom of the ocean. Just imagine triggering a major fault and just walking in as they please after the 9.9 earthquake shakes any defenses to pieces, or how long is NERV gonna be able to play the attrition game if Japan has a blockade? These are, of course, just two an examples.
Already tried my hand with the Ocean Punk, with Tokyo-3 being a floating city on the Pacific. Reason for the concept being that Second Impact caused a major tectonic upheaval: earthquakes and tsunamis happen pretty much daily, volcanoes never go dormant for longer periods of time and a big chunk of Europe is unlivable because of a new fault line that split open beneath the North Sea and immediately tsunami'd the eastern coast of Great Britain.
In which story, dude?
An Evangelion/Battlezone crossover of mine that sputtered out shortly after Israfel and I haven't touched it since. In it, the Evas are Powered Armor Mini-Mecha that can hover, so the water is not a problem for them and they won't run out of power either for as long as they're under direct sunlight because the biometal making up their entire outer hull functions as a full-body photovoltaic cell.
And although these Evas don't have fleshy bits other than the pilot, the Strain Six biometal the Eva is made out of is sentient, so they are still liable to do their own thing. In particular, the first time Unit 01 goes berserk, its head spontaneously shapeshifts from the oni helmet into a Terminator-like skullface that scares the crap out of Shinji. Another notable tidbit is that not only Shinji and Rei are siblings, but Yui was nommed by Unit 01 when she was pregnant with Rei and quite literally disintegrated around Rei in a bizarre reversal of how childbirth usually goes, causing Rei to become 'touched' and not only grow much faster than ordinary children, but have serious anger management issues reminiscent of a berserk Eva, coupled with superhuman strength that very quickly taught NERV to not try to restrain her when she's having a temper tantrum after she very nearly killed an adult caretaker at the age of four with a viciously brutal beating.
Oh, and for extra fun, Rei is paranoid that Shinji is trying to take Gendo away from her but thankfully manages to restrain herself from going full yandere.
Edited by amitakartok on Sep 19th 2018 at 12:46:55 PM
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
... Shinji, taking Gendou away from Rei? <bursts into a fit of loud laughter> I'm sorry, it's just... that requires her to somehow fail to notice how Gendou is utterly apathetic towards Shinji at best no matter what he does, and downright abusive at his worst. Unless his behavior towards his son is drastically different in this setting?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Second, your phrasing (specifically, "made harder by") gave me the impression that you might be facing a logical problem that you want a Watsonian solution for.
Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 9th 2018 at 3:47:46 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.