Villians in Eva Fanfics?

[Kendrix]

What was the name of that story?

Kreuzwege V /Retelling a story.

Just so you know, the author never saw the CR before I told them about it, so they came up with their own explanation for the cosmology. Also, it's in German.

---

On the topic of SEELE as villain material,

It's also the motif of a few individuals (Kaji, Misato in a straight-heroic way, Fuyutsuki, Yui and Gendo more in a "sabotage from the inside" fashion. Especially Yui and Gendo, who made themselves partially indispensable to them) fighting a big organization with their armed goons everywhere. The ruthless, unpersonal way of it, they use mainly faceless goons or unfeeling machinery.

They also got a "controlling elite" thing going on.

In any other story, the hero would slowly uncover the conspiracies, redeem the shadier players opposed to the main bad guy via power of family/friendship, and give them one big middle finger, but the thing about EVA is, the power of a big organization that has the law in their hands gets more of a realistic treatment, and does the idea of teenage chosen ones.
The end result is, the sheming parties hijack the "prophecy" for themselves and the protagonist never actually meets the main antagonist or find out they exist...(Even though there was a defied opportunity for that in episode 17... Then again, *Misato* did get to speak to the old men there, and she's the closest thing we have to a straight hero.) Most shows start out this way, with the villains well concealed in the shadows behind middlemen, but they're usually found out sooner or later.



...maybe the problem is that of giving the characters something more tangible to oppose, with SEELE being an elusive lot by nature?
Then again, that's what the angels are for, to give Shinji & co something to smash and create immediate drama.

[driftking18594]

Kreuzwege V /Retelling a story.

Just so you know, the author never saw the CR before I told them about it, so they came up with their own explanation for the cosmology. Also, it's in German.

Well, Scheisse.

[Kendrix]

In either case, there's always this guy:

[URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/22/blackgoddo.jpg/][/URL]

[Gob Hobblin]

In either case, there's always this guy:

[URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/22/blackgoddo.jpg/][/URL]

Isn't it ironic that he looks hella like George Lucas?

[child of Lilith]

Well he is the Japanese version of George Lucas.

[driftking18594]

Thankfully he hasn't found a Jar-Jar equivalent to slip into Rebuild.

[Mr. Tines]

Of the seven plots

• Man vs. Man
  
• Man vs. Nature
  
• Man against God
  
• Man vs. Society
  
• Man in the Middle
  
• Man & Woman
  
• Man vs. Himself.

NGE is the last masquerading as the second; so villains don't really come into the equation.

[Chuckman]

There aren't enough villainous Yuis.

[Rommel]

Well she's kinda cute so she wouldn't make a very good villain.

[Clover]

Well she's kinda cute so she wouldn't make a very good villain.

Against the word of the underanalysis club, I'd say Yui shows enough villainous behavior to make a good antagonist. She's cute in a creepy and entrancing way.

[Gob Hobblin]

Against the word of the underanalysis club, I'd say Yui shows enough villainous behavior to make a good antagonist. She's cute in a creepy and entrancing way.

Totally agree. There's also the question about what her own goals are for the whole show: if you think about it, her desire to be the one, lonely soul left over from mankind implies that mankind has to end in order for her to achieve her dream. Thus, while she seems kind and loving to her son, she may have been just as genocidal in her intentions as Seele or Gendo. A lot is really left up in the air in regards to Yui.

There's also the the consideration that Yui, knowing what would happen with the contact expiriment, deliberately had Shinji watch. And she knew how devoted Gendo was to her...and went through with contact anyway. Which means a good chunk of why Shinji is messed up in the first place had to do with Yui's plans.

If you think about it in that light, Yui was incredibly manipulative and highly dangerous.

[Dream]

There's also the the consideration that Yui, knowing what would happen with the contact expiriment, deliberately had Shinji watch. And she knew how devoted Gendo was to her...and went through with contact anyway. Which means a good chunk of why Shinji is messed up in the first place had to do with Yui's plans.

It's certainly better than her family turning into Tang because of some crazy religious cult though :P

[Gob Hobblin]

It's certainly better than her family turning into Tang because of some crazy religious cult though :P

But her goal is STILL tang the world so I'm the last human left. In order to be a true 'memorial' as she wanted to be, she needed Instrumentality to kick it into gear.

So you have the possibility of a woman manipulating her husband, torturing her child, and planning on wiping them out anyway, and the entire time thinking this was the best thing for them.

That's really creepy when you think of it that way.

[Dream]

But her goal is STILL tang the world so I'm the last human left. In order to be a true 'memorial' as she wanted to be, she needed Instrumentality to kick it into gear.

This would be a good theory if it didn't go agaisnt everything we know about Yui, Anno, and the series.

[Gob Hobblin]

This would be a good theory if it didn't go agaisnt everything we know about Yui, Anno, and the series.

But what do we know? We know that Yui was a member of Seele, and that her goals differed. But differed by how much? Recall that she wanted Shinji to see the Contact Experiment and show him humanity's 'bright future.' Surely she understood the implications of Contact, and what that bright future was.

We know what she said to Gendo and what her thoughts were when Shinji made contact with her...but that's all from outside observation. Even when Shinji is inside 01, what he sees could be what she WANTS him to see. If you refer to the series in the way everyone had a good opinion about her, people have good opinions about dangerous people all the time. It's merely a question of emotional levers.

I do not know what Anno has said about Yui, though, so I can't speak to that. However, since this concerns fan fiction, while his comments are certainly enlightening in character creation, they can be ignored as existing outside of the story (in terms of creating fanfic villains). I'm still interested to know what you heard (PM or post, please?)

This isn't to start a debate as to whether or not Yui was a villain: I don't think she was, I think her motives were good if flawed (the same old song of Evangelion, really). I'm simply saying that there's enough ambiguity that, if a fanfic writer wanted to, they could make Yui Ikari the overriding, true villain of Evangelion with very little effort. And she would be a good villain in the right hands.

[Dream]

At this point it might be good mentioning that i don't really care for plot or technical consistency most of the time (as long as it isn't too glaring), and regard it as secondary to thematic elements or narrative intent. For example, i don't really care that much about Yui being related to SEELE and that we just know their plans differed to an extent, or at least i don't really care when it comes to decide whether or not Yui is a villain, since the series pretty clearly establishes her as an embodiment of hope, has a great love for humanity, is generally regarded as a kind person, and Anno's opinion of the themes presented in Evangelion seem to agree with Yui's viewpoint to a significant degree.

Also, while you have a good point on the fact that people have good opinions about dangerous people all the time, i should probably note that the director himself seems to have a good opinion of her, given the (admittedly enigmatic/ambiguous) way she is presented in the series. Also, regarding the source/what Anno said, i think there is a small confusion, i didn't have any quote by Anno in mind when i wrote what i did in here.

This isn't to start a debate as to whether or not Yui was a villain: I don't think she was, I think her motives were good if flawed (the same old song of Evangelion, really). I'm simply saying that there's enough ambiguity that, if a fanfic writer wanted to, they could make Yui Ikari the overriding, true villain of Evangelion with very little effort. And she would be a good villain in the right hands.

However this changes a lot, i have to admit that i'm not sure how much reasonable tweaking or arguing someone could do to make Yui a villain (And yeah, she would probably make an interesting/appealling villain), but it certainly seems to be a viable endeavor. Probably not with "very little effort" however.

[Clover]

"i don't really care for plot" - Dream, 2013.

[Kendrix]

But her goal is STILL tang the world so I'm the last human left. In order to be a true 'memorial' as she wanted to be, she needed Instrumentality to kick it into gear.
.

*sigh* This entire "evil Yui" shit needs to die, it has nothing to do with how this character is presented in this show and the things the author has her say. (He mostly has her as a mouthpiece for his own beliefs... no, not villain material.)
You would just think that it might be cool "cool" if she of all people were evil because having a good-ish person is, apparently, totally boring.

That's the last thing you should do in a fanfic, grab one character who definitely wasn't treated as a villain by the narrative, and make them one for the sole sake of having a villain.
It simply has nothing to do with the source material.
I might as well decide to, hm... make Misato the villain! Yeah, Misato seems right, because... mh, dunno, her hair is purple and purple is evil!
*headdesk*
A fic that has uber evil Yui... simply doesn't have Yui in it. You may as well make up an OC.

I don't think she was that psychopathically hung up on that last human part, she speaks of timeframes like "If the sun goes poof."
She wants to preserve something of humanity in case it eventually gets destroyed which is not that unrealistic since we have yet to disprove that FTL-travel is impossible.

I'm generally pretty shocked at the lack of understanding/care for how big a thing this is, everyone goes "blah, blah, eternal proof how silly."
It's not silly at all. It would be such a great thing, to not be forgotten.


From her talk about averting the final tragedy, it seems like her logic was more "the scrolls say impact takes place here, but there's no word in them saying that it has to stick."
She seems to have envisioned exactly what took place - impact takes place but gets reversed, everybody lives.


That isn't to say that she's perfect - she does have a very, very long-game way of thinking which is not without a certain callous quality (Maybe that's one of the things she saw in Gendo, that they're both very much big-picture thinkers... ), her logic being that she can help Shinji a lot more if she protects him from angels and ensures there's a world left for him to live in.
Her dialogue could be interpreted to mean that the reason she turned against SEELE was that her kid would get instrumentalized as a teenager and wouldn't get a chance to grow up/ have his own life...
And maybe she overestimated Gendo? Can't blame his wife for seeing him through the infamous pink goggles.

That with her and Gendo is strangely tragic, actually - She probably appreciate him sufficiently, she just does so in ways he can't understand.
He doesn't get the entire "Lets have a kid as transcendent-ish proof of our love" part, and she probably parted from him so he'd be remembered for enternity... which goes over his head.

I feel that one of the reasons she didn't tell him is that he would not have approved of damning his kid to be the pilot of that thing years from then if he'd had a choice in the matter.
Once Yui was in there, using Shinji became indispensable for his plans, but what we hear in ep 20 suggests that it was once important for him for his son to have a normal life.

On the other hand, parents are sort of supposed to believe in their children and sacrifice themselves for them, and Yui enters EVA 01 for his sake, and lets him decide.
Gendo, on the other hand, pretty much stole Shinji's existance for himself... from a certain point of view, at least, he sacrificed his child for his goals...

Interestingly, one rejected script for EoE had Gendo asking, "But Yui, do you really think that letting Shinji decide all this is a good idea?"

Gendo took many decisions from him that should have been his, but maybe asking him "Do you wanna poof-ify the planet?" wasn't that reasonable.
Because from the looks of it, while Yui seems to have hoped for an outcome where "the final tragedy is averted", it looks like she totally would have let Shinji have the planet stay tanged.
So maybe it was more like she knew her son would be the one who gets to choose that and chose to put herself in a position where she'd be able to support him?

Hm.

Giving her dimension and flaws is not avoidable if you want a fic where she is more prominent than in her few cameos in the show, and it seems reasonable to take these flaws from fridge logic, but making her a straight up villain would be equal to not getting what she's meant to represent/ not having listened to any of her philosophical comments.

[Chuckman]

This would be a good theory if it didn't go agaisnt everything we know about Yui, Anno, and the series.

We don't really know anything about Yui. Everything we see of her is fragmented, dreamlike, and through the eyes of men obsessed with her.

I don't understand why it's considered axiomatic that in a series that's all about trying to shock the viewer out of their shell and get over clinging to childhood/their mommy, Shinji's mother must be some kind of saint. She doesn't need to be evil, but there's nothing in Eva's themes or text to suggest that she can't be, and a great deal to suggest that she is, at the very least, behind everything in a master-mindey kind of way.

[Gob Hobblin]

I'm surprised at how some folks 'Yui could be a villain thing' really personally. Completely not my intent...

Frankly speaking though, a villain does not HAVE to be EVIL. Some of the most effective villains are those one sympathizes with, or are clearly intending to do good. And yet, their goals or means are so divorced or opposed to what the rest of the character see as the norm or proper behavior, they become villainous by default.

The point of making an established character a villain in a fanfic (as far as I see it) is to not change the character, but show how the character's traits drove them to develop in another direction. Kendrix mentioned something about shoehorning Misato into the role of a villain. Well...she's obsessive with the concept of destroying the Angels no matter the cost (which put serious blinders on her to things going wrong until it was too late), it's clear from some of her interactions with the children that she can be exceedingly impatient (which in turn seemed to drive her to taking increasingly drastic measures as the series progressed), and her desire to keep people to arm's length to a degree (and the devestation she felt when Kaji was killed) demonstrate someone who is easily hurt or pummeled by those around her.

These are traits that could push a person either way: either into growing as a strong character, or taking actions that could be seen as 'villainous.' Making Misato a villain would not be outside of her personality: in fact, she was called out a few times by how close she toed the line in what could be considered prudent or safe behavior.

Hell, ANY character on the show could be crafted into a villain with careful setup and direction. Kaji, Asuka, Fuyutsuki, even the Bridge Bunnies...the characters all have strong character virtues, but equally strong vices and flaws that allow them to be pushed in any direction with just the right lever.

I keep saying that the best villains are the ones who do not see themselves as villains, and are in fact sympathetic to a larger or lesser extent. A villain that forces the audience to question whether or not what they do is wrong (and therefore view their own values) is a good character, a good driver of plot, and a good medium for sharing the author's ideas and directions of story.

Incidentally, I do agree with Dream's last statement: I oversimplified how easy it would be to make Yui a villain. But I still stand by my assertion she COULD be written as a villain, and a good one as well, precisely BECAUSE of the traits that made her such a good character to begin with.

Also, Chuckman hit the nail on the head: the only things we know about Yui are from unreliable narrators. It's not to say she was evil, just that we can't assume she was a perfect human. Which leaves a lot of ground for fan fic writers.