Fanfic Story Ideas, Mk. II

amitakartok · Postby **amitakartok** » Sun Dec 22, 2019 10:39 am

Weird as fuck thing happened today. I dreamed of watching the final Rebuild movie for the first time, but it wasn't the action scene in the trailer.

Instead, Shinji, in his white-shirt-black-pants signature attire, was standing in front of the Wunder and talking to the ship, which visibly emoted back by shifting the bow armor around. He monologues (in a tone that indicates he had mostly gotten over all the crap that had happened) that while the Earth looks completely red from space, there are still green areas (the scene takes place in the middle of one) but they're getting smaller each year, as whatever happened between 2.0 and Q resulted in the planet itself becoming sentient (demonstrated by a shot of a tree in the red area sprouting tentacles to extract a fang lodged into one of its roots). There's also a shot of the pilots' school in ruins, with only a few broken wall pieces and the building's outline on the ground being visible.

Next scene is Shinji working at a construction site, where a house foundation is being laid down onto a multi-piston shock-dampening platform. There's a young girl working there as well, but she's quiet and reclusive, wearing a jacket zipped all the way up to her chin. Then a car convoy rolls up with Misato, Ritsuko and plainclothes agents, who accost the girl and open up the front of her jacket, with Ritsuko visually identifying marks in her skin characteristic of "a pilot suit, maybe even a plugsut". She's led away with one of those collar things with telescoping poles on it real-life police use to escort violent criminals to the courtroom, while Shinji watches in silence.

Next scene, Shinji is once again standing in front of the Wunder and gazing at the ship while Ritsuko monologues in the background that according to eyewitness reports, he had grown 5 cm in the past year, more than what Asuka and Mari had in their entire time at WILLE.

That's the point where I woke up. What do you guys make of this?

Ao3 · Postby **Derantor** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 9:54 pm

That you are one lucky guy. I rarely dream, and I've never dreamt of Eva, outside of one very short scene, and that wasn't very happy.

It surely sounds very interesting. I think it would make a great fourth movie (or fanfiction), but not one I could write. It requires a really ... dreamlike approach without much exposition. Like, why is Shinji left alone, when the girl next to him (which could either be Asuka or one of the Rei clones) is forcefully removed? I guess he is needed for the Wunder somehow, but why work in construction, then? All those things don't matter in a dream, you just accept them.

You should give it a try. It sounds like a nice short story, an epilogue to the Rebuilds of sorts (what is the PC-term for those around here? NTE? NTR?). From the sound of it, both Mari and Asuka are dead, or otherwise "gone", while WILLE seems to have stayed mostly the same. Maybe the girl is somebody completely new, another pilot, drafted in the war against NERV, now discarded, as the new enemy is the planet itself. Anyways, I think it will be more of an elogy than an epilogue. It sounds rather dreary.

amitakartok · Postby **amitakartok** » Fri Jan 10, 2020 8:16 am

Eh, I don't know. I already have a major ongoing Eva fanfic project, though interest in it is so little that I'm genuinely doubting whether it's worth continuing. I have a lot of stuff for it, it's just that the plot is so slow-going (almost 200k words and we're only at Israfel, with Shinji not even having appeared yet) that I can't dump that stuff into the middle without massive spoilers. Hell, a few weeks ago I began putting together a universe bible to keep my ramblings coherent (as I tend to forget a lot of things) and the background historical information alone is nine and a half pages without even going into the timeframe the Eva pilots were alive in!

Ao3 · Postby **Derantor** » Sat Feb 01, 2020 3:41 pm

I've been playing around with a continuation fic idea for months now, starting with a quick A/S relationship and moving further and further away from them to explore the possible implications of Instrumentality on humanity as a whole. Trouble is I had their relationship starting with physical interacton (so, sex and violence first, because hormones and confused teenagers just do that stuff, and it's only cliché because it's true) and going from there, evolving into this mututal crutch/deep connection thing where they start to see the other as an extension of their self-image, their Shadow, to be exact, and working off of that, eventually seperating because they fear the obvious downward spiral this will put them in while ultimate not being able to live apart either, but I don't think people will take the story seriously if they don't spend 3-10 years in therapy first before attempting to hold hands.

The meat of the story would have been how society rebuilds into something quite different from anything that came before. Given the sharing of information and forced introspection of Instrumentality, but still faced with the dire prospect of having to survive I imagined an authoritarian government arising after a period of not very intense strife, which, contrary to everything seen before, does not try to hide information. Instead, they flood every news channel with so many details that it basically becomes white noise while they are still able to silence those who come too close to the truth. "We force nobody to believe anything. The evidence is out there, look at it yourself. Oh, btw, those "Third Impact Truthers" are really fanatical and dangerous, we have to be vigilant."

The A/S relationship is important only insofar as I wanted to show that, despite Annos hopeful messages (if you believe they are there in the first place), those two are definitely fucked. Excuse the strong language, but in any kind of realistic scenario they are as well known, famous and notorious as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Jesus and God combined, with all that that implies. Best case scenario: A golden cage to live in, constant surveillance, being forced to be mouthpieces for the government under threat of just being sent somewhere (prison, mental hospital, death) otherwise. I think they will just wither away. Asuka will not take well to being controlled in that way while Shinji will just be consumed by guilt. Coming to terms with yourself is all well and good but it can only happen if you are actually given the chance, and Anno did his best denying his main characters just that. Or maybe I underestimate them and they can take as much abuse as Asuka takes in "The Way out is Through". I doubt it though. Growing up in a peaceful society creates weak characters. If it is enough to take Eva away from Asuka to break her, the first rape will surely do the same.

Anyways, besides the middle part everything has been done already I think. Just throwing this out here to see if somebody has an opinion on it.

CleanHarry · Postby **CleanHarry** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 10:52 am

Spoilers for end of Evangelion: Genocide
A series of one-shots describing Shinji and Asuka’s lives as asylum seekers in America, being a follow up to Rommel’s genocide epilogue if they are okay with it. They could maybe try to escape the US and Japanese governments’ watch desiring to live a normal life and maybe raise their child, or maybe eventually go back to Japan and help stomp out A what’s left of Seele.
I don’t want to do anything without the author’s ok, and I understand them wanting to leave it up to the reader what happens next, I just can’t get out of my head the idea that the world’s government continuing to meddle in the pilots lives, and what they could do to escape
and maybe, possibly not be chipped and be held prisoner in the Corleone estate from Godfather II
And regain some semblance of freedom and normalcy, even though it will never be normal.

amitakartok · Postby **amitakartok** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 12:08 pm

Yesterday I had a simple crack idea.

What would happen if, somehow, Elon Musk was put in charge of SEELE?

CleanHarry · Postby **CleanHarry** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 1:19 pm

Derantor wrote:I've been playing around with a continuation fic idea for months now, starting with a quick A/S relationship and moving further and further away from them to explore the possible implications of Instrumentality on humanity as a whole. Trouble is I had their relationship starting with physical interacton (so, sex and violence first, because hormones and confused teenagers just do that stuff, and it's only cliché because it's true) and going from there, evolving into this mututal crutch/deep connection thing where they start to see the other as an extension of their self-image, their Shadow, to be exact, and working off of that, eventually seperating because they fear the obvious downward spiral this will put them in while ultimate not being able to live apart either, but I don't think people will take the story seriously if they don't spend 3-10 years in therapy first before attempting to hold hands.

The meat of the story would have been how society rebuilds into something quite different from anything that came before. Given the sharing of information and forced introspection of Instrumentality, but still faced with the dire prospect of having to survive I imagined an authoritarian government arising after a period of not very intense strife, which, contrary to everything seen before, does not try to hide information. Instead, they flood every news channel with so many details that it basically becomes white noise while they are still able to silence those who come too close to the truth. "We force nobody to believe anything. The evidence is out there, look at it yourself. Oh, btw, those "Third Impact Truthers" are really fanatical and dangerous, we have to be vigilant."

The A/S relationship is important only insofar as I wanted to show that, despite Annos hopeful messages (if you believe they are there in the first place), those two are definitely fucked. Excuse the strong language, but in any kind of realistic scenario they are as well known, famous and notorious as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Jesus and God combined, with all that that implies. Best case scenario: A golden cage to live in, constant surveillance, being forced to be mouthpieces for the government under threat of just being sent somewhere (prison, mental hospital, death) otherwise. I think they will just wither away. Asuka will not take well to being controlled in that way while Shinji will just be consumed by guilt. Coming to terms with yourself is all well and good but it can only happen if you are actually given the chance, and Anno did his best denying his main characters just that. Or maybe I underestimate them and they can take as much abuse as Asuka takes in "The Way out is Through". I doubt it though. Growing up in a peaceful society creates weak characters. If it is enough to take Eva away from Asuka to break her, the first rape will surely do the same.

Anyways, besides the middle part everything has been done already I think. Just throwing this out here to see if somebody has an opinion on it.

It seems interesting, but far too cynical. Unless you come up with some way for them to deal with/overcome the problems you pointed out I don’t see the fic serving any purpose. Some people like to deconstruct things, but at a certain point you have to put things back together as well or else what’s the point of anything. I like the idea that Asuka and Shinji start seeing each other as sort of reflections of themselves and get how you show them becoming afraid of what their relationship might become, but unless they figure it out and get back together in the end I can’t imagine anyone who would choose to spend their time on something so bleak. Saying that it’s dumb to hope is a terrible message, and even though you may not be saying that explicitly, that’s still what you’d say by tearing down a message that many people actually get something positive out of rather than what yours seeming to be “it can’t ever get better”

Lt Light Ark · Postby **Lt Light Ark** » Wed Mar 04, 2020 11:10 am

One thing that I kept thinking is how a Mobile Suit Gundam/Evangelion crossover could be.
Like, in Gundam the enemy is War as a concept that...obviously wasn't beaten, hell, even SEED tries to give an answer and...it sorta fails with the idea that the solution is someone having the bigger stick.

In Evangelion, what I would call a more lighthearted series, there is this optimistic view on humanity.
I am wondering how a crossover would be, certainly things would be difficult if NERV wants to keep nations from having Evangelions and Zeon not giving a fuck anyway...

amitakartok · Postby **amitakartok** » Wed Mar 04, 2020 12:10 pm

I could see SEELE rising up in the After War / Post Disaster / Correct Century / Regild Century settings. These are the ones that got hit by human-on-human war the hardest, hence how SEELE can get their claws in by promising an end to further wars.

For those not familiar with what I'm talking about:

In the After War timeline, an Earth-vs-space conflict resulted in space carpet-orbitalbombing Earth, killing over 90% of humanity and plunging civilization into a quasi-anarchy of independent townsteads and roving bandit/mercenary groups. The old governments are trying to restore order, but only to be on top once more, which many don't like the idea of and actively resist.
In the Post Disaster timeline, humanity slid back into an almost feudalistic system after an AI war so destructive that things still hadn't completely recovered 300 years later.
In the Correct Century timeline, a centuries-long string of wars ultimately resulted in someone pressing the reset button on human civilization in the form of a nanite superweapon that destroyed all technology in the inner Solar System, throwing humanity so far backwards that they're still only using biplanes and 19th century fashion over 2300 years later.
In the Regild Century timeline, humanity used to be a prosperous spacefaring polity in the distant past but the weakening and ultimate downfall of centralized government resulted in wars and warlord power plays that caused society to slide so far back that at some point, institutionalized cannibalism was a thing (not anymore, but the descendants of that caste are still racially discriminated against). Current state of affairs can best be described as "children playing with nuclear weapons because they've forgotten how horrible war can be".

From what I've seen so far, however, the fandom doesn't seem to be all that interested in making Evangelion a bit harder sci-fi than it is in canon.

Blockio · Postby **Blockio** » Wed Mar 04, 2020 12:32 pm

CC and RC I can sort of see (although I have watched neither Turn A nor G Reco so far), AW definitely, although I'd argue that the PD timeline is just a bit too fucked for even Seele to take a hold. Between Gjallarhorn, Teiwaz and Tanto Tempo (the other space mafia from the manga sidestory), there are already so many secret societies that basically run on the world being a desolate shithole that Seele would probably be out-schemed before they can secure any sort of political power

amitakartok · Postby **amitakartok** » Wed Mar 04, 2020 4:46 pm

Blockio wrote:CC and RC I can sort of see (although I have watched neither Turn A nor G Reco so far)

I'll let you draw your own conclusions from this, then.

The closest Eva idea I ever had to it was one where Earth is stuck in a time loop where the Evas keep failing to stop the Angels (no thanks due to SEELE constantly interfering), which rewinds time a billion or so years so that the previous loop's Third Impact becomes the next loop's First Impact. What the story would be about is the final loop where humanity didn't build the Evas, they found them in underground bunkers left by the previous loop who passed up their own chance to stop the loops in order to give the next loop a head start. Thus in this story, the Evas are archaic lostech so advanced that it took SEELE most of the 20th century just to come up with a rough and incomplete translation for the instruction manual. NERV barely knows enough of them to activate and operate them, but know absolutely nothing about their inner workings. Complicating the situation is that although these Evas don't require a soul sacrifice, they can't just toss someone into them and get going because the Evas choose their own pilots via unknown means and criteria.

A different idea I had a few years ago was one where the setting and characters are identical to canon at first glance... but the continent, country and city names are all wrong and the world topography is nothing like Earth, yet nobody seems to notice. It would also be mentioned during one of the droning-filled class the pilots have in school that the biggest mystery of science is why does humanity suddenly appear in the fossil records a couple thousand years beforehand, with no evolutionary ancestors, coupled with an ancient religion (read: SEELE) preaching that humanity was cast out of heaven for their sins. It would eventually be revealed that the story takes place an unknown number of millennia after Rebuild, where Third and Fourth Impact destroyed Earth's biosphere beyond recovery, forcing the remnants of humanity to abandon Earth in a sleeper ship based on the Wunder's tech. Problem is, the ship suffered catastrophic structural failure during reentry when the autopilot identified this world as habitable and attempted to land. The cryogenics block containing the passengers was successfully auto-ejected by the failsafes and made a soft landing, but the rest of the ship containing everything else plowed into the surface at terminal velocity, so the survivors were back to the stone age and over the millennia had forgotten their origins. But now Angels are wandering out of the crater created by the sleeper ship's impact and humanity is forced to recreate the Evas to fight back.

Ironically enough, what they think are Angels are actually Lilim lifeforms, originating from Unit 01 that was powering the ship and created these lifeforms the same way Adam created the Angels. And the alien ecosystem within the crater is actually Earth-native life seeded by the same.

Ao3 · Postby **Derantor** » Fri Mar 06, 2020 7:03 pm

CleanHarry wrote:It seems interesting, but far too cynical. [...] “it can’t ever get better

No no, things will get better. Just not for those two. Thats the sacrifice to be able to tell a story at all, since all the other stories have already been told. The rest of it is quite positive, actually, despite how I described it, but I don't want to spoil. If there is to be a message in my story, it would be "Sometimes, things get better, sometimes, they don't - but the assumption that they will not will get you nowhere." Hope is what prevents the world from turning out REALLY bleak in the first place. Even for those two there is hope, it just doesn't quite work out. But I am playing with the thought of leaving their ending open instead of pinning it down to my very very depressing headcanon.

CleanHarry wrote:but unless they figure it out and get back together in the end

Hm, I can't explain this in detail without spoiling everything. So I'll just say that they don't have to get back together because they never left each other. Extension of self and all that, it's not exactly a love story. I know how that sounds totally contradictory to what I said before, but ... it might make sense, somehow. Another part of the story that's insanely difficult to write. I should really have picked something easier.

amitakartok wrote:What would happen if, somehow, Elon Musk was put in charge of SEELE?

SEELE would build a hyperloop around the Geofront, then drive around Lilith on it all day long while smoking pot.

YouTube · Postby **Reichu** » Fri Mar 06, 2020 7:10 pm

This

the first rape will surely do the same

casts a giant "edgelord" shadow on everything else. It's hard to take the idea that you're not cynical seriously when you casually talk about breaking a(n already-violated and broken) character through sexual violence like it's dramatically necessary or something.

Ao3 · Postby **Derantor** » Fri Mar 06, 2020 7:56 pm

Reichu wrote:It's hard to take the idea that you're not cynical seriously when you casually talk about breaking a(n already-violated and broken) character through sexual violence like it's dramatically necessary or something.

I meant to imply the exact opposite, that it is completely unnecessary to have her raped on top of everything else that she went through. The casualness of the remark was aimed at fics that treat rape as something necessary to give her even more trauma, as if she didn't already have enough. Ghosts of Evangelion did it too, and I thought it went over the line as well, even though it is treated seriously there - but she already had issues being touched in that fic from the start, so no need to double down on that by having her therapist of all people rape her.

So no, I don't find it necessary in the slightest, I find it distasteful and I don't intend to write anything which includes the rape of Asuka. I find it unnecessary to what lengths canon-eva goes to torture her, that's part of the reason why I want to write my fic. To show how she has already suffered too much, and that the ending leaves her at a place which sets her out for more suffering - too much to recover from, in my eyes. Sorry if that came off differently.

Edit: That comment was aimed at "The Way Out Is Through", which puts her to ridiculous levels of abuse. That's why I said the first rape will surely break her - because she suffers much more in that fic and still comes out mostly unchanged, which I find unbelievable und unecessary cruel.

Blockio · Postby **Blockio** » Fri Mar 06, 2020 8:13 pm

Derantor wrote: to point out the ridiculous levels of abuse she suffers in that fic, which would, in my mind, surely break her.

That's exactly what Reichu is talking about - she already is broken, full stop. Anything beyond that is just overkill and, quite honestly, offputtingly edgy

Ao3 · Postby **Derantor** » Fri Mar 06, 2020 8:37 pm

Blockio wrote:That's exactly what Reichu is talking about - she already is broken, full stop. Anything beyond that is just overkill and, quite honestly, offputtingly edgy

I didn't mean to imply that she WASN'T broken before, and I said as much. It is just that there are different levels of broken. When I said "break", I meant "break" as in "beyond repair". And if it's true that she is already so broken as to be beyond any hope of recovering, any fic that does anything to her is offputtingly edgy, including Ghosts, Orchestrating the Silence, The Division Bell or any other fic that lets any harm come her way.

Edit: I mean, didn't this sentence: "To show how she has already suffered too much, and that the ending leaves her at a place which sets her out for more suffering - too much to recover from, in my eyes." convey my feelings about the necessity of any more suffering on her part or the state she's in at the end of EoE?

YouTube · Postby **Reichu** » Fri Mar 06, 2020 8:56 pm

Ah, I thought you were implying that your fic had multiple rapes in store for Asuka. Glad to know that's not the case.

(And Ghosts went that direction, seriously? I remember getting criticized by Bagheera for thinking about including a sexual assault in a story I was working on at one point...)

Ao3 · Postby **Derantor** » Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:44 pm

Reichu wrote:Ah, I thought you were implying that your fic had multiple rapes in store for Asuka. Glad to know that's not the case.

(And Ghosts went that direction, seriously? I remember getting criticized by Bagheera for thinking about including a sexual assault in a story I was working on at one point...)

No, I'd never do that to her. My thinking is more along the lines of "Would she dye her hair to not be recognized or would that be too painful for her". But then again, I have her physically scarred, and thats already crossing a line, I feel.

Regarding Ghosts: It is at least strongly implied, and I read it as meaning exactly that.

SPOILER: Show

Misato is having the guy "suicided", so ... yeah, it's kind of serious.

Blockio · Postby **Blockio** » Sat Mar 07, 2020 10:11 am

Ah, I see. Yeah, misread that, too

Ao3 · Postby **Derantor** » Mon Mar 09, 2020 1:00 pm

Well, I think I should explain my thinking, since, reading it back, my original post comes off as far more cynical than intended without knowing the thought process behind it. Might contain some spoilers for the broad strokes of the story, so I'll just put it inside one.

SPOILER: Show

I wanted to strike a middle ground: Instrumentality fixes some things, but not everything - most importantly, attitudes, interests and baggage from before remain, as do personal relationships, alliances and influence, as diminished as it might be. Third Impact and the aftermath of Instrumentality pose hardships and struggle, but they do not threaten life on earth as a whole or the survival of the human race. The "Divine Technology" of the Evas still exists, but nobody tries to use it for quite a while - the pilots are not forced to do the bidding of some deranged war-lord or dictator, since those aren't around either: Humanity as a whole has learned something, and Japan had a very peaceful society already. The authoritarian government is there to ensure that people do not kill each other and that there is enough food and goods for everybody. International relations are strained, but no outright war, or revenge-nuking of Japan because NERV was mostly run by Japanese.

Everything is based on a normal distribution: People of all walks of lifes, persuasions and dispositions return, in all kinds of states. Most cluster around a healthy middle, some became perfect angels of virtue, others are completely deranged because of the experience, but those are the fringes. The return happens in a way that enables survival for the species - but there are still dangers. People returning far from any sustenance, in bad weather or near a camp of criminals are all options still. Rei did all she could to ensure that earth is still habitable an realtively safe, but she's gone now, so no divine intervention to fix everything.

Regardless, even if only 10% of people are on the fringes of opinion*, thats enough to ensure that the pilots can never lead a normal life (if they are even capable of that, given their experiences) and need constant protection - even being forced to work for the government is the good outcome, since, again, some powerful people might not want them around or able to reveal some truths, because those people worked for SEELE beforehand. Thats where the "threat of prison/mental instituiton/death"** comes from: There are enough people out there clamouring for that, including people in the government, and depending on how the situation develops, they might gain traction. By making the pilots into heroes, they are exposed on the one hand but are offered protection on the other. Harming or killing them would become increasingly unopportunistic and that way there is an actual reason for the government to care what happens to them (powerful people will rise to power again - and most of them helped SEELE one way or another, so they fear for their own skin should the actual truth be revealed). The other option is of course to just isolate them completely, which I wouldn't count as a good outcome either.

*(Shinji is a hero who saved us all/He is literally worse than Hitler since half of humanity didn't return and his temper tantrum effectively killed 1,5 Billion people of the 3 billion left after Second Impact (or any other percentage of returnees, even just 0.1% missing or dying in the aftermath would be 3 million people whom he personally "killed"). As for Asuka: Guilt by association, really. She fought against the UN, after all, she killed all those soldiers. There is no way to ensure that everybody just believes she is innocent. Much of the danger to them is based on perception, not fact. And the facts aren't even known: In-Universe, nobody has Evageeks to tell them what's right, and even on here, opinions vary wildly. I wanted to capture that uncertainty.)

**(which might just exist inside the heads of the pilots, it wouldn't make a difference - how can they trust anybody after what they've done and what happened to them? Same goes for the bleakness: A "normal" life, with everybody around them happy or indifferent, might feel just as bleak and stressful to them as my scenario. But those stories have already been told, for example, "When She Smiles", so I thought I'd do my own thing.)

So yeah, while I seem overly negative, I think I am already more optimistic than I should have any reason to be. There are so many things that have to go right for even this outcome to occur that I regularily break my own suspension of disbelief while writing.

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