As for his new story, Adrift, yeah the master of dark and depressing reveals has returned. Story starts off pretty idyllic and slice of life-esque with a nice little insight into this AU version of the world and characters, with few hints sprinkled here and that something has clearly gone wrong for this version of Shinji. As the story continues, it gets more and more into Shinji's depressive state and how that affects his view of his friends and family while giving more and more details to the point that you can more or less piece together what probably happened that led to Shinji's current state. Then in the last act the plot ramps up in speed and starts revealing much more about the events, so much so that you'll probably end up missing a bunch on the first read through, while at the same time not giving away too much explicitly. And finally the story ends with a scene that ties all the disparate bits of info together, re-contextualizes it all to make it all make sense with one last major reveal, and gets the dubious honor of being the first thing I've read in awhile that left me feeling genuinely horrified and nauseous (which I guess was the point so....good job?).

So yeah, overall solid story; characters and world felt very grounded and real, prose and dialogue were strong as always with Kadmon, and I ended up feeling depressed by the end of it. So I guess I did end up getting the classic Kadmon experience afterall. Yay? ((also to whoever's reading this, if you still haven't read Patient but somehow have read this story, I'd say now would be a good time to read that one))

So in this fic, the teacher- named Takuji Yamashiro- is is basically used as an "Uncle Ben" figure for Shinji. He doesn't actually give the responsibility speech though. Instead, his last conversation with Shinji was an apology for being emotionally closed off and vowing to do better, before being struck down and all that. Shinji never really got to understand Yamashiro, which winds up leading to his character development in the first thirteen chapters. Through being Spider-Man, Shinji is put in situations where he reckons with his lack of understanding (his bully targeting him largely to Shinji pushing him away for example) and how it leads to suffering (leaving Mayumi Yamagishi to fend for herself when he felt betrayed), which in Eva he can't rationalize away as being out of his control. It's sadly the best this fic ever gets, since I felt the later arcs didn't have him grow as much and became too fix-ficcy. Ultimately, I like that the "Great Responsibility" emphasized in this story is how just being with another person is a responsibility in it of itself, and that the way you treat others is something that can help or destroy them. Shinji becomes more heroic through attempting to understand and reach out to people, which I think fits for him. It's especially put in sharp contrast to Naoko Akagi, who survived her canon death to become this fic's Doctor Octopus. Consumed by hatred over the way she was used by Gendo and mistreated by the world, she constantly lashes out at others- including outright telling Ritsuko she wishes she was never born- in an attempt to wrest control from how her life has spiraled.