Starting problems with new fanfiction

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Starting problems with new fanfiction

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Postby T3quil4 » Wed Feb 06, 2013 2:43 pm

Hey everyone

For quite some time now I'm thinking about writing a Maya/Shinji based fanfiction.

Well, I have the rough main concept, but my problem is how i should begin the story.

I want to begin the whole thing with Maya and Shinji coincidentally meeting at a place like a cinema or something like that on Shinjis birthday. I don*t want to tell too much. My problem now is: Since it's supposed to be a romantic/dramatic story, I don't know if I should begin the ff slowly (no kiss or anything like that when they meet), a little bit faster (a kiss at the end of the first "date") or maybe Maya and Shinji had feelings for each other from the start of NGE.

Maybe some of you can help me with the decision. I would be grateful.

By the way: Pardon my english since I'm from germany.

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Postby DuncanR » Wed Feb 06, 2013 4:06 pm

Starting stories... oh, the agony!

The one guideline I can think of for starting any story is this: the first paragraph needs to be dynamite. You need to catch your reader's attention and imagination as quickly as possible, as firmly as possible: don't waste time talking about the weather, or scenery, or back story, or characters daydreaming, or whatever. A professional publisher can often tell if a book is good or not after reading only the first paragraph. The shorter the story is, the better the writing needs to be.

The kind of "dynamite" you use will depend on what you want to do with the theme: you could start off with two characters getting into an explosive argument the first time they meet (to create drama), or write up a luscious description of a cute boy/girl that some other character is longing after (to create romantic tension).

If the story is mostly romantic, you can afford to have the main characters get together early and stay together: your readers want romance, and that sort of story has a very predictable, tried-and-true formula. Romance readers like predictable plots and happy endings and you shouldn't be afraid to give it to them!

If it's mostly dramatic, you might want them to meet early, but come into conflict: Drama involves uncertainty and tension, so you don't want them to have a happy ending right away. In fact, if the main characters finally get together, it probably means the story is over. Drag things out: have them argue and misunderstand each other, introduce competing love interests... the list goes on. Do everything you can to get them closer, and closer... and closer... almost there! Oooh, they have a fight over a petty misunderstanding--again--and drift apart. Ah well, better luck next time.

These are both pretty extreme approaches (and they'll turn out pretty cliche, too, if you're not careful), so you'll probably want your story to end up somewhere in between. Decide what the real purpose of the story is: do you want them to be together and happy, or do you want them to be apart and frustrated? Or do you want to inspire some other emotion?

Also, try and decide right away if you want the ending to be twisted all around: does the story start off romantic, but end on a tragic, dramatic note? Are your readers going to feel "tricked" into reading an ending they didn't expect? Is that what you, as an author, want them to feel? (*cough*Anno*cough*) sorry, I had something stuck in my throat for a second. Let me get a glass of water.

Mmm... water! Now then.

One a final note, one definition of Drama is "a play that is neither a Comedy nor a Tragedy." I haven't heard you mention either of these: do you know if you want to make the story funny, sad, or somewhere in between? I'm curious to know.

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Postby Clover » Wed Feb 06, 2013 9:27 pm

If they fuck, just skip to that scene.

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Postby DuncanR » Wed Feb 06, 2013 9:54 pm

View Original PostClover wrote:If they fuck, just skip to that scene.

If it's graphically depicted, then sure. Save us all some time.

If it happens offscreen, that's different. Maybe.

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Postby Grand Duke of Yashima » Thu Feb 07, 2013 3:09 am

Hmmm, Maya/Shinji. That's not a combination you see very often, which means its fertile ground for innovation.

IMHO go the drama route and not with an overly romantic tone, although if you can make it work it can follow later. You're going to have to bridge the gap in years between the two, although it's not as wide as Shinji/Misato. Add that Maya is much less extroverted than Misato or most of the other girls in Shinji's life and it's more of a challenge for one to open up to the other. Maya probably feels pity towards Shinji, Shinji's thoughts on her are completely unknown.

I think the setting's important as here are two characters who work in the same place but not on the same job. There's got to be a good reason to get them together, and perhaps having them get stuck in an elevator or something with good isolation that can provoke attempts at making a connection. Work out something in common, even a common interest (music?) and have that be a bridge.

Good luck!
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Postby Monk Ed » Thu Feb 07, 2013 2:07 pm

View Original PostDuncanR wrote:The one guideline I can think of for starting any story is this: the first paragraph needs to be dynamite.

Addendum: You will likely be rewriting your first scene a lot. So actually, don't get too hung up on getting that first scene/paragraph perfect right out the gate; it's more important to get something down first, then worry about making it dynamite later. Also, the scene you first write is not necessarily going to wind up as the first scene of the final product.
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Postby arkiel » Fri Feb 08, 2013 8:39 pm

If you can't make the first paragraph pop, at least get to the point of the thing by the end of the chapter. No point reading something that can't hook you pretty early on.

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Postby DuncanR » Sat Feb 09, 2013 4:27 pm

View Original Postarkiel wrote:If you can't make the first paragraph pop, at least get to the point of the thing by the end of the chapter. No point reading something that can't hook you pretty early on.


Good advice. Essentially, do everything you can to avoid wasting the reader's time.

If your writing style is hard or you to predict, you can just write the first chapter however you like and then go back and rewrite the first portion completely. It'll seem like you knew where it was going all along.

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Postby Nuclear Lunchbox » Sat Feb 09, 2013 4:53 pm

View Original PostDuncanR wrote:Don't waste time talking about the weather, or scenery, or back story, or characters daydreaming, or whatever.

Respectfully, I disagree. Some of my best-reviewed stories have started this way. It's all in the depiction of the subject matter, not necessarily the subject matter itself.

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Postby T3quil4 » Sat Feb 09, 2013 6:07 pm

Thank you all for the advice. I think now I know how to begin the story.

I already may have written some fanfictions, but that was about 11 years or so ago. And since I was 14 years old back then when I wrote them, they're... well, let's just say, I would love nothing more than to delete them.

But like I wrote above, thanks for all the advice. The first two pages are already done.

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Postby DuncanR » Sat Feb 09, 2013 6:25 pm

View Original PostNuclear Lunchbox wrote:Respectfully, I disagree. Some of my best-reviewed stories have started this way. It's all in the depiction of the subject matter, not necessarily the subject matter itself.

You are quite correct: scenery can be an excellent way to establish mood and atmosphere... but it's still not a technique I'd recommend for new writers. Gotta learn the good habits before you can toy with the bad ones. :)

View Original PostT3quil4 wrote:Thank you all for the advice. I think now I know how to begin the story.

I already may have written some fanfictions, but that was about 11 years or so ago. And since I was 14 years old back then when I wrote them, they're... well, let's just say, I would love nothing more than to delete them.

But like I wrote above, thanks for all the advice. The first two pages are already done.

Good luck! The first page is always the hardest.

And I think it's normal to believe your older work is worse: it usually means you're getting better as a writer. :)

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Postby Monk Ed » Sat Feb 09, 2013 9:12 pm

View Original PostDuncanR wrote:Good luck! The first page is always the hardest.

:uhh: Iiiiiii have to disagree with that. I had a real easy time starting my current fic... 8 or 9 years ago. Sticking with it has been the hard part.
And I think it's normal to believe your older work is worse: it usually means you're getting better as a writer. :)

On the other hand one can also have the experience of going back and finding that something you thought would look awful after all this time isn't so bad after all. Sometimes mixed in right alongside the parts that indeed make you cringe.
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Postby arkiel » Sun Feb 10, 2013 2:23 pm

Thinking about all this stuff, I did a lookback at what I've done in the past, to rate it by chapter one.
The Foregone Conclusion - nice first paragraph pop, quickly establishes timeline. Technicals cloud the follow-up and some bad dialog from Ritsuko. Rest of chapter is mild-graphic sex and an okay psychological breakdown. Really like this bit, sets up premise for first story arc without jumping right in with Kodama Horaki.

The Weaver - starts shitty, just a novelization of the episode. Setting and tense gets confused in places. Everything goes aces once the Weaver shows up, but that's toward the end. Character definition is generally shitty - oldest thing I'll mention here.

Wake Up, Ikari! - strictly premise-setting, and worse, world-building. If I went back, I'd distribute things a bit more evenly across forthcoming chapters. The history lesson totally cuts the narrative. And there's no hint of the crazy shit incoming -- probably should have some foreshadowing in there. First paragraph isn't the strongest.

Branching Paths, 1B - gotta be my strongest first chapter to date. A little action, a little history that fits in the narrative, a little terror, a little action, a little absurdity. I guess the first paragraph is okay too; Shinji fleeing the 3rd Angel.

Learn from my mistakes, yo. And they are mistakes, I don't have the time or inclination to correct any of this stuff. Moving forward is burden enough.
The Weaver - Shinji and a Mad Spider God.
The Foregone Conclusion - Two years into a seemingly endless Angel War.
Wake Up, Ikari! - Wake. The Fuck. UP.
Branching Paths - Specifically 1B, 3B, 6A. Shinji goes crazy and kills a bunch of chinstrap geese.
Beneath, Shinji deals with a ten-year timeskip.

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Postby Mr. Tines » Sun Feb 10, 2013 3:08 pm

Rather than provide self-critique alone, some examples of actual opening paragraphs might be of use (I have resisted the urge to tidy and tweak the following samples)

This one starts after the event that changes the story has happened, when the consequences are starting to make themselves felt
‘Another day, another disaster,’ Gendo Ikari summarised to himself, viewing the paperwork on his desk. Not just the budget and contract approvals — how much longer would it take for them to finish dismantling that octahedral mass, the damned Angel Ramiel? how much would extra back-up generator capacity cost if it was to arrive in a reasonable time? — but now, according to the memo from personnel at the top of the stack, he barely had any Eva pilots to call upon, if another Angel appeared. The last, Matariel, had taken all three units acting in concert to stop, and now Soryu was confined to bed — as the memo euphemistically put it — with gastroenteritis, and Yui's boy was hospitalised with something that looked like severe allergenic shock. Only Rei was fit to pilot — Rei, whose health and physical well-being were precarious at the best of times. The facts inevitably led to one conclusion, that he would have to accelerate part of his own schedule, to gather more compatibility data — and to bridge the gap until the dummy-plug system was ready — which wouldn't be until after Units 03 and 04 were ready.

So he had summoned Ritsuko Akagi to an urgent meeting.


This starts near the very beginning, just before the point where we can see things are not as we might have expected
Shinji Ikari stared at the payphone handset. Like all the others, this one was useless, all lines unavailable. Out of habit, he hung it back on the hook, and grabbed his things.

Stepping out of the booth, the distant rumblings were louder, closer than they had been when he had got off the train. He checked the postcard that gave the very vague instructions, scrawled around the seriously off-duty photo of the woman who should have been there to meet him, then consulted his watch.

Well, there was nothing more to do. He had seen the signs at the station for the public shelters. Might just as well head back and wait this all out, whatever "this" was. He looked down the silent, deserted street to check the signs.

And there, some way away, in the middle of the road, a girl, looking younger than him, in what looked like a rather formal school uniform, a white jacket, and calf length white skirt.

The fluttering of a flock of pigeons from the power lines, disturbed by the ever closer rumbles, distracted him for an instant; and when he looked again, she had gone.


Yes, this one is an Eva fic too --
“So here goes.”

Nancy Wolf sat in what seemed an infinite blankness, the control analogue of the self-enfolding StarGate Secret Rose. She had launched the program that the Seraph had provided, the one that would open the wormhole to the past, by stitching together an astronomical — more than astronomical — number of pre-existing paths in the quantum foam, back by a Planck time or so at each step, and forcing them wide enough for the Secret Rose to pass. She was aiming for Earth, at the opening of the third millennium, well before the untamed Singularity that had taken most of the human race, well before the space industries that had left one of the most significant remnant populations, so that there could be a more orderly, and complete Transcension. But with the inherent uncertainties in the process, she was now scattering herself, one world-line at a time, across the whole of the past, across all space, across a whole range of alternates.


And so is this one, which is also a pastiche of some very British humour
One da I am siting in the prep room at st custards when my grate friend peason enter. He carry a PARCEL and look furtiv.

“what hav you there, answer me clot or i shall uterly tuogh you up.” i demand.
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Postby MugwumpHasNoLiver » Sun Feb 10, 2013 6:25 pm

Try not to explain everything right up front. I can't tell you how many times I've started something by an aspiring writer where they've felt the need to explain the whole plot in the first paragraph. Intrigue is what keeps people reading a story. Provide a steady drip-feed of information, establishing the bare minimum to keep the story moving, and withhold extraneous plot details until they become absolutely necessary.

The important part of an opening paragraph isn't to grab the reader by the hair, drag them inches from your face and growl "Look at me, you fucking slut!" Whenever a writer is obviously trying to get my attention, it comes off as disingenuous and desperate. A first page is like a sly seduction. They're meeting you for the first time and you want them to get to know you better. You want to charm and intrigue them; wink and promise good things will happen if they keep spending time with you. Make your reader wet. The sex is brutish and short when you skip the foreplay.

As you want to write a romance, keep the flirting to subtext and let the seduction play out slowly. Write it ambiguously, letting he reader guess how much one character feels about another. Once you give a concrete answer, the tension is gone. The characters gradually falling in love is a better bet if the romance is your main focus, but if there are non-romantic plot elements, you could go either way. While it's necessary for you to know the answer, leave it vague enough so the reader can fill in the blanks.

Since this is now more or less a general writing advice thread, I recommend everyone who wants to start writing should look into How Not to Write a Novel by Howard Mittlemark and Sandra Newman. In one convenient package you'll have all the information and practical advice it took me years to collect browsing writing boards and disparate other online sources. It's also a goddamn laugh riot. I really wish I'd had it when I was sixteen.
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Postby arkiel » Fri Feb 15, 2013 10:20 pm

Yeah, lets do this real quick. Opening samples are a few paragraphs long because I make them small.
The Weaver wrote:Shinji walked a few steps behind Asuka and Hikari, absently staring at the distant mountains that hung over the cityscape of Tokyo 3. He was wretchedly mulling over an encounter he had just had with Ayanami.

Earlier that day all three pilots had stayed after school with their class to clean the homeroom. The boys had cleaned the floor, the girls cleaned the chairs and desks.

Rei had been kneeling over the water bucket, wringing out a rag in her hands. The way she had looked then, the water slowly dripping off the cloth, the way the sunlight angled in and bounced off the ground around her - that image had caught Shinji's attention and held it. Then Touji had hit him with a broom and sent him back to work.

Later, after a series of sync tests, Shinji had found himself on an elevator with Rei - alone. He had been trying to talk to her all day, but someone was always around, and he couldn't work up the nerve.

"I'm going to my mother's grave tomorrow," he said. "I'm going to be seeing my father."

Rei's head rose slightly, but she did not respond.

"I was wondering, uh, what should I talk with him about?" Shinji's voice grew more confident.

"How would I know?" the girl asked.

Here Shinji faltered. "Well, I've seen you talking with him happily and" his voice grew low and miserable "I don't know what kind of person he is."

Wow. You could have just watched the episode.

The Foregone Conclusion wrote:Misato Katsuragi carefully put her coffee cup down. Stared at it.

"Why?" she finally said.

Not three days had passed since the destruction of the 64th Angel. Major Katsuragi and Doctor Akagi were in the latter's office. The doctor has just informed the Major that her ward, Asuka Langley Sohryu, will be suspended from piloting duty indefinitely.

"She's approaching the limit of usefulness," Ritsuko explained. "Look..."

She brought up an image on her computer. Black screen, two white lines side by side, indented and embossed. It was easy to see that both lines fit together, a cavity in one corresponding to a protrusion in the other.

"This is a graphical representation of the core-pilot relationship for the Unit One and the Third Child," Ritsuko explained. "Every deviation from a single straight line - perfect and instantaneous synchronization - represents stress on the pilot or the Eva. Shinji's graph represents a statistically insignificant amount of stress. I've had to magnify it in order to illustrate how the system represents errors. Now, this is Asuka's graph..."

The Second Child's graph was different. Jagged. The side representing the core's connections was malformed, composed of not only of steep peaks, but areas where the line folded back on itself, intersecting what had come just before and forming chaotic squiggles and crude geometric shapes. But all that strangeness was nothing compare to the amount of deviation on Asuka's side of things, and for a moment Misato had to look away.

Not bad, not bad.

Wake Up, Ikari! wrote:Gray Flowers. Shinji Ikari typed it blind, staring up at the ceiling. Trying to plot it out in his head.

Grayflowers? No. Too romanji. Hip, Kensuke would call it. He deleted the non-word.

Seiji Takora will always love his wife. Maybe too heavy? And King got away with the infrequent journalistic present-tense, but opening with it? Something that hints the end? It could work. Of course she's going to die. That's the point.

The boy's fingers tapped over the keyboard. They had married on a bright, clear day in early March. Him in a black family kimono, Naoko in a simple white gown.

Okay. Sweet, simple image. Now what?

The window was open, and a breeze pushed through the room, smelling of grass and the lake and... Shinji's eyes closed. And rot. It was late Spring, but a cold rain had passed through less than an hour ago, and the air that wafted through the window was chilled and wet. It was easy to imagine Summer bleeding into Autumn, and that outside the leaves were turning, falling, rotting damp on the ground.

Leaves turning bright colors, becoming something remarkable and different, right before they fell. There was something to that. They diagnosed the cancer two months later. He typed it fast, following the impulse.

Okay, that's a little better. That italicized shit is a little odd, and you don't really understand why he's doing it, but...

Branching Paths wrote:Away! The word stuck in his mind, burning with the heat rising from his chest, and propelled Shinji across and down the street. The explosion had deafened him, and his mind was a tight and empty place except for that word. Away!

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
(((Shinji Ikari)))
Str: 5 (male baseline)
Guts: 2 (not male baseline)
Sanity: 8 (five seconds ago was a solid 10)
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

One block. Two. Six. More. The ground constantly shifting beneath him, his feet and arms momentarily abandoning their petty differences to work together because all of Shinji Ikari had all gotten a good look at the thing that was making the earth move. The monster.

He finally collapsed when the sound of nothing melted into a liquid roar, loud enough to crowd out even Away! His arms and legs, to their credit, managed to pull Shinji off the sidewalk and into the shade beneath a store awning before they fled back into the safety and comfort of non-sentience.

Thing of beauty. Best thing I've written so far.
The Weaver - Shinji and a Mad Spider God.
The Foregone Conclusion - Two years into a seemingly endless Angel War.
Wake Up, Ikari! - Wake. The Fuck. UP.
Branching Paths - Specifically 1B, 3B, 6A. Shinji goes crazy and kills a bunch of chinstrap geese.
Beneath, Shinji deals with a ten-year timeskip.

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Postby Tribblepoo » Wed Feb 27, 2013 10:33 am

You need to hook your audience right away, but in a consistent manner. I do agree that you don't need to drone on about the scenery, but a basic description of the setting of the first scene does aid continuity for the reader. For example, mentioning a sudden rainstorm might explain why Shinji and Maya end up together outside of a NERV setting (by chance seeking shelter under the same awning or in the same small convenience store). All this needs is a mention, just a sentence or part of a sentence to set the general scene. Making this first paragraph and first page flow is really important.

That brings me to my next point. Keep things moving. Don't mire the plot down in mundane blah...unless this is the point of the story. Keep the story moving from event to event, point to point, with plausible steps between. Also, keep side-plots and similar events to a minimum. All these do is distract from the story and having too many takes away from side-plots serving as a bit of a break from the main plot to making the story seem more like a cobbled-together repository for plot-bunnies.

Finally, just a bit of advice from my own writing experience. I generally have an idea of two things when I begin a story; how it begins and ends. This gives me a point to start at and a point to work the story toward. Knowing how the story ends really aids me in deciding how to keep the story flowing and moving and how each event might lead to the next. This also gives me an idea of how long I might make it.

One last point (I promise); try to do something new, but don't stray outside of your "comfort zone" in writing. This helps create interest, as people probably won't want to sit through the same sort of story they have read before. If you can come up with an unusual premise for the romance, that will help you immensely.
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Postby GreggHL » Sat Mar 02, 2013 8:42 pm

Starting a story requires a hook, like discussed above. Depending on the type of story, you'd have a different kind of hook. For example, when I was starting Rebuild ND, I discarded at least two different openers while I was plotting out the whole thing; The opener for the story itself was a lead in to a major plot point much further down the road.

The capsule will work. He has no doubt. He can allow himself no doubt. As he feels the terrible heat, feels the ground crack beneath him, it is the knowledge that the capsule will work that gives him the strength to ignore the pain and press on.

The first pulse hits. He can feel the ground beneath him begin to melt. Thompson runs past, running for the docks. The pulse hits and he liquifies before hitting the ground. But he presses on.

Through the head, as he pulls his parka around his face. Through the force that makes the air feel like thick molasses. He walks, one foot in front of the other, like climbing a vertical cliff face.

There is the light which makes the world shake. There is the roar which makes the ears bleed. The sky turns from night to blood, and he continues on, past the screaming and dying, past the architecture of the ruined dome he called home for so many months. He continues. He perseveres.

The capsule will hold. His daughter will survive. Just this once, he won't let her down.

Human architecture gives away to something much, much more. He climbs the thing they thought was a hill, but on closer inspection is a bent finger. He climbs up the ridge of alien flesh and material, as the waves of I AM was over him, screaming and tearing but he does not falter.

In the valley of the old gods, in the center of Antarctica-that-soon-shall-not-be, Shiro Katsuragi pulls back his parka and beholds beauty. The pulsing light with the god at the center. Pulses of white along it that fly off, and it is just like he thought. Just like he theorized.

“He...he's doing it.” He rubs a gloved hand over stubble. “Splitting the Ego. He's splintering his identity to create new souls!”

A sharp laugh and he shakes his head. Well, that's a thing, he thinks. World is about to end, but he has a theory that's just been proven. He really is a geek.

Reaching out, he presses his hand against the air and finds it solid. Flexing his fingers, he presses further and he feels the information, feels the senses. The blast tosses his parka off and his dark hair flies free, waving about his head like a halo.

Closing his eyes, he presses both hands against the air and he feels it, feels the everything. Months of experimentation. Months of theories. Months of numbers and data and wrangling with the forces of universe itself, and it comes down to this.

Against the beast that shouts I AM at the bottom of the world, one Man shouts louder.

The pillar pulses. The wind whips, slows down, and reverses direction, now flowing inward instead of out. Brown eyes lock with the black spots on the radiance. His lips part into a grin. There is a battle of wills, invisible but shaking the ground beneath them. In the distance, the ice caps begin shattering. Beneath them, the ground turns to liquid and the great waves of force expand outwards.

Man stands and stares upon God. The great giant, pulsing with white, pulsing with absolute, unleashed force, staggers towards the Man and tilts its head. A question, carried through the ether, carried through the identity. One which the Man answers with a smile.

“Because she's my daughter!”

And the ground gives way between them. What was the white beneath them becomes black. What was solid ground, the cradle of God, becomes an abyss that consumes them both. And as Shiro Katsuragi falls, there is a smile on his face, because he knows, deep down,

The capsule will hold.


This sets up the entire story, itself. Second Impact, the supposed fate of Misato's father, whole nine yards. Individual chapters, depends on the chapter itself. For example, the opening to chapter 2- which focuses on Shinji getting weirded out by Tokyo-3, is a dream sequence.

Shinji Ikari looks up as the smoke clears to find the blue haired girl with the manic smile standing over him.

“Shinji Ikari,” Rei announces, “The Angels are attacking, you are humanity's last home, and the prom is tomorrow!”

“Don't you mean 'hope'?”

“I KNOW WHAT I SAID!”

The pale fist grabs him, dragging him across Tokyo-3 and dropping him into the enormous metallic, blood filled tampon. The giant robot greets him, turning into a rainbow of colors immediately before he punts the screaming turtle monster.

The Angel explodes, into a vaguely phallic, cross-like shape. On the screen in front of him, the swimsuit wearing blonde and the tactical ops commander in a racing queen outfit shake their pom poms, as Mom steps into view.

“Excellent work, Shinji! I knew there was a reason we handed you a prototype giant robot. Oh, and one last thing.”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”




And Shinji opens his eyes, staring at the white, unfamiliar ceiling. He sits up, looking down at the white hospital gown he is wearing, and stares across the large, empty hospital room.

“What just happened?”


The entire chapter is a humor chapter, and this sets it up- Shinji having weird dreams, his impressions of the characters, etc.

Chapter 3 will start introducing more of the cast. So, I start it out by introducing Mari.

The alarm rings. Covers fly off, feet flying into shoes as she jumps off the bed. A blur of motion and pajamas become her school uniform; the green skirt and vest over her white blouse, glasses snapped onto her nose and her hair hanging in two pigtails.

The door swings open, sliding along the divider and running through the hallway. Her bag is waiting at the door; fresh snacks, bills and her finished homework waiting for her. It is a new day in Tokyo-3, fresh sunrise and dawn greeting her.

And as with all things, Mari Illustrious Makinami Langley meets it with gusto.


So we get a small snippet of Mari which establishes her character but leaves room for more stuff when we have more scenes with her.


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