From Your Lips to the Author's Ears: Story Ideas

[Cosmo11]

Rei is killed off in the Ramiel battle and Gendo decides not to bring her back to pilot. The story would then progress without her influence.

[TMBounty_Hunter]

My brain actually bothered me for a few days with an idea like that some months ago.

The set up would be that when Shinji opens up Rei's plug there would be no one left intact inside to smile. This obviously turns things upside down. How would Shinji deal with such a catastrophic loss so early on? How would he deal with being the only pilot left in Tokyo-3 for a while, being the last line of defense? How would his relationships change with future teammates? How would the shattered invincibility of the Eva going to affect Asuka from the start? How would she perceive a girl she has never met? How pissed off would she get when Shinji refuses to go on even though someone died so he could? Will Kaworu have a bigger role to play if Seele sees an early chance to use him as a trump card against Gendo now that his own trump card Rei must be hidden? Or maybe the opposite, what if Kaworu's effect on Shinji no longer becomes necessary because bringing Rei back to life could be used as the final straw to break him?

The problem I have is that my brain really, really likes to come up with what-if scenarios but it's not really capable of working through them thoroughly or structuring a continuous, coherent plot. The kinda good thing is that after rolling about in one scenario for a while it gets bored and moves on.

[Sailor Star Dust]

^I've always loved "what if" scenarios (prefer happier ones, but...). Sounds like something that Bagheera or Paul needs to write!

[StarShaper7]

A "Where Are They Now?" epilogue like American Graffiti and Animal House.

Shinji would go on to become a popular politician, only to resign after a video of him crying profusely while refuting allegations of being a chronic masturbator who broke into women's hospital rooms went viral.

Asuka moved back to Germany and became her world's Angela Merkel. To this day she denies any romantic entanglements with a certain shamed Japanese politician.

Misato was offered a high-ranking position in the UN. She instead accepted a job as the spokesperson for Suntory.

Rei was/is/will be

Ritsuko is the principal of Tokyo-3's prestigious Evangelion Academy. Maya is the vice-principal.

Mr and Mrs Suzuhara became a player on the Japanese national basketball team and a hard-ass Food Network chef, respectively.

Aoba and Hyuga started that band they were always talking about starting off-screen. They are aptly called "The Bridge Bunnies."

Kaworu's decapitated head remains hidden in Shinji's basement.

Pen-Pen was last seen migrating to the North Pole. He was never heard from again.

Yui's memorial to humankind got stuck somewhere inside the asteroid belt. A retrieval mission is expected to take place in a few hundred years.

[ElMariachi]

Shinji just can't take a break, can't he?

[Squigsquasher]

Shinji would go on to become a popular politician, only to resign after a video of him crying profusely while refuting allegations of being a chronic masturbator who broke into women's hospital rooms went viral.

That's just evil.

Fic idea: Shinji leads a double life as the sensational surrealist DJ going by the name of Doctor Psychogroove, whose tunes have an effect described by a leading music publication as "like drinking industrial strength LSD mixed with moonshine and Adrenochrome whilst watching Eraserhead and snorting the dust of ground-up Salvador Dali paintings". Can he keep his friends from discovering his persona? And what will he do when he creates a record so psychadelic that it opens a portal to the Funky Dimension and releases a horde of smooth Acid Demons?

[ElMariachi]

^
So in short, a story of how Shinji learns to use his Impact Trigger powers to party and get rich?

[Gob Hobblin]

^

Featuring, of course, a last minute save by and team up with Bootsy Collins and the Mothership, recently returned spreading their funky message around the Cosmos.

Optional funk-off against Adam.

[Asukaner117]

^

Featuring, of course, a last minute save by and team up with Bootsy Collins and the Mothership, recently returned spreading their funky message around the Cosmos.

Optional funk-off against Adam.

Okay, I need this in my life.

[Atropos]

While I was in the shower, I struck upon a brilliant idea for an Eva fanfic along the lines of this proposal. But, instead of using William Gibson as the base, we'd be rewriting Evangelion as a YA genre fiction novel, a la The Hunger Games or Divergent.

Ideas  SPOILER: Show

Shinji becomes female, because these hypothetical books are mostly geared towards a female audience—sad fact is, more girls read books than boys at that age. She can't be as much of a "shrinking violet", though; that might remind readers too much of themselves. No, our heroine would have to draw on manga-Shinji or Rebuild-Shinji for inspiration, meaning that she's quiet 80% of the time and then turns surly and violent when things go sour.

Also genderflipped would be Rei, Asuka, and Misato. We have a sort of Edward vs. Jacob dynamic with Reiji and Asuma; obviously Reiji doesn't die in this version. Reiji would be played as the stoic badass type, while Asuma plays Malfoy to Shinko's Harry Potter. Also note that, while Misato is flipped, Kaji is not—you get an ambiguous Lupin/Sirius vibe as opposed to the series' outright relationship, because that's more enticing to the kiddies.

The whole thing has to be told from Shinko's first person perspective. Therefore Gendo gets built up as the ultimate villain for the first two books (it's a trilogy, it has to be a trilogy) until the second half of the last one (the first and second halves are totally different, because when this is sold to Hollywood they'll want a two-part ending and we don't wanna disappoint the fans with two hours of nothing happening in one installment) when SEELE is revealed as the ultimate evil. I don't think any of these books have had outright apocalyptic endings, but I'm not afraid to push the envelope—just so long as our heroes end up safe and sound, so Shinko can have the luxury of choosing which man she wants to spend the rest of her life with. At age 14.

What about Kaworu? I dunno; maybe introduce him earlier so he isn't introduced and killed 100 pages apart.

I'm currently in the middle of my own novel-length fanfic (I'm gonna finish it this time, I swear!) so this idea's gonna be on hold for a while. Maybe someone should get the Booze Your Own Adventure gals on this, if they stop sliding into alcoholism and start making videos again.

[ElMariachi]

Frankly, you made some change on the characters that they could be completely original characters without anyone noticing.

[Atropos]

Eh, the basic beats of the story will remain the same. Shinji might be a girl and Misato might be a rugged possibly-bisexual older dude, but the former will still be waiting by a phone booth in the first scene, and the latter will still be late.

[Gob Hobblin]

Misato having to watch and assist the kids as they slowly but surely slip into dementia, due to unanticipated side effects from repeated and prolonged synchronization with the Evangelion.

Bonus points if she has to keep forcing them to fight, or take new recruits knowing exactly what's going to happen to them.

[Mr. Tines]

^
Any further with that one and you end up with the Children taking the place of the Yuusha-bu. I think we know who gets to play Minowa Gin's role.

[Ray]

Kaji, Misato and Ritsuko in a high school Shojou Romance setting.

[amitakartok]

Crazy idea: Shinji gets Gendo's letter and arrives to Tokyo-3 a few days later, just like in canon... except the reason why he didn't travel immediately is because the night before he departed, Shinji became a father and didn't want to be away from his girlfriend while she's giving birth.

His girlfriend? Tabby-chan. SEELE got to him first.

[NemZ]

I think I mentioned this elsewhere but can't find it so here you go.

Everyone comes back from the sea in the span of a single year, all of them emerging on their birthday. When they do so, they are all physically 14 regardless of what age they were before and with memories after that time erased. This also means anyone younger than 14 come back aged up as well, because life isn't fair. A postapocalyptic world of unsupervised time-displaced amnesiac teenagers.

[Squigsquasher]

I think I mentioned this elsewhere but can't find it so here you go.

Everyone comes back from the sea in the span of a single year, all of them emerging on their birthday. When they do so, they are all physically 14 regardless of what age they were before and with memories after that time erased. This also means anyone younger than 14 come back aged up as well, because life isn't fair. A postapocalyptic world of unsupervised time-displaced amnesiac teenagers.

That's just cruel.

[Squigsquasher]

Fic idea: Asuka discovers Tumblr and starts her own blog. Before long she falls in with the wrong crowd and becomes a perpetually-offended nutjob dedicated to calling people out over everything, accusing Misato of internalizing misogyny for dressing provocatively, accusing Hikari of slut-shaming for dressing modestly, Rei of being a white supremicist for having pale skin, and throwing enough allegations of "micro-aggressions" at Shinji for everything from cutting her sandwiches the wrong way to holding the door open for her (and then again when he doesn't hold the door open for her) that even his infinite patience is tested. But a saviour comes from a truly unexpected angle in the form of NERV's residant /pol/ack...Maya.

[Atropos]

Everyone comes back from the sea in the span of a single year, all of them emerging on their birthday. When they do so, they are all physically 14 regardless of what age they were before and with memories after that time erased. This also means anyone younger than 14 come back aged up as well, because life isn't fair. A postapocalyptic world of unsupervised time-displaced amnesiac teenagers.

At least repopulation won't be a problem...