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Advice and Trust [NGE]

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And on those happy thoughts, I'm going to embarrass/credit @Strypgia by using his story as an example in writing lectures provide you all a valuable lesson in writing romance, basic wordcraft, and fiction writing.

(note- original transcript can be found on my Discord if anyone's curious)

The three items needed for crystalizing that "maybe" romance into that "definetly" romance, a lecture.
(Link to Chapter 1 go here.)

First thing to analyze- the background enviroment. We start off with the classic Type A Tsundere arangment, variant 2- The Doormat. Normally, this is a passive MC and a very active Tsundere who sticks by him for any one of a number of reasons. Here, this is known as Asuka riding roughshod over Shinji whenever she damn well pleases. As all tsunderes in the wild are wont to do, she eventualy decides she wants to advance the romance with Shinji. In the cannon, this goes horribly wrong because of reasons. They're kids, it's not NGE if something goes right, blah blah blah. Here, we meet the divergence point- where Shinji slips.

Now, there are three large-scale items needed to progress a relationship from one holding pattern, or level to another. I prefer holding pattern, as it implies movement, versus level which is static. These three macroitems are a low point or disruption of routine, realization, and a stabilization. The low point is so there's a chance for a deeper romantic connection to happen, the realization is the moment the connection is made, and the stabalization is what prompts a permanent shift in holding pattern and therefore relationship.

Now, both in cannon and here, there's been certain environmental pressures that have brought Shinji and Asuka to their resepctive hiccup in life. It's not really much to go over- Asuka decides that now would be a great time to give things with Shinji a kick, and said kick is swiftly applied via kissing him.

Here's the point of divergence from cannon- Shinji looses his footing and starts to slip and stagger, pulling Asuka in closer. At first glance, barely worth a mention, right? Wrong. The slip and after show off the three essential items necessary for a romance- interdependancy, physical reaction, and honest expression of intent. Or, in plain English, Shinji grabs Asuka and Asuka grabs back, they both like kissing each other, and they both keep kissing each other. There's no wild gesticulation, there's no frantic stoppages, there's just one long, slightly awkward makeout scene. A good couple (and the entire premise of the fic is making Shinji and Asuka a reasonably good couple) tends to trust each other first, and go for them first. Interdependancy, check. Good couples have physical chemistry on some level. If there's no chemisty, you have philla, not eros. Can you build a relationship off of it? Sure- just not one that has sexual portions. Instead of Antony and Cleopatra or Romeo and Juliet, you end up with Rolland and Oliver or Legolas and Gimli. Not the intended result, that. Then there's honest expression of intent. Shinji falls over holding Asuka, and the first thing she does when they're done falling? Keep kissing him. It's not a trap, and Shinji, instead of running, decides to keep at it too.

So, we've got our hiccup in routine down to jar the couple, and an event to move their relationship forward. However, if we stop here all we have is the same old same old, now with more kissing between sporadic bouts of violence. Not exactly a major improvement to bring about significant change, so the author prints out this.

Asuka just narrowed her eyes at him. "What Sensei?"

"The one my father abandoned me with after my mother died in an accident with the Eva! Not that you'd understand that," he bit out. It was not a comfortable memory. He pinched his eyes closed as the painful image of his father's retreating back welled up once again.

But when he opened them again, Asuka was staring at him like she'd seen a ghost. "Me too."

Shinji blinked. That couldn't be what she just said.

Her arms squeezed him tighter as her gaze went far away. "My mother... There was an accident with Unit-02... She... died, eventually. My father... didn't mourn very long." Her mouth twisted sourly. "So yes, Third Child, I know exactly what that felt like!"

Shinji sat stunned, his mind trying to grapple with her shocking revelation. Asuka... had felt the same kind of loss as he had? She'd had her mother ripped away from her, and even younger than him? She... was like him?

"Your father abandoned you after your mother was gone," he said.

She looked at him sharply again. She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped. Her forehead wrinkled in thought for a moment. "You have nightmares all the time about it. The memory keeps coming after you when you try to sleep," she said eventually. It was only half a question.

Shinji nodded slowly, never breaking her eyes. A memory of Asuka weeping in her sleep, whimpering for her Mama floated across his mind. "It's hard to sleep. You feel lonely and cold at night, because no one ever held you after that," he finally replied. It was even less a question. There weren't questions. They were connections. Confessions.

Asuka barely let him finish before she replied. "You never had many friends before you came here. No on ever wanted to just talk to you for you."

She knew... This was his life. And hers? "Your father never explained or apologized for why he just left you."

"No one even tried to understand your pain. No one cared." Her eyes were magnetic, her voice hypnotic.

"You miss her every day, but don't even have any pictures, barely any memories. No one tells you about her." He almost felt like it wasn't his own voice speaking anymore.

Her arms tightened around him even more, almost a desperate grip now. "And there was never any point in talking about it to anyone, because there was no one in the world who could understand what being an Evangelion Pilot was like," she said softly.

Silence hung heavy between them. Shinji vaguely noticed they were breathing in synch, faces just inches apart.

"You're just like me."

He blinked. He wasn't sure which of them had started saying it first.
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Remember, three things to move a relationship towards romance- initial incident, realization, and finally something to make the change in relationship stick. This, right there, is the definition of making the new change stick. To do this, the author had to deal with two issues- one, the fact neither character had a very solid understanding of the other's background, and two; deal with the fact both of the characters believe, quite rightly, that they are unique to the world. To fix both issues in one conversation, he had this little heat-to-heart happen which gives both characters common ground with each other. This is important- no amount of personal chemistry and animal magnatism will save a doomed relationship if there's nothing for it to work with. The other thing this talk does is diabuse them of their special snowflake "You don't know what I've been through" issue- because, while neither has lived in each other's shoes, they both have a pretty damn good idea of what it's like.

So, to finish, three things are needed to get a relationship to transcend friendship to romance. There needs to be an initial incident, a moment of clarity and romance to boost the relationship, and an event that solidifies the relationship at it's newest pattern. Here, we have the kiss, the continuation of the kiss and tacit acceptance of the other party, and the discussion after the kiss. Each part sets up the next, and the whole system works beautifully to show progression in the lives of characters and in the story itself.

Please be careful with the commenting, I don't want to accidentally derail the thread.
 
7734 said:
Please be careful with the commenting, I don't want to accidentally derail the thread.
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You seem to have gotten cannon and canon mixed up. The former is an artillery piece, the latter is the facts and events established in the original work. A simple repeated typo, but annoying nonetheless, especially if you're going to be providing a written copy to those you're lecturing. Best to fix that before you're left wondering why someone with a transcript is snickering throughout the lecture.
 
JumperPrime said:
You seem to have gotten cannon and canon mixed up. The former is an artillery piece, the latter is the facts and events established in the original work. A simple repeated typo, but annoying nonetheless, especially if you're going to be providing a written copy to those you're lecturing. Best to fix that before you're left wondering why someone with a transcript is snickering throughout the lecture.
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I've said this before. Let me see, oh, here it is.
StorymasterQ said:
To differentiate, refer to this image:
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There's no appreciable pronunciation difference, both ruin shipping, and I'm more liable to give the artillery piece the correct designation. While it might be pedantic to bring the topic of royal bastard demiculvren versus a KwK 7.5cm L/70 versus a Mk. 7 up right now as compared to the original text of the story, I am perfectly willing to go the distance in making sure my point is clear with or without spelling errors.
 
7734 said:
There's no appreciable pronunciation difference, both ruin shipping, and I'm more liable to give the artillery piece the correct designation. While it might be pedantic to bring the topic of royal bastard demiculvren versus a KwK 7.5cm L/70 versus a Mk. 7 up right now as compared to the original text of the story, I am perfectly willing to go the distance in making sure my point is clear with or without spelling errors.
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... I have no idea what you just said.
 
octobersanctuary said:
Always good to avoid mixing up ecclesiastic law with heavy projectile weapons
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With Ex Ultima Regio, the difference is amazingly slim. Thanks, Richelieu!

Always Late said:
... I have no idea what you just said.
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That If I'm talking about cannons, I'll actually use the name of the cannon, even if it's some ungodly aglamation of numbers, adjectives, or both. For reference, a royal bastard demiculvren is a gun that has more metal than usual ("royal") with a shorter than usual barrel ("bastard") and fires a shot slightly standard than a standard culverin ("demiculverin") dating from around the sixteenth century.
 
Canon is the correct spelling, however you've obviously got a stream of consciousness draft going on there that is meant to be read out loud. Sure, there are misspelled words, but they are often spelled correctly elsewhere, sometimes even in the same sentence. So I'd only worry about it if you're going to turn that draft into a published document.

On other matters, a pretty good overview of how to write a successful romance. Or if you want to preserve the Status Quo, for suspense purposes, just make point #3 fail.
 
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Comedy Omake #59 - MattR's "Inheritance V - The Statement of Izumi Ayanami"
  • Apocrypha
    • Been pretty quiet here lately. Looks like it's time for Inheritance -- Part 5: The Statement of Izumi Ayanami. The writings of a girl now dead for 15 years finally tie together the mysteries of the Ayanami Mansion -- and hint at how to end the madness for good.

    Inheritance -- Part 5: The Statement of Izumi Ayanami​
    Words can scarcely express the form of the unspeakable nightmare I have witnessed, or describe the depths of my dread at learning the blasphemous horrors in whose creation my own family has been implicated. But words will have to serve. As I doubt any to whom I may speak after leaving this place would believe me, save for those who are themselves responsible for this abomination and would surely have me silenced, and I dare not draw their attention by returning too soon, I can place my hope for the future only in you, my reader. If you are here, reading this, then you have no doubt already experienced enough on these defiled grounds to give my feeble words credibility.

    In a bout of youthful rashness, I came to this place pursuing rumors of lost wealth. Though I found no such thing, and though part of me wishes I could deny the evidence of my eyes, I cannot say that I regret my decision. There are indeed things in this world more valuable than mere money; my experience here has brought that into focus.

    Upon arriving at the mansion, I found it much as described: stately in style, yet haphazard in its arrangement. Whatever plan it might have originally conformed to had been all but obliterated by the seemingly random and mercurial adornments. Rooms had been built within rooms, staircases led nowhere. Doors opened to brick walls. I had some difficulty even finding a privy to relieve myself after the journey from the town; so much so that I saw fit to leave myself signs by which to find it again. But, with my base needs met, I soon got down to the business which had brought me here: searching for the remaining fortune of my great-grand-uncle. Alas, the first day's search proved fruitless, beyond discovering what had once been some sort of geothermal backup generator -- obviously nothing of clear value had been left in plain sight, and the absurd floor plan confounded the day's search. I very nearly became lost on several occasions. As dusk began to settle over the mansion, I made preparations to return to town, to come back the next day.

    I believe that was, in hindsight, when I encountered the first of the apparitions.

    It began with a prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck, an uncanny sensation of being watched, that I fervently dismissed as my imagination -- an artifact of the isolation and the ineffable architecture surrounding me. So, too, did I brush off the faint sense of hearing whispers in the background silence; for is it not a basic human flaw to perceive familiar patterns in random things?

    The... figures... were harder to dismiss.

    There was nothing distinct, no glowing form looming out of the settling darkness, rattling chains or cloaked in ancient garb. Instead, at the blurry edge of my vision, the realization that part of what I was seeing had not been there a second ago -- vertical shadows or indistinct, motionless forms that vanished when looked at directly. I puzzled over them for some minutes before I realized that, real or not, they seemed to be getting closer.

    I made a hasty retreat from the mansion that night, locked the front door, and returned to town. I spent most of that night curled up in my bed at the hotel, convincing myself that what I had seen was but the product of an overactive imagination, and resolved to take action the next morning. It was some hours before I finally drifted into a fitful slumber.

    Come the morning, I had concluded that the previous night's harrowing experience had been merely a trick of the shadows cast by the setting sun, and so, before resuming my investigation, I inquired at the local utility office about restoring the flow of electrical power to the mansion. To my surprise, I found that power was already being supplied, paid for through automatic deductions from some anonymous account; indeed, this arrangement had been ongoing for some time. This struck me as distinctly odd, given that no lights or electrical appliances had functioned the day prior. The utility employee helpfully suggested that power might have been shut off at the fuse box to save money, and so I resolved to make it the first focus of the day's search.

    Upon returning to the mansion, I found it thankfully devoid of the frightful sense of presence that had made itself known the night before. Emboldened, I began searching for the power junction in hopes that restoring electric lighting to the house would chase away my fatigued fears. An hour passed in futile search of the mansion's labyrinthine interior before it occurred to me to trace the power cables' entry from the outside, where they passed through a corroded but still serviceable transformer. From this, and with careful pacing of the interior, I was able to finally locate the circuit breaker box. In hindsight, I should have found it surprising how modern it appeared for a structure so long abandoned. And so, to better facilitate my search and reassure my own senses, I closed the circuit breakers.

    In retrospect, that was likely my greatest mistake.

    Against my expectations, the light did nothing to dispel the apparitions. In fact, in some respects, things seemed to have become worse: even in bright light, both natural and artificial, I was now hearing whispers and catching glimpses of things I dared not look at straight away.

    Stubbornly, I persevered, drawing courage from both the daylight outside and the surrounding comfort of man's artificial light. I was determined not to give in to fear, let alone to my own imagination.

    As the day wore on late, it occurred to me that the appearance of the half-glimpsed figures was not random; they seemed to be drawing my eyes in a particular direction. I eventually returned to an office I had investigated before. Half-convinced that the figures I was seeing might be trying to help me, leading me to some undiscovered secret, I searched the office, finally discovering the passage leading to the very workshop in which I would later write these words.

    A half-glimpsed glow around the corner led me further into the concealed part of the mansion, and to another secret door. Behind it was a room dominated by a large, double-locked door, along with a small desk and chair. With the keys still in the room, I opened it, only to be faced with a long, forbidding hallway, at the end of which I dimly saw another closed door.

    At that late hour, my appetite for exploration finally failed me. I decided to leave that final exploration for the next day.

    In hindsight, that night, I realized I had not closed and relocked the heavy door to the interior.

    Upon my return the next day, I found evidence of a decidedly more corporeal presence within the mansion besides my own. Furniture and decorations had been knocked over, in a manner too haphazard to suggest a human burglar. Tracing the path of disarray, I found one end leading to a broken window outside the manor, no doubt the point of entry for some wild animal or another.

    Tracing the path in the other direction led to the office, and the secret passage, which I entered with some trepidation.

    Stepping cautiously and fearing the worst -- I had no desire to ambush a bear while armed only with a flashlight -- I crept into the workshop. To my relief, I found only a startled tanuki, that quickly fled in the other direction -- right towards the final passages whose investigation I had earlier postponed. I gave chase, and eventually saw it dash through the door at the end of the unexplored hallway... the door I was quite certain had remained closed when I had left the night before. Curious at this turn of events, I pursued it, in spite of a mounting sense of dread that seemed to grow in proportion to my progress down that foreboding walkway.

    In some respects, I wish that I had not done so.

    When I reached the door, I found myself looking upon a large room full of unknown machinery. Clothing was strewn about, and the floor was slick with some indescribable fluid. The stench of blood was palpable. Within this room, I saw the tanuki struggling wildly against some unseen force. Wildly, but in vain, as it was being dragged bodily towards the center of the room -- and towards a swirling, amorphous mass residing there. Upon reaching it, to my horror, I saw the poor creature liquefy, whereupon it was absorbed into the larger corpus.

    I must have let out a gasp, for suddenly, I had the distinct sense that whatever... it... was, it was looking directly at me.

    It began to move.

    Naturally, I fled back the way I had come with all possible haste, slamming shut the heavy door at the far end of the hallway, turning the locks, breaking the keys, and jamming a chair in place beneath the handle. Something on the other side slammed into the door with terrible force, but it held. I fled further.

    I was struck by a gnawing sense of guilt; that I had unwittingly unleashed this fiend somehow. Its awakening only while I was exploring the mansion could not possibly be a coincidence. Making my way back to the workshop, I searched frantically for an explanation in the scattered texts. Thankfully, the mansion's previous occupants, in their haste to be rid of this place and in the expectation that no outside intrusions would be forthcoming, had gone to no great lengths to hide their notes, and I quickly came upon details of just what had transpired here some decades ago.

    Details, and a name. A name I had heard spoken by my parents only in whispers: SEELE. A secret society, of sorts, in which the Ikari branch of the family supposedly held some degree of authority. Though none had spoken of exactly what this society's machinations entailed, at least not within my earshot, the tone in which SEELE was spoken of suggested something nefarious.

    They were not wrong.

    Though filled with mysterious jargon, and often written in languages incomprehensible to me, what I could understand was sufficient to fill me with loathing at what had unfolded here. Some years ago, SEELE had come into possession of ancient, arcane documents that had redefined its understanding of life and the world; ancient texts that hinted at the potential for advanced new sciences with untold possibilities for remaking the nature of human existence. Alas, due to their nature, these texts were shot through with superstition and occult nonsense. To sort the intellectual wheat from the chaff, SEELE had created a laboratory, in this very mansion, where they engaged in what amounted to the most vile, blasphemous necromancy.

    For SEELE's goal appeared to be nothing short of godhood itself, obtained though the merging of human souls. As a first step, as a proof of concept, under the guise of renovations to the mansion, they had constructed a vast array meant to separate souls from bodies and forcibly fuse them together, while reducing their bodies to the liquid I had seen covering the floor and absorbed into that thing. From the callous tone of their notes, I have no reason to believe their test subjects went willingly to their awful fates.

    In any case, if this dread society was indeed attempting to create a new form of being, they succeeded, and in the worst possible way. It appears that, in their arrogance, they had ignored the most ancient rule of such eldritch inquiries: do not call up that which you cannot put down.

    What they created was in no way a stepping stone on the path to divinity; it was a deranged monstrosity. Driven by some existential agony and the incompatibility of the forcibly integrated minds, it lashed out at everything within its reach. SEELE's arcanists had not expected it to be able to forcibly integrate other beings into itself, assimilating souls and using the raw material of their bodies in an attempt to reconstruct its own. Many of the researchers and observers met an ironic fate at the hands of their own creation before those who remained were able to retune their apparatus to bind it, stripping it of its stolen body and sealing its piecemeal soul. In their ignorance of their own creation, it appears they had no means of putting it down for good, so they arranged a continuous power supply to their containment apparatus and simply left it here.

    Piecing together the details of the experiment with my recollections of the mansion's electrical supply -- the corroded power converters and the straining generator -- I realized the awful truth. By reconnecting the mundane electrical appliances of the mansion to the power grid, I had drawn away enough current to weaken the prison holding SEELE's maddened creation in check. Worse, in my ignorance, I had left open the door to the experiment chamber overnight. Like some sort of anglerfish, it had used its apparitions to draw in local wildlife, reducing them to that component liquid before using it to reconstitute the misshapen body I had witnessed in the test chamber. Given the creature's size, that poor tanuki had likely been but the most recent of its victims. But that gave me pause. If I again reduced the electrical load, might the resurgent containment circuits be enough to divest this abomination of its stolen body and bind it again?

    It was at that moment when I was interrupted by a tremendous crash, as the beast finally battered down the outer door to the test chamber.

    I cannot say what act of Providence prevented me from losing my way in the twisting passages of the manor, nor what feat of mental fortitude kept me from descending into a blind panic, even as my ears told me that my unspeakable pursuer was drawing ever nearer. Though my recollection is a blur, I managed to make my way swiftly to the circuit box, and threw open the main power connection to the manor's mundane appliances, once again allowing all available electricity to flow into the containment circuit even as I plunged myself into darkness. Only then did I allow myself to turn around.

    My glimpse of... it... was mercifully brief, as the mansion's apparatus was already drawing its malformed soul back into its prison, its body liquefying and soaking into the carpet. My mind is still unable to fully reconcile the sight into a clear memory; I have only a jumbled account of twisted limbs, a misshapen body, and faces. Far too many faces.

    Perhaps it is for the best. The fragments I can recall will likely haunt me for the rest of my days.

    I must have spent the rest of the night slumped in that same spot, my mind vainly trying to come to terms with what it had just witnessed. It was only with the morning that my volition returned, and I was able to fully take stock of the situation, and of what had to be done. This could not be allowed to happen again.

    After reading SEELE's notes again, I concluded that the only near-term hope was to ensure steady electrical power to the mansion's containment circuits. Taking stock of the mansion's power supply, I noted that the geothermal engine was at least turning, and might yet be made to drive the generator again, while time had taken its toll on several elements of the main commercial power feed. After taking stock of what sort of parts would be needed, I stopped at the local library to see if I might find any books that could help me with the installation, followed by some hurried shopping at a hardware store. With my frightened state and atypical shopping list for a teenage girl, I supect I made quite the impression on the clerk! Upon my return, I set to restoring the generator to working order, and then replacing the corroded transformer. By evening I had done what I could for the mansion's power supply, boarded over the broken window, and straightened up the furniture; as the sun set, I waited for any repeat performance of the first night's apparitions. None were forthcoming. As a final measure, I had the utility company add a second billing account, just in case the anonymous account (which I was now certain was SEELE, keeping their mistake buried) ever ran empty.

    I know I was able to apply only the most superficial of bandages to this festering wound. And having seen this, I dread what other horrid deeds SEELE may be planning. Fate willing, once I have gained the necessary skills, I will return here to destroy this abomination for good. I can rely on no one else; I fear even my dear cousin may be too close to this to be trusted, even with the risk of accidental disclosure. If you are reading these words, then either you have entered the mansion before I completed my education, or I have failed in my quest. In the latter case, I can only implore you to succeed in my stead. One of us must succeed, lest something unspeakable be unleashed upon an ignorant world.

    --Izumi Ayanami, July 1992


    Rei took a moment to let the preceding passages sink in to her listeners. "I think it is safe to make three assumptions," she concluded. "First, Izumi's actions twenty-four years ago may well have saved the world by re-establishing and reinforcing containment on this... 'Anglerfish.' Second, containment is failing again, and this time we likely do not have the means to re-establish it. And third, judging from the style of her prose, young Izumi Ayanami read far too much H.P. Lovecraft for her own good."
     
  • Apocrypha
    • BadRoad said:
    Great. The Dead Sea Scrolls were a shoggoth owner's manual.
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    That does raise the question of whether Instrumentality was, in fact, the worst thing SEELE could have done with the knowledge contained within the Secret Dead Sea Scrolls... and considering that what they did come up with involved The End of the World as We Know It, that's saying a lot...
     
    "And third, judging from the style of her prose, young Izumi Ayanami read far too much H.P. Lovecraft for her own good."

    You said it, Rei! I'a! I'a!
     
    Under the sunken shadowy depths. Far below where where any fish may dain to venture. Lies the hideous and cyclopian drowned city if L'rei which lays in slumber until the stars right and the waff is prepared.
     
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