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Evangelion Ideas Thread: You Can (Not) Rebuild

Gryphon said:
I have played it. Pretty darn good game.

And if you mean to ask whether a Persona-styled take on the Evaverse could work, I'd say it could certainly be a fairly good take on the standard fix-fic. I've gone on the why of that on some other occasions, but it can be boiled down to the fact that Persona and Eva have pretty much opposite themes to each other, which could be an interesting thing to explore: The power of bonds and connections between people on one side, versus the hedgehog dilemma on the other.
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I don't know, I feel the themes are actually close, they're just approached from opposite directions:

Persona: social bonds are awesome!

Evangelion: social bonds are awesome but we can't have them!

grommile said:
An Persona-styled Evaverse fic could be interesting in different ways depending on which Persona you're using as the point of reference; each of the games has its own distinct thematic and tonal space.
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Personally, I wouldn't outright copy any of the games but rather design a shadow world and related stuff more unique to Eva. Each game indeed is different from the rest while keeping in the general thematic of the franchise, so introducing a few differences wouldn't be a problem, and that would allow for more freedom in crafting the story.
 
illhousen said:
Evangelion: social bonds are awesome but we can't have them!
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No, the theme was "Social Bonds are awesome, but humans kind of suck at them and they take work and cause pain."

Social Links are what doom and then save the world in EoE. Shinji's lack of S-Links and the violent nature of their loss with the Death of Kaworu and Auska's comatose state lead to him ending the world. He then saved it when Rei and Kaworu beat the importance of love and caring for other humans into his head.
 
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The whole symbolism about AT Fields is quite literally "but we can't have them". Kaworu explicitly expressed it: Man will always be alone; he can at best distract himself from that fact with relationships (though doing that is still a good thing). Even in EoE, after Shinji restores the possibility of people to form AT Fields, he says he will most likely be betrayed and hurt again. He just wants to see everyone again, and the Plane of LCL is too much like death for him - but even so he has to acknowledge that people will always be alone and hurt each other.

The question is whether those social connections are still not worth it, despite the pain and despite the fact that people will never fully understand each other. But NGE does quite clearly say, explicitly and through symbolism, that this is a fact: That on some levels people will always be alone and hurt each other. It might might just be worth it regardless.
 
grommile said:
An Persona-styled Evaverse fic could be interesting in different ways depending on which Persona you're using as the point of reference; each of the games has its own distinct thematic and tonal space.
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Here about Persona thematic

P2
Themes: The Ideal vs. Reality; Cause and Effect; Opposites
Motifs: Rumors; "sins" and "punishments"
Symbols: Red (for Tatsuya), Purple (for Maya); Sun and Moon; ideal energy and kegare

P3
Themes: Death (esp. Memento Mori); Night
Motifs: Dark Hour (also, midnight); "Death Drive"
Symbols: Blue as symbolic of night; Coffins; Tartarus; Nyx; Evokers

P4
Themes: Truth
Motifs: The concept of the "true self"; murder mystery
Symbols: Yellow/Gold as symbolic of truth; Fog; TV (device that "tells us how to think")

P5
as far as I can tell based on what I've read about it, deals with personal freedom with regards to society and how society can be both harmful and beneficial to it. The story follows a villain-of-the-week format where most of the villains are people who take advantage of the letter of the law in order to break the spirit of the law.
 
Tylonius said:
No, the theme was "Social Bonds are awesome, but humans kind of suck at them and they take work and cause pain."
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Well, yes, but it's not as snappy.

My reading is not that different from yours in this regard.

Basically, if Persona presents SLinks as a linear ladder where you meet a person, get to know them and grow progressively closer until you're best buddies (at which point it's safe to dump them forever because you've sucked out all the infernal power they can give you and don't need them anymore), in Eva they would be more like Escher paintings: one step forward, two steps back, reverse the direction and try again until you fall.
 
Eva is starting the game with all your SLinks in the Broken state.

And no clues about how to fix them.
 
grommile said:
Eva is starting the game with all your SLinks in the Broken state.

And no clues about how to fix them.
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I wouldn't go that far for most of the cast (at last until the end part of the series), but I'll give you the joke. :p

And following a bit on the Persona thing, and since the games always have had that whole Deity being the background puppetmaster going on, who could be the Big Bad in a Evaverse crossover? A more sentient and proactive Lilith or Adam, with more ability to influence events in some manner? Some other random God or Goddess from nowhere following the staple of the series? A different take on the SEELE council, or their final aims?
 
Gryphon said:
And following a bit on the Persona thing, and since the games always have had that whole Deity being the background puppetmaster going on, who could be the Big Bad in a Evaverse crossover? A more sentient and proactive Lilith or Adam, with more ability to influence events in some manner? Some other random God or Goddess from nowhere following the staple of the series? A different take on the SEELE council, or their final aims?
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Given what was said about the similarity of themes about social bonds and the fact that Persona deals with the concept of sea of the unconsciousness, I feel that some form of Instrumentality should be compatible with the crossover well enough.

Personally, I feel that something akin to P3 plot (an eldritch abomination approaching the world, heralded by powerful monsters and sickness of the mind spreading across the population) would work for Evangelion. SEELE may be planning to do some grand ritual when the stars are right to re-purpose the abomination for their own goals.

I would actually advise against gods meddling too much in this since I feel Eva works best when it's primary a human story, with gods being here as obstacles or slaves rather than active agents.

Well, I guess Nyarly could be around, bringing out the worst in humanity.
 
I've been playing Battletech and the heat management system gave me an idea for an alternate Eva-verse

Units do have an S2 Engine, but the cloning process creates imperfections in its structure. Angel S2 Engines are room-temperature superconductors, but the defects in the ones Evas have introduces electrical resistance into the system, which causes them to generate massive amounts of heat when operating under normal conditions. Instead of acting as a power cable, the umbilical pumps cryogenic coolant through a series of channels surrounding the Eva's core, cooling the S2 Engine down to the point where it regains its superconductivity.

In the event that the umbilical is cut, the five minute window isn't the countdown to when the Eva runs out of power, its the countdown to when heat levels will rise to the point that the pilot will boil alive inside of the entry plug.
 
Which doesn't account for the countdown timer continuing exactly where it left off after resuming from a pause.

If you want heat management, here's what I'm using in my fic:

"The Evangelion has a vestigial secondary nervous system that runs across the entire body parallel to the primary one, but is not physically connected to any nerve clusters. This secondary nervous system includes traces of a molecular structure we haven't managed to fully replicate in laboratory conditions yet, but it is the closest thing we have ever seen to a biological superconductor. The end result is that the secondary nervous system has an amazingly low electrical resistance; even channeling the reactor's maximum designed power output through it only raises the Evangelion's body temperature by about 5 °C, which is completely removed from the body through the armor anchoring implants and dissipated into the surrounding air without requiring a dedicated cooling system."

"That air-cooling won't work in vacuum." – Asuka pointed out.

"As I have explained to the colonel before, the Evangelion is a ground-based weapon platform. It is not and never was intended for zero-gravity usage."

"But what if the military might want to deploy it on, say, the Moon? Or Mars? The thinner the air, the worse air-cooling's going to be."

The pause was enough for Asuka to realize the woman didn't consider that at all. – "What do you suggest, then?"

Asuka sighed and rested the back of her head against the entry plug seat. – "Durandals have a liquid droplet heatsink just for that scenario, but scaling it up as-is would add on another hundred tons of weight, maybe more, plus the armor to cover the tanks with because I'm not sure Evangelions have the room to spare under their skin. The navy's ships use their armor plating as heatsinks too, I think, so you may be on the right track... hmm..." – She paused for a few seconds, cupping her chin with her hand in thought before tapping on her chin with her finger thrice. – "How problematic is it to swap out the armor anchoring implants?"

"Quite."

"And the anchors? Can you pull them out without surgery?"

"That is possible, yes."

"How about hollowing out the anchor and installing a pipe system into it? You fill the pipe with coolant and circulate it to dump the heat out into the armor faster than a solid anchor would."

"That would increase costs and mechanical complexity, not to mention decrease the anchor's structural load-bearing capacity."

"If a place has no atmosphere, chances are it's because it doesn't have enough gravity to hold one." – Asuka pointed out. – "Lower gravity equals higher structural load-bearing capacity, so the plates' interlocks should hold everything together. Problem solved."

"...I see your point. I'll forward your suggestion to the designers. It would seem I made an excellent choice employing you. No offense to the others."
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Removing gravity from the situation doesn't do that much to address the mechanical loading concerns of those anchors; you still have to design to accommodate the loads inherent in the Evangelion's movements.
 
That is true. Gravity pulling the whole thing downwards is one thing, centrifugal force trying to rip the plates off their mountings is another.

There would also be a later Eva design whose gimmick is being able to discharge its batteries while main power is still on so that the main power source's maximum output no longer bottlenecks performance, but overclocking the Eva's power grid like that produces too much waste heat for the armor to dissipate, forcing the Eva to deploy external radiator heatsinks and liquid droplet dispensers to avoid abruptly shutting down in the middle of combat due to its electronics overheating.
 
So after a long talk with @Turing Decidable I have thought of a fusion fic for Eva and Fate. It would basically be the Eva cast transposed into the Nasuverse with a holy grail war about to start. Gendo Ikari is a mage who wants to use the grail to bring back Yui whose soul was ripped apart in a root experiment. To mix Eva and fate the servants are all humanized versions of the angels from eva (well except the ones who are already human shaped). Shinji is forced to join the war after summoning Tabris by accident as his servant. Asuka is a hot blooded exchange student from Europe who is secretly a mage herself and the chosen representative of a number of mage families. Touji is another accidental master who summons Bardiel (Assassin) after being told he can use the grail to heal his dying sister. I have not figured out everything but I think I have a foundation for something cool.

The angels/servants and their roles are as follows:
Zeruel/ berserker
Bardiel/ Assassin
Ramiel/ Archer
Areal/ Caster
Iruel/Rider
Lilith/ Saber
Tabris/ Lancer
 
Alex said:
So after a long talk with @Turing Decidable I have thought of a fusion fic for Eva and Fate. It would basically be the Eva cast transposed into the Nasuverse with a holy grail war about to start. Gendo Ikari is a mage who wants to use the grail to bring back Yui whose soul was ripped apart in a root experiment. To mix Eva and fate the servants are all humanized versions of the angels from eva (well except the ones who are already human shaped). Shinji is forced to join the war after summoning Tabris by accident as his servant. Asuka is a hot blooded exchange student from Europe who is secretly a mage herself and the chosen representative of a number of mage families. Touji is another accidental master who summons Bardiel (Assassin) after being told he can use the grail to heal his dying sister. I have not figured out everything but I think I have a foundation for something cool.

The angels/servants and their roles are as follows:
Zeruel/ berserker
Bardiel/ Assassin
Ramiel/ Archer
Areal/ Caster
Iruel/Rider
Lilith/ Saber
Tabris/ Lancer
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Eh, I feel that the idea of Angels replacing Servants is rather uninspired. Kaworu works, sort of, but the rest lack any personality or ideology of their own, which drastically reduces their narrative role. I mean, you could go with OCs and give them voice, but at this point it's easier to go with mythological heroes and maybe give them some kind of amalgamation between their canon cool stuff and Angel abilities as NPs.

Reimagining Eva characters as natives of Nasuverse has some potential, though I feel you don't make full use of possibilities here.

Gendo actually works better not as an established magus but as a husband of actual magus, Yui, who picked up some tricks (making him a first gen magus) but whose true strength lies in politics and making contacts rather than craft. This way, he needs Shinji to participate since he's incapable of supporting a Servant with mana himself, which would create a dynamic between them similar to Eva but probably with Gendo being more involved by necessity since he would need Shinji at the very end as well.

Asuka works well enough with her canon backstory slightly adjusted for circumstances (mother going mad from some experiment, suicide, dolls, adoption, becoming a star genius, etc.), though I would make participation in the ritual her own choice not backed by any family, her way to prove her worth to the world. The Holy Grail War is considered the culmination of modern magecraft, so winning it would be a sure sign that her existence matters.

(For bonus fun, I'd make her family magecraft dollmaking similar to what Touko does.)

Toji's involvement feels weird. I think he works better as someone otherwise uninvolved who gets caught up by events, like maybe Caster decides to use him as an ingredient in ritual or something.

There is a matter of Rei to consider. In this context, she's obviously a homunculus and probably the vessel for the Lesser Grail, designed to unravel after consuming the souls of Servants and give rise to the miracle. I kinda like the idea of her being a second vessel, similar to Sakura, something designed to steal the miracle and subvert the normal process of the war. Gendo is behind it, of course, but his involvement is second-hand, the person responsible for her creation is someone else skilled in alchemy.
 
illhousen said:
Eh, I feel that the idea of Angels replacing Servants is rather uninspired. Kaworu works, sort of, but the rest lack any personality or ideology of their own, which drastically reduces their narrative role. I mean, you could go with OCs and give them voice, but at this point it's easier to go with mythological heroes and maybe give them some kind of amalgamation between their canon cool stuff and Angel abilities as NPs.

Reimagining Eva characters as natives of Nasuverse has some potential, though I feel you don't make full use of possibilities here.

Gendo actually works better not as an established magus but as a husband of actual magus, Yui, who picked up some tricks (making him a first gen magus) but whose true strength lies in politics and making contacts rather than craft. This way, he needs Shinji to participate since he's incapable of supporting a Servant with mana himself, which would create a dynamic between them similar to Eva but probably with Gendo being more involved by necessity since he would need Shinji at the very end as well.

Asuka works well enough with her canon backstory slightly adjusted for circumstances (mother going mad from some experiment, suicide, dolls, adoption, becoming a star genius, etc.), though I would make participation in the ritual her own choice not backed by any family, her way to prove her worth to the world. The Holy Grail War is considered the culmination of modern magecraft, so winning it would be a sure sign that her existence matters.

(For bonus fun, I'd make her family magecraft dollmaking similar to what Touko does.)

Toji's involvement feels weird. I think he works better as someone otherwise uninvolved who gets caught up by events, like maybe Caster decides to use him as an ingredient in ritual or something.

There is a matter of Rei to consider. In this context, she's obviously a homunculus and probably the vessel for the Lesser Grail, designed to unravel after consuming the souls of Servants and give rise to the miracle. I kinda like the idea of her being a second vessel, similar to Sakura, something designed to steal the miracle and subvert the normal process of the war. Gendo is behind it, of course, but his involvement is second-hand, the person responsible for her creation is someone else skilled in alchemy.
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The Gendo thing was much like I was thinking, tho I would have had Gendo being another master be a surprise for Shinji. I was planning like you said that he is a first gen magus that married into the Ikari family (a respected mage house) to parallel him getting involved with Yui initially because of her connections to SEELE.

Asuka as a rogue mage who is trying to prove her own worth kinda like Waver would work. I was just trying to connect Asuka's experience being trained as a pilot and transpose it here. As her being trained to be the champion of a coalition of mages.

I was thinking Touji was a normal kid who is approached by a shadowy figure who convinces him to join the war to save his sister. Tricked into acting as a pawn in a greater scheme.
 
*sigh* ...how refreshing it would be if people stopped maiming poor Sakura to get Toji involved in things...
 
Maybe he just wants her broken wrist to heal up faster so she'll stop whacking him with the cast? Those things really hurt if you swing 'em hard enough.
 
Alex said:
Asuka as a rogue mage who is trying to prove her own worth kinda like Waver would work. I was just trying to connect Asuka's experience being trained as a pilot and transpose it here. As her being trained to be the champion of a coalition of mages.
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I think the parallels are sufficient with just the regular magus training. Magi are already expected to risk their lives every day without fail in the name of magecraft, so that would account for Asuka's upbringing.

I was actually thinking less outright rogue and more just someone not directly involved with the core intrigues but possessing a strong wish recognized by the Grail.

Basically, I don't think that in this case it's needed to put her in the exactly same situation. Asuka becoming a Master as a result of her general upbringing and her ideals makes sense, and it feels more natural to me.

Alex said:
I was thinking Touji was a normal kid who is approached by a shadowy figure who convinces him to join the war to save his sister. Tricked into acting as a pawn in a greater scheme.
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Toji works as a fish-out-of-water type of character, someone close in perspective to readers who could point out how fucked up everything is, but only if he's the protagonist. If the story follows Shinji, Toji works better in a role of a secondary character one step removed from the action.

His sister, of course, could still be harmed or die once some Servant or Rei starts eating people.
 
Last page or so, there was that remark by someone that making the Eva pilots awesome misses the point of the story. I had an interesting Chekhov's Gun moment today in that regard.

Namely, during the race to catch Sahaquiel, instead of Shinji holding the Angel up by himself until Asuka and Rei get there, the girls basically use Accelerated Territory from AdEva to get there quickly enough and the three of them combine their Evas' AT-fields into a single gigantic one that stops the Angel dead in its tracks. And by gigantic, I mean that the field momentarily expands to a size larger than the planet's diameter.

Anyway. That gigantic field ends up obliterating at least one satellite that gets in the way, which is a problem down the line. Namely, when Kaji is being tailed by his assassin just before his death, he tries calling for backup on a satellite phone - but the satellite that got destroyed in the battle against Sahaquiel was part of the satellite phone company's constellation and by freak chance was the one that would've provided service in Japan at the time. It was being replaced but due to weather issues, the launch of the replacement satellite was delayed a few days and as such, it hadn't reached its target orbit yet but the network was already set to use it. So when Kaji tried calling for backup, the system handed over the call to the replacement satellite but since it wasn't where it was supposed to be, the call couldn't connect.

In summary, the kids being awesome indirectly got Kaji killed. How's that?
 
that idea misses the entire point of the 'awesome eva pilot' criticism and adds utterly nothing to the plot except a 'fuck you' twist. No one would ever find out about it in a way even remotely connectable to the story, it undercuts the purpose of Kaji leaving everything to Misato if he's still desparately trying to live right to the end, and ends up sending the message that the kids can't do anything right no matter how they try. The tragedy of Evangelion springs from how the characters are hemmed in by their flaws to self-destructive actions taken in pursuit of their wants, not getting randomly fucked by shit they couldn't see coming.

While Evangelion is in many ways a criticism of many Super Robot shows and their many absurd underpinnings, one major theme that still ties it to that genre is the idea that bonds to others are important and allow you to do great things, and your idea here smacks of somebody desperately trying to come up with a 'shocking swerve' that actively detracts from the originals themes in a botched attempt to be dark and painful.

And on further reflection, a lot of the ideas you've pitched seem to suffer from this same problem of being different just to be different instead of reinforcing the stories themes.
 
You raise valid points, but I feed the need to point out a few things.

it undercuts the purpose of Kaji leaving everything to Misato if he's still desparately trying to live right to the end
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Not if he makes absolutely damn sure he exhausted all other options first. I mean, why is he entrusting everything to Misato in the first place? Because he couldn't carry it through by himself, right? So by having tried to evade his fate one last time and failed, he can face death in full confidence that there is truly nothing more he can do to maximize Misato's chance of succeeding where he failed. He didn't call it quits early, he accomplished all he humanly could and is now ready to die because what happens from this point onward is no longer his responsibility.

one major theme that still ties it to that genre is the idea that bonds to others are important and allow you to do great things
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Hard to keep that in sight when manys keep saying that positive bonds miss the point of Eva.

a lot of the ideas you've pitched seem to suffer from this same problem of being different just to be different instead of reinforcing the stories themes
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That's the thing: I don't operate on themes. I don't base ideas on abstract concepts or force a concept into a preexisting idea, I just say what comes to my mind.

As for the 'different' part... I don't know. I have been stating it repeatedly and thus cannot truthfully deny that I see no point in rehashing canon because that's already been told a thousand times in fanfics, but part of it is that I feel there's nothing I can possibly do to improve upon canon. I cannot please everyone, but that also works backwards: I'll never be 100% satisfied with everything, so I don't even pretend. Canon is canon. It is as it is.

Then there's another matter I've also been stating repeatedly throughout the years: if I'm not allowed to change anything other than how the characters interact with each other, I feel as if I have my hands tied behind my back. It's not just that I don't have fun while writing like that and thus feel no motivation to continue the story, to me, the characters don't feel... alive. It's as if they're nothing but robots operating on if-then-else logic. And this is the point where I ask myself: what's the point? What's the point in telling a story if I'm not allowed to tell it the way I want to? What's the point in fanfiction if it cannot be fanfiction?

You and I have disagreed on many things over the years and I don't expect it to stop now, but I'm still saying it.
 
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