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leliel_12Somewhere Across the Seas of Tindalos…
Timeline NDS-9182736 (Xothian Classification),
Earth, Ruins of Tokyo-3, NERV Bridge
It was the coffee that finally drove in what Necrons lost with their flesh.
Touch? Ritsuko barely acknowledged touch to begin with. Really, after the way she died, a few decades or so away from all sensation of touch was a good rest cure. Moreover, the actuators and sensors of a Necron body did a good enough job - most of Ritsuko’s time was spent in a sterile lab of cold metal and plastics anyway, and the sensors in a noble-class chassis for a Necron (a strict demand of her saviors) were very careful to simulate touch as accurately as possible for the practical reason that also accurately simulated pain - and with it, a guide for repairs or early warning for the direction of danger (though a moment’s thought could turn it off). So at worst, it felt like wearing very thin latex to her at times, mildly annoying at worst, but easy to forget.
Autonomic processes? That took more getting used to, it took a while before Ritsuko didn’t have odd pauses before she spoke because she forgot she didn’t even need air to activate her voice synthesizer. Nor did she feel her heart race when she ran (or at least jog - Necrons, as a rule, were not built with top speed in mind), or sweat when panicked, and that was sincerely alienating…but then she realized she didn’t hunger, either. Or tire, beyond boredom. Or really, never feel anything other than her best. She imagined this could feel alienating after a while, but for now, she could deal (though she felt nothing but pity for those poor souls afflicted with the Flayer Virus, and with it, the memory of hunger - without the ability to satiate it). More importantly, she remembered bleeding out, and the sense of that horrible realization her own heartbeat was killing her was…well, that was a silver lining to no longer having a pulse to begin with.
Loss of emotions? …She was quite able to form her own nuanced opinions on touch and lack of autonomic processes, as well as make decisions based on her opinions and feelings, made that point a moot one. By definition, whoever thought she lost emotions in any noticeable way was an imbecile. She was Ristuko Akagi before and she was Ritsuko Akagi now, though there was an interesting philosophical discussion as to whether she was Ritsuko-in-a-metal-body or a robot-named-Ritsuko who happened to perfectly remember a dead woman’s memories and so was programmed to think exactly like her.
And right now, the program told her that this was the worst discovery she had made yet, and she cursed herself for not seeing it.
“...Dr. Akagi?” Maya Ibuki said, from the other side of the bench. “...Ritsuko? You’ve been staring at that cup for a full minute.”
Ah. That wasn’t implausible. “...I can’t smell this,” Ritsuko said, looking up. “Not in the way you can. My olfactory sensors are dissecting it and giving me a sense of its complexity and composition, as well as how rich it is…but true smell is as much taste as it is in the nose. And Necrons…are not designed to eat.”
A look of understanding and sympathy came to Maya. “...ah.” She paused. “Um…” She held out her hand, the fact it was partly covered in alien flora somehow making the gesture seem even more awkward.
Wordlessly, Ritsuko handed over her request, still marveling at the look of a woman who had been haphazardly killed only to be revived through symbiotic plants as an extremely leafy revenant (with sprouting flowers out of her hair and what were formerly lethal neck and torso wounds) in a mostly repaired version of her old casual wear, sipping coffee from an extradimensional traveler’s machine, as they watched the source of her revival shed more of his spores into the increasingly LCL-free oceans.
“You know, senpai,” Maya said after a good sip. “When I thought to myself that a new position would change view of reality…I didn’t expect that to be anywhere close to ‘brought back from near brain death by a living genetic pool of the Angels, told Pilot Ikari was some kind of interdimensional galactic warlord dragon, and I needed to help launch and coordinate both an Eva and an emergency attack within the fake Ikari’s AT Field.’ And then I fully realized the person telling me this was you. As an alien robot. I’m still not sure how I feel about…any of this. I’m not sure if I will for…years.”
“Imagine what it’s like being an alien robot, after your possessed best friend murdered your previous body while screaming conspiracy theories and homophobic slurs,” Ritsuko said, slumping in her chair. “I have discovered that just because I can’t physically feel tired doesn’t mean I can’t be exhausted. At least we won…even if our world is now the dominion of an Angel-Lilim hybrid and his effective siblings. And their worshipers. Which is actually a far better ending than anticipated, as they are capable of cross-species communication and transactional relationships, at worst.”
“Though it apparently wasn’t always that way. A world with a literal dark sun, they’re from…I’m surprised some are even recognizable as human any more, let alone a majority.” Maya shrugged. “At least Diego…I think he’s still Diego, he could have renamed himself - ahem! He’s replacing the ocean’s ecology by feeding on the LCL. I’m eager to experience winter for the first time…” She smiled. “I’ve always wanted to experience snow again, have more memories of it than just being a young child. We can see it together…”
…And here came the pain. “...Lieutenant Ib…Maya,” Ritsuko corrected herself. “That’s…that’s going to be a…problem…”
Maya frowned. “Dr. Akagi, I understand. Don’t worry, my plants are apparently insulated, and…while being a machine is awkward, I-”
“That’s not the issue, Maya,” Ritsuko interrupted. “I mean I’m not staying on Earth. I’m going with Trazyn to his Dynasty’s domain next month”
Maya stared at her. “What?”, she squeaked.
“Part of the deal made for my revival,” Ritsuko said with a sigh. “I wasn’t exactly in a position to object - and really, living at all makes a lot of deals forgivable.” With a snap of her fingers, the Necron-human made a hologram of a particular, organic-looking container appear. “Because of that thing. The Soul Urn.”
Maya blinked. “...it looks like a heart to me. Or a spleen.”
“It’s Evangelion tissue. It also has a soul in it - my soul. I am the only Necron in existence to know its fate, definitively - and that it did not need to be destroyed in order for the personality matrix to exist.” Ritsuko switched the view to other Necrons. “And that implies that on some level, their souls exist too…and even if not, I am an ideal test model for getting new ones. An important part in getting new, mortal bodies.”
“...but you can come back, right?”, Maya asked, a little desperately. “Necron ships can travel fast, and you can have shore leave-”
“Who would want me back?” Ritsuko finally asked.
Maya stared at her. “...sorry?”
“You know the reason the Black Dragon felt threatened by me? Why he isolated and broke me? Because we are the same, at our cores,” the scientist continued. “Scarred by our mothers, we escaped into a delusion of agency, lashing out at everything nearby. All the while, just…becoming ever more of a miserable hag, hating everything that could help, treating the the one person who we should have trusted the most like absolute shit, except he didn’t have an Elder God to save her from my own mistakes-”
Ritsuko’s recriminations were suddenly cut off by her sensors registering a kiss.
“...Mmmpf?!” Even without lungs, the scientist could still be rendered utterly without words.
Maya drew back, tears in her eyes. “Senpai…Ritsuko. Stop. Please. If you are going to be alone and immortal…I don’t want you to spend eternity torturing yourself thinking you’re the monster you saved everyone from. The monster who was strangling that beautiful brain of yours.”
“Buh…” Ritsuko blinked, one could almost hear the perhaps-literal servos in her head whirring as she slowly began to comprehend that her lieutenant was not only homosexual, but carrying a torch for her. “But I…I didn’t do anything! Just coordinated the distraction and cloak-”
“And you’re the one who built and planned it! I was following your strategy! I fought, we won - but you fought too!” The tears were flowing now. “So please - Ritsuko. Senpai. Look me in the eyes, and tell me, even if you leave me behind…stop calling yourself the villain of your own story. If you hadn’t helped…nobody would be anything in their own story…”
Ritsuko stared at her. “...why me?”, she finally said. “I’ve been…I’m awful to you…?”
“In the name of Gendo Ikari. He is, uh…” Maya looked at the marker placed nearby, as a sign of polite recognition by the Last Redoubt than any real mourning for some of the names on it. “No longer an issue. And the thing is…you’re also the person who blames yourself first, when you’ve done wrong. So I think you’re also the person who can do better.”
Ritsuko took a long minute to think over that.
“...I can’t promise you that,” she finally admitted. “But…I think I can take you with me, and show you snow on other worlds. Help you help me see that I’m more than just…the Commander’s woman. Maybe…maybe I can learn to be someone else’s.”
Maya beamed.
[Link to fork on das-sporking here.]
Leliel: [Long exhale] You know, there’s a lot of thesis statements one could give with Thousand Shinji - it’s a hatefic of Neon Genesis Evangelion disguised as a crossover, it’s a sue fic of someone who barely understands the wiki of Warhammer 40,000 trying to write an original faction disguised as a crossover, it’s a crossover that thinks it’s a stompfic - but the core summation I have for it is…well, my normal co-sporker could not force himself to continue reading it past about chapter 17. This is a man who has every intention of sporking one of the most infamous comics in Western history to relax for our next project, and the shit with Kaworu, after the date rape scene, broke him. That’s how bad things got.
Emma: Honestly, the best way I can describe this fanfic is… instructionally bad. It’s a show of fascinating writing ineptness from the beginning to the end, on every level from the technical to the moral, elaborated on by the fact the author Thinks he’s a literary genius who has fixed any problem anyone could ever have with any story. It’s a crossover where one side is blatantly favoured over the other, it’s a crossover where the favoured side is barely comprehended or accurate, it’s a fix-it fic where things like “character flaws” and “drama” are treated as needing fixing, it’s a “romance” written by someone who thinks only straight men are people… it’s one of the most fascinating encapsulations of badfic this side of Partially Kissed Hero.
Leliel: And the capital T in Thinks is deserved here, because holy shit the sheer intellectual arrogance on display as well…
Leliel: So, yeah. As Emma said, one of the big things about that fic is that it isn’t just bad - it’s bad in such obvious and fixable ways that it can be used as a tool of genuine instruction. We’ll get to that, with the breakdown of the characters, setting, plot and lore issues. But…before we really get into it…Wanderer has something to say. Specifically, the fact which drove him off wasn’t the fact it wasn’t just terrible…it was dull.
Wanderer: Yeah, and I think what just fucking shits me, was that there wasn’t even anything interesting to spork out of it, at least for me. With the previous sporks we’ve done or are doing, A Brighter Dark and The Rising of Shield Hero, there was always something really, really fucking bad about them, but they were still fun to dissect, in the way that a wrong answer is worth dissecting. A Brighter Dark isn’t even that bad, honestly; talking with the author made me realize it was a product of edginess as a teen rather than malice towards the game and its fans such as me, and it genuinely improved near the end! Not enough to save it from being a badfic given its horrid start, but it was genuinely getting better over time. And even with as repulsive as The Rising of Shield Hero was, as fundamentally-irredeemable as that anime is, it was at least fun to poke fun at and mock at how shockingly terrible it really was… both for the realization that this was the anime culture warriors hyped up as the next great anime back in 2019, and the fact that it barely had anything going for it even then and only carried on to the present via shallow hype, on top of a truly disgusting exploration of slavery and grooming. Again; the answer is fundamentally wrong, but it’s at least interesting to dissect in a way that makes it fun to analyze.
Thousand Shinji, however? It reminded me a lot of a spork for an entire franchise that I shall not name for now that I’ve canned in the end and put on indefinite hiatus — not because there wasn’t potential for making a fun spork of it, because believe me, there’s enough ‘WTF’ in it that it would absolutely be fun to take the piss out of, but because I was simply just objectively not in the right emotional state of mind to be able to spork it and be mentally okay, to the point where the mods themselves were growing concerned and asked us to stop before it damaged our mental health more. The wound was still way too fresh at the time, especially given this was after a particularly traumatic betrayal I went through at the time (no, I will not explain; ask Leliel in DMs if you’re so curious). For the sake of the comm rules and my mental health, I’ve decided not to do it on the comm even if we ever come back to it (and even then, only with mod permission from this comm and with a third person serving as a moderating influence on the two of us), because a.) I don’t want a repeat of what happened with the first attempt, and b.) I want enough positivity from mocking the whole thing in a way that feels like I can showcase how Neil Line-crossing that franchise really is when it gets past a certain point, kind of like marveling at a twenty-semi pileup like a piece of art. It’s gets astoundingly bad in a way that’s truly memorable, and my biggest mistake was that, put simply, I tackled that spork when I just wasn’t ready for it on an emotional level, because my breakup with that franchise was fucking messy.
Put simply, it just wasn’t fun for me at the time, and that brought out the worst in us. Sporking should not feel like a duty.
And that’s really the lesson I learned later than most sporkers knew from the start about sporks: they’re supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be fun taking the piss out of bad media, mocking it, and then outright making fun of what it does wrong on a fundamental level, and occasionally getting the torches and pitchforks out for a writer who’s truly banal as a person for the stuff they endorse in the work. Because you’re effectively reclaiming that badness in a way that makes for good entertainment. It’s effectively the inverse of sporking Harry Potter for a lot of people in this blog who had their roots in it (beyond the fact of how fraught a lot of the political issues are likely hitting comm rules) — with how J.K. Rowling is as a person, and the fact Harry Potter’s awfulness is only truly observable from a hindsight perspective, it runs into the issue that it’s just not a fun spork or one particularly worth doing at all (unlike the other franchise I’ve alluded to; it’s at least got enough batshittery to be enjoyable to laugh at), because there really isn’t a lot of people in this blog who have the neutrality to pull it off (me, I never cared for Harry Potter, so I’m one of the only ones who could, but even then it probably would be a slog and still would run into aforementioned hot-button issues - and Leliel actually did care for it, so he likely wouldn’t be able to help me), and the work — more importantly — not even having enough ‘WTF’ to be able to make taking the piss out of it fun. It’s not even fun bad. It’s just boring mediocrity.
And that’s exactly why I’ve dipped out of Thousand Shinji following the last stretch.
With the upcoming comic we’re sporking, there’s so much wrong with it and it’s so brazenly offensive that it becomes downright fascinating to dissect how much it gets wrong; it’s like Dragonball Evolution in that regard, a work being fucking objectively garbage on a fractally wrong level, and comes and goes like a high-speed car crash into a nuclear power plant. That is special, rare, and above all else, interesting to make fun of; look no further than Team Four Star’s absolutely hilarious riff on that movie.
By contrast, there is absolutely nothing remotely interesting of a bastardized copy of one of anime’s greatest classical anti-heroes turned into an insufferably smug Redditor who rapes, perverses and corrupts his way into glory and becomes the “real Chaos Gods” and then proceeds to stomp his way through the entire story. He’s literally that scene from the Gmod animation Scout Con 2014, in which a convention full of Scouts (an infamously smug speedster twerp from Team Fortress 2 with an ego the size of Texas) basically watching a self-masturbatory fanfic about how great the Scout is… at literally everything else’s expense (timestamp: 8:57-9:30):
No plot. No characterization. No canon detail. No consistency. No bathos. No logos. No ethos. No actual good writing. Just a purely self-stroking, ego-aggrandizing fluff piece that only exists to how how “awesome” Academia Nut’s Sue is and how “KEWL” his take on the New Chaos Gods are. There is absolutely, literally, and objectively nothing interesting or of value to dissect from a story like Thousand Shinji, on any comprehensive level. It’s literally the kind of fanfic people think about when they call bad writing from any bad published work “fanfic-tier”, even when there are many hard-working fanfic writers who have made far better works than this swill ever did.
So, it’s perhaps no surprise we’re capping it off here and not bothering with the sequel, because… there’s absolutely nothing of value in that masturbatory mess that we haven’t seen here already. I knew that I’ve hit my limit with this fic after the whole date rape sex pest shit with Tzeentchji, and that I had to bail out of it because it was just all downhill from here, and my line in the sand was crossed there. There are absolutely no redeeming qualities to a fanfic like Thousand Shinji; it’s not even so bad it’s good, in the sense that it’s fun to make fun of. It’s not just bad straight-up, either. It, in fact, commits the worst sin a piece of entertainment can commit: being straight-up boring bad.
Look, all I’m saying is, if you’ve given me the choice between Thousand Shinji and Dragonball Evolution, I’d choose the latter over the former any day, by gathering my friends and just riffing on it, because there’s at least some entertainment to be had from that. In that, Thousand Shinji is closer to the movie version of The Last Airbender, being so unmistakably a chore to get through that it makes even a riff-track among friends utterly dull and lifeless beyond belief. This entire fanfic was an abomination of bad writing and boring edge, and I would’ve dipped sooner if I knew that the date rape was coming up.
Leliel: [applauds] And, I want to put in a word myself: As much as I was chewing out the lore fails, and making the last chapter even longer - I am almost thankful for them, because I’m learning to be a librarian. Research and correcting errors is literally my thing and what I find fun, I’m trying to make a career out of this. If there wasn’t, I think I would have seriously tried to skip the last couple chapters or end early. That is how fucking dull this thing got. When we invoked Deep Hurting, we were not fucking kidding.
Emma: I, uh, obviously don’t agree about the boredom, given what I said up there. I think part of it is that as I’ve got older I’ve lost patience with both the common targets of older sporkings, and the common methodology of them. I don’t care for sporking cringeworthy self-insert Legolas romances, and I don’t care for rapid-fire smug jokes. I like analysis, and I like to be sporking something meaty that I can really get into stripping to the bone, in a more instructional manner. A lot of older sporking subjects don’t have enough there, and honestly, I don’t want to contribute to the nasty culture where “teenage girl’s self-insert redeems Draco Malfoy with the power of love” is considered an unforgivable sin but this is considered good, solely because it was written by a Rationalist (™) man, and not a sissy girl. This was fascinating to spork, because it’s so far from the dictates of what’s usually understood as bad fanfiction, while being so abominably bad. And that’s without even getting into the social aspects. This fic is like a bingo card for misogyny, toxic masculinity, homophobia… it manages to be MORE uncomfortable with the real-world implications of its fantasy races than 40k canon, so there’s that, too. And I’m not going to claim that Thousand Shinji has the reach to do serious harm, or that dissecting it was any sort of great social good, but it felt nice to be able to just full-throated scream at something for being written by an inept, smug bigot who encapsulates the Dunning-Krueger effect.
Leliel: Seriously. And speaking as someone who is from that Uber-Rational part of the interwebs that likes taking things to their logical extremes to see what happens…this didn’t even do that right. I wasn’t kidding when I said the fight porn was the redeeming aspects of this fic…but past Ramiel, they got so utterly predictable and clearly tied into canon before actually doing anything cool with the gear that they just became another slog, and not even notable enough to be worthy of a spork. And then even that was dropped for the psyker-based fights, in spite of the fact that “affecting materials in subtle but fun ways” is very much the fine control Arcanites love pulling off with their brains. Instead, we got Dragonball fights, sans the ham, humor, or interesting character interactions that make Dragonball fights fun to watch.
Characters
Leliel: If you ask me, this is at the core of Thousand Shinji’s other issues; it takes the cast of a series and franchise that is defined by their characterization and how it affects themselves, and the world…and throwing it out as “weakness” in favor of making the Optimal Schemers with Humor Potential (As Defined By Extremely Online Elitist Nerds). Actually, one person - because the most I worked through this story, the more I realized, well, he’s the only actual character with agency. So, let us start with He Who Needs To Fuck Off:
“Shinji Ikari”, aka Tzeentchji: The Great Poo-Bah of Birdbrained Perverts
Emma: Tzeentchji is basically the epitome of bad online takes about Shinji Ikari. Forget being the new Chaos God of schemes and hope, Tzeentchji should truly achieve apotheosis as the Embodiment and Personification of “Posters Who Don’t Get Evangelion”. The core thesis of the Evangelion parts of this crossover (in the way Cronenberg’s the fly is about a human/fly crossover) is that Shinji being afraid, passive and insecure is a flaw in the narrative that needs to be fixed. Never mind that Shinji is a child soldier and that more than justifies like 90% of his character flaws, never mind that “fixed” Tzeentchji is both morally worse that Shinji ever is and incredibly uninteresting to read. Academia Nut fixed all those stupid flaws that Anno obviously put in his magnum opus because he’s not as good a writer as a fucking… Spacebattles 40k guy.
Leliel: Yeah…let’s take a look at the final tally of the score meant exclusively for him:
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 2051
Not the highest score out of all of the scores, but mostly because of the sheer lore fail of that final chapter. And the reason can be summed up in how the final chapter explicitly calls his canon self, and I quote, “a bitch.” Now, let’s see the wiki page on the actual Shinji…
(https://evangelion.fandom.com/wiki/Shinji_Ikari#Personality)
“Is stuck in the past, where he was closer to being happy, and is actively trying to fight the Angels, but is afraid of hurting others.” Basically, a kid in over his head, knows it, and is trying his best, but a genuinely kind person. That is, to this fic, a “bitch.” So, we have someone forward-looking, eager, and a complete and utter asshole. And in the process, not only does he become completely unlikable, he becomes an idiot.
Emma: How could you call him an idiot, Lel? With all those words devoted to calling him the special smartest little birthday boy in existence? Just to clarify the fic hasn’t driven me insane, that was sarcasm. The fact this fic is unwilling to give Tzeentchji any actual equal matches, combined with its devotion to stations of the canon means all of Tzeentchji’s vaunted intelligence doesn’t do anything. Pretty much every bad thing that happens in canon still happens here, because that allows the author to not have to write or imagine anything, and also lets Asuka and Rei’s suffering be directly fed into Tzeentchji’s victim complex.
Leliel: Exactly! And what happens the moment the author lets him have anything resembling a fair intellectual challenge with Gendo? He is absolutely fucked. With the power of listening bugs. As much as it’s supposed to show Gendo is an equal, the scheme was so simple and obvious, and absolutely nobody was Tzeentchji’s equal until then - so it came off it only happened because Tzeentchji was a perverted moron not being protected by the author’s own pathetic ego for once in this fic. But here, in this sporking? He’s just a pathetic loser who is basically all of Shinji’s worst qualities, none of his positives, and a bunch of macho posturing and intellectual insecurity otherwise. In other words, a perfect example of the kind of nerd that the actual Shinji is made to mock. So, I must say, this really says a lot of good things about Shinji’s writing, huh? Bet seeing him hurt Academia Nut, hence this negation of him.
Tzeetchji’s Harem
Leliel: Yes, we are grouping them, because, let’s face it, there’s not enough differentiation between Asuka, Rei, or Misato to really be their own characters, beyond archetypes. Hell, Misato’s barely in it! So, to recap-
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1134
Actually, it was pointed out by a friend this “equality of godhood” involves Tzeentchji still speaking for the four, and leading the “queens”, so one more for the road!
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1135
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 1009
But, when it comes down to it - essentially, the only other characters not given any prominence in the narrative other than Tzeeentchji are Asuka and Rei…and dear God-Emperor does it show just how much this fic revolves around its Stu. There is absolutely nothing in their lives that does not relate to, stem from, or is meant to impress Tzeentchji, because the sole factor in their lives that is important is pleasing him. Which also conveniently allows Academia Nut to shove literally every single canon fail or frustration Shinji suffers onto them! They’re literally his incompetence sinks, so that he looks “cooler” by comparison! But they’re fine with it, because he “completes them” and “makes them better”...which, if you ask Academia Nut, involves turning them into generic harem archetypes that were stale even back when this fic was written! Asuka here can be described as “violent loving Tsundere” while Rei is “crazy cute Yandere who is supposedly endearing for how she goes from nightmarish to loving so easily.” Yeah, uh, the thing about a more heroic-ish Yandere is that they are generally aware, on some level, they have problems…or is comedically non-threatening, if not both. “Literal date rape and mind rape” does not a sympathetic character make.
Emma: Honestly, I get the impression that Academia Nut thinks of “Literal date rape” as “comedically non-threatening”. The entire thing was played off as an “oopsie!” And yeah, Thousand Shinji is basically a story about how everything Rei and Asuka suffered in canon could be fixed if they were just allowed to be Tzeentchji’s possessions. Not that they don’t still suffer everything that happened in canon, with additional suffering, but that none of that matters because the central desire in every woman’s life is to be owned by their male master, and they have that to fulfill them. There’s no actual “fixing” for them in this fix-fic, beyond the fact that Tzeentchji has now been afforded 60% of the female cast as his sexual prize.
Leliel: Really, we keep calling these ladies the trophy wives for a reason - because they have about the same level of agency as big old statuettes on the shelf. With windup keys in their asses.
Emma: Yes, and much like actual trophy wives, they primarily exist to reify heterosexuality in particular! That’s right, we’re writing this during pride month, I haven’t shaved my legs in three weeks, it’s time for the SCARY LESBIAN SEGMENT.
Thousand Shinji might not be one of the highest proofs that the harem male fantasy can exist without actually deconstructing heteronormative monogamy, but that’s due to the fact it has less reach than uh, every other harem anime, and not due to any of its ideals. This is going to sound kind of insane, but I think I could say that Tzeentchji should be understood as one guy in multiple monogamous relationships, and you’ve all been driven insane enough to understand me. Rei and Asuka’s relationship is either non-existent, or presented as a “side effect” of them both orbiting Tzeentchji, a relationship which is presented as natural and inevitable, no matter how abusive or abusive and also incestuous it is.
Leliel: Precisely! The only time we saw anything resembling anything non-straight was when it was either for sexy-gaze…or explicitly predatory. And even then, it was only because the haremettes were both “so in love” with the guy they ended up being a combination of jealous and lusty for each other. Because that’s how that works, ask any man who uses the term “sigma male” unironically!
Emma: I would like to remind everyone of the extended imagine spot where Rei imagines turning herself into a disease to infect Asuka, both as emphasis on the fact that her attraction to Asuka is unnatural and dangerous and literally a disease, but also to say even that would be secondary to Asuka and Shinji’s ability to have a baby and reproduce heterosexually. This is a fic that goes out of its way to beat the drum that women being attracted to each other is both dangerous and also fake and a product of jealousy.
Leliel: And as a final cherry on the shit sundae? As the fic kept on going on, and on, the more and more fetishes kept on being piled on them, especially Rei. Like, suddenly “Tzeentch provided me with a sister” became “Rei wants to jump bones” was obvious incest undertones, but then we had the…everything with how she became ever more unhealthy, and then finally, Misato joining the harem with it being “obvious” that Tzeentchji was attracted to her like “no duh.” As if that was in from the beginning, as opposed to literally fucked into her brain by a Keeper of Secrets. It comes off as desperate more than anything else, using fanservice to get eyes rather than writing.
Emma: Oh, yeah, this is written for exactly one audience, and that audience is “2000s anime perverts (derogatory) who think bi women are threesome dispensers and think it was an objective writing flaw that Shinji was ‘robbed’ of his relationships”. *beat* and sadly, it worked. This has a more comprehensive TV Tropes page and crosswickings than some influential novels.
Leliel: It is also a moment where we stop and remember that TV Tropes was also not really moderated for much of its early existence, like when this was being published…and that the YMMV page has some interesting entries on it. There is a reason editing the site is only really open to members who can be banned now…and why it is frowned on to make pages for your own work.
Others(?):
Leliel: All grouped together because…were there any? At most, we had one or two POVs from Shinji’s schoolmates and The Antagonists, but those mostly were to show just how Awesomesauce (™) the Stu and his Harem were. Especially the supposed villains, who for being “equals”, came off as…utterly unable to do much of anything except stand around, blinking at the “brilliance” of the “mysterious foe” that anyone with a couple calls could figure out.
Emma: One of the central conceits of this fic is that SEELE (unstoppable shadow government that causes the apocalypse) and NERV (incredibly powerful defense agency whose battle strategy is “get the R&D girls to make an offense against God”) are capable of being defeated by one teenager, and that Warhammer technology is completely unanalyzable by the people who reverse engineered the Angels. It’s not a cool power fantasy, it’s just really, really dumb.
Leliel: I think the real big illustration of this fic’s attitude towards the supporting cast is how Gendo decided to “get back” at Tzeentchji…by killing Hikari. The one student that Tzeentchji does not really know. Because to Academia Nut’s brain, she is literally interchangeable with Toji, just as Asuka is interchangeable with her MAAAAAAN. And really…isn’t that a perfect summation of how classic a Gary Stu Tzeentchji is? Literally the entire story is warped around him, as he is the only character with any agency, with maybe some being loaned to his helpers now and again. This is what people originally meant by Mary Sue, but because Tzeentchji is a guy, he passed under the more misogynistic radar of a lot of classic Mary Sue Litmus Tests, which shows the massive problem in those tests.
Emma: Oh, yeah. Years and years ago, a tumblr blogger I follow described an unnaturally perfect, tragic, skilled female character and then pointed out she’d described Batman to make a point about Mary Sues. She’s still getting hate for it, and this is a post that could be in 5th grade if it was a person. The central concept of the Mary Sue is “ewww, girls are writing GIRLS who do things”, and the fact that places that were hubs of “mary sue destruction” completely overlook shit like this and other “uber-shinji” fanfics is proof of that.
Leliel: And once again, it should be noted that I like a lot of Super-Shinji…because a lot of them understand a core praxis of Evangelion as a franchise is that Shinji is genuinely a natural talent and could have saved the world, if he had anything resembling proper support networks that did their job. Good Super-Shinji fics do that and explore how with the right catalyst, Shinji becomes a reconstruction of the very same “young mecha pilot” he deconstructs, someone who is genuinely damaged but can do it when it counts. As shown by the very first lines of the fic, Tzeentchji is not recognizable as Shinji, because his shyness and introversion are “lies”, for…some reason. Including, hilariously, “cello playing in the woods”, because that makes sense. And that is a sign of a much, much broader issue in this fic that is does not understand NGE well at all…or even 40K, but the characters are mostly Eva based, and tied to Eva’s themes, so they are a symptom of Academia Nut’s complete negative thought given to that half of the properties this is supposedly a fanfic of. And in so doing, really shows his entire ass, because a point of Eva is “you are not the center of the world” - but that’s too hard and ego-scarring for Academia Nut to write, so meh, all hail Tzeentchji, who is at the center of the universe by being layered in author love! Just like an onion, including how each layer is see-through, and stinks!
Setting
Leliel: I consider this different from the lore, because I consider this worldbuilding that directly affects the characters. Things in the present, as opposed to just the backstory. Which means that while there’s other scores that apply, I’m going to focus on a big one here…
TALON ON THE SCALES: 2258
Seriously, where was the internal tension in this fic? This fic literally would not know the ability to maintain a credible threat if it bit it in the ass. Or even foreshadowing - remember how Jet Alone’s production model was going to be a thing? You don’t? Well, neither do I, it didn’t figure into the final battle at all! And then the Mass-Produced Evas suddenly started pulling Angelic abilities out of their asses, because whoops, suddenly Academia Nut realized that stations of the canon wouldn’t work if he kept on making even a single Eva OP as fuck, even one driven by a Designated Incompetence Sink like Asuka!
Emma: The bullshit arms race is a pretty common thing for bad writing. The heroes pull enough out of their asses or get OP enough that the only way to fix it when the author realizes “oh, right, narrative tension is a thing that exists” is to let the villains also pull things out of their asses.
Leliel: I think the perfect illustration coming to mind is right there in the last chapter - two things. One is the sudden reveal the God-Emperor was influencing SEELE to “pose a challenge” to Tzeentchji, in spite of that never even being hinted at at all. And the second is the Cute Animal Friends, including one that seems to have been made up purely to make up for missing symmetry…except for Pen-Pen, who had barely been a factor, suddenly being getting the Mark of Chaos Ascendant because He Am Da Cute, without Misato’s input at all. You know, his owner, who relied on him so much for emotional support that the moment she sent him away for his own safety is one of the most heartwarming and tragic moments in the series. The one pet who actually deserves to be the Divine Companion in canon and was hyped up as such is literally forced to never really be at his mistress’ side, because the Mark of Chaos Ascendant is something meant for mortals. Great care for Misato there, Nutty. And yes, Nutty, because Misato, more than any other haremette, was an afterthought. And that brings me to the real doozy…
Lore
Leliel: And now…the big ones.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 2112
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 3328
First, a confession: I was wrong to call this second count EXCOMMUNICATE CANONICUS, and leave PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART to specific Chaos fails. I should have flipped it, with Chaos fails being the primary term, and everything else being a subset of that - because, in my bad memory of the fic and before really dissecting it, I made the mistake of assuming a fanfic about Chaos was written by someone who was actually a fan of Chaos, or even more than the most casual-ass fan of Warhammer 40,000.
Emma: Yeah, it’s obviously a little skewed by the POVs of all the sporking characters I wrote for being traitors, but this is a fic that is as thoughtlessly, loudly “Imperium-as-Default-and-Correct” as the worst stuff that Games Workshop ever shoots out of its extruded book product machine. The human-centrism, the Great Man/strongmanism (although that’s not a framing incompatible with Chaos), the “Hard Men Making Hard Decisions” of it all… this is a fic by someone whose only interest in Chaos as a faction is the veneer of rebellion and the weird sex stuff.
Leliel: Here’s something I only learned later after I started this fic, and checked the original thread; Academia Nut, at the time of writing, thought Chaos was “stupid” I won’t make any assessments either way, as Chaos is often thwarted by its own impatience and infighting, but I think that underscores something really telling about how AN approached this entire crossover - thinking that he needed to “improve” Chaos as a faction, as opposed to recognizing that it is literally Science Fantasy Forces of Hell with Lovecraft undertones - and also Dark Side of the Force. But then again, a website called StarDestroyer.net is going to be reluctant to see anything associated with the Big Cool Galactic Empire as anything but at least effective and manly. (I wonder how many of them had a breakdown when they realized that many classic Star Wars fans love Andor, which is all about Imperial incompetence and how that is fundamentally tied into their general oppressiveness and evil.)
Emma: I’m not sure the Star Wars comparison works; as much as Chaos is the Dark Side of the Force, Warhammer 40k has a Galactic Empire, and it’s the literal Imperium of Man. I think it makes a lot more sense not to frame this as “Chaos is the Empire, so Academia Nut wanted to frame it as cool too,” but rather “The reason Academia Nut thinks Chaos needs fixing is because it is not the Empire faction, which is why this Chaos-centric fanfic spends all its time Burnishing the Golden Throne”.
Leliel: But even beyond that, the simple fact of the matter is, this fic has outright contempt for one half of its foundation, and the other has blind fanboy worship…without much actual knowledge of it at all, coming off as the sort of music fan who is so out of touch they think Fortunate Son is a pro-war song, as a common Americanism (for the record - the song is literally about someone drafted to fight the notorious clusterfuck that was the Vietnam War lamenting that he wasn’t fortunate enough to be born into a politically connected family to waive being pulled into what the entire anti-war movement could tell was a pointless quagmire, and the title comes from the lyrics going “I ain’t no fortunate son” - it is not subtle). If anything, it comes off as a notorious other crossover fanfic that is also partly sporked on this comm, Star Destroyers Rampant - except worse, because while that was about the actual Galactic Empire going nuts, Academia Nut decided Shinji Ikari’s entire personality offended him and removed it, then decided to make it somehow The Objective Best For Its Purpose in the last chapter just so that everyone is sure to know this was right. In other words, Shinji was surgically removed and replaced with a Villain Stu original generation Chaos Lord…and then decided to try and make everything about how Lame and Uncool and Totes Girly and Dweeby Eva is in comparison to 40K and AN’s own knowledge of military hardware…extremely American knowledge, and as the sheer size of the PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART count, and how it is a good size larger than even DUMMY PLUGGED is, both elements about as deep and detailed as a blank piece of printer paper.
Emma: 40K doesn’t even have established military hardware! It’s a cartoon! The sooner you realize it is not actually amenable to powerscaling outside of “wouldn’t it be cool if?” the happier you’ll be.
Leliel: But, speaking as a fan of 40K - I think that whole sentiment really exposes something about the whole nerd space this was born from - the debate nerd culture. That need to “win” fights, no matter what. It’s the same kind of self-serious nitpicking that causes Spacebattles Competence to be a much-mocked meme on Spacebattles itself - the belief that everyone in a story must be perfectly rational and make perfectly optimal decisions at all times in order to “justify” winning. When in fact the whole point of a lot of character development is looking at the reasons people don’t make optimal decisions all the time, and why they shouldn’t, sometimes. This is pretty obvious with Evangelion itself, but - I think that’s another reason why Academia Nut thinks Chaos is “stupid” - because the whole point of Chaos is that its offer is “power and happiness await, the only price is your humanity.” On both levels - you become something strange, monstrous, and demonic as mutations remake you, but also lose human traits such as inherent comradery and the sense you can just trust the people around you implicitly. Great and terrible, but not human, and that’s if you succeed - and that’s usually the kind of place where Chaos’ fuckups come from. They don’t count on altruism and often end up getting in their own way…but that writing that or at least Tzeentchji fighting off that impulse would be haaaard, so suddenly, he’s the master of “enlightened self-interest”, aka “being a complete asshat, but only when the author deems it useful to him and circumstances conspire to make it so.”
Emma: Yeah, as the closest thing to a pro-Chaos sporker this fic has, I don’t want Chaos to be “Good”. I’m not interested in 40k having a good faction; my beef with the Imperium is them being pushed as the best option and how that reflects in the real-life fandom. When I talk about understanding Chaos, I’m talking about understanding it as something people turn to for sympathetic reasons and then are consumed by. I’m talking about it as an engine for tragedy. Thousand Shinji, as a fanfic which does not portray an interesting or canon-accurate version of Chaos, and portrays following that version of Chaos as the path to a happy ending, fails on multiple levels.
Themes (Intended)
Leliel: This is…honestly a bit hard, because so, so much is muddled. At the end, we heard “the gods need to be less dickish”, but absolutely nothing hinted at that before except the Keeper of Secrets being semi-antagonistic, and even that was “for the best.” Supposedly it was about how Shinji showing more of Gendo’s manipulativeness would become a storm of competence, except as we have shown, Gendo’s really more of the Master of Plan B school of planning rather than just being omnicompetent, and more importantly, callous rather than truly cruel or even especially selfish, so he the two aren’t comparable. Perhaps something about how Shinji with more of an edge would be one who could actually help his co-pilots and bridge crew more, except oh yeah, Tzeentchji’s also an egotistical manipulator who is explicitly seeing them as people he can make into better servants. So that doesn’t work either!
Emma: Yeah, I think the fic was trying to contrast Tzeentchji with Gendo as the “good manipulator”, but the problem is that Tzeentchji is so callous and cruel, and this version of Gendo is so unbelievably, incredibly, astoundingly stupid, that it fails for that to matter.
Leliel: Basically, in the end, what happens is that this fic ends up about being nothing more than “wow, cool 40K robot”. For certain values of 40K, as noted. Which leads to the actual theme, which is way more prevalent…
Themes (Actual, And The Sequel’s Specter)
Leliel: Ahem: Tzeentchji is a Special Boy, everything that is Good loves Tzeentchji, nothing goes wrong for Tzeentchji, everything that momentarily inconveniences Tzeentchji is just there to make him look better, Tzeentchji is always right, and Academia Nut is the smartest and more knowledgeable person to have ever read a Warhammer 40K summary off the back of a miniature box. Thank you for paying attention to the short version.
Emma: Basically, everything in the world should revolve around a single great man. If anything in the world does not revolve around a male lead, it should be fixed. If a story involves bad things happening to its male lead, this is clearly a writing flaw that should be fixed. Women are most complete and fulfilled when their whole life revolves around a man who treats them like shit. The underclass are most complete and fulfilled when completely ruled by someone who treats them like shit. Anything outside, “other” or divergent is a disgusting anomaly that must be destroyed. The problem with tyranny, manipulation and cruelty is that the wrong guy is doing them… I miss anything major?
Leliel: And moreover…see, if you think we’re kidding about how much of a powerwank this is…there’s a sequel. Well, actually it was supposed to be a “side fic”, but it’s the closest thing to a “sequel” we’ll ever get. The Open Door, it’s called, and here’s some choice entries from the TV Tropes YMMV page:
Emma: Sort of an “I never thought the ‘writes fic about leopards eating faces’ guy would write fics about leopards eating my faves’ faces” situation?
Leliel: Pretty much. And then the leopards ate his own face, because suddenly, he realized there was no coherent plot he could make.
How to Improve
Leliel: But, as Emma noted…this is instructional badness. And I think the big thing here is that even while we were sporking that there were a bunch of things that we could have done to easily make things a lot more readable, even without changing the premise of the fic too much. Hell, there’s some things we could easily do that wouldn’t even result in that much of a change to begin with. So, here’s a list of some suggestions. My own are going to focus on ones that, without fundamentally changing the core premise of “Shinji gets a Warhammer psyker mentor and comes in a trained cadet and a psychic mastermind” that this fic is supposedly about, and making him, uh, tolerable. Perhaps even good. However, Emma doesn’t care about Super Shinji as a concept, so I’m also going to also give out other ideas that change the genre a bit. Basically, we’re going to both see major problems in this fic, and show you how easily they could be fixed.
1. Actually give us a chance to see Khnemu, or other mentors, raising him.
Leliel: Literally the opening lines of this fic are that everything about Shinji’s canon characterization in this fic is “a lie.” Absolutely nothing is spent even on the reasons why he still pretends to be an inoffensive introvert, just how much he hates everyone and enjoys playing with people because reasons. This makes him a genetic Tzeentch worshiper, but it doesn’t make him recognizable as Shinji. Hell, it doesn’t make him recognizable as Gendo, who is deliberately oblivious to the pain he causes in the name of getting Yui back rather than outright sadistic. And it certainly doesn’t underscore why Shinji cares about Khnemu - or why we should either. No, let’s see the old Sorcerer Lord encountering Shinji, who being Shinji decided that the weird possibly four-armed guy is in pain and needs help, and Khnemu is touched enough to see Shinji as an asset and possible apprentice rather than food - and then it becoming genuine found family. It can take less than a chapter, even! Just have them encounter each other, then a training scene where Khnemu explains Tzeentch worship and how it ties to psychic powers, then Khnemu admitting he doesn’t have much longer before anointing Shinji as a potential Thousand Son, using his precognition to warn him that his biological father wants him as a pawn in a plan that will destroy humanity too thoroughly for it to be remade in Magnus’ image.
Emma: I think that bringing in Shinji’s canon characterization makes it more sensible that he would turn to Chaos, too. We’re never given any indication that Tzeentchji had anything in common with Shinji just because he apparently met Khnemu so young, but canon Shinji could actually be perfect as someone who would seek meaning and belonging in Chaos, particularly before Gendo calls for him. He’s adrift, isolated, and traumatized, and Chaos is scariest when it can offer genuine succor. But that would require both realizing Chaos is a cult that takes advantage of people and not a logical faction you join by making reasoned decisions, and not seeing a traumatized teenager as a terrifying threat to your masculinity.
2. If we’re keeping Shinji a manipulator, make it clear he’s still doing it in the belief it is for the best - and with justification.
Leliel: This is the big one, and what made Tzeentchji so abhorrent and obnoxious. Quite simply, Tzeentchji’s entire personality is based around his own gratification, with any kindness he does for others explicitly being so he can make them better tools for himself, explicitly so - and then we are expected to just kind of…nod along, I guess. This isn’t even really Chaotic behavior; as we noted, while Chaos is prone to massive selfishness and callousness, the human worshipers genuinely think they are in the right to do so, that this is the only way for humanity to truly survive and thrive. Especially for worshipers of Tzeentch, as the God of Ambition and Hope, who are likely going to be assured they know best for everyone, which combined with genuine empathy to actually check is going to result in a scarily competent schemer due to ability to delegate to trusted lieutenants and knowing exactly how to bribe people with mutations that are both what they want and what makes them more effective to you. Will it be perfect? Hell no, that’s Tzeentch - he loves his random changes, and that’s what makes adaptation of the scheme interesting. Moreover, however - it also makes a hypothetical Arcanite Shinji With Actual Functioning Conscience actually fun to read about, because it’s clear he gives a damn about his co-pilots. Change his mentor and patron to a non-Chaos God, don’t even have to do that - Eldrad-trained Shinji might not think highly of the human species in general, seeing them as a very naive and young race compared to his eldar sensei, but also that he’s part of it and that he’s studying with them to be better, so if he fucks up, he sighs, acknowledges fault, and learns.
Emma: There’s a reason Magnus is the most humane and sympathetic Daemon Primarch. And yeah, part of that is that he’s semi-forced to fall after the Heresy begins, but part of that is that Tzeentch–again, god of hope and ambition and trying to change things– is just really good as the God that’s followed by people who mean well, or who once meant well. The fic sometimes makes vague gestures towards Tzeentchji meaning well, but they’re undercut by his brutal selfishness everywhere else, as well as the fact no one is allowed to get mad at him about any of it. To really write a sympathetic manipulator, they both need to do better, and also have people treat them worse (in a deserved way, not in a “look how MEAN they are” way). Or, hell, make it a tragedy! Make it about how you actually can’t manipulate your way out of being manipulated. Lean into the child soldier shit from NGE and all the implications Games Workshop won’t admit about the Primarchs! Make it about a boy who makes the wrong choices because they’re less bad to his perception, and make us see why he believes that! Tragedy isn’t automatically more mature, no, but it’s more mature than trying to make a “fix fic” by smushing two tragedies together and ignoring all the implications.
3. No romance, pick one partner, or make it a real polycule of every part loving every other equally. And also, for the love of god, make it non-sex-focused, this isn’t a porn fic.
Leliel: This one’s fairly obvious. Rei and Asuka are written horribly, because they are written as sex objects first, and Misato, even beyond the oh-god levels of consent issues, is even worse. This is not hard, and I’ve seen good takes on writing romances on both pilots - yes, even Rei, with either tackling the fact that Rei is Shinji’s probably-unknowing sister head-on or handwaved as not that closely related due to genetic engineering. Mari is also good, if you bring her in from later continuity (and to help continue the fanbase troll) - but those are fairly normie takes, and we’re writing from the perspective of a Chaos-ish Shinji. So let’s go a little nuts, shall we? Let’s have a true polycule involved - but make it part of the intrigue. Let’s make it so that it’s because Shinji secretly screws with Fate and SEELE’s plans so bad they’re forced to activate Kaworu early as a “potential pilot”, and while Shinji senses he’s part-xeno, he’s still fascinated by this obvious double agent and the psyker equal despite himself…and during the mental game he plays with his “rival”, his respect becomes mutual affection based on mutual challenge. If you’ve read This Is How You Lose The Time War, a male version of the lesbian rival romance is what I have in mind. Meanwhile, however, Asuka’s inferiority complex is acting up, both quickly pick up and are trying to comfort her…and to the initial horror of all three of them, she finds herself falling for both when they stand up to her initial “I don’t need your pity, baka!” defenses and realize she’s trying to ask for help while not seeming weak. Cue teenage hormones also complicating the game exponentially as neither Kaworu nor Shinji wants to hurt the other nearly as much as their plans and definitely don’t want to break Asuka’s heart or make her feel like she has to decide between the two…especially because they use their AU-induced emotional maturity to walk up to her and confess that their feelings are beginning to run a bit passionate and they don’t want it to explode at the worst time, only for her to realize she is actually fine with both of them and they aren’t really that jealous of the attention the other gets, so the only reason that’d happen is because of the factions tearing them apart. And of course, no sex - 14 year olds in a war, they can figure out kinks when they’re older and done with fighting for their lives!
Emma: I don’t object to that, but honestly? I think making Shinji/Kaworu and Rei/Asuka two rival romances that crash into each other is a really good idea. On a fic level, Thousand Shinji is, again, incredibly forceful about the fact that two women cannot be attracted to each other without a) corruption b) a man to hang real attraction on or c) both. Making Rei/Asuka start before Asuka/Shinji would reframe the focus away from just The Man, and would have a lot of really interesting chemistry in their canon dynamic, particularly if you feed that into Khornate Asuka/prowess-focussed Slaaneshi Rei.
4. The world, especially the villains, change in response.
Leliel: Nobody who works for NERV is particularly stupid, Gendo least of all. He’s going to pick up that his son has behaviors more like his own pretty quickly, and is going to be…conflicted. On the one hand, good, Shinji will happily leap in the robot and fight, and knows when to shut up and lock in, but on the other, he’s clearly suspicious of Gendo - and more importantly, has turned out like his old man, which is something Gendo knows isn’t good and isn’t happy about. So he’s going to look into it, and from there, it’s likely he is going to discover the Warp if it is at all related to AT Fields at all. He may not be a psyker himself, but to be frank, Ritsuko can probably whip up a pretty good substitute to examine the Warp with the MAGI and the Dead Sea Scrolls given their tie to the Angels and thus, AT Fields, and that means SEELE isn’t far behind, especially if Kaworu is present as their agent. He is going to see the Immaterium as a way to better ensure Third Impact by observing Instrumentality from both the material and mental worlds, and that means NERV likely changes its own schemes to account for psychic powers as well - and that’s even assuming Gendo has no psyker potential of his own, the man already has the obsessive discipline to make the average daemon hurt its claw trying to possess him. And that’s just the main human antagonists; the Angels quickly learning and adapting AT Fields to more creative forms that manipulate the Warp would be cool, and other students picking up 40K elements simply by observing Shinji would be fascinating…especially if he isn’t exactly a fan of that. Like, he does not want Hikari to start literally using military discipline learned from an Eldar Path as part of class rep duties, beyond being annoying it’d be utterly exhausting.
Emma: Yeah, I know I’ve complained about this a lot, but for a fic that wants us to believe Gendo is so evil and cunning that anything Tzeentchji does against him is justifiable… Gendo sure never does anything. Gendo is an amoral, intelligent man obsessed with a single goal. If you want to bring Warhammer 40k into his setting, you have to consider that you’re giving Gendo a bunch of new toys, too.
5. Make it a full fusion between properties.
Leliel: The first of the “let’s change the premise” ideas, who says we have to keep the setting as is? The princeps pilots of Imperial Titans are at least partly based on Evangelion - the whole deal behind how rare they are (and why the Collegia Titanica is willing to recruit outside of the Adeptus Mechanicus, normally a huge no-no for the paranoid and possessive tech-priests) is because they need the willpower to safely link to the intelligent, willful, and furious machine-spirit of a Titan. Shinji being an abnormally young princeps in an entire class of mecha pilots, most of whom are older than him and were educated their whole life by the Priesthood of Mars…and show just how screwed up the Imperium is at its core, that the Evangelions-as-Titans are simply “oddball projects, but nothing beyond what a Magos does if they’re being especially eccentric and if it works, it works.” Admittedly, said things likely need the legal protection of the Inquisition to continue, but they’ve done worse in the ostensible name of the Imperium. Ask Fidus Kryptman about his Line some day, and the several dozen worlds he burned to deny the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Leviathan biomass - and how he was punished by giving him command of several squads of Deathwatch Space Marines to make sure they didn’t find a new source and keep them isolated fighting Orks in Octarius. Hell, doesn’t need to be 40K; I mentioned Destiny, but Warframe, for spoiler reasons, could be ported and fused as is. The important part of Eva is its characters, so simply dress them in proper universe attire, figure out how the Angels and Evas fit, season to taste. Don’t even need to alter stations of the canon too much, because by nature, you’re examining how this story manifests in a different universe (but yeah, do alter some, because different universe.)
6. Alter stations of the canon.
Leliel: Actually, let’s get on that - this is something I see all the freaking time, but putting new powers in your fic alters canon. It’s okay to change up canon. In fact, it’s recommended - you can’t expect, say, the Angels to attack in a different order unless something about the new cosmology you added affects that, but Gendo is going to change his plans in response to a different Shinji, as noted. Heck, he may even consider Jet Alone worth keeping around as a supplement to the Evas if someone shows a way to overcome AT Fields artificially, even weakly. It’s certainly going to change how the pilots think and fight, and how the adults act. Really, defaulting to stations of the canon, especially the “allegedly cooler fights, but functionally identical outcomes and events” really shows a deep underconfidence in your own writing…and a bone-deep laziness as well.
Emma: Also, make sure the alterations you make to stations of the canon actually have ripple effects! This fic is willing to do things that should fundamentally alter the course of the story, but because then Academia Nut wouldn’t be allowed to follow the plot beats of a story he hates so tightly, things as earth-shaking as “Shinji’s personality is completely rewritten from the very beginning”, Hikari’s horrible death, and… whatever happened with the party and all the horrible violence there only matter when the writing is directly looking at them.
7. Give other characters agency - and if you’re feeling a bit radical, make it so Shinji isn’t the main character!
Leliel: This is the most radical change at its core - because as noted, Tzeentchji is the only character with agency in this entire goddamned fic. Everyone else is warped around him. So giving anyone else their own arc already alters things unrecognizably for the better…but as noted, you don’t even have to have Shinji as the main character. Hell, if you’re having him as a manipulator, having another person trying to follow him and decode what he’s actually thinking while dealing with the fallout leads to a wonderful mystery story. He can even remain a protagonist, and the reveal of his full plans don’t require lying to the audience (the main POV character is discovering at the same rate we are, a la Watson and Holmes) but it reminds us - from the outside, this kid is kind of a creepy ass!
Emma: That would be actually really interesting. It’d be a good way to bring in the pilot candidates like Toji and Kenichi, kids who, despite the narrative’s stated aims, are treated far more disposable in this fic than they are in canon. Hell, making them the humans caught up in a war of gods and monsters would actually bring in a very 40k version of the human perspective.
Leliel: And while we realize it would probably be numerically ironic for nine, seven works given how it’s Nurgle’s sacred number and a good spread of tips. However, there’s also something Wanderer realized when looking over this list (because while he quit, he’s still following):
All of these suggestions would literally require rewriting of the fanfic from the first sentence onward.
There is literally nothing good about this fic that is not tainted by the sheer magnificent garden of Tzeentchji’s asshole nature. It was a bad idea to make him such a snobby and materialistic ass, and it was executed worse. And then it got worse as he built on himself, and the fic warped worse and worse to accommodate him and the fundamental toxic power fantasy he personifies.
Emma: Yeah, I don’t think the fundamental premise is completely poisoned. *beat* Just, literally everything else is. They say there are no bad premises, just bad executions, but the flipside of that is that there is no premise that cannot be ruined by terrible execution by an incurious, smug, bigoted, dismissive asshole.
Leliel: And with that with say with one final one-fingered salute:
Fuck you, Tzeentchji.
Emma: *Grinning* Fuck you, Tzeentchji, for the last and loudest time!
Scenes From Across the Seas of Tindalos…
----
“So, I’m guessin’ this is goodbye, friends?”, Vulkan said, the portal device beginning its priming sequence as it began tuning to its planar coordinates.
“Kind of, though I suspect the path is still open. We might see each other again,” Taion said. “Apparently my world is fated to be destroyed if saved, because it needs to be separated into its components…but then it will re-fuse in a safer way later, and doors will remain open between my world and the Kevesi one before then. Bit of a vision shared by Diego’s Band, which is good to know - no doubts about facing Moebius.”
“To be entirely honest,” Corax said, with his distinct morbidly humorous tone, “I doubt you would care even if you suspected Z’s death would result in instant Exterminatus. The situation you describe of an Aionian would make the average member of the Death Korps of Krieg furrow their gas masks in pity. At least the Kriegers live and fight and die for an actual cause as opposed to the privilege of being a good vintage of wine for the local cannibal witch-lords while they treat the process of becoming said vintage as the ten-thousandth season of Thyrrus Game. And I already earmarked Krieg as ‘needs reform last century.’”
“Sounds like it,” Taion said, a bit stiffly. “But, well…I have my duties. We saved a large portion of, well…everything. I’ve seen the same kind of hunger in Moebius that I saw in the Black Dragon. If not more. Because by the end…everyone near him was hollowed out. Less than my own Mondo.”
“Dat’s true,” Vulkan said, sadly, as he looked at the two girls who were now hanging limp like someone had cut their strings - even given their mutation, they looked more like discarded dolls than monsters, left behind by a cruel child. “Next item on the agenda is going to be givin’ those to Sophia and her sisters, I think. Dey can’t live as humans any more. Dey mutants, though they at least got their free will back.”
“Is…that entirely advised…?”, Corax said, with a nervous glance at the inactivated Eva behind him.
“They’re also going to include monitor devices, especially in case any of those Daemon Primarchs get any ideas about conquering other universes and start crossing the Seas of Tindalos,” Taion pointed out. “It’s both an act of compassion and quiet monitoring.”
“Ah,” Corax said, relaxing. “Though…Miss Katsuragi? Did you find any trace of her…?”
“That…” Taion smiled, bringing up a vial with a softly glowing purple object inside. “Is actually something we can thank Dr. Akagi for.”
Vulkan looked closer. “Is that…?”
“Her soul? Yes. Perfect for putting in a clone body, one made with technology from my world - sans the ten-year quick growth, of course. I do believe Trazyn and Orikan are getting more than they bargained for, given how she was able to stomach pump the corpse of a god.”
---
Shenzen Jahyryphost, sometimes called the Penumbral Slayer of the Unsullied Sanctum, Brother-Sargeant of the Night Lords and Emissary to the Officio Assassinorum, was sometimes jokingly called the Temple of Focused Pain, both for his incredible ability to operate when injured and even turn his apparent inability to be slowed down even by explosives into part of his Legion’s morale-breaking tactics, and for a relatively minor issue in his gene-seed. Quite simply, when the old Space Marine was deeply annoyed for a long period of time (anger without the adrenaline rush of a true fight response), the neurotransmitter cascade in his brain provoked an ‘awaken’ response in his Catalepsean Node, even when he was already fully active instead of in the aware-trance the organ normally allowed instead of unconscious sleep. This caused him painful and distracting migraines that could worsen into outright microseizures, which the Apothecaries of his Legion accounted for by installing an implant under his temple that, when rubbed, would ‘tune’ the Node and end the migraine earlier…but gave him a very distinct expression and gesture that indicated to all who knew him that either a situation needed to resolve itself in the next hour or he would seriously consider terminal sanctions of someone, or that he would feel the need to scream into the empty void for a bit in frustration. Or more likely, both.
“...Let me see if I have heard you correctly, Nocht,” Shenzen said, inhaling as he finished the massage sequence for the implant and lowered his hand from his temple. “You discovered a hole to another universe, where ours is not just a story, but an enthusiast’s recreation of a larger universe.”
Nocht nodded. “That is correct, my lord.”
“In said universe, you met a version of Primarch Lorgar, along with several of his brothers, except in their universe, they were the ones to become Traitors to the God-Emperor. And also female, which enabled a mix of genders among Astartes in their own respective universe. And also two psykers with the ability to steal ‘hearts’ to remove anti-social impulses and Chaotic leanings. And a xenos hybrid who later became a non-hostile Daemon Prince, who helped you, and I am reading from your account, ‘spork’ a world where Vulkan had replaced the central character of a pre-Emperor Holy Terran defense against a xenos invasion while assistance with an alliance with the Necrons.”
“That is a summary of what I said, and I am just as flummoxed,” Nocht said.
“And then you and the Daemon Prince, plus its…his cohort carry out a distraction action with most of the Daemon Primarchs so those two psykers and their own backup, which included male, loyal versions of Corax and Vulkan himself, could steal the heart of the Black Dragon, causing him to fall apart and die in the tides of the Warp.” Shenzen inhaled. “Did I leave anything pertinent out?”
“Well, you forgot how a local techpriest was converted into a Necron using a variant of the Pariah method and starting a revolt on an Imperial World to trick the Drukhari into showing themselves so we could interest one particular Necron Overlord,” Nocht said. “I feel that may be a tangent, admittedly.”
“It is,” Shenzen said, before turning to the guests, kept very safely behind purity seals on the other side of the window. “And I wish to the Throne you did not bring these witnesses, so I could assume you took leave of your senses in that hole.”
“You do realize that me being here has already given me several ideas on how to make your crusade for justice beneficial to myself and psykers in general, right?”, Magda said with a smirk. “Especially given your more open-ish attitude towards them?”
“I…really don’t see why I need to be behind this?”, Pyra said, poking at an Aquila. “I don’t even recognize this.”
“You’re close enough to being a Warp familiar that it was for the Inquisitor’s sake. You know, when he stops babbling madly about the world needing to make sense again,” Nocht said. “But…that is how things worked out. I apologize for the…general insanity.”
“Hmph.” Shenzen thought, then shrugged and sat back in his ornate chair. “But, on the other hand…I cannot say I am too upset. It certainly does explain why the Salamanders have suddenly completely lost cohesion and are attacking each other and worlds seemingly randomly, and there are reports their new homeworld suddenly cooled to iron instead of being volcanic. Also Governors suddenly renouncing wealth and taking vows of poverty and charity, the Astronomicon having increased in brightness to levels not seen in millennia, and large caches of precious items suddenly transmuting into practically useful supplies and raw materials. The citizenry report visions of thieves with the face of true angels stealing the darkness from the soul of a false one who casts himself down before the Emperor to beg forgiveness, as well. Annoying, given how this makes larceny a holy profession for a great deal of the Imperial Creed…but given how that is the cost for being down a Daemon Primarch, I believe the Arbites can manage. The universe just became a significantly brighter place…especially in the knowledge that even Vulkan, once his self-deceptions were removed, had the capacity for remorse and atonement.”
“Lord Curze’s spirit smiles upon us all,” Nocht said, lifting his water cup in an impromptu toast. “Though I suppose this will be all classified?”
“Of course. Even beyond the fact that I do not want the secret of extradimensional travel going anywhere, the Ecclesiarchy would not be pleased to discover that this was done with the help of any form of Chaos, come the apocalypse or not. I can already imagine the noble lineage being drawn up for this ‘Shinobu Hattori’ to explain that he was always a true exemplar of the aristocracy who was cruelly usurped and defamed by the scheming and heretical House Shido, but remained true to the Emperor and found restitution along with Calculus Sakura, his Lexmechanic beloved - that a criminal saved everything with the help of a Vindicare with a notoriously existent personality is already inconvenient enough for the orthodoxy of the Creed, so naturally, at least one has to be a Rogue Trader. As much as I would have it that their identities would be obliterated altogether rather than twisted like this for the benefit of the Inquisition’s propaganda.” Shenzen paused. “But as for us…good work. I am going to see if Assassins get awarded a Star of Terra. At least. They will be viewing you as a Saint someday, I believe - probably in your lifetime. They already are with Hattori and Sakura, and let us be entirely honest, the Creed needs to be made more uncomfortable with the idea of ‘lowly’ people being heroes.” Shenzen’s face broke into one of his rare smiles. “Ave Dominus Nox.”
---
Shinobu and Futaba, now dressed in the sleek wear of the Last Redoubt, looked over the increasingly strange, but also increasingly thriving, streets of Tokyo-3.
“Sure you don’t need us?”, Shinobu asked. “We never directly fought those Tsan-Chan troops or their commanders. Seems like they might be pretty bitter about their ally losing…”
“Trust me, I’m used to them,” Diego said with a confident grin. “Honestly, at this point, they’re almost part of the Last Redoubt’s own myth - the Sparta to our Athens, but hopefully not with the incredible luck that let Sparta beat Athens and pretend their society knew up from down.”
“If there was any society that should be seen as a real life Evil Fantasy Empire,” Futaba said, with a knowing nod. “But yeah. I still need to train this brand new psychic power of mine. Even in universes without the Dark Gods, it’s still hard to distinguish myself from the Warp sometimes. And I don’t want to suborn my will to the Emperor or something like that.”
“Mm. And Ichiro’s dream is…ultimately making everything like that. There’s a reason we call the Tsan-Chan Wasps, beyond their uniforms,” Diego said, looking…sad. “If you’re one of them, your life means nothing beyond what you can do for the city…or be for the city. There are actively rewards to your family for donating yourself to be remade into a monster or building materials. Almost as much as turning in traitors.”
“...Yeah, I can see why the Last Redoubt of Humanity doesn’t think they count,” Shinobu said, blanching a bit. “I guess that’s also why they think ‘cruel empire’ is a compliment - they show they’re ruthless enough to do that kind of crap.”
“Pretty much. They say that kindness is a weakness when it comes to survival in the Night Lands, so cruelty with benefits is a virtue and a sign of wisdom,” Diego said, directing his throne body to start creating a coral reef. “But now? Now we have a world with a sun to go to - I don’t intend to rule it, as much as any God can avoid ruling the world they remade from its apocalypse. I’m a scientist, doctor, and scholar, not a king. But I do plan on taking advantage of how much empty space there is, make a settlement for Redoubters who want to see the sun when it still shone with light and a world without monsters or the Wasps to relax in. Plus, I think I probably converted most of the survivors of this version of Third Impact to Shub-Niggurath and the other Old Ones; I did just save them in her name, and unlike the Daemon Primarchs, they aren’t associated with the thing that just tried to brand them all into zombielike servitude. I need to make sure they worship her in the studying of life, Mi-go communication and worshipful science with occasional wild parties style, not bloody murders in the woods, forced mutation, and rampaging kaiju used as a form of divination style.”
“Well, you are a God. And, well, living embodiment of the strange aeons where even death dies. I mean, look at the oceans,” Futaba said, pointing down. “Pretty much a big salty puddle with orange flavor before, and now look at all them fishies!”
“If you’re starting a religion, it’s best to make sure you help write the commandments,” Shinobu agreed, knowingly. “It’s bad enough when you’re just a celebrity - we had to dope slap Mishima’s Shadow for a reason. Though…” Shinobu frowned. “What’s the spork crew going to be doing?”
“Well, Emma’s going off, she earned her break, but…” Futaba was cut off, as her eyes suddenly began to glow. “Oh. Oooh no. This is your relaxation spork…?”
The other two looked at the tiny prophetess in alarm.
With an expression that could have been absolute terror or trying very hard not to laugh, Futaba looked up. “So. Have you guys ever heard of certain events in American comics?”
(Stay tuned for Wanderer and Leliel’s next concurrent spork with Rising of the Shield Hero: Heroes in Crisis!)
Timeline NDS-9182736 (Xothian Classification),
Earth, Ruins of Tokyo-3, NERV Bridge
It was the coffee that finally drove in what Necrons lost with their flesh.
Touch? Ritsuko barely acknowledged touch to begin with. Really, after the way she died, a few decades or so away from all sensation of touch was a good rest cure. Moreover, the actuators and sensors of a Necron body did a good enough job - most of Ritsuko’s time was spent in a sterile lab of cold metal and plastics anyway, and the sensors in a noble-class chassis for a Necron (a strict demand of her saviors) were very careful to simulate touch as accurately as possible for the practical reason that also accurately simulated pain - and with it, a guide for repairs or early warning for the direction of danger (though a moment’s thought could turn it off). So at worst, it felt like wearing very thin latex to her at times, mildly annoying at worst, but easy to forget.
Autonomic processes? That took more getting used to, it took a while before Ritsuko didn’t have odd pauses before she spoke because she forgot she didn’t even need air to activate her voice synthesizer. Nor did she feel her heart race when she ran (or at least jog - Necrons, as a rule, were not built with top speed in mind), or sweat when panicked, and that was sincerely alienating…but then she realized she didn’t hunger, either. Or tire, beyond boredom. Or really, never feel anything other than her best. She imagined this could feel alienating after a while, but for now, she could deal (though she felt nothing but pity for those poor souls afflicted with the Flayer Virus, and with it, the memory of hunger - without the ability to satiate it). More importantly, she remembered bleeding out, and the sense of that horrible realization her own heartbeat was killing her was…well, that was a silver lining to no longer having a pulse to begin with.
Loss of emotions? …She was quite able to form her own nuanced opinions on touch and lack of autonomic processes, as well as make decisions based on her opinions and feelings, made that point a moot one. By definition, whoever thought she lost emotions in any noticeable way was an imbecile. She was Ristuko Akagi before and she was Ritsuko Akagi now, though there was an interesting philosophical discussion as to whether she was Ritsuko-in-a-metal-body or a robot-named-Ritsuko who happened to perfectly remember a dead woman’s memories and so was programmed to think exactly like her.
And right now, the program told her that this was the worst discovery she had made yet, and she cursed herself for not seeing it.
“...Dr. Akagi?” Maya Ibuki said, from the other side of the bench. “...Ritsuko? You’ve been staring at that cup for a full minute.”
Ah. That wasn’t implausible. “...I can’t smell this,” Ritsuko said, looking up. “Not in the way you can. My olfactory sensors are dissecting it and giving me a sense of its complexity and composition, as well as how rich it is…but true smell is as much taste as it is in the nose. And Necrons…are not designed to eat.”
A look of understanding and sympathy came to Maya. “...ah.” She paused. “Um…” She held out her hand, the fact it was partly covered in alien flora somehow making the gesture seem even more awkward.
Wordlessly, Ritsuko handed over her request, still marveling at the look of a woman who had been haphazardly killed only to be revived through symbiotic plants as an extremely leafy revenant (with sprouting flowers out of her hair and what were formerly lethal neck and torso wounds) in a mostly repaired version of her old casual wear, sipping coffee from an extradimensional traveler’s machine, as they watched the source of her revival shed more of his spores into the increasingly LCL-free oceans.
“You know, senpai,” Maya said after a good sip. “When I thought to myself that a new position would change view of reality…I didn’t expect that to be anywhere close to ‘brought back from near brain death by a living genetic pool of the Angels, told Pilot Ikari was some kind of interdimensional galactic warlord dragon, and I needed to help launch and coordinate both an Eva and an emergency attack within the fake Ikari’s AT Field.’ And then I fully realized the person telling me this was you. As an alien robot. I’m still not sure how I feel about…any of this. I’m not sure if I will for…years.”
“Imagine what it’s like being an alien robot, after your possessed best friend murdered your previous body while screaming conspiracy theories and homophobic slurs,” Ritsuko said, slumping in her chair. “I have discovered that just because I can’t physically feel tired doesn’t mean I can’t be exhausted. At least we won…even if our world is now the dominion of an Angel-Lilim hybrid and his effective siblings. And their worshipers. Which is actually a far better ending than anticipated, as they are capable of cross-species communication and transactional relationships, at worst.”
“Though it apparently wasn’t always that way. A world with a literal dark sun, they’re from…I’m surprised some are even recognizable as human any more, let alone a majority.” Maya shrugged. “At least Diego…I think he’s still Diego, he could have renamed himself - ahem! He’s replacing the ocean’s ecology by feeding on the LCL. I’m eager to experience winter for the first time…” She smiled. “I’ve always wanted to experience snow again, have more memories of it than just being a young child. We can see it together…”
…And here came the pain. “...Lieutenant Ib…Maya,” Ritsuko corrected herself. “That’s…that’s going to be a…problem…”
Maya frowned. “Dr. Akagi, I understand. Don’t worry, my plants are apparently insulated, and…while being a machine is awkward, I-”
“That’s not the issue, Maya,” Ritsuko interrupted. “I mean I’m not staying on Earth. I’m going with Trazyn to his Dynasty’s domain next month”
Maya stared at her. “What?”, she squeaked.
“Part of the deal made for my revival,” Ritsuko said with a sigh. “I wasn’t exactly in a position to object - and really, living at all makes a lot of deals forgivable.” With a snap of her fingers, the Necron-human made a hologram of a particular, organic-looking container appear. “Because of that thing. The Soul Urn.”
Maya blinked. “...it looks like a heart to me. Or a spleen.”
“It’s Evangelion tissue. It also has a soul in it - my soul. I am the only Necron in existence to know its fate, definitively - and that it did not need to be destroyed in order for the personality matrix to exist.” Ritsuko switched the view to other Necrons. “And that implies that on some level, their souls exist too…and even if not, I am an ideal test model for getting new ones. An important part in getting new, mortal bodies.”
“...but you can come back, right?”, Maya asked, a little desperately. “Necron ships can travel fast, and you can have shore leave-”
“Who would want me back?” Ritsuko finally asked.
Maya stared at her. “...sorry?”
“You know the reason the Black Dragon felt threatened by me? Why he isolated and broke me? Because we are the same, at our cores,” the scientist continued. “Scarred by our mothers, we escaped into a delusion of agency, lashing out at everything nearby. All the while, just…becoming ever more of a miserable hag, hating everything that could help, treating the the one person who we should have trusted the most like absolute shit, except he didn’t have an Elder God to save her from my own mistakes-”
Ritsuko’s recriminations were suddenly cut off by her sensors registering a kiss.
“...Mmmpf?!” Even without lungs, the scientist could still be rendered utterly without words.
Maya drew back, tears in her eyes. “Senpai…Ritsuko. Stop. Please. If you are going to be alone and immortal…I don’t want you to spend eternity torturing yourself thinking you’re the monster you saved everyone from. The monster who was strangling that beautiful brain of yours.”
“Buh…” Ritsuko blinked, one could almost hear the perhaps-literal servos in her head whirring as she slowly began to comprehend that her lieutenant was not only homosexual, but carrying a torch for her. “But I…I didn’t do anything! Just coordinated the distraction and cloak-”
“And you’re the one who built and planned it! I was following your strategy! I fought, we won - but you fought too!” The tears were flowing now. “So please - Ritsuko. Senpai. Look me in the eyes, and tell me, even if you leave me behind…stop calling yourself the villain of your own story. If you hadn’t helped…nobody would be anything in their own story…”
Ritsuko stared at her. “...why me?”, she finally said. “I’ve been…I’m awful to you…?”
“In the name of Gendo Ikari. He is, uh…” Maya looked at the marker placed nearby, as a sign of polite recognition by the Last Redoubt than any real mourning for some of the names on it. “No longer an issue. And the thing is…you’re also the person who blames yourself first, when you’ve done wrong. So I think you’re also the person who can do better.”
Ritsuko took a long minute to think over that.
“...I can’t promise you that,” she finally admitted. “But…I think I can take you with me, and show you snow on other worlds. Help you help me see that I’m more than just…the Commander’s woman. Maybe…maybe I can learn to be someone else’s.”
Maya beamed.
[Link to fork on das-sporking here.]
Leliel: [Long exhale] You know, there’s a lot of thesis statements one could give with Thousand Shinji - it’s a hatefic of Neon Genesis Evangelion disguised as a crossover, it’s a sue fic of someone who barely understands the wiki of Warhammer 40,000 trying to write an original faction disguised as a crossover, it’s a crossover that thinks it’s a stompfic - but the core summation I have for it is…well, my normal co-sporker could not force himself to continue reading it past about chapter 17. This is a man who has every intention of sporking one of the most infamous comics in Western history to relax for our next project, and the shit with Kaworu, after the date rape scene, broke him. That’s how bad things got.
Emma: Honestly, the best way I can describe this fanfic is… instructionally bad. It’s a show of fascinating writing ineptness from the beginning to the end, on every level from the technical to the moral, elaborated on by the fact the author Thinks he’s a literary genius who has fixed any problem anyone could ever have with any story. It’s a crossover where one side is blatantly favoured over the other, it’s a crossover where the favoured side is barely comprehended or accurate, it’s a fix-it fic where things like “character flaws” and “drama” are treated as needing fixing, it’s a “romance” written by someone who thinks only straight men are people… it’s one of the most fascinating encapsulations of badfic this side of Partially Kissed Hero.
Leliel: And the capital T in Thinks is deserved here, because holy shit the sheer intellectual arrogance on display as well…
Leliel: So, yeah. As Emma said, one of the big things about that fic is that it isn’t just bad - it’s bad in such obvious and fixable ways that it can be used as a tool of genuine instruction. We’ll get to that, with the breakdown of the characters, setting, plot and lore issues. But…before we really get into it…Wanderer has something to say. Specifically, the fact which drove him off wasn’t the fact it wasn’t just terrible…it was dull.
Wanderer: Yeah, and I think what just fucking shits me, was that there wasn’t even anything interesting to spork out of it, at least for me. With the previous sporks we’ve done or are doing, A Brighter Dark and The Rising of Shield Hero, there was always something really, really fucking bad about them, but they were still fun to dissect, in the way that a wrong answer is worth dissecting. A Brighter Dark isn’t even that bad, honestly; talking with the author made me realize it was a product of edginess as a teen rather than malice towards the game and its fans such as me, and it genuinely improved near the end! Not enough to save it from being a badfic given its horrid start, but it was genuinely getting better over time. And even with as repulsive as The Rising of Shield Hero was, as fundamentally-irredeemable as that anime is, it was at least fun to poke fun at and mock at how shockingly terrible it really was… both for the realization that this was the anime culture warriors hyped up as the next great anime back in 2019, and the fact that it barely had anything going for it even then and only carried on to the present via shallow hype, on top of a truly disgusting exploration of slavery and grooming. Again; the answer is fundamentally wrong, but it’s at least interesting to dissect in a way that makes it fun to analyze.
Thousand Shinji, however? It reminded me a lot of a spork for an entire franchise that I shall not name for now that I’ve canned in the end and put on indefinite hiatus — not because there wasn’t potential for making a fun spork of it, because believe me, there’s enough ‘WTF’ in it that it would absolutely be fun to take the piss out of, but because I was simply just objectively not in the right emotional state of mind to be able to spork it and be mentally okay, to the point where the mods themselves were growing concerned and asked us to stop before it damaged our mental health more. The wound was still way too fresh at the time, especially given this was after a particularly traumatic betrayal I went through at the time (no, I will not explain; ask Leliel in DMs if you’re so curious). For the sake of the comm rules and my mental health, I’ve decided not to do it on the comm even if we ever come back to it (and even then, only with mod permission from this comm and with a third person serving as a moderating influence on the two of us), because a.) I don’t want a repeat of what happened with the first attempt, and b.) I want enough positivity from mocking the whole thing in a way that feels like I can showcase how Neil Line-crossing that franchise really is when it gets past a certain point, kind of like marveling at a twenty-semi pileup like a piece of art. It’s gets astoundingly bad in a way that’s truly memorable, and my biggest mistake was that, put simply, I tackled that spork when I just wasn’t ready for it on an emotional level, because my breakup with that franchise was fucking messy.
Put simply, it just wasn’t fun for me at the time, and that brought out the worst in us. Sporking should not feel like a duty.
And that’s really the lesson I learned later than most sporkers knew from the start about sporks: they’re supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be fun taking the piss out of bad media, mocking it, and then outright making fun of what it does wrong on a fundamental level, and occasionally getting the torches and pitchforks out for a writer who’s truly banal as a person for the stuff they endorse in the work. Because you’re effectively reclaiming that badness in a way that makes for good entertainment. It’s effectively the inverse of sporking Harry Potter for a lot of people in this blog who had their roots in it (beyond the fact of how fraught a lot of the political issues are likely hitting comm rules) — with how J.K. Rowling is as a person, and the fact Harry Potter’s awfulness is only truly observable from a hindsight perspective, it runs into the issue that it’s just not a fun spork or one particularly worth doing at all (unlike the other franchise I’ve alluded to; it’s at least got enough batshittery to be enjoyable to laugh at), because there really isn’t a lot of people in this blog who have the neutrality to pull it off (me, I never cared for Harry Potter, so I’m one of the only ones who could, but even then it probably would be a slog and still would run into aforementioned hot-button issues - and Leliel actually did care for it, so he likely wouldn’t be able to help me), and the work — more importantly — not even having enough ‘WTF’ to be able to make taking the piss out of it fun. It’s not even fun bad. It’s just boring mediocrity.
And that’s exactly why I’ve dipped out of Thousand Shinji following the last stretch.
With the upcoming comic we’re sporking, there’s so much wrong with it and it’s so brazenly offensive that it becomes downright fascinating to dissect how much it gets wrong; it’s like Dragonball Evolution in that regard, a work being fucking objectively garbage on a fractally wrong level, and comes and goes like a high-speed car crash into a nuclear power plant. That is special, rare, and above all else, interesting to make fun of; look no further than Team Four Star’s absolutely hilarious riff on that movie.
By contrast, there is absolutely nothing remotely interesting of a bastardized copy of one of anime’s greatest classical anti-heroes turned into an insufferably smug Redditor who rapes, perverses and corrupts his way into glory and becomes the “real Chaos Gods” and then proceeds to stomp his way through the entire story. He’s literally that scene from the Gmod animation Scout Con 2014, in which a convention full of Scouts (an infamously smug speedster twerp from Team Fortress 2 with an ego the size of Texas) basically watching a self-masturbatory fanfic about how great the Scout is… at literally everything else’s expense (timestamp: 8:57-9:30):
No plot. No characterization. No canon detail. No consistency. No bathos. No logos. No ethos. No actual good writing. Just a purely self-stroking, ego-aggrandizing fluff piece that only exists to how how “awesome” Academia Nut’s Sue is and how “KEWL” his take on the New Chaos Gods are. There is absolutely, literally, and objectively nothing interesting or of value to dissect from a story like Thousand Shinji, on any comprehensive level. It’s literally the kind of fanfic people think about when they call bad writing from any bad published work “fanfic-tier”, even when there are many hard-working fanfic writers who have made far better works than this swill ever did.
So, it’s perhaps no surprise we’re capping it off here and not bothering with the sequel, because… there’s absolutely nothing of value in that masturbatory mess that we haven’t seen here already. I knew that I’ve hit my limit with this fic after the whole date rape sex pest shit with Tzeentchji, and that I had to bail out of it because it was just all downhill from here, and my line in the sand was crossed there. There are absolutely no redeeming qualities to a fanfic like Thousand Shinji; it’s not even so bad it’s good, in the sense that it’s fun to make fun of. It’s not just bad straight-up, either. It, in fact, commits the worst sin a piece of entertainment can commit: being straight-up boring bad.
Look, all I’m saying is, if you’ve given me the choice between Thousand Shinji and Dragonball Evolution, I’d choose the latter over the former any day, by gathering my friends and just riffing on it, because there’s at least some entertainment to be had from that. In that, Thousand Shinji is closer to the movie version of The Last Airbender, being so unmistakably a chore to get through that it makes even a riff-track among friends utterly dull and lifeless beyond belief. This entire fanfic was an abomination of bad writing and boring edge, and I would’ve dipped sooner if I knew that the date rape was coming up.
Leliel: [applauds] And, I want to put in a word myself: As much as I was chewing out the lore fails, and making the last chapter even longer - I am almost thankful for them, because I’m learning to be a librarian. Research and correcting errors is literally my thing and what I find fun, I’m trying to make a career out of this. If there wasn’t, I think I would have seriously tried to skip the last couple chapters or end early. That is how fucking dull this thing got. When we invoked Deep Hurting, we were not fucking kidding.
Emma: I, uh, obviously don’t agree about the boredom, given what I said up there. I think part of it is that as I’ve got older I’ve lost patience with both the common targets of older sporkings, and the common methodology of them. I don’t care for sporking cringeworthy self-insert Legolas romances, and I don’t care for rapid-fire smug jokes. I like analysis, and I like to be sporking something meaty that I can really get into stripping to the bone, in a more instructional manner. A lot of older sporking subjects don’t have enough there, and honestly, I don’t want to contribute to the nasty culture where “teenage girl’s self-insert redeems Draco Malfoy with the power of love” is considered an unforgivable sin but this is considered good, solely because it was written by a Rationalist (™) man, and not a sissy girl. This was fascinating to spork, because it’s so far from the dictates of what’s usually understood as bad fanfiction, while being so abominably bad. And that’s without even getting into the social aspects. This fic is like a bingo card for misogyny, toxic masculinity, homophobia… it manages to be MORE uncomfortable with the real-world implications of its fantasy races than 40k canon, so there’s that, too. And I’m not going to claim that Thousand Shinji has the reach to do serious harm, or that dissecting it was any sort of great social good, but it felt nice to be able to just full-throated scream at something for being written by an inept, smug bigot who encapsulates the Dunning-Krueger effect.
Leliel: Seriously. And speaking as someone who is from that Uber-Rational part of the interwebs that likes taking things to their logical extremes to see what happens…this didn’t even do that right. I wasn’t kidding when I said the fight porn was the redeeming aspects of this fic…but past Ramiel, they got so utterly predictable and clearly tied into canon before actually doing anything cool with the gear that they just became another slog, and not even notable enough to be worthy of a spork. And then even that was dropped for the psyker-based fights, in spite of the fact that “affecting materials in subtle but fun ways” is very much the fine control Arcanites love pulling off with their brains. Instead, we got Dragonball fights, sans the ham, humor, or interesting character interactions that make Dragonball fights fun to watch.
Characters
Leliel: If you ask me, this is at the core of Thousand Shinji’s other issues; it takes the cast of a series and franchise that is defined by their characterization and how it affects themselves, and the world…and throwing it out as “weakness” in favor of making the Optimal Schemers with Humor Potential (As Defined By Extremely Online Elitist Nerds). Actually, one person - because the most I worked through this story, the more I realized, well, he’s the only actual character with agency. So, let us start with He Who Needs To Fuck Off:
“Shinji Ikari”, aka Tzeentchji: The Great Poo-Bah of Birdbrained Perverts
Emma: Tzeentchji is basically the epitome of bad online takes about Shinji Ikari. Forget being the new Chaos God of schemes and hope, Tzeentchji should truly achieve apotheosis as the Embodiment and Personification of “Posters Who Don’t Get Evangelion”. The core thesis of the Evangelion parts of this crossover (in the way Cronenberg’s the fly is about a human/fly crossover) is that Shinji being afraid, passive and insecure is a flaw in the narrative that needs to be fixed. Never mind that Shinji is a child soldier and that more than justifies like 90% of his character flaws, never mind that “fixed” Tzeentchji is both morally worse that Shinji ever is and incredibly uninteresting to read. Academia Nut fixed all those stupid flaws that Anno obviously put in his magnum opus because he’s not as good a writer as a fucking… Spacebattles 40k guy.
Leliel: Yeah…let’s take a look at the final tally of the score meant exclusively for him:
GENDO’S FATED BASTARD: 2051
Not the highest score out of all of the scores, but mostly because of the sheer lore fail of that final chapter. And the reason can be summed up in how the final chapter explicitly calls his canon self, and I quote, “a bitch.” Now, let’s see the wiki page on the actual Shinji…
(https://evangelion.fandom.com/wiki/Shinji_Ikari#Personality)
“Is stuck in the past, where he was closer to being happy, and is actively trying to fight the Angels, but is afraid of hurting others.” Basically, a kid in over his head, knows it, and is trying his best, but a genuinely kind person. That is, to this fic, a “bitch.” So, we have someone forward-looking, eager, and a complete and utter asshole. And in the process, not only does he become completely unlikable, he becomes an idiot.
Emma: How could you call him an idiot, Lel? With all those words devoted to calling him the special smartest little birthday boy in existence? Just to clarify the fic hasn’t driven me insane, that was sarcasm. The fact this fic is unwilling to give Tzeentchji any actual equal matches, combined with its devotion to stations of the canon means all of Tzeentchji’s vaunted intelligence doesn’t do anything. Pretty much every bad thing that happens in canon still happens here, because that allows the author to not have to write or imagine anything, and also lets Asuka and Rei’s suffering be directly fed into Tzeentchji’s victim complex.
Leliel: Exactly! And what happens the moment the author lets him have anything resembling a fair intellectual challenge with Gendo? He is absolutely fucked. With the power of listening bugs. As much as it’s supposed to show Gendo is an equal, the scheme was so simple and obvious, and absolutely nobody was Tzeentchji’s equal until then - so it came off it only happened because Tzeentchji was a perverted moron not being protected by the author’s own pathetic ego for once in this fic. But here, in this sporking? He’s just a pathetic loser who is basically all of Shinji’s worst qualities, none of his positives, and a bunch of macho posturing and intellectual insecurity otherwise. In other words, a perfect example of the kind of nerd that the actual Shinji is made to mock. So, I must say, this really says a lot of good things about Shinji’s writing, huh? Bet seeing him hurt Academia Nut, hence this negation of him.
Tzeetchji’s Harem
Leliel: Yes, we are grouping them, because, let’s face it, there’s not enough differentiation between Asuka, Rei, or Misato to really be their own characters, beyond archetypes. Hell, Misato’s barely in it! So, to recap-
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1134
Actually, it was pointed out by a friend this “equality of godhood” involves Tzeentchji still speaking for the four, and leading the “queens”, so one more for the road!
HETERONORMATIVE HEDGEHOG: 1135
THE DARK PRINCE’S AT FIELD: 1009
But, when it comes down to it - essentially, the only other characters not given any prominence in the narrative other than Tzeeentchji are Asuka and Rei…and dear God-Emperor does it show just how much this fic revolves around its Stu. There is absolutely nothing in their lives that does not relate to, stem from, or is meant to impress Tzeentchji, because the sole factor in their lives that is important is pleasing him. Which also conveniently allows Academia Nut to shove literally every single canon fail or frustration Shinji suffers onto them! They’re literally his incompetence sinks, so that he looks “cooler” by comparison! But they’re fine with it, because he “completes them” and “makes them better”...which, if you ask Academia Nut, involves turning them into generic harem archetypes that were stale even back when this fic was written! Asuka here can be described as “violent loving Tsundere” while Rei is “crazy cute Yandere who is supposedly endearing for how she goes from nightmarish to loving so easily.” Yeah, uh, the thing about a more heroic-ish Yandere is that they are generally aware, on some level, they have problems…or is comedically non-threatening, if not both. “Literal date rape and mind rape” does not a sympathetic character make.
Emma: Honestly, I get the impression that Academia Nut thinks of “Literal date rape” as “comedically non-threatening”. The entire thing was played off as an “oopsie!” And yeah, Thousand Shinji is basically a story about how everything Rei and Asuka suffered in canon could be fixed if they were just allowed to be Tzeentchji’s possessions. Not that they don’t still suffer everything that happened in canon, with additional suffering, but that none of that matters because the central desire in every woman’s life is to be owned by their male master, and they have that to fulfill them. There’s no actual “fixing” for them in this fix-fic, beyond the fact that Tzeentchji has now been afforded 60% of the female cast as his sexual prize.
Leliel: Really, we keep calling these ladies the trophy wives for a reason - because they have about the same level of agency as big old statuettes on the shelf. With windup keys in their asses.
Emma: Yes, and much like actual trophy wives, they primarily exist to reify heterosexuality in particular! That’s right, we’re writing this during pride month, I haven’t shaved my legs in three weeks, it’s time for the SCARY LESBIAN SEGMENT.
Thousand Shinji might not be one of the highest proofs that the harem male fantasy can exist without actually deconstructing heteronormative monogamy, but that’s due to the fact it has less reach than uh, every other harem anime, and not due to any of its ideals. This is going to sound kind of insane, but I think I could say that Tzeentchji should be understood as one guy in multiple monogamous relationships, and you’ve all been driven insane enough to understand me. Rei and Asuka’s relationship is either non-existent, or presented as a “side effect” of them both orbiting Tzeentchji, a relationship which is presented as natural and inevitable, no matter how abusive or abusive and also incestuous it is.
Leliel: Precisely! The only time we saw anything resembling anything non-straight was when it was either for sexy-gaze…or explicitly predatory. And even then, it was only because the haremettes were both “so in love” with the guy they ended up being a combination of jealous and lusty for each other. Because that’s how that works, ask any man who uses the term “sigma male” unironically!
Emma: I would like to remind everyone of the extended imagine spot where Rei imagines turning herself into a disease to infect Asuka, both as emphasis on the fact that her attraction to Asuka is unnatural and dangerous and literally a disease, but also to say even that would be secondary to Asuka and Shinji’s ability to have a baby and reproduce heterosexually. This is a fic that goes out of its way to beat the drum that women being attracted to each other is both dangerous and also fake and a product of jealousy.
Leliel: And as a final cherry on the shit sundae? As the fic kept on going on, and on, the more and more fetishes kept on being piled on them, especially Rei. Like, suddenly “Tzeentch provided me with a sister” became “Rei wants to jump bones” was obvious incest undertones, but then we had the…everything with how she became ever more unhealthy, and then finally, Misato joining the harem with it being “obvious” that Tzeentchji was attracted to her like “no duh.” As if that was in from the beginning, as opposed to literally fucked into her brain by a Keeper of Secrets. It comes off as desperate more than anything else, using fanservice to get eyes rather than writing.
Emma: Oh, yeah, this is written for exactly one audience, and that audience is “2000s anime perverts (derogatory) who think bi women are threesome dispensers and think it was an objective writing flaw that Shinji was ‘robbed’ of his relationships”. *beat* and sadly, it worked. This has a more comprehensive TV Tropes page and crosswickings than some influential novels.
Leliel: It is also a moment where we stop and remember that TV Tropes was also not really moderated for much of its early existence, like when this was being published…and that the YMMV page has some interesting entries on it. There is a reason editing the site is only really open to members who can be banned now…and why it is frowned on to make pages for your own work.
Others(?):
Leliel: All grouped together because…were there any? At most, we had one or two POVs from Shinji’s schoolmates and The Antagonists, but those mostly were to show just how Awesomesauce (™) the Stu and his Harem were. Especially the supposed villains, who for being “equals”, came off as…utterly unable to do much of anything except stand around, blinking at the “brilliance” of the “mysterious foe” that anyone with a couple calls could figure out.
Emma: One of the central conceits of this fic is that SEELE (unstoppable shadow government that causes the apocalypse) and NERV (incredibly powerful defense agency whose battle strategy is “get the R&D girls to make an offense against God”) are capable of being defeated by one teenager, and that Warhammer technology is completely unanalyzable by the people who reverse engineered the Angels. It’s not a cool power fantasy, it’s just really, really dumb.
Leliel: I think the real big illustration of this fic’s attitude towards the supporting cast is how Gendo decided to “get back” at Tzeentchji…by killing Hikari. The one student that Tzeentchji does not really know. Because to Academia Nut’s brain, she is literally interchangeable with Toji, just as Asuka is interchangeable with her MAAAAAAN. And really…isn’t that a perfect summation of how classic a Gary Stu Tzeentchji is? Literally the entire story is warped around him, as he is the only character with any agency, with maybe some being loaned to his helpers now and again. This is what people originally meant by Mary Sue, but because Tzeentchji is a guy, he passed under the more misogynistic radar of a lot of classic Mary Sue Litmus Tests, which shows the massive problem in those tests.
Emma: Oh, yeah. Years and years ago, a tumblr blogger I follow described an unnaturally perfect, tragic, skilled female character and then pointed out she’d described Batman to make a point about Mary Sues. She’s still getting hate for it, and this is a post that could be in 5th grade if it was a person. The central concept of the Mary Sue is “ewww, girls are writing GIRLS who do things”, and the fact that places that were hubs of “mary sue destruction” completely overlook shit like this and other “uber-shinji” fanfics is proof of that.
Leliel: And once again, it should be noted that I like a lot of Super-Shinji…because a lot of them understand a core praxis of Evangelion as a franchise is that Shinji is genuinely a natural talent and could have saved the world, if he had anything resembling proper support networks that did their job. Good Super-Shinji fics do that and explore how with the right catalyst, Shinji becomes a reconstruction of the very same “young mecha pilot” he deconstructs, someone who is genuinely damaged but can do it when it counts. As shown by the very first lines of the fic, Tzeentchji is not recognizable as Shinji, because his shyness and introversion are “lies”, for…some reason. Including, hilariously, “cello playing in the woods”, because that makes sense. And that is a sign of a much, much broader issue in this fic that is does not understand NGE well at all…or even 40K, but the characters are mostly Eva based, and tied to Eva’s themes, so they are a symptom of Academia Nut’s complete negative thought given to that half of the properties this is supposedly a fanfic of. And in so doing, really shows his entire ass, because a point of Eva is “you are not the center of the world” - but that’s too hard and ego-scarring for Academia Nut to write, so meh, all hail Tzeentchji, who is at the center of the universe by being layered in author love! Just like an onion, including how each layer is see-through, and stinks!
Setting
Leliel: I consider this different from the lore, because I consider this worldbuilding that directly affects the characters. Things in the present, as opposed to just the backstory. Which means that while there’s other scores that apply, I’m going to focus on a big one here…
TALON ON THE SCALES: 2258
Seriously, where was the internal tension in this fic? This fic literally would not know the ability to maintain a credible threat if it bit it in the ass. Or even foreshadowing - remember how Jet Alone’s production model was going to be a thing? You don’t? Well, neither do I, it didn’t figure into the final battle at all! And then the Mass-Produced Evas suddenly started pulling Angelic abilities out of their asses, because whoops, suddenly Academia Nut realized that stations of the canon wouldn’t work if he kept on making even a single Eva OP as fuck, even one driven by a Designated Incompetence Sink like Asuka!
Emma: The bullshit arms race is a pretty common thing for bad writing. The heroes pull enough out of their asses or get OP enough that the only way to fix it when the author realizes “oh, right, narrative tension is a thing that exists” is to let the villains also pull things out of their asses.
Leliel: I think the perfect illustration coming to mind is right there in the last chapter - two things. One is the sudden reveal the God-Emperor was influencing SEELE to “pose a challenge” to Tzeentchji, in spite of that never even being hinted at at all. And the second is the Cute Animal Friends, including one that seems to have been made up purely to make up for missing symmetry…except for Pen-Pen, who had barely been a factor, suddenly being getting the Mark of Chaos Ascendant because He Am Da Cute, without Misato’s input at all. You know, his owner, who relied on him so much for emotional support that the moment she sent him away for his own safety is one of the most heartwarming and tragic moments in the series. The one pet who actually deserves to be the Divine Companion in canon and was hyped up as such is literally forced to never really be at his mistress’ side, because the Mark of Chaos Ascendant is something meant for mortals. Great care for Misato there, Nutty. And yes, Nutty, because Misato, more than any other haremette, was an afterthought. And that brings me to the real doozy…
Lore
Leliel: And now…the big ones.
DUMMY PLUGGED: 2112
PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART: 3328
First, a confession: I was wrong to call this second count EXCOMMUNICATE CANONICUS, and leave PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART to specific Chaos fails. I should have flipped it, with Chaos fails being the primary term, and everything else being a subset of that - because, in my bad memory of the fic and before really dissecting it, I made the mistake of assuming a fanfic about Chaos was written by someone who was actually a fan of Chaos, or even more than the most casual-ass fan of Warhammer 40,000.
Emma: Yeah, it’s obviously a little skewed by the POVs of all the sporking characters I wrote for being traitors, but this is a fic that is as thoughtlessly, loudly “Imperium-as-Default-and-Correct” as the worst stuff that Games Workshop ever shoots out of its extruded book product machine. The human-centrism, the Great Man/strongmanism (although that’s not a framing incompatible with Chaos), the “Hard Men Making Hard Decisions” of it all… this is a fic by someone whose only interest in Chaos as a faction is the veneer of rebellion and the weird sex stuff.
Leliel: Here’s something I only learned later after I started this fic, and checked the original thread; Academia Nut, at the time of writing, thought Chaos was “stupid” I won’t make any assessments either way, as Chaos is often thwarted by its own impatience and infighting, but I think that underscores something really telling about how AN approached this entire crossover - thinking that he needed to “improve” Chaos as a faction, as opposed to recognizing that it is literally Science Fantasy Forces of Hell with Lovecraft undertones - and also Dark Side of the Force. But then again, a website called StarDestroyer.net is going to be reluctant to see anything associated with the Big Cool Galactic Empire as anything but at least effective and manly. (I wonder how many of them had a breakdown when they realized that many classic Star Wars fans love Andor, which is all about Imperial incompetence and how that is fundamentally tied into their general oppressiveness and evil.)
Emma: I’m not sure the Star Wars comparison works; as much as Chaos is the Dark Side of the Force, Warhammer 40k has a Galactic Empire, and it’s the literal Imperium of Man. I think it makes a lot more sense not to frame this as “Chaos is the Empire, so Academia Nut wanted to frame it as cool too,” but rather “The reason Academia Nut thinks Chaos needs fixing is because it is not the Empire faction, which is why this Chaos-centric fanfic spends all its time Burnishing the Golden Throne”.
Leliel: But even beyond that, the simple fact of the matter is, this fic has outright contempt for one half of its foundation, and the other has blind fanboy worship…without much actual knowledge of it at all, coming off as the sort of music fan who is so out of touch they think Fortunate Son is a pro-war song, as a common Americanism (for the record - the song is literally about someone drafted to fight the notorious clusterfuck that was the Vietnam War lamenting that he wasn’t fortunate enough to be born into a politically connected family to waive being pulled into what the entire anti-war movement could tell was a pointless quagmire, and the title comes from the lyrics going “I ain’t no fortunate son” - it is not subtle). If anything, it comes off as a notorious other crossover fanfic that is also partly sporked on this comm, Star Destroyers Rampant - except worse, because while that was about the actual Galactic Empire going nuts, Academia Nut decided Shinji Ikari’s entire personality offended him and removed it, then decided to make it somehow The Objective Best For Its Purpose in the last chapter just so that everyone is sure to know this was right. In other words, Shinji was surgically removed and replaced with a Villain Stu original generation Chaos Lord…and then decided to try and make everything about how Lame and Uncool and Totes Girly and Dweeby Eva is in comparison to 40K and AN’s own knowledge of military hardware…extremely American knowledge, and as the sheer size of the PRIMORDIAL BRAINFART count, and how it is a good size larger than even DUMMY PLUGGED is, both elements about as deep and detailed as a blank piece of printer paper.
Emma: 40K doesn’t even have established military hardware! It’s a cartoon! The sooner you realize it is not actually amenable to powerscaling outside of “wouldn’t it be cool if?” the happier you’ll be.
Leliel: But, speaking as a fan of 40K - I think that whole sentiment really exposes something about the whole nerd space this was born from - the debate nerd culture. That need to “win” fights, no matter what. It’s the same kind of self-serious nitpicking that causes Spacebattles Competence to be a much-mocked meme on Spacebattles itself - the belief that everyone in a story must be perfectly rational and make perfectly optimal decisions at all times in order to “justify” winning. When in fact the whole point of a lot of character development is looking at the reasons people don’t make optimal decisions all the time, and why they shouldn’t, sometimes. This is pretty obvious with Evangelion itself, but - I think that’s another reason why Academia Nut thinks Chaos is “stupid” - because the whole point of Chaos is that its offer is “power and happiness await, the only price is your humanity.” On both levels - you become something strange, monstrous, and demonic as mutations remake you, but also lose human traits such as inherent comradery and the sense you can just trust the people around you implicitly. Great and terrible, but not human, and that’s if you succeed - and that’s usually the kind of place where Chaos’ fuckups come from. They don’t count on altruism and often end up getting in their own way…but that writing that or at least Tzeentchji fighting off that impulse would be haaaard, so suddenly, he’s the master of “enlightened self-interest”, aka “being a complete asshat, but only when the author deems it useful to him and circumstances conspire to make it so.”
Emma: Yeah, as the closest thing to a pro-Chaos sporker this fic has, I don’t want Chaos to be “Good”. I’m not interested in 40k having a good faction; my beef with the Imperium is them being pushed as the best option and how that reflects in the real-life fandom. When I talk about understanding Chaos, I’m talking about understanding it as something people turn to for sympathetic reasons and then are consumed by. I’m talking about it as an engine for tragedy. Thousand Shinji, as a fanfic which does not portray an interesting or canon-accurate version of Chaos, and portrays following that version of Chaos as the path to a happy ending, fails on multiple levels.
Themes (Intended)
Leliel: This is…honestly a bit hard, because so, so much is muddled. At the end, we heard “the gods need to be less dickish”, but absolutely nothing hinted at that before except the Keeper of Secrets being semi-antagonistic, and even that was “for the best.” Supposedly it was about how Shinji showing more of Gendo’s manipulativeness would become a storm of competence, except as we have shown, Gendo’s really more of the Master of Plan B school of planning rather than just being omnicompetent, and more importantly, callous rather than truly cruel or even especially selfish, so he the two aren’t comparable. Perhaps something about how Shinji with more of an edge would be one who could actually help his co-pilots and bridge crew more, except oh yeah, Tzeentchji’s also an egotistical manipulator who is explicitly seeing them as people he can make into better servants. So that doesn’t work either!
Emma: Yeah, I think the fic was trying to contrast Tzeentchji with Gendo as the “good manipulator”, but the problem is that Tzeentchji is so callous and cruel, and this version of Gendo is so unbelievably, incredibly, astoundingly stupid, that it fails for that to matter.
Leliel: Basically, in the end, what happens is that this fic ends up about being nothing more than “wow, cool 40K robot”. For certain values of 40K, as noted. Which leads to the actual theme, which is way more prevalent…
Themes (Actual, And The Sequel’s Specter)
Leliel: Ahem: Tzeentchji is a Special Boy, everything that is Good loves Tzeentchji, nothing goes wrong for Tzeentchji, everything that momentarily inconveniences Tzeentchji is just there to make him look better, Tzeentchji is always right, and Academia Nut is the smartest and more knowledgeable person to have ever read a Warhammer 40K summary off the back of a miniature box. Thank you for paying attention to the short version.
Emma: Basically, everything in the world should revolve around a single great man. If anything in the world does not revolve around a male lead, it should be fixed. If a story involves bad things happening to its male lead, this is clearly a writing flaw that should be fixed. Women are most complete and fulfilled when their whole life revolves around a man who treats them like shit. The underclass are most complete and fulfilled when completely ruled by someone who treats them like shit. Anything outside, “other” or divergent is a disgusting anomaly that must be destroyed. The problem with tyranny, manipulation and cruelty is that the wrong guy is doing them… I miss anything major?
Leliel: And moreover…see, if you think we’re kidding about how much of a powerwank this is…there’s a sequel. Well, actually it was supposed to be a “side fic”, but it’s the closest thing to a “sequel” we’ll ever get. The Open Door, it’s called, and here’s some choice entries from the TV Tropes YMMV page:
- Broken Aesop: The Chaos Gods don't move their followers to other universes because they don't want their people to go down the same road that Old Chaos did and make their same mistakes, and they want to be around to watch their followers' evolution... still New Chaos makes the same mistakes and is going down that same road!
- Broken Base: Due to New Chaos themselves and how they come across to the readers. Fans of the series point to their savvy tactics, Crazy cool characters, and the sheer over-the-topness of the very premise (much less the execution) as reasons the series is awesome. People who dislikes it, on the other hand, point to numerous well-liked characters to whom New Chaos has done some extremely objectionable things. More than a few fans that read and enjoyed Thousand Shinji became diehard members of the second group after a character they liked wound up on New Chaos's bad side and suffered greatly for it.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: New Chaos is supposed to be seen as A Lighter Shade of Black compared to the the C'Tan, but the fact they spend more time committing pointless evil deeds against the inhabitants of various universes makes it impossible to see them as worth rooting for.
Emma: Sort of an “I never thought the ‘writes fic about leopards eating faces’ guy would write fics about leopards eating my faves’ faces” situation?
Leliel: Pretty much. And then the leopards ate his own face, because suddenly, he realized there was no coherent plot he could make.
How to Improve
Leliel: But, as Emma noted…this is instructional badness. And I think the big thing here is that even while we were sporking that there were a bunch of things that we could have done to easily make things a lot more readable, even without changing the premise of the fic too much. Hell, there’s some things we could easily do that wouldn’t even result in that much of a change to begin with. So, here’s a list of some suggestions. My own are going to focus on ones that, without fundamentally changing the core premise of “Shinji gets a Warhammer psyker mentor and comes in a trained cadet and a psychic mastermind” that this fic is supposedly about, and making him, uh, tolerable. Perhaps even good. However, Emma doesn’t care about Super Shinji as a concept, so I’m also going to also give out other ideas that change the genre a bit. Basically, we’re going to both see major problems in this fic, and show you how easily they could be fixed.
1. Actually give us a chance to see Khnemu, or other mentors, raising him.
Leliel: Literally the opening lines of this fic are that everything about Shinji’s canon characterization in this fic is “a lie.” Absolutely nothing is spent even on the reasons why he still pretends to be an inoffensive introvert, just how much he hates everyone and enjoys playing with people because reasons. This makes him a genetic Tzeentch worshiper, but it doesn’t make him recognizable as Shinji. Hell, it doesn’t make him recognizable as Gendo, who is deliberately oblivious to the pain he causes in the name of getting Yui back rather than outright sadistic. And it certainly doesn’t underscore why Shinji cares about Khnemu - or why we should either. No, let’s see the old Sorcerer Lord encountering Shinji, who being Shinji decided that the weird possibly four-armed guy is in pain and needs help, and Khnemu is touched enough to see Shinji as an asset and possible apprentice rather than food - and then it becoming genuine found family. It can take less than a chapter, even! Just have them encounter each other, then a training scene where Khnemu explains Tzeentch worship and how it ties to psychic powers, then Khnemu admitting he doesn’t have much longer before anointing Shinji as a potential Thousand Son, using his precognition to warn him that his biological father wants him as a pawn in a plan that will destroy humanity too thoroughly for it to be remade in Magnus’ image.
Emma: I think that bringing in Shinji’s canon characterization makes it more sensible that he would turn to Chaos, too. We’re never given any indication that Tzeentchji had anything in common with Shinji just because he apparently met Khnemu so young, but canon Shinji could actually be perfect as someone who would seek meaning and belonging in Chaos, particularly before Gendo calls for him. He’s adrift, isolated, and traumatized, and Chaos is scariest when it can offer genuine succor. But that would require both realizing Chaos is a cult that takes advantage of people and not a logical faction you join by making reasoned decisions, and not seeing a traumatized teenager as a terrifying threat to your masculinity.
2. If we’re keeping Shinji a manipulator, make it clear he’s still doing it in the belief it is for the best - and with justification.
Leliel: This is the big one, and what made Tzeentchji so abhorrent and obnoxious. Quite simply, Tzeentchji’s entire personality is based around his own gratification, with any kindness he does for others explicitly being so he can make them better tools for himself, explicitly so - and then we are expected to just kind of…nod along, I guess. This isn’t even really Chaotic behavior; as we noted, while Chaos is prone to massive selfishness and callousness, the human worshipers genuinely think they are in the right to do so, that this is the only way for humanity to truly survive and thrive. Especially for worshipers of Tzeentch, as the God of Ambition and Hope, who are likely going to be assured they know best for everyone, which combined with genuine empathy to actually check is going to result in a scarily competent schemer due to ability to delegate to trusted lieutenants and knowing exactly how to bribe people with mutations that are both what they want and what makes them more effective to you. Will it be perfect? Hell no, that’s Tzeentch - he loves his random changes, and that’s what makes adaptation of the scheme interesting. Moreover, however - it also makes a hypothetical Arcanite Shinji With Actual Functioning Conscience actually fun to read about, because it’s clear he gives a damn about his co-pilots. Change his mentor and patron to a non-Chaos God, don’t even have to do that - Eldrad-trained Shinji might not think highly of the human species in general, seeing them as a very naive and young race compared to his eldar sensei, but also that he’s part of it and that he’s studying with them to be better, so if he fucks up, he sighs, acknowledges fault, and learns.
Emma: There’s a reason Magnus is the most humane and sympathetic Daemon Primarch. And yeah, part of that is that he’s semi-forced to fall after the Heresy begins, but part of that is that Tzeentch–again, god of hope and ambition and trying to change things– is just really good as the God that’s followed by people who mean well, or who once meant well. The fic sometimes makes vague gestures towards Tzeentchji meaning well, but they’re undercut by his brutal selfishness everywhere else, as well as the fact no one is allowed to get mad at him about any of it. To really write a sympathetic manipulator, they both need to do better, and also have people treat them worse (in a deserved way, not in a “look how MEAN they are” way). Or, hell, make it a tragedy! Make it about how you actually can’t manipulate your way out of being manipulated. Lean into the child soldier shit from NGE and all the implications Games Workshop won’t admit about the Primarchs! Make it about a boy who makes the wrong choices because they’re less bad to his perception, and make us see why he believes that! Tragedy isn’t automatically more mature, no, but it’s more mature than trying to make a “fix fic” by smushing two tragedies together and ignoring all the implications.
3. No romance, pick one partner, or make it a real polycule of every part loving every other equally. And also, for the love of god, make it non-sex-focused, this isn’t a porn fic.
Leliel: This one’s fairly obvious. Rei and Asuka are written horribly, because they are written as sex objects first, and Misato, even beyond the oh-god levels of consent issues, is even worse. This is not hard, and I’ve seen good takes on writing romances on both pilots - yes, even Rei, with either tackling the fact that Rei is Shinji’s probably-unknowing sister head-on or handwaved as not that closely related due to genetic engineering. Mari is also good, if you bring her in from later continuity (and to help continue the fanbase troll) - but those are fairly normie takes, and we’re writing from the perspective of a Chaos-ish Shinji. So let’s go a little nuts, shall we? Let’s have a true polycule involved - but make it part of the intrigue. Let’s make it so that it’s because Shinji secretly screws with Fate and SEELE’s plans so bad they’re forced to activate Kaworu early as a “potential pilot”, and while Shinji senses he’s part-xeno, he’s still fascinated by this obvious double agent and the psyker equal despite himself…and during the mental game he plays with his “rival”, his respect becomes mutual affection based on mutual challenge. If you’ve read This Is How You Lose The Time War, a male version of the lesbian rival romance is what I have in mind. Meanwhile, however, Asuka’s inferiority complex is acting up, both quickly pick up and are trying to comfort her…and to the initial horror of all three of them, she finds herself falling for both when they stand up to her initial “I don’t need your pity, baka!” defenses and realize she’s trying to ask for help while not seeming weak. Cue teenage hormones also complicating the game exponentially as neither Kaworu nor Shinji wants to hurt the other nearly as much as their plans and definitely don’t want to break Asuka’s heart or make her feel like she has to decide between the two…especially because they use their AU-induced emotional maturity to walk up to her and confess that their feelings are beginning to run a bit passionate and they don’t want it to explode at the worst time, only for her to realize she is actually fine with both of them and they aren’t really that jealous of the attention the other gets, so the only reason that’d happen is because of the factions tearing them apart. And of course, no sex - 14 year olds in a war, they can figure out kinks when they’re older and done with fighting for their lives!
Emma: I don’t object to that, but honestly? I think making Shinji/Kaworu and Rei/Asuka two rival romances that crash into each other is a really good idea. On a fic level, Thousand Shinji is, again, incredibly forceful about the fact that two women cannot be attracted to each other without a) corruption b) a man to hang real attraction on or c) both. Making Rei/Asuka start before Asuka/Shinji would reframe the focus away from just The Man, and would have a lot of really interesting chemistry in their canon dynamic, particularly if you feed that into Khornate Asuka/prowess-focussed Slaaneshi Rei.
4. The world, especially the villains, change in response.
Leliel: Nobody who works for NERV is particularly stupid, Gendo least of all. He’s going to pick up that his son has behaviors more like his own pretty quickly, and is going to be…conflicted. On the one hand, good, Shinji will happily leap in the robot and fight, and knows when to shut up and lock in, but on the other, he’s clearly suspicious of Gendo - and more importantly, has turned out like his old man, which is something Gendo knows isn’t good and isn’t happy about. So he’s going to look into it, and from there, it’s likely he is going to discover the Warp if it is at all related to AT Fields at all. He may not be a psyker himself, but to be frank, Ritsuko can probably whip up a pretty good substitute to examine the Warp with the MAGI and the Dead Sea Scrolls given their tie to the Angels and thus, AT Fields, and that means SEELE isn’t far behind, especially if Kaworu is present as their agent. He is going to see the Immaterium as a way to better ensure Third Impact by observing Instrumentality from both the material and mental worlds, and that means NERV likely changes its own schemes to account for psychic powers as well - and that’s even assuming Gendo has no psyker potential of his own, the man already has the obsessive discipline to make the average daemon hurt its claw trying to possess him. And that’s just the main human antagonists; the Angels quickly learning and adapting AT Fields to more creative forms that manipulate the Warp would be cool, and other students picking up 40K elements simply by observing Shinji would be fascinating…especially if he isn’t exactly a fan of that. Like, he does not want Hikari to start literally using military discipline learned from an Eldar Path as part of class rep duties, beyond being annoying it’d be utterly exhausting.
Emma: Yeah, I know I’ve complained about this a lot, but for a fic that wants us to believe Gendo is so evil and cunning that anything Tzeentchji does against him is justifiable… Gendo sure never does anything. Gendo is an amoral, intelligent man obsessed with a single goal. If you want to bring Warhammer 40k into his setting, you have to consider that you’re giving Gendo a bunch of new toys, too.
5. Make it a full fusion between properties.
Leliel: The first of the “let’s change the premise” ideas, who says we have to keep the setting as is? The princeps pilots of Imperial Titans are at least partly based on Evangelion - the whole deal behind how rare they are (and why the Collegia Titanica is willing to recruit outside of the Adeptus Mechanicus, normally a huge no-no for the paranoid and possessive tech-priests) is because they need the willpower to safely link to the intelligent, willful, and furious machine-spirit of a Titan. Shinji being an abnormally young princeps in an entire class of mecha pilots, most of whom are older than him and were educated their whole life by the Priesthood of Mars…and show just how screwed up the Imperium is at its core, that the Evangelions-as-Titans are simply “oddball projects, but nothing beyond what a Magos does if they’re being especially eccentric and if it works, it works.” Admittedly, said things likely need the legal protection of the Inquisition to continue, but they’ve done worse in the ostensible name of the Imperium. Ask Fidus Kryptman about his Line some day, and the several dozen worlds he burned to deny the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Leviathan biomass - and how he was punished by giving him command of several squads of Deathwatch Space Marines to make sure they didn’t find a new source and keep them isolated fighting Orks in Octarius. Hell, doesn’t need to be 40K; I mentioned Destiny, but Warframe, for spoiler reasons, could be ported and fused as is. The important part of Eva is its characters, so simply dress them in proper universe attire, figure out how the Angels and Evas fit, season to taste. Don’t even need to alter stations of the canon too much, because by nature, you’re examining how this story manifests in a different universe (but yeah, do alter some, because different universe.)
6. Alter stations of the canon.
Leliel: Actually, let’s get on that - this is something I see all the freaking time, but putting new powers in your fic alters canon. It’s okay to change up canon. In fact, it’s recommended - you can’t expect, say, the Angels to attack in a different order unless something about the new cosmology you added affects that, but Gendo is going to change his plans in response to a different Shinji, as noted. Heck, he may even consider Jet Alone worth keeping around as a supplement to the Evas if someone shows a way to overcome AT Fields artificially, even weakly. It’s certainly going to change how the pilots think and fight, and how the adults act. Really, defaulting to stations of the canon, especially the “allegedly cooler fights, but functionally identical outcomes and events” really shows a deep underconfidence in your own writing…and a bone-deep laziness as well.
Emma: Also, make sure the alterations you make to stations of the canon actually have ripple effects! This fic is willing to do things that should fundamentally alter the course of the story, but because then Academia Nut wouldn’t be allowed to follow the plot beats of a story he hates so tightly, things as earth-shaking as “Shinji’s personality is completely rewritten from the very beginning”, Hikari’s horrible death, and… whatever happened with the party and all the horrible violence there only matter when the writing is directly looking at them.
7. Give other characters agency - and if you’re feeling a bit radical, make it so Shinji isn’t the main character!
Leliel: This is the most radical change at its core - because as noted, Tzeentchji is the only character with agency in this entire goddamned fic. Everyone else is warped around him. So giving anyone else their own arc already alters things unrecognizably for the better…but as noted, you don’t even have to have Shinji as the main character. Hell, if you’re having him as a manipulator, having another person trying to follow him and decode what he’s actually thinking while dealing with the fallout leads to a wonderful mystery story. He can even remain a protagonist, and the reveal of his full plans don’t require lying to the audience (the main POV character is discovering at the same rate we are, a la Watson and Holmes) but it reminds us - from the outside, this kid is kind of a creepy ass!
Emma: That would be actually really interesting. It’d be a good way to bring in the pilot candidates like Toji and Kenichi, kids who, despite the narrative’s stated aims, are treated far more disposable in this fic than they are in canon. Hell, making them the humans caught up in a war of gods and monsters would actually bring in a very 40k version of the human perspective.
Leliel: And while we realize it would probably be numerically ironic for nine, seven works given how it’s Nurgle’s sacred number and a good spread of tips. However, there’s also something Wanderer realized when looking over this list (because while he quit, he’s still following):
All of these suggestions would literally require rewriting of the fanfic from the first sentence onward.
There is literally nothing good about this fic that is not tainted by the sheer magnificent garden of Tzeentchji’s asshole nature. It was a bad idea to make him such a snobby and materialistic ass, and it was executed worse. And then it got worse as he built on himself, and the fic warped worse and worse to accommodate him and the fundamental toxic power fantasy he personifies.
Emma: Yeah, I don’t think the fundamental premise is completely poisoned. *beat* Just, literally everything else is. They say there are no bad premises, just bad executions, but the flipside of that is that there is no premise that cannot be ruined by terrible execution by an incurious, smug, bigoted, dismissive asshole.
Leliel: And with that with say with one final one-fingered salute:
Fuck you, Tzeentchji.
Emma: *Grinning* Fuck you, Tzeentchji, for the last and loudest time!
Scenes From Across the Seas of Tindalos…
----
“So, I’m guessin’ this is goodbye, friends?”, Vulkan said, the portal device beginning its priming sequence as it began tuning to its planar coordinates.
“Kind of, though I suspect the path is still open. We might see each other again,” Taion said. “Apparently my world is fated to be destroyed if saved, because it needs to be separated into its components…but then it will re-fuse in a safer way later, and doors will remain open between my world and the Kevesi one before then. Bit of a vision shared by Diego’s Band, which is good to know - no doubts about facing Moebius.”
“To be entirely honest,” Corax said, with his distinct morbidly humorous tone, “I doubt you would care even if you suspected Z’s death would result in instant Exterminatus. The situation you describe of an Aionian would make the average member of the Death Korps of Krieg furrow their gas masks in pity. At least the Kriegers live and fight and die for an actual cause as opposed to the privilege of being a good vintage of wine for the local cannibal witch-lords while they treat the process of becoming said vintage as the ten-thousandth season of Thyrrus Game. And I already earmarked Krieg as ‘needs reform last century.’”
“Sounds like it,” Taion said, a bit stiffly. “But, well…I have my duties. We saved a large portion of, well…everything. I’ve seen the same kind of hunger in Moebius that I saw in the Black Dragon. If not more. Because by the end…everyone near him was hollowed out. Less than my own Mondo.”
“Dat’s true,” Vulkan said, sadly, as he looked at the two girls who were now hanging limp like someone had cut their strings - even given their mutation, they looked more like discarded dolls than monsters, left behind by a cruel child. “Next item on the agenda is going to be givin’ those to Sophia and her sisters, I think. Dey can’t live as humans any more. Dey mutants, though they at least got their free will back.”
“Is…that entirely advised…?”, Corax said, with a nervous glance at the inactivated Eva behind him.
“They’re also going to include monitor devices, especially in case any of those Daemon Primarchs get any ideas about conquering other universes and start crossing the Seas of Tindalos,” Taion pointed out. “It’s both an act of compassion and quiet monitoring.”
“Ah,” Corax said, relaxing. “Though…Miss Katsuragi? Did you find any trace of her…?”
“That…” Taion smiled, bringing up a vial with a softly glowing purple object inside. “Is actually something we can thank Dr. Akagi for.”
Vulkan looked closer. “Is that…?”
“Her soul? Yes. Perfect for putting in a clone body, one made with technology from my world - sans the ten-year quick growth, of course. I do believe Trazyn and Orikan are getting more than they bargained for, given how she was able to stomach pump the corpse of a god.”
---
Shenzen Jahyryphost, sometimes called the Penumbral Slayer of the Unsullied Sanctum, Brother-Sargeant of the Night Lords and Emissary to the Officio Assassinorum, was sometimes jokingly called the Temple of Focused Pain, both for his incredible ability to operate when injured and even turn his apparent inability to be slowed down even by explosives into part of his Legion’s morale-breaking tactics, and for a relatively minor issue in his gene-seed. Quite simply, when the old Space Marine was deeply annoyed for a long period of time (anger without the adrenaline rush of a true fight response), the neurotransmitter cascade in his brain provoked an ‘awaken’ response in his Catalepsean Node, even when he was already fully active instead of in the aware-trance the organ normally allowed instead of unconscious sleep. This caused him painful and distracting migraines that could worsen into outright microseizures, which the Apothecaries of his Legion accounted for by installing an implant under his temple that, when rubbed, would ‘tune’ the Node and end the migraine earlier…but gave him a very distinct expression and gesture that indicated to all who knew him that either a situation needed to resolve itself in the next hour or he would seriously consider terminal sanctions of someone, or that he would feel the need to scream into the empty void for a bit in frustration. Or more likely, both.
“...Let me see if I have heard you correctly, Nocht,” Shenzen said, inhaling as he finished the massage sequence for the implant and lowered his hand from his temple. “You discovered a hole to another universe, where ours is not just a story, but an enthusiast’s recreation of a larger universe.”
Nocht nodded. “That is correct, my lord.”
“In said universe, you met a version of Primarch Lorgar, along with several of his brothers, except in their universe, they were the ones to become Traitors to the God-Emperor. And also female, which enabled a mix of genders among Astartes in their own respective universe. And also two psykers with the ability to steal ‘hearts’ to remove anti-social impulses and Chaotic leanings. And a xenos hybrid who later became a non-hostile Daemon Prince, who helped you, and I am reading from your account, ‘spork’ a world where Vulkan had replaced the central character of a pre-Emperor Holy Terran defense against a xenos invasion while assistance with an alliance with the Necrons.”
“That is a summary of what I said, and I am just as flummoxed,” Nocht said.
“And then you and the Daemon Prince, plus its…his cohort carry out a distraction action with most of the Daemon Primarchs so those two psykers and their own backup, which included male, loyal versions of Corax and Vulkan himself, could steal the heart of the Black Dragon, causing him to fall apart and die in the tides of the Warp.” Shenzen inhaled. “Did I leave anything pertinent out?”
“Well, you forgot how a local techpriest was converted into a Necron using a variant of the Pariah method and starting a revolt on an Imperial World to trick the Drukhari into showing themselves so we could interest one particular Necron Overlord,” Nocht said. “I feel that may be a tangent, admittedly.”
“It is,” Shenzen said, before turning to the guests, kept very safely behind purity seals on the other side of the window. “And I wish to the Throne you did not bring these witnesses, so I could assume you took leave of your senses in that hole.”
“You do realize that me being here has already given me several ideas on how to make your crusade for justice beneficial to myself and psykers in general, right?”, Magda said with a smirk. “Especially given your more open-ish attitude towards them?”
“I…really don’t see why I need to be behind this?”, Pyra said, poking at an Aquila. “I don’t even recognize this.”
“You’re close enough to being a Warp familiar that it was for the Inquisitor’s sake. You know, when he stops babbling madly about the world needing to make sense again,” Nocht said. “But…that is how things worked out. I apologize for the…general insanity.”
“Hmph.” Shenzen thought, then shrugged and sat back in his ornate chair. “But, on the other hand…I cannot say I am too upset. It certainly does explain why the Salamanders have suddenly completely lost cohesion and are attacking each other and worlds seemingly randomly, and there are reports their new homeworld suddenly cooled to iron instead of being volcanic. Also Governors suddenly renouncing wealth and taking vows of poverty and charity, the Astronomicon having increased in brightness to levels not seen in millennia, and large caches of precious items suddenly transmuting into practically useful supplies and raw materials. The citizenry report visions of thieves with the face of true angels stealing the darkness from the soul of a false one who casts himself down before the Emperor to beg forgiveness, as well. Annoying, given how this makes larceny a holy profession for a great deal of the Imperial Creed…but given how that is the cost for being down a Daemon Primarch, I believe the Arbites can manage. The universe just became a significantly brighter place…especially in the knowledge that even Vulkan, once his self-deceptions were removed, had the capacity for remorse and atonement.”
“Lord Curze’s spirit smiles upon us all,” Nocht said, lifting his water cup in an impromptu toast. “Though I suppose this will be all classified?”
“Of course. Even beyond the fact that I do not want the secret of extradimensional travel going anywhere, the Ecclesiarchy would not be pleased to discover that this was done with the help of any form of Chaos, come the apocalypse or not. I can already imagine the noble lineage being drawn up for this ‘Shinobu Hattori’ to explain that he was always a true exemplar of the aristocracy who was cruelly usurped and defamed by the scheming and heretical House Shido, but remained true to the Emperor and found restitution along with Calculus Sakura, his Lexmechanic beloved - that a criminal saved everything with the help of a Vindicare with a notoriously existent personality is already inconvenient enough for the orthodoxy of the Creed, so naturally, at least one has to be a Rogue Trader. As much as I would have it that their identities would be obliterated altogether rather than twisted like this for the benefit of the Inquisition’s propaganda.” Shenzen paused. “But as for us…good work. I am going to see if Assassins get awarded a Star of Terra. At least. They will be viewing you as a Saint someday, I believe - probably in your lifetime. They already are with Hattori and Sakura, and let us be entirely honest, the Creed needs to be made more uncomfortable with the idea of ‘lowly’ people being heroes.” Shenzen’s face broke into one of his rare smiles. “Ave Dominus Nox.”
---
Shinobu and Futaba, now dressed in the sleek wear of the Last Redoubt, looked over the increasingly strange, but also increasingly thriving, streets of Tokyo-3.
“Sure you don’t need us?”, Shinobu asked. “We never directly fought those Tsan-Chan troops or their commanders. Seems like they might be pretty bitter about their ally losing…”
“Trust me, I’m used to them,” Diego said with a confident grin. “Honestly, at this point, they’re almost part of the Last Redoubt’s own myth - the Sparta to our Athens, but hopefully not with the incredible luck that let Sparta beat Athens and pretend their society knew up from down.”
“If there was any society that should be seen as a real life Evil Fantasy Empire,” Futaba said, with a knowing nod. “But yeah. I still need to train this brand new psychic power of mine. Even in universes without the Dark Gods, it’s still hard to distinguish myself from the Warp sometimes. And I don’t want to suborn my will to the Emperor or something like that.”
“Mm. And Ichiro’s dream is…ultimately making everything like that. There’s a reason we call the Tsan-Chan Wasps, beyond their uniforms,” Diego said, looking…sad. “If you’re one of them, your life means nothing beyond what you can do for the city…or be for the city. There are actively rewards to your family for donating yourself to be remade into a monster or building materials. Almost as much as turning in traitors.”
“...Yeah, I can see why the Last Redoubt of Humanity doesn’t think they count,” Shinobu said, blanching a bit. “I guess that’s also why they think ‘cruel empire’ is a compliment - they show they’re ruthless enough to do that kind of crap.”
“Pretty much. They say that kindness is a weakness when it comes to survival in the Night Lands, so cruelty with benefits is a virtue and a sign of wisdom,” Diego said, directing his throne body to start creating a coral reef. “But now? Now we have a world with a sun to go to - I don’t intend to rule it, as much as any God can avoid ruling the world they remade from its apocalypse. I’m a scientist, doctor, and scholar, not a king. But I do plan on taking advantage of how much empty space there is, make a settlement for Redoubters who want to see the sun when it still shone with light and a world without monsters or the Wasps to relax in. Plus, I think I probably converted most of the survivors of this version of Third Impact to Shub-Niggurath and the other Old Ones; I did just save them in her name, and unlike the Daemon Primarchs, they aren’t associated with the thing that just tried to brand them all into zombielike servitude. I need to make sure they worship her in the studying of life, Mi-go communication and worshipful science with occasional wild parties style, not bloody murders in the woods, forced mutation, and rampaging kaiju used as a form of divination style.”
“Well, you are a God. And, well, living embodiment of the strange aeons where even death dies. I mean, look at the oceans,” Futaba said, pointing down. “Pretty much a big salty puddle with orange flavor before, and now look at all them fishies!”
“If you’re starting a religion, it’s best to make sure you help write the commandments,” Shinobu agreed, knowingly. “It’s bad enough when you’re just a celebrity - we had to dope slap Mishima’s Shadow for a reason. Though…” Shinobu frowned. “What’s the spork crew going to be doing?”
“Well, Emma’s going off, she earned her break, but…” Futaba was cut off, as her eyes suddenly began to glow. “Oh. Oooh no. This is your relaxation spork…?”
The other two looked at the tiny prophetess in alarm.
With an expression that could have been absolute terror or trying very hard not to laugh, Futaba looked up. “So. Have you guys ever heard of certain events in American comics?”
(Stay tuned for Wanderer and Leliel’s next concurrent spork with Rising of the Shield Hero: Heroes in Crisis!)
Quick Announcement On Sporks!
Date: 2025-07-20 12:55 pm (UTC)Re: Quick Announcement On Sporks!
Date: 2025-08-18 06:27 am (UTC)Re: Quick Announcement On Sporks!
Date: 2025-08-18 01:55 pm (UTC)Please, go ahead, I love car crashes - I busted a guy at the new War of the Worlds (starring Ice Cube) movie.
Re: Quick Announcement On Sporks!
Date: 2025-08-18 05:51 pm (UTC)That one thing? Well... I'll let TVTropes speak for itself! Keep in mind, the text below was from the trope "Bigger is Better in Bed" which is exactly what you think it is.
Ahem...
A Crown of Stars: Played straight. According to Asuka, Shinji's penis is nearly twice larger than Big Bad's and former Big Bad's. Moreover, the latter two abused her sexually, were pretty lousy in bed, and made her feel dirty, whereas Shinji made her feel good, happy, and special.
Yeah...
Re: Quick Announcement On Sporks!
Date: 2025-08-18 05:54 pm (UTC)Re: Quick Announcement On Sporks!
Date: 2025-08-18 06:21 pm (UTC)Re: Quick Announcement On Sporks!
Date: 2025-08-18 06:56 pm (UTC)Re: Quick Announcement On Sporks!
Date: 2025-10-23 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-20 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-20 09:38 pm (UTC)A Horrifying (Yet Pertinent) Crossover I Just Woke Up From
Date: 2025-07-28 11:37 am (UTC)This is why you don't watch 100% Donkey Kong walkthrough videos before bed, adults.
Re: A Horrifying (Yet Pertinent) Crossover I Just Woke Up From
Date: 2025-07-28 02:32 pm (UTC)Tell me more.
Re: A Horrifying (Yet Pertinent) Crossover I Just Woke Up From
Date: 2025-07-28 09:43 pm (UTC)Re: A Horrifying (Yet Pertinent) Crossover I Just Woke Up From
Date: 2025-07-28 09:46 pm (UTC)