[FFML] [fanfic][repost] NGE: EndGame, 02

[Miashara]

I liked this. Parts of it, at any rate. Here we go.

>At any rate, the story itself has been wrapped with hard breaks at every 
>70th character. Hopefully Windows Live Mail won't mess up the format. As 
>earlier stated, this is my first foray into Evangelion fanfiction, and this 
>draft has not been pre-read due to my complete lack of beta readers, so 
>some glaring mistakes may be present.

Well, at least you spell checked it. And my WLM didn't have any problems 
with it.

>The fluorescent tubes, held in fixtures of three each, were inset at

inserted

>regular intervals into the plastered ceiling and turned off, since the
room was already sufficiently illuminated by the copious amounts of
what looked like late afternoon sunlight pouring in from the leftmost
wall, which was composed entirely from glass panels. Shinji felt
completely refreshed, as if invigorated by a good night's sleep. The
ceiling was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes, and he
gazed intently at it, fascinated by its overwhelming normalcy.

Are you Warren G Harding reincarnated? Normality. Also, that opening 
sentence is brutal. Try to break it up or something.

>"The medical facility of Central Dogma, NERV headquarters, three
kilometers underground beneath Tokyo-3," Rei said methodically, as if
delivering a report. "You have been unconscious for five days, during
which you have been treated for mental shock and extreme physical
fatigue."

So he not only got a good night's sleep, he got four more. Lucky bastard.

>A less-than-comfortable pause ensued where Shinji mentally scrambled
to remember his identity and what had happened prior to his waking up,
and failed rather miserably. The slightest hint of panic set in.
"Uh... no," he replied lamely.

You use a lot of ellipses. A lot. One a novel is okay, one a chapter is 
pushing it, one a paragraph is rediculous. Remember, they actually mean that 
something is being omitted, not pauses. We have commas and hyphens for that.

>Rei turned the page of her book. "This could be a problem." she
stated.

problem," she

and you might want to change turned to returned

Also, this is the only reason I finished reading this. His amnesia warned me 
that this probably wouldn't descend into sickening Mary Sue disease. Your 
prose is also very readable. You have a very smooth, even pacing that works 
well.
~*~

>A matron had escorted him from the hospital room he shared with Rei,

So he and Rei were actually sleeping and quartered in the same room? I got 
the impression she was just visiting. Odd.


>analyses and simulations... or displaying screensavers, Shinji wasn't

Don't get me wrong. Overuse of ellipses is just one of those things that 
irritates me. But that one doesn't even make any sense.

>sure which. At least sixteen kilograms of paperwork shared a desk with
a laptop and a row of neatly-lined empty soda cans. A potted plant
stood sentry by the entrance, looking as though it had been watered
with as much espresso as liquid dihydrogen oxide. Shinji stood
perfectly still, not daring to so much as twitch, thanks to the white
snow ermine currently perched atop his head.

Other than that, that was an extremely nice, understated description. You 
conveyed a very good mental picture in very few words. Well done.

>"Those are all your items," Ritsuko replied. "One quantum
supercomputer, the set of clothes you're wearing now, and one pet
ermine."

"Kyu," Hisame chimed in helpfully from atop Shinji's head.

By the way, I also liked that. A lot of people get into long, drawn out 
explanations of how the characters learn the names of stuff. I don't really 
care. Ermine=Hisame. Good. Done.

>"Big place, isn't it?" Shinji remarked, busy being awe-struck by the
architecture. The entire complex was clean and efficient, and
augmented by various automated electronics and systems. Yet it felt
strangely natural to him, and for a moment Shinji wondered if he'd
spent his life wandering through fortified military installations.

That didn't really make a huge amount of sense. If he spent his whole life 
wandering through these places, why would they be impressive? Also, since he 
can't remember anything, why would he remember enough to be impressed at 
all? Unless he's used to being in fortifications that were inferior to this 
one, but I can hardly imagine anyone capable of planar travel being 
impressed by Central Dogma.

Unless he's in Terminal Dogma. That would porbably be pretty freaking weird 
to anyone.

>"This is Central Dogma, NERV headquarters," Ritsuko said, as a set of
reinforced interlocking doors opened with the silent whoose of

The silent what?

>pneumatics to allow the travelator to transport them into and across
what looked like a gigantic, cylindrical steel-walled chasm, almost as
if they had just entered a large vertically-aligned steel pipe, with a
myriad of other travelators bridging the chasm above, below, and all
around them.

Gott in himmel you punctuate a lot.

>As the doors on the far wall of the chasm opened to allow them
passage, Shinji could hear the disjointed voice of a female drifting
along the corridors. Ritsuko perked up visibly at the sound. "So it's
Area C16 today," she murmured softly to herself. And then, louder, at
Shinji: "This way."

try not to start sentences with conjuntions. It bad grammar and overly 
wordy.

>"JUST OPEN UP, YOU GOD-DAMNED LOVECHILD OF A –"

Goddammed. It's one word.

>Which was as far as she got before being smothered by plastic sacks of
garbage that crashed down upon her from beyond the now-open doors.

Sight gags are hard to pull off. That was pretty good.

>"The second model of the synthetic life form Evangelion, Unit 02,"
Ritsuko announced loftily. "Humanity's only line of defense against
the Angels."

>"It took quite a beating during its last deployment," Misato grinned
sheepishly. "Relax, it doesn't look this ugly all the time."

That's pretty good characterization in those two lines, especially Ritsuko. 
I like that.

>"We can't make you do it against your will," Ritsuko said calmly.
"You're free to leave if you want to."

But as we mentioned before, you will be shot.

>Shinji stared at her, suddenly cautious of her apparent calmness.
"What's the catch?"

"There's no catch. We can force you into the entry plug, but we can't
make you pilot it against your will," Ritsuko replied. "Right now one
of our pilots is in Germany with an incomplete Evangelion unit still
under construction, and the other injured. We need you more than you
can imagine, but all the same there's no way we can force you to.
That's all there is to it."

But if you don't and we need you, humanity dies. That includes you.

Perhaps you explained this in the first chapter, but why isn't he in Unit 
01? Why is he looking at Asuka's unit (hehhehehe</childish>) when she's in 
Germany with an incompleted EVA?

>Despite himself, Shinji felt surprisingly calm – or at least, less
panicky than he had expected he would be – even though nothing seemed
to make sense. Perhaps Ritsuko's admission that other pilots were
available had reassured him somewhat. No matter how pressing or dire
they tried to make it sound, they had other people to take his place.
Which sounded only natural, now that he considered it. The thought of
having the operations of a UN military branch rest solely on a
fourteen year old child piloting a gigantic, indeterminate organic
construct against invading monsters was utter absurdity.

That really amused me.

>And as the
relief of that thought washed over him, he suddenly wanted nothing
more than to get away from the strange monster and out of Central
Dogma, to be far away from the bizarre irrationality of it all and
back in the normal world where common sense and logic still prevailed.

And where exactly is that? The normal world of SI fanfic?

>And yet it was as though seeing the behemoth known only as Unit 02 had
brought back a fleeting semblance of a long-forgotten memory,
tantalizingly dancing about the periphery of his conscious thought and
yet refusing to manifest itself. Had he really done this before?
Perhaps he had. After all, that was presumably the only thing they
needed him for, the reason why he was even here in the first place.
Perhaps that also explained the strange feeling, as if he'd woken up
from a dream that had moved him to tears, yet had slipped from his
mind as he crossed the blurred line between sleep and wakefulness,
leaving only emotions behind, so strong that they survived even the
loss of the thoughts that had evoked them.

Okay, that was a really good passage.

>There's still something I need to do.

You need to clarify that in some way. I recomend putting it in single quotes 
and setting a he thought after it. Your intent is clear but decyphering it 
breaks up the flow of prose, something you want to avoid. Especially 
something you want to avoid coming down off a really good description.

>"I said I'll think about it," Shinji repeated, still staring
thoughtfully at Evangelion Unit 02, with traces of disquiet in his
eyes. "I'll need some time to sort out everything you've dumped on me
so far." And whether I should trust you at all, he added silently.

That's also a good alternative to the single quote things. Just pick one and 
be consistent.

>"MISATO-SAN!" Shinji shrieked in terror as he scrambled back
frantically on all fours. He slammed back-first into his desk, which
knocked enough air out of his lungs to pause his screaming for a
moment or two, but ultimately failed to discourage him from continuing
to bawl his lungs out. He was stopped only when, a second later, a
drawer jarred loose from the earlier impact tumbled down and crashed
squarely onto his forehead, causing the Avatar to collapse back
limply, cross-eyed.

"Oro..."

"Well." Misao frowned. "That went a lot better than I thought it
would."

The usual questions about why she freaks him out if an EVA didn't, etc. etc.

>/"How should I put this,"/ Shinji replied. /"I'm this world's messiah,
if you will."/

Pompous fuck.

That whole fight scene. Didn't care. Some SI wacking off to how awesome he 
is.

Good:

The flow of your story was very good. The timing was nice, it stayed light, 
and there were some very interesting hints of Machiavellianism on the part 
of Ritsuko. Her entire characterization was very well done. Misato was a bit 
more flakey than I like, but nothing terrible. Try not to reduce her to a 
complete moron. Shinji, when he's not being overpowered, is an interesting 
character. He doesn't seem to have a spine, but hey. Shinji, right? You are 
very good at fast, light description and set the scene quite well.

Bad:

The whole fight was retarded. The SI is overpowered. That's nice. I don't 
care. At other points SI self love seeps out like pus from a sore. Not 
pleasant. And this whole breaking the fourth wall, thing. Don't do it. It's 
jarring, irritating, and doesn't work. I know what you're trying to do. 
You're failing. Leave the 4th wall alone.

Ugly:

You punctuate like a spastic weasel in a cage of commas. Its very droppings 
are ellipses. Your knowledge of correct hyphenation is abysmal. Do yourself 
a favor. Buy "Elements of Style" by EB White. Read it. Love it. Memorize it. 
Oh, and you have a bunch of long convoluted sentences. Most of them aren't 
really a problem, but there's so many commas interspersed throughout that it 
can get very difficult to read.

General:

I'm not sure if the EVA-02 thing is intentional or not. I'm assuming it is. 
I glanced through the first chapter after I read this one but didn't see 
anything that explained it. Didn't read most of that, though, because of my 
aforementioned problems with SIs.

Don't get discouraged, though. Other than some grammatical rule related 
problems, you write very well. You have some very good ideas, and there's a 
lot of creativity here. Like I said, I really like the way you treated the 
original cast. I was dubious about the whole ermine thing, but then you 
played the Pen Pen card and I really had to shut up. Well played, Moriarty. 
Well played.

Good job. I'll read the next chapter when it comes out.

Miashara
www.deepfriedpuppies.com/miashara

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