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Oh boy, do I ever. I've only got a handful of published stories, and they're almost all just one-shots that are on the short side. I do have one that's 20K words, though.

But unpublished? I have about 60K words sunk into a WIP colab fic series, and that's not even counting the less-developed miscellaneous colabs and other projects that haven't panned out yet.

I may have a problem.

Fanfiction, original fiction, whatever? If so, what are you working on right now?

I made it about 4,000 words into the first draft of a historical novel before realizing it needed a bit more planning, so if I have a WIP, it's that.

Awkward Silence returns! That's a running theme, like I said.

Regarding both the angel fight and Shinji getting beat up, they both show aspects of something Eva does that a lot of mech series don't so much: create a sense that there are actual consequences. When a building falls down, people get hurt. Our giant robots draw a stupid amount of power: of course we can't just have them run except off a cable. And so on. It makes the world feel more weighty.

The "Children" thing is a preservation of an error in the original. The old sub (and I believe the old dub) said "Child" there, which Word Of God confirms is correct.

As for Shinji Hate, I've actually not seen that so much among people who like EVA. Is that a thing? It seems understand the way Shinji works, so I doubt you'll hate him.

Netflix did a totally new dub for the series.

We have claims to add, unless people don't care about technically claiming every single fic you do. But the existing long-term one's updated and the old one's been moved.

Greetings all... Or rather, greetings again I suppose. Life's been more than a bit of a blur since I was last really able to pop onto the board or Discord, and it feels really nostalgic to come back...
If a lilbit awkward. Since it's been so long, I'm not sure if I should re-Introduce myself or somesuch.

The dub is the same one he's familiar with, so we're sticking with it. Plus, I'm familiar with the Eva soundtrack and all bajillion versions of "Fly Me to the Moon" that come with it, so if I don't have to listen to it ever again, I'm okay with that. ^_^;

~Neshomeh

It looks like we may be settling into a pattern of giant robot fights every odd episode, unpacking the fallout from the giant robot fight every even episode. That's cool. I can dig it.

Spoilers start now.

In episode three, we learn that Hapless Youth still has to go to school, Eva pilot or not. We learn some of the world's history: in an event known as the Second Impact, the South Pole was basically vaporized, sea levels rose, and half the life on Earth was wiped out. This took place in the year 2000, and fifteen years later, humanity has made an astounding comeback. Or, at least Japan has. We don't know anything about the rest of the world. The Rainbow Council may be world leaders, or it may be all Japanese, I dunno. In this episode, we also learn that the government routinely hides things from the people, so it's entirely possible that anything we THINK we know is wrong. This should be fun.

It is relevant to note here that Hapless Youth is fourteen years old. So is Listless Waif. At one point, one of the NERV people makes a telling remark that the Evas must be piloted by fourteen-year-olds. I believe this is because they must be piloted by the "Children." Hapless Youth definitely is a Children (that's how they use the word, don't ask me why); they say so in the first couple eps. Listless Waif likely is, too. In fact, they are two of at least four Children: someone at NERV mentions that they haven't found the fourth one yet.

Undoubtedly connected, when this episode's Angel turns up, a data readout on it labels it Angel 04. There's clearly a link between the Second Impact, the Angels, the Children, and the Evas, though the exact nature of it is unclear so far. What IS clear is that numbers are important, and worth paying attention to as we go on.

But in the meantime, we meet two of Hapless Youth's new classmates, Tracksuit and Glasses Nerd. Tracksuit has a younger sister who was injured by falling debris during the first episode's battle, and he wants nothing more than to punch the Eva pilot in the face for being so reckless. Naturally, when some other students ask Hapless Youth whether he is the Eva pilot, he says yes. Then everyone knows, and Tracksuit punches him in the face. Like you do.

Duty calls when Angel 04 attacks, though. All the students head for their designated shelter, and Hapless Youth and Listless Waif head for NERV. Hapless Youth suits up, despite not caring for his lot at all, and the battle commences.

Meanwhile, Glasses Nerd really really wants to get some video footage of the Angel and the Evangelion. He's sick of not being allowed to see anything. He convinces Tracksuit to sneak up to the surface with him. Almost immediately, they are in peril and almost get squashed by Unit 01 when the Angel slams it into the ground. Oops.

Important fact about Evas: they work best when plugged in, like a vacuum cleaner. They have backup batteries, which are good for about five minutes. Unit 01's cord was broken.

Irresponsible Woman (Hapless Youth's "operational commander," IIRC) orders that Unit 01's power jack thingy be ejected, making space for the two idiots to climb inside to safety. She orders Hapless Youth to disengage, but instead he flips out and starts beating on the Angel with his last five minutes of power. Lucky for him, he stabs it in the eye and it dies just in time. He melts down, witnessed by Tracksuit and Glasses Nerd.

Tracksuit now feels bad about punching him in the face, but Hapless Youth isn't at school the next day. He's taken off. We spend a lot of episode 4 following him riding his midnight train going anywhere, and then following him back to Tokyo 3 on foot for some reason.

I don't think I've actually mentioned Tokyo 3 yet. It's the city where the show takes place. During Angel attacks, the tallest buildings, containing the shelters, are retracted underground, and they hang there, above the NERV command center (I think). It's really pretty cool, and an incredible technological feat for humans to have pulled off a mere 15 years after near annihilation. I don't know what happened to Tokyo 2, but until further notice I shall assume it's hanging out with Babylon 4 somewhere. ^_~

Where were we?

Right, Hapless Youth goes walkabout. Can't blame him, really. He's traumatized, he has no meaningful connections to the world, he has no good role model for making any, and he has no real reason to fight. He protects people who need it when they're right in front of him, but he's only fourteen; he can't really conceive of the big picture here, and doesn't have all the information anyway. He's just done what he's told so far because, well, what else is he going to do?

When he comes back after two days, Irresponsible Woman rags on him about mindlessly agreeing with everything she says without really listening to her. If you don't want to be here, she tells him, you should leave.

Shockingly, he decides to leave. Who would've guessed? So, he's decommissioned, and he gets all set to go back where he came from.

At about this point, though, Tracksuit and Glasses Nerd catch up to him. Tracksuit insists that Hapless Youth needs to punch him in the face to make up for earlier. Hapless Youth does so. They are bros now.

This is probably why Hapless Youth doesn't go through with leaving. He doesn't get on his train. When Irresponsible Woman figures out that he can't form a meaningful connection with her or anyone else because he doesn't know how (how could he, with Hard Bastard for a father?), and races off to try to stop him from leaving, she finds him standing on the platform. There is an awkwardly long shot of the two of them just standing there, staring.

And that's pretty much it.

As of now, I don't really understand all the hate in the fandom for Shinji. The people I know talk about him like he's this useless, spineless loser, and I mean, okay, he's not gung-ho with the fighting, and I guess if you're like Glasses Nerd and you think piloting an Eva would be really cool, I can see why you'd think that. But he's just a fourteen-year-old kid with no real family or friends, no connection to the world, no reason to care, no model for how to care if he wanted to. He's been dragged into this fight with no say in the matter by a father who doesn't love him and a strange woman who's an absolute authority figure on the one hand and trying to be his friend, maybe, on the other. It's confusing. Of course he doesn't know how to handle it. He's barely even aware of what's going on, let alone why or what it has to do with him.

I say, if Glasses Nerd thinks being a pilot is so cool, they should let him try. Except he's not a Children, so it probably wouldn't work. He's probably better off continuing to try and make friends with Shinji. I guess Glasses Nerd is sans parents, too, so they have some baggage in common that will help them relate.

Shinji will probably get called Shinji from now on. I'm starting to know him. I remember Irresponsible Woman's name, too (it's Misato), but I don't care yet.

There's another probably-important female character in NERV, too, some sort of scientist, but I still have no idea what her deal is. The only thing that's stuck with me about her is the scene from ep 1 when she was introduced, and that's only because it involved some pointless fanservice with a wetsuit. If I ever actually feel it's relevant to mention her, she will be Labcoat, because that's what she's worn since, and she IS a scientist of some sort. I'm just not exactly sure what sort.

~Neshomeh

Here, have a triple chocolate cupcake and don't forget to blow out the candles!

First: A physical copy of Pokémon Uranium for the Nintendo Switch!

Second: An Ultimate Sword from the OreSpawn mod for Minecraft!

Third: My wishes for a happy birthday!

Neshomeh and Silenthunder, if you guys still have your eyes on the ones we co-claimed, I'm down to renew if you are.

So yeah, there's some stuff on the Unclaimed page that probably shouldn't be there, and it's gonna bother me if I don't do something about it.

I'm planning to get started this coming Friday, June 28 at 11:30 am East Coast time. If anyone has claims dating from January 2018 or before they're still interested in, please renew them before that day. Thanks in advance, everyone!

*gives water bottle and delicious cake*

In other words, I turn 26 today. Yay! :D

Unfortunately there was no celebration whatsoever at my family's house, since the poor building is all but coming apart at the seams and we spent the entire day on repairs, but I'm still another year older all the same so there's that I guess. ^^;

Anyway, yeah. Hap birth me! :3

...That is impressive. I will absolutely give it a shot.

I'll reiterate that you should definitely watch Subbed, but other than that... uh... yeah. That sounds like the first two episodes of Eva.

I actually really liked Episode 2, and thought it sold the show well. But I think I'm in the minority on that.

As for the weird stuff... it takes a while. That largely comes in at the very end of the series. Until then, you'll be seeing a lot of standard giant robot stuff, execept with characters that are less stable than usual.

The one thing I want to point out as something I especially like is the sound design. Those quiet, still shots that show up in almost every episode (you probably know the ones I mean if you've seen the show) do a lot to build the oppressive atmosphere this show thrives on.

I might have watched it eight times already. And have plans to watch it again tonight.

Note: I have never seen this show before, but I have spent a lot of time with people who have. Spoilers beyond the first two episodes may or may not be present in the following summation, I have no idea, but fair warning in case something I propose as a wild guess is actually true. (And please don't tell me either way.)

My summary:

An Irresponsible Woman drives recklessly through an abandoned city, in lockdown due to an attack by a monstrous being called an Angel. One of these hasn't been seen in fifteen years (and the current year is 2015, lol). She picks up a Hapless Youth from a street corner. They are nearly wrecked by the explosion of a weapon meant to take out the Angel, but it's okay: our Hapless Youth's head is cushioned from the blow by the Irresponsible Woman's pillowy bosom. They're both fine, and they make their way to their destination.

It seems the Hapless Youth has been summoned to an underground military establishment known as NERV, which is tasked with fighting the Angels. The summons comes directly from its leader, his father, who is such a Hard Bastard that he can break an I-beam with his face. No, really, that actually happens at one point! Okay, there was reinforced glass in between, but they framed the scene to look that way, so I'll interpret it that way if I want to. {= P

Hard Bastard wants Hapless Youth to pilot a giant robot, or Evangelion, known as Unit 01. The Evas are totally not actually Angels that have been hacked by NERV and encased in armor, I'm pretty sure. Hapless Youth, disappointed that his father didn't actually want to see him out of love or anything like that, refuses. He just got here, he's never seen any of this before, and why should he? Hapless Youth is absolutely correct in this. Irresponsible Woman and Hard Bastard don't try to force him, they just summon the other pilot, who is a Listless Waif due to being more or less on death's door from her last attempt to do this.

By the way, the success rate of the Evas is zero. This has never worked, ever. And yet they still want to chuck Hapless Youth into this thing and expect him to just agree out of patriotism or something, even though he's like twelve, probably. This is insane.

Still, seeing Listless Waif attempt to drag her broken self back into the Eva, Hapless Youth has second thoughts. Also, the battle going on above-ground causes some structural damage down where they are, and some debris nearly squashes Hapless Youth, but the Eva acts of its own accord to protect him, flinging the debris aside to break on Hard Bastard's face. The Eva should not be able to do this, it's not even plugged in. This is Significant.

So Hapless Youth eventually climbs in, and we have evidence that in the 90s, people totally believed that liquid oxygen was going to be a thing by 2015. Hee.

Hapless Youth syncs up perfectly with the Eva. This has never happened before! Amazing! They shoot him to the surface to fight the Angel, and things look promising: the Eva walks! Incredible!

... Then it faceplants and the Angel shoots it in the head. Oops. I guess that's... the end of Evangelion. {= D

No? There's more? Okay.

So Hapless Youth doesn't actually die. In fact, in flashbacks, we learn that the Eva more or less comes to life, heals itself, and proceeds to beat the snot out of the Angel. Hapless Youth is totally fine, if somewhat traumatized. He's given quarters in NERV, but rather than make him live alone, Irresponsible Woman decides to take him in. She likes beer. She drinks beer. She may have had one or two dozen beers. She is also totally manipulating Hapless Youth to be sure he'll be combat-ready again. Nice.

Meanwhile, we see that the world is run by a council of totally-not-evil dudes who all look more or less like the Penguin. (The DC villain, not the actual hyperintelligent penguin Pen-Pen who also lives with Irresponsible Woman and Hapless Youth for some reason.) I'd call them a shadowy council, except they each get their own color spotlight, so they are the Rainbow Council. I'm sure they're not somehow responsible for everything that's wrong with the world.

And that's pretty much it for the first two episodes.

What do I think? It's weird, I don't know any of these characters well enough to care about what's happening to them, and I don't know why the show dives right in and expects me to be invested. Still, the designs are cool, the soundtrack is good (if lined up rather oddly with the action at times), the action is good, and the mystery of what the Angels are, where they came from, what's NERV really all about, etc., is intriguing. So, sure, why not?

I expect some super-weird weirdness going forward, though. So far, I'm not feeling it, and the hype is large. {= )

I'll try to give more thoughts as I go, but no promises I'll be very consistent about it.

~Neshomeh