Hello, horde. How'ya doin'?
This is a bit long. Apologies to all.
I thought this piece was very well-written generally, and an excellent
introspection-oriented work. Too many Evangelion fics end up with the
characters having a bulky internal dialog and no actual plot. Shinji's
desire to kill himself is built up very well, and Asuka's continually
(accidentally) foiling his attempts is a nice plot trick.
I have a beef with this story, however. And it's fairly critical.
Let's start at the beginning of the story. Asuka is in A-1 bitch mode
from the get-go. In some places it works--particularly when she grabs
Shinji's ear on the catwalk, when she wants her lunch, and when she's
all moon-eyed over Kaji. In other places, it's over the top. I had the
biggest problem with the time she calls Shinji on the cell phone to
come to the mall. While Asuka has a great big superiority complex and
is very demanding, I just can't envision her doing what she does in
this section. The demand for dinner at the end is really the final
straw. I don't think that it's an unrecoverable scene; I just think
that she'd take a slightly more wheedling approach at the outset. And
I just think that his buying dinner is a comment that has to go.
Perhaps she should order him to *cook* dinner, instead.
Also, I thought that having Asuka and Kaji "happen" to show up in some
"desolate" and "isolated" corner of NERV with no more explanation than
that Kaji wanted to wander to be just a *bit* to convenient to
swallow. It also made no sense for Asuka and Kaji to part ways down
there in the bowels of HQ. Perhaps relocating this to a somewhat more
central area would work--it could be a mostly unused passage to the
surface or some such thing. That makes the appearance of Kaji (have it
be his own "personal way out" or something) and his parting from Asuka
there much more reasonable.
So Asuka's a bitch. That's not too bad. But it will make for problems
later on. The thing here is that you have to ask why she's being a
bitch to Shinji. There are a few possible reasons: (1) She really
likes Shinji and wants to draw out his strength; (2) She really likes
Shinji and can't really deal with it [the more reasonable of these
two]; (3) She doesn't care one way or the other about Shinji and
bitchiness is just natural for her; (4) She doesn't like Shinji and
bitchiness is her way of expressing it.
I'm not sure about which reason you intend to use in this story. But I
*am* sure that the only way you can justify the method she uses to
prevent Shinji's suicide is (4). Accepting any other means that her
method of convincing him not to kill himself has to go. And I'll give
you a simple reason. If you were to run into a person who was
contemplating suicide, and you told him the things that Asuka tells
Shinji, you would be just begging him to jump.
[Sparky's Brief Lecture]
People commit suicide because they feel terrible about themselves and
their lives, and they see no other way out of their pain. If you
respond to that by ridiculing them, and make them feel even *worse*
about themselves, they *will not* respond by making positive changes
in their lives. It's as simple as electricity. If you add negative
charge to a negatively charged object, it will not suddenly become
positively charged; it will become more negatively charged.
When someone is at a crisis point, and you make them feel worse about
themselves, it will not reverse their psychological momentum. Rather,
it will probably push them over the edge. So don't you ever try what
Asuka did.
Please.
I'm begging you.
I've lost friends to suicide before, and I've helped turn friends
away. And it's not harsh logic that stops a needless death, but rather
compassion and love. Yet all too often when I see a story where X
saves Y from suicide, this harsh attack style comes in. Please don't
ever do that. I'd say "Please stop writing like that" if I thought it
would do any good. In your own lives, if you ever face this situation,
please, please make an effort to show the person in danger that he or
she is loved. Don't attack these people. Don't hurt them. And for the
love of god, don't suggest to them convenient places where they can
jump.
[/Sparky's Brief Lecture]
That's not to say that those points she makes aren't valid. But it's
really stupid to make them at the time and in the way that she does.
And Asuka (say what you will) isn't an idiot. These are very good
reasons not to commit suicide. But if you're going to talk someone
down off the ledge, you don't do it by calling him an idiot and
telling him he's being totally selfish. Your goal is to make that
person realize that people *do* care about him and love him, and that
there's a positive reason for him to *live*, and not just *not die*.
Oh, I thought that Asuka's letting the word "hang" slip was very good.
So here we go on some interpretations:
(1) and (2) can be dealt with together, pretty much. They both boil
down to the idea that Asuka really likes Shinji and can't find an
adequate way to say it. If this is the case, then her behavior when
she's trying to talk him (and herself) out of suicide makes no sense.
Since she's been in the situation herself (apparently), Asuka knows or
at least has an idea why Shinji would want to kill himself. She has
some (but slightly lesser) acquaintance with the feelings of
worthlessness that bring on his crisis. And I think Asuka is
intelligent enough to realize that the best way to get rid of those
feelings is to give Shinji some sense that people do care about him.
And since she (according to this interpretation) particularly does,
and because his situation has put her at a crisis (which it would if
she liked him and hence feared losing him), I think it's plausible to
suggest that her method for trying to pull him back from the brink
would be to admit her feelings.
I think that's also a strong option because of her superiority
feelings--she'd think she'd be enough to pull him back. I certainly
think she'd at least mention that she liked him.
But more importantly, I don't think she'd be as harsh with him as she
is. I think she'd be angry, and a little hurt. However, I think the
anger would be more oriented towards Shinji's own failure to realize
that she cared about him.
Regardless, if Asuka likes Shinji, then she won't choose to destroy
him like she does in the story. If nothing else, she'll spend her time
appealing to the fact that Misato, Kensuke, and Touji like Shinji.
There's an extent to which she does it in the story, but I just don't
think that it's adequate. Frankly, Shinji could just as easily
conclude from what Asuka says that he might as well jump, because
you've already emphasized that he doesn't think that Misato
understands him, which in his mind could easily slip into an
interpretation that she really doesn't care about him. Keep in mind
that Shinji's not feeling entirely rational in this story, so rational
thought isn't very likely to save him.
So (1) and (2) don't work for the story. How about (3)? Well, if Asuka
doesn't care one way or the other about Shinji, then her reason for
convincing him not to commit suicide boil down to the fact that she's
still not over her mother's hanging. That kind of fits with what she
says here--especially the parts about those who are left behind. But
Asuka is intelligent enough to realize that Shinji's situation and her
mother's are not the same. Her mother was crazy, as Asuka implies. But
Shinji's just deeply depressed, and I think Asuka at least has the
intelligence to grasp that. So again, as above, I think she'd take a
more gentle approach. Naturally, since she has no affection for
Shinji, that won't be the reason she gives. But I think she would
spend a lot of time emphasizing how Misato cares about Shinji, how
Touji and Kensuke care about him. In other words, I think that while
some of her negativity would stand, I think it would be strongly
mitigated by her attempts to actually keep him alive. She could still
be a bit harsh about it, but I think she'd make a stronger case for
Misato's caring about Shinji, at least. Certainly it would be more
than just asking a question.
As for (4), this is the only way in which her method makes any sense.
If Asuka really wants Shinji to be out of the way, then she would use
this very dangerous method to pull him back from the brink,
particularly since doing it in this way would make his life after he
chose to survive really shitty. I'll explain that below, but suffice
it to say that if Shinji decides to live solely for the reasons that
Asuka gives, without believing that anyone around him actually cares,
then his life will be a totally depressed Hell. So I can only buy what
Asuka does if she actually actively dislikes Shinji and doesn't want
anything good for him at all.
Now, I don't know what interpretation you're taking here. I have a
feeling it's more along the lines of (1) and (2). "I hate you!" seems
plausible for all these interpretations, but the line "If you're going
to leave me, go get it over with," suggests that there's something
important to Asuka about Shinji's being there for her. That fits
better with at least some affection. It doesn't need to be love, but I
think that line, at least, strongly implies that she cares.
Moving on to the depressed hell.... The last few paragraphs of the
story *really* bugged me. Shinji's emotional transformation was
totally inappropriate. Sure, he's decided not to die. But that
decision wasn't made for any positive reason. His choice to live has
been based solely on the fact that he realizes he can't die without
hurting other people. But that choice wasn't made because he had some
cathartic realization that people actually care about him. So he has
no reason to be happy or ebullient in any way.
In fact, he should be crushingly depressed, because the one thing
that's keeping him from committing suicide is the very thing that
makes him *want* to kill himself: the control of his life by other
people. You spend a great deal of time building up his feelings of
manipulation and loneliness. How can being manipulated into not
committing suicide improve his emotional state? The manipulation
wasn't even done in a positive way. I just can't buy that Shinji will
start to feel the least bit alive simply because Asuka calls him an
idiot for a while. Here again is the crux: you don't make people feel
better by ridiculing them. And you won't prevent, or even necessarily
delay, a suicide if you don't make the person feel better about
himself and his life.
It comes down to this choice for me when reading the fic: I can buy
Asuka's methodology, or I can buy the ending. Together, they don't
work. If you keep her method for preventing Shinji's death, then you
have to boot the ending. That's a simple transformation, if you want
to do it. Simply have Shinji go into the elevator, and end the story
as the doors close in front of him. That would well emphasize how he's
trapped into his manipulated life.
If you decide you want to keep the positive ending, and I think you do
(and should), then a major rewrite of Asuka's talking Shinji down is
absolutely necessary. Of primary importance is that Shinji will have
to recognize that at least someone cares about him enough that he can
go on living for a while. It doesn't really matter who it is, although
I would suggest Asuka or Misato. It certainly can't be his
father--even if Shinji could be convinced that Gendo cared about him
(a tough sell), I don't think that would matter enough to him to pull
him back, if for no other reason than that he feels no real connection
with his father. It may also be necessary for Asuka to open up a
little more during the session on the cliff. Most importantly though,
Asuka can't call Shinji a selfish idiot as much as she does. Once is
more than enough. She should use words like "confused" instead.
That may seem OOC, especially given her bitchiness in earlier
sections. I don't think it is, if she wants Shinji to live... after
all, Asuka's attitude, no matter how she feels about Shinji, is a
shell she wears to mask her own feelings of loneliness. I think, if
the situation were dire enough, she'd be willing to cast it off. We
see that in "Magma Diver" when she resigns herself to her death,
something unexpected from a brash, ebullient warrior woman. If it
bothers you, though, you might just tone down the earlier sections.
So those are my thoughts. You probably disagree with many of them, and
they did go on for quite a long time. But I just felt completely
jarred by the way the fic ended, and I was very troubled by the way
Shinji got saved from himself. All things considered, this is a very
good story. But I think that ultimately what is written as happening
in the moment of highest tension would never lead to the ending you
describe.
Nonetheless, I think I must reiterate that this is extremely well
written throughout. The psychological inconsistency of the final two
parts in no way detracts from the excellent work done earlier in the
fic. And really, those last two parts could work more harmoniously
with only minor changes.
Sparky
*********
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."--Isaac Asimov
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