The Blue Rose (formerly titled Boyfriend of Steel) was over a year's worth of effort from a guy with an impossibly busy schedule, who really liked Evangelion and who wanted to try his own hand at Fan Fiction. My challenge to myself was to write a short story within the scope of the original series (meaning no alternate universes or crossovers),using the infamous GANIAX-produced Girlfriend of Steel, an interactive PC game produced shortly after the release of the TV series in Japan, as the model, while also trying to avoid many of the pitfalls that you see in most Fan Fiction.
Writing this story took four stages: an outline, which focused heavily on the dialog and interactions between the characters; a rough draft, which was then sent out to a selected set of beta readers; an initial published version, and the re-written final, which is posted here.
Some common questions about the story from the beta readers and others:
1)What happened at the end? The biggest question of the story from early readers was: did Patrick die? Whether or not Patrick and Rei actually exist in that world is completely open to debate, but this is a consequence of Patrick’s decision in the EVA. It doesn’t have to be real, it could all be in Patrick’s mind, or maybe not….
2) Why would Shinji actually try to help Patrick get a date with Rei? Mostly because he doesn't have the guts to do it himself as Misato wryly observed. Because he's too weak to ask Rei himself, he facilitates the date for Patrick and watches from a distance. Actually I think the situation Shinji gets in is quite interesting because both Rei and Asuka are taken up with the American boys and this leaves him free for Misato, who certainly cozies up to him.
3) If Vance is using the Neural Control Serum to mask his identity to EVA-03, wouldn't Vance start taking on characteristics of Toji, such as physical appearance, an affinity for basketball, Kansai cuisine, and to be randomly violent? I didn’t want to bring that into the plot as it gets too weird at that point. Plus it is already an unwieldy story without having the Toji/Vance comparisons. I supposed I could have wrote it to pursue this and have Vance have the hots for Hikari, that sort of thing, the reason why I didn’t was A) I wanted to give Asuka someone to play off other than Shinji, someone that she might actually respect, and Vance is strong enough to handle her, and B) then once the mystery is discovered then everyone’s going to know Toji is the real pilot for EVA-03 and that goes against canon (remember we’re trying to fit this in as a side story like Girlfriend of Steel). Instead I have the serum using DNA directly from EVA-03, which is why the spoof doesn’t work for long – he’s essentially being rejected by the EVA. Yes, it’s anime physics, but then so is a lot of NGE.
4) As some may have guessed, this story was evolved out of an attempt to “Americanize” Evangelion. I had originally planned a story about EVA-03 and EVA-04, set in the NERV operations in America , which has two locations: 1st Branch in Massachusetts, and 2nd Branch in Nevada, where the S2 Engine accident occurs.(This is all from source material in NGE, you can see more details at http://www.evageeks.org/). My original story had four pilots: the twin pilots of EVA-04 (which became Patrick and Erin Forrrestal), the pilot of EVA-03 (who eventually became Vance), and another clone of Rei Ayanami, who had an American name and a somewhat different personality. The basic plot was that the American EVA pilots were training as “backups” for the Japan operation, but their leader was secretly plotting to destroy NERV and cause a “destructive” Third Impact in revenge for the evils of humanity. In my original story concept, there were a lot of similarities to NGE, including the father-son angst, but no EVA-Angel battles. Instead the EVAs were training to fight other EVAs. At the climax of the story, one of the twins discovered the nature of the plot and caused (along with either the other twin, or “Rei”) the “Sea of Dirac” or black hole that is thought to swallow EVA-04 at the beginning of NGE Episode 17. The main obstacle to the story was the lack of action: with no angels to fight the story lacked the intensity that I wanted. So I re-worked the story to fuse it with the original cast and plot: this way the EVA-on-EVA action doesn’t seem out of place.
5) The dialogue in the first part of Chapter Ten is taken directly from NGE Episode 17.
Thanks to the following who beta-read this story:
- <!--[if !supportLists]-->Haganeookami (who provided much of the grammar and spell checking, and general moral support)
- <!--[if !supportLists]-->Matsuman
- <!--[if !supportLists]-->Fachiro1
- <!--[if !supportLists]-->CorporalChaos
- <!--[if !supportLists]-->Chowwow
All of your feedback was welcome and essential to the final version. Hope that everyone enjoyed reading this! -spd
About the above image: actually this was drawn by Haru for my birthday and to celebrate the completion of the story. Yes, it's Rei and Patrick, and they are a bit older in this picture (about late teens). Just one possibility....
