NGE: Nobody Dies 2: The Reevival

[Jorlem]

To kick off the new thread, here is the Nobody Dies Table of Contents.
Edit:
It occurred to me that I forgot to describe what is actually in the linked table.  It's a listing of the various stories and side stories that are part of the Nobody Dies 'verse.  Most usefully, it includes when they occur in relation to the main fic's timeline.  Sorry about the oversight.
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Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

[Dartz]

Sometimes I think I'm the only person on the internet who doesn't like that fic.

I've tried to read it three/four times.... but just can't get into it. It's this insanely popular thing, but I just can't like it for reasons I can't fathom.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Bob Schroeck]

Nothing wrong with that, Dartz. De gustibus non disputandum and all.

Oh and because I forgot to mention it earlier... http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/88/NGE_Nobody_Dies]chapter 88 is up.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Epsilon]

Sometimes I think I'm the only person on the internet who doesn't like that fic.

I've tried to read it three/four times.... but just can't get into it. It's this insanely popular thing, but I just can't like it for reasons I can't fathom.

You are not alone. It's well written, but I just...
Everyone loves Nobody Dies Rei and I just find the character so annoying. It ruined the entire experience for me.
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Epsilon

[Dartz]

Yeah, Rei just doesn't sit right with me either. Though I'm being very careful to avoid complaining about shows I don't watch. I really didn't get very far into it. At least I'm not alone I suppose....
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Bob Schroeck]

BTW, just fair warning... I got a board membership request this morning from a "GreggHL".
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[GreggHL]

Yeah, Rei just doesn't sit right with me either. Though I'm being very careful to avoid complaining about shows I don't watch. I really didn't get very far into it. At least I'm not alone I suppose....

I found it's a mixed bag, honestly.  I seem to have groups who either love the fic or hate it.  Some go to extremes in either way, but a find there's a strong middle ground which has offered me a lot of constructive criticism.  That and, in all honesty, some of the my more recent chapters have been lukewarm, but that's another story altogether.

As for Rei, yeah.  I don't see her as a character.  I see Rei as part of the plot.

[Bob Schroeck]

Welcome to the forums, Gregg. I suspected it might have been you...

And before we go any further, I must inform you that here in the DW forums, we have but two rules that all must follow: 1) Have fun, and 2) Play nice. (Which is not to say you can't have your disagreements, but we tend to be civil about them.)

And please feel free to explore and add your voice to other parts of the forums. I'd love to see what you might have to contribute to http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/forums/8/Fenspace]Fenspace, for instance...
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Foxboy]

Heeee~y! Welcome to the fora.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Rod.H]

Heeee~y!

*Hears 'Heeee~y'*
Oh no! The REE! They are spreading, run for it!

[Epsilon]

As for Rei, yeah.  I don't see her as a character.  I see Rei as part of the plot.

Which I think is part of the problem I have with the character.
Though honestly? I thinks its mainly the fandom. The same thing happened with Xelloss from Slayers. Everyone else was all "That... is a secret!" and grinning foolishly while talking about him and how awesome he was and I just reacted with visceral hatred when I actually encountered him in the show and their continued fawning praise of the character just exacerbated the feeling.
The ineffable trickster god archtype is a difficult one to pull off. I guess that's why I spent so much time deconstructing the trope in HT.
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Epsilon

[GreggHL]

As for Rei, yeah.  I don't see her as a character.  I see Rei as part of the plot.

Which I think is part of the problem I have with the character.
Though honestly? I thinks its mainly the fandom. The same thing happened with Xelloss from Slayers. Everyone else was all "That... is a secret!" and grinning foolishly while talking about him and how awesome he was and I just reacted with visceral hatred when I actually encountered him in the show and their continued fawning praise of the character just exacerbated the feeling.
The ineffable trickster god archtype is a difficult one to pull off. I guess that's why I spent so much time deconstructing the trope in HT.
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Epsilon

Yeah, I remember reading that one of the things that truly ticked Anno off is how people loved Rei.  Not as much as a character as much as they saw her as, well, the hot chick.  Which itself I find odd because a) she's fourteen and b) she's so far in the Uncanny Valley that she owns a ranch and sells salad dressing.  The WoG is unreliable with Eva at best because Anno was/is something of a troll with his fanbase, but I'm pretty sure he intended Rei to be disturbing.

I just ran with it in the other direction.  If I ever redo the story, I'm going to try to make her more creepy.

[GreggHL]

Welcome to the forums, Gregg. I suspected it might have been you...

And before we go any further, I must inform you that here in the DW forums, we have but two rules that all must follow: 1) Have fun, and 2) Play nice. (Which is not to say you can't have your disagreements, but we tend to be civil about them.)

And please feel free to explore and add your voice to other parts of the forums. I'd love to see what you might have to contribute to Fenspace, for instance...

I shall keep it in mind.  In truth, I've actually gone to this forum a lot, and just never signed in.  I did get a lot of reading material off of the recommendations thread.

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, then, you should feel right at home. Cool.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[GreggHL]

Well, then, you should feel right at home. Cool.

Yeah, I like this place.

Here's the thing; I never take a critique personally, at least not anymore.  That's one of the reasons I tend to pop in on fanfic threads that mention and/or rip into my stuff.  Any critique, outside of "You suck and you suck for sucking" helps me either improve the story, or improve other things I plan to work on in the future.  That's half the beauty of it, really.  I will admit I do get obsessive about my stories, but at the same time it's probably from a sense of pride.

Or schaudenfreude.  Whichever comes first.

[Black Aeronaut]

Well, I don't really care myself. I just fell in love with the insanity from eight o'clock, day one and it kept on from there. So far I think my two Most Epic Rei moments are 1) when she met Go-kun the first time and 2) Rei's battle against Adam (she seems to have hit her ultimate high point there - since then she seems to be focusing on passing it down to the next generation).

"REI!!! DON'T ANTAGONIZE CTHULU!" I mean, really, 'nuff said there! (^_^)

Anyhow... I just hope to be able to match your awesomeness with my own work. Kinduva tall order for me, so I do have to ask... What is your mental process for this stuff?

[GreggHL]

Well, I don't really care myself. I just fell in love with the insanity from eight o'clock, day one and it kept on from there. So far I think my two Most Epic Rei moments are 1) when she met Go-kun the first time and 2) Rei's battle against Adam (she seems to have hit her ultimate high point there - since then she seems to be focusing on passing it down to the next generation).

"REI!!! DON'T ANTAGONIZE CTHULU!" I mean, really, 'nuff said there! (^_^)

Anyhow... I just hope to be able to match your awesomeness with my own work. Kinduva tall order for me, so I do have to ask... What is your mental process for this stuff?

I honestly couldn't say.  When I started ND, Rei's weirdness was going to be an act.  But the more I wrote it, the more I was convinced that yes, Rei really should be this over the top.  For everything else, I tended to a) use a cowriter who vetted my too out there ideas, some of which I really liked but whathaveyou, and b) sounded the stuff out before writing it down.  What I mean for that is basically, outline it.  I have the ending of ND outlined.  I use that as a basic framework for everything else.

[The Wanderer]

I haven't been participating in these threads much, in no small part because I fell far behind on reading ND itself; I only just this past week caught up from chapter 58, and I took the occasion to reread the entire fic.

I don't have any immediate particular comments on the story as such (which is probably a good sign - I can be extremely critical at times, and I can find something wrong with almost anything), but there is one thing which I found very noticeable and somewhat distracting both times through the fic, on more of a proofreading/copyediting level.

Gregg, you appear to have a habit of spelling the word "too" with only one O, particularly - but not exclusively - when it appears at the end of a sentence and is directly preceded by a comma. This first showed up in chapter 1 without the comma and chapter 2 with, and has been fairly consistent all the way through (it happened in chapter 87, but not in 88). The pattern has been so persistent that I've started to wonder if it isn't somehow a spellchecker typo or similar.

Do you have any idea why that happens?

[OpMegs]

Well, then, you should feel right at home. Cool.

Yeah, I like this place.

Here's the thing; I never take a critique personally, at least not anymore.  That's one of the reasons I tend to pop in on fanfic threads that mention and/or rip into my stuff.  Any critique, outside of "You suck and you suck for sucking" helps me either improve the story, or improve other things I plan to work on in the future.  That's half the beauty of it, really.  I will admit I do get obsessive about my stories, but at the same time it's probably from a sense of pride.

Or schaudenfreude.  Whichever comes first.

Ironically, the timing of this is kinda funny.

I've introduced people to Nobody Dies that've dropped off reading it and such (mostly around the Multiverse arc, due to the fanfic in-jokes they missed and such), and while I understood their reasons, I stuck with it because the madcap stuff was funny to me. (DINOSAUR TANK)

However, the most recent chapters with Tamiel and Ichi becoming the Mark-01 and the whole near-Instrumentality brought back what I really enjoyed about this story, which is that you're one of the few Eva writes that goes somewhere new with the premise, while maintaining a fairly close relation to the original canon. I loved Eva's cast, and the cosmology was interesting, but where Anno took it just pissed me off because I liked the cast. Whereas with Nobody Dies, Crowning Moments Of Awesome aren't horribly subverted into awful let-downs minutes later. Even the worse ones (Raziel, the near-Instrumentality, etc.) may have setbacks, but they go beyond that.

Essentially, Nobody Dies has hit that wonderful middle ground with me where Angst and Drama do not mean Depressing As All Shit And Why Am I Watching This When I Want Entertainment.

Hell, you've made the Angels into characters we empathize with and can understand, even if they're weird and out there (Leliel is a notable case, but I recall someone's argument that Zeruel was trying very hard to be the father figure for the Angels after ADAM was trapped away and failing due to the fact that his very nature means he can't do the job, like someone failing the Sibling Promoted To Parent test).

All in all, the only real criticism I can bring up that isn't stylistic nitpicking at this point is something you seem to already be addressing, namely that the Ree are more plot devices than characters (besides Kei). You have no idea how much I outright cheered when Kyoko got put in charge of them, because it means someone in-story who won't just go "eh, it's the Ree. What you gonna do? *shrug*"

That, and you have my undying respect for managing to turn Kyoko around from Over 9000 UberBitch to a character I like and can cheer for through character development. That's just amazing. Even if it put Asuka in the state she was in at the start of the fic, it just made the eventual resolution all the sweeter. I swear, you could mine some of the Sohryu family moments for 100 proof sugar these days. It's amazing.
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"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

[Wiregeek]

I feel like I'm in the prescence of some sort of insane celebrity.. kinda like Johnny Depp, only more prone to start barking..

The only quibble I have with the story is the horrid grammar and spelling, but that's nothing more than a minor irritation at best. (Think "The Devil's Panties")
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[Sofaspud]

*points at OpMegs post*  I'm one of the ones that fell off the bandwagon at the multiverse arc.
Up until that point, it was condensed awesome -- had its downpoints, but, on the whole, Awesome(tm) -- but that left turn onto WTF Avenue threw me off and I haven't mustered the gumption to get back on the horse since.
I dunno.  I felt... almost betrayed, I guess?  That's not the right word but I don't know what is.  Here's this amazing story with wacky hijinks and wait why are we heading off to some other universe now?  This doesn't make sense!
(Yes, I can say that with a straight face even though the ND-verse is insane as-is)
So, my 2c, I guess.  Like I said, I liked it up until that point...

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[WengFook]

I've introduced people to Nobody Dies that've dropped off reading it and such (mostly around the Multiverse arc, due to the fanfic in-jokes they missed and such), and while I understood their reasons, I stuck with it because the madcap stuff was funny to me. (DINOSAUR TANK)

I'll chime in with a ditto on the madcap stuff and taking the Evangelion characters in brave new directions. I really like the small moments of character development where you take the really unlikeable characters, like Kyoko, and humanize them through the story progression.
The only complaint I'd voice is that, I feel, the story has a tendency to flit from awesome moment to awesome moment with a feeling of a grand overarching plot but leaves the immediate story telling a little disjointed and no rest from the high energy scenes. :o
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Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

[GreggHL]

My apologies if it takes me a while to respond.  I'm actually working as a teacher in Korea, so I've got a 14 hour time difference with the east coast of the US.  Hence, I'm asleep when many people are up and visa versa.

I will admit that the Multiverse arc could have been done better.  If I do rewrite the story, I would definitely limit that to canon verses like the NERV Academy and Ikari Raising project, if only to see Ikari Raising Project Gendo get emasculated by two Yui's.

Oddly enough, though, the Multiverse arc was essential for Kyoko's character growth.  She had to see how bad things could have been.  She had to see that she was still in the best case scenario, even as bad as things were with Asuka.  I felt the best way to do it would be to see the canon scenario, where things hinted to her doing all this on purpose, so Asuka would be so broken she could Synchronize.

As for the grammar, I have two reasons.  First, I am way too impatient to use a Beta.  That's one of the reasons I update so fast.  Second, only around chapter 40 or so did I get Open Office, which fixed a lot of the basic spelling mistakes.  Of course, there's also the fact that I may be slightly dyslexic, and hence get the to/too thing confused every now and then.  I am working on that, too.

[GreggHL]

I do find filler to be important and have been trying to structure things lately.  After every big battle I try to do a chapter or so of light hearted stuff.  Like, after Zeruel I had Asuka Sohryu vs. the World, and after Tamiel I have the current one, with Shinji baby-sitting the Reego and the Ree, JA-Tan, Go-kun, Yui and Naok00 each trying, separately, to ship Rei.

[Dartz]

Don't worry, your grammer is still better than mine in the rough.

Still, an extra couple days with a beta reader isn't that much really... and you can always be working on the next chapter during that time. It's something that really pays off, and improved my own stuff no-end. It's obvious when things I've done haven't been beta'd.... painfully obvious in fact that it makes me cringe. Some extra time with a beta improves the finished product no-end, for very little extra waiting on the writing end. Another thing a beta helps with, is nixing some dumb ideas before you go ahead with them or giving you advice on just how far you can take things.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?