It all started with a challenge. With simple conditions:

1) Yui may not be in more then 2 or 3 scene's.
2) Fic must include all three pilots and must revolve around at least one of them.
3) Gendo must take a secondary roll.
4) Fic must be set sometime after Shinji's first fight in an Eva.
5) Gendo's primary concern must always be the human Instrumentality plan.

Conditions easily met. But count on Lara Bartram to seize the occasion to *again* give birth to an original fic.

The basic idea is not new. It's one I'm rather familiar with. However, it's the first time I see it actually applied to the NGE universe. And applied well it was.

The story starts with Shinji going into yet another angst night. But this time, more than dark memories comes to hunt him, as Shinji fells prey to one of the most popular monster of literature: the dreaded vampire. From there starts a new dark Tokyo-3 tale.

To a little fan of vampire stories like me, this came as a very pleasant surprise. With flawless execution, Lara merged the vampire theme with the NGE world. The story is obviously dark, but the vampire elements are used with moderation, not taking over the NGE elements. Rei, Asuka, Ritsuko, Gendo: they all stay the same.

For those who complained about NGE fics only being WAFF stories, a breath of fresh air. Well, as much as a dark can be...
 

SEELE-01
May 18th 2000

Darkish sort of fic. Shinji is attacked by something... and then subsequently he starts to kill people. Runs away despite the efforts of lots of beautiful females to help him and waits for Third Impact. Grim stuff.

Considering NGE is a dark type of fic, it's surprising there aren't that many good dark fics out there and there's no shortage of WAFF type Eva fics. I'm sure Anno-sensei would be estatic. Perhaps there's some sort of law of equal and opposite reaction in the relationship between fanfic and anime. Robert 'Kenjiko' Haynie's acceptance speech at the 1999 Chicken Ball Awards encapsulates this paradox perfectly.

After reading it twice, somehow I still couldn't quite picture a vampiric Shinji. I blame that on watching too much Buffy - where becoming a vampire causes you to lose your original personality. But all in all, this is good, innovative 'what if' stuff.

(the above was posted on the FFML as part of my usual 'Cranky Evafic Comments' - well, waste not, want not.)