'Variations on a Theme' (VoaT) starts with Shinji returning from his month-long tour of Unit-01's S2 core. Up to this point, all is as it was in NGE the series. Once back however, new things start to happen to our favourite wuss.

Written by James Grabowski and Geoff Upchurch, this is a marvellously written fic from certain stand-points. It is intelligent, creative, and in some cases breathtaking in the depth of thinking it requires. For once Shinji comes back, the enigmatic albino Ayanami Rei takes a serious interest in our young hero. From that seemingly simple beginning a whole lot happens in a fic that continues across the centuries and continents.

Well, not actually. In truth it all takes place in a day or two and just in Tokyo-3. But it sure seems like it should involve years.

For this fic has several problems. The first and most serious is size. I'm not talking 'War and Peace' here, I'm talking Robert Jordan's 'The Wheel of Time' kind of long. It takes the characters 5k just to say 'hello', 15k to look at their watches, and if someone actually asks 'what do you want for breakfast?' most multi-gigabyte hard drives suffer a 'lack of memory' error. In fact, you will find your greatest friend in reading this fic is your 'Page Down' key. Brevity gentlemen, brevity!

Which brings us to problem number two: dialogue. No one, not even philosophy majors faced with the end of the world go into the kind of reflection and analysis of their lives as these characters get into. NGE also suffered from this on occasion, but usually limited it to conversations between Gendo and Futyuski. In VoaT, everybody drops into discussions about life, love, death, what is living, and who's turn it is to take out the trash at a moment's notice. It makes a hard read of the fic, simply because you want to skip all this airy pussy-footing around the topic and actually go somewhere.

As well, while they start pretty much in character, the authors do take certain liberties with characters. Rei (natch) gets to do things rather than being a cute and mysterious wallflower. While Rei getting a bit more active is a common thing in fanfiction, the time it takes to happen here is a bit surprising. Not the length in fic size (which by itself could hold a
dozen other fics), but in the time it takes story wise. When 315k doesn't even manage to cover half a day, drastic character changes over the fic seem quite out of place.

Added to this problem are the authors' tendency to cause a whole bunch of characters to flip out. Asuka and Ritsuko basically go insane for a few paragraphs at different points. I'm not talking just a little bit of giggling, I'm talking foaming at the mouth kind of nuts. And then they seem to recover a bit later. This tendency for people to drop out for a bit takes away from what we know of them. We know they can take a lot, but when they break we expect them to stay broken. The recoveries they seem to get cheapens what should be traumatic events. These people lead stressful lives, and if they started going off the deep end as often as they do, humanity would long since have been toast.

Also, Asuka really seems to be treated poorly here. It's obvious early on that she's looking out for Shinji (in her own way), but once Rei shows the young Ikari some loving, Asuka is reduced to screaming and mindless violence. I am not impressed with how Shinji is made to drop her without a second thought. She's really just shuttled off to the side so Shinji and Rei can have their long talks (see above). There's also the development of a Asuka/Hikari pairing.

I'm not too sure on this. It involves the recreation of not one, but two characters' sexuality. There is nothing wrong with examining a character's change in orientation, especially at this young an age. However, there are certain places it works better. It usually works well in 'Ranma 1/2' fanfics, simply because there is so much opportunity and questions on the issue of gender in that series. It would work with Shinji since he's been shown to be open to the possibility. But for it to work with Asuka and Hikari, it would require that two characters who have shown strong interest in guys to be seriously worked over. I just can't see it, and thus I find it more of an attempt to keep Asuka away from Shinji and Rei. I'm probably biased since I think Shinji and Asuka do a better job than anyone else of keeping the other in line, but you ain't reading reviews just to hear me lie about how I feel. I have group therapy for that. ^_^

Strengths of the fic: lush writing and good descriptive passages with an abundance of imagery and feeling. These guys spent time working on the fic, and it is visible to those who read it.

In conclusion: is it a good fic? Hard to say. I will read more as I am curious where this all is leading towards. However, I still have many problems with this fic, and it wouldn't take much to doom it under its own weight of melodrama.