A Personal Essay: Fanfiction from Fans: the Flavors

For over a year now I have read and written Evangelion fanfiction. In that time I have been engrossed more and more into stories written by fans than the series Neon Genesis Evangelion itself. Some time ago I realized that I was losing something, and it was a while longer before I figured out what that something was. The reason for taken so long to gain this revelation was that everyone had lost the same thing, and it would have appeared that no one realized it or believed it mattered. Well, after writing Blue Rain Blue on pure impulse, I gained back what I had lost, and that was this -- the flavor that the original story gave its audience. Thus, I learned that there are three important factors to writing fanfiction: 1) remembering what we are fans of in the first place, 2) reading other fanfiction, 3) balancing your fanfic for yourself and your readers.

Let's face it: all of us who have gotten into Evangelion fanfiction have rarely, if ever, gone back and watched the series again even once. In fact, I believe that most fans have watched all 26 episodes only once or twice. In my experience, that is not nearly enough to take in all it has to offer. In my mind the last two episodes of the series is the climax of the story and its resolution, so for all English students out there, it follows the long slope of development up and the steep cliff of resolution down. Granted that it is usually more appealing to watch any of the first 24 episodes over the last two, I believe that watching Genesis 1:13 is pivotal to characterization -- in fanfiction or simply in one's mind. This hold true even if a writer wishes to have his/her story split off in the middle of the series, since episode 25 sums up the history, personality, and motivation of the four main characters in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Hideaki Anno's story is not like others in this way as well -- instead of having his story split off from a root of a tree, he chose to start from the branches and meet at the seed. In other words, what is learnt in episode 25 should act as a foundation or a buzzing noise in the back of one's mind as one prepares to write a piece of fanfiction.

One must also realize that everyone has a different perception of what they see, and Neon Genesis Evangelion is a prime example of this fact. It is why fanfiction is different from everyone and to everyone. "There are as many truths as there are people," said Kaji (ever notice how Kaji got to say the coolest things in the series, even when he was dead? I think that tells us something about the guy). Now, given that, I have read fanfiction for over a year now, and the cauldron of stories I have read have boiled about and the stew I have in my mind is derived more from the fanfics I read than the series itself. This is not anything deterring until I come to write my own story, and I am the type of writer who aims to keep things as they were, as they "should be," I sometimes say to myself. It has become clear to me that one should not base their perception of a story off of another's. It would be like making a copy of a copy, eventually leading to a blurred image of something that was possibly very simple to begin with.

Also, one must remember that to start off, one must realize that a writer writes for others in the sense he writes for himself. Some writers write to draw out something they wish they had seen, while others write to show their readers what they should see, and so on. I am not saying that fanfiction should follow a rubric. If that were to happen, we'd lose creativity, individuality, and genres of fiction like parodies and humor. What I am saying is that a reader who wishes to write someday might try bearing in mind that just because something sounds good, it might not be right. Evangelion is a pretty strict anime, where most of it is characterization spurred by the extant world. Because of that, one cannot expect to find heavily valiant or romantic scenes in what there would be if a continuation of the story and movies were to exist. In other words, Evangelion is a message and lesson, not just a story, and in that sense one would not find scenes in it similar to a fantasy story from other anime. Also, its symbolism is incredibly striking as they are often abstract rather than corporeal things. Take the ending theme of Neon Genesis Evangelion, for instance, with Rei's silhouette rotating about the moon. It is very different from, say, the pendant Kanzaki Hitomi wears in Tenkuu no Escaflowne. Often, symbolism in Evangelion is the type that means something rather than stands for something. It induces thought rather than reminds. Now, it is obvious that this lack of conventional romance (and I do not use the word "romance" with connotation to "love") spurs a desire for it -- a void to be filled. That is one reason why fanfiction is so wonderful. But back to the idea of copying a copy, if a writer bases his standard off of someone else's, somewhere along the line something will be lost. And back to the idea of going back to the original story, it is by experiencing it again that a writer's standard can be refreshed.

Another topic on the matter is the way in which people associate characters with others characters. One popular theory among why Asuka-fans are Asuka-fans and Rei-fans are Rei-fans is that the Asuka crowd believe Asuka and Shinji are meant to be together and that her physical abuse towards Shinji is reminiscient of that between Akana and Ranma from the popular Ranma 1/2 (or at least 99% of Asuka-fans seem to feel this way, as some like Asuka because of the past-driven result of her psychological personality). Rei-fans are often generalized into the idea that Rei-fans like the ideal picture of a Japanese woman from around the nineteenth century (people often believe this is why Rei is popular in Japan). That is, people like Rei believe she's quiet, listening, and calm to the point of submissive. I, for one, know that I do not fit into that last category, and I would like to believe that most Rei-fans (at least the ones not from Japan and aren't molded into seeing ideal women that way) are like me in that manner. In the same way, I am distraught between whether or not Asuka-fans like Asuka because she is the ideal picture of a popular and cool (with the EVA, if nothing else) or because she's like Akane. The third idea is that neither circumstances apply at all in any way (as in, zero percent true), but as stated before, that is rare if one reads the portrayal of Asuka-fics on the internet.

Now we have a prime example -- Asuka. I think that when people watched Evangelion, they picked out their favorite character for their reasons. But, after reading the fanfics out there that are widely accepted, those ideas bent to fit the commonplace perspective (hence the perspective is widely accepted). From the point of a Rei-fan, all Asuka stories stem from the same root, and the same holds true to Rei stories from the perspective of Asuka-fans (99% of the time). There is truth in this idea, as most stereotypical ideas have, and that truth is actually very solid. In fact, looking back, I realize once again that I began writing fanfiction because this idea was so true -- all the Rei stories out them (however few there may be) were nearly the same, which is a shame, since there are so few to begin with. Asuka stories also bear this trait, but there are so many writers for Asuka stories out there some of them are bound to beome special. This is why most of the stories I like are actually Asuka stories. But wouldn't it be just wonderful if one didn't have to view every new Asuka fic with boredom and expectation? -- if every fic could be seen glowing with potential?

There has to be more individuality between stories than the name of the author and title. Books in the real world can be identified by their authors without problem because the authors all have a different story to tell whereas fanfic writers are obligated to follow a code or canon. If that canon changes or things that weren't canon become part of the code, then fanfiction becomes more and more limited. Having not reached even a year and a half of fanfiction, I for one have already become tired with the blatant and trite things that are coming out online. So many fics have become so that the average reader would probably not bother too much with the beginning to a fic other than the first sentece of each paragraph for the first ten of so paragraphs. In a sense this essay is the rant, complaint, and asking of a whining reader and writer.

We cannot forget what was originally given to us. To do so is to add salt to the cake someone baked for you.