This, I may say, is a bit out of character for me. I actually chanced across Eyrie on the Elmer Studios MSTings page. I would normally classify myself as disliking fanfiction. I read MSTings often, and am appalled by the garbage people fling at their hapless computers and with which they ravish the poor, unsuspecting net. Normally, fanfiction irritates or amuses me, but I seldom come away from reading it with any sense that my time was well spent. Two or three sentences, and I'm done. I just finished reading NXE, seasons 1-3...

...IN ONE SITTING.

I'm saving Apotheosis Now for a treat later. I've got a feeling that THIS ending of Evangelion might not make me want to hit someone.

As you may have gathered, I really enjoyed it. This is, quite literally, unprecedented, and is a testament to what an impressive accomplishment this thing is. I looked back at the commentary by those who have MSTed the series (ep 1-9), and I start to get a bit of a mean-spirited vibe from the whole business. I'm not sure how Gryphon or any of the other contributors to NXE took the MSTing of their works, but I can't help but feel that the MSTers exaggerated all the flaws and denied all the strengths.

Primary among these exaggerations concerns DJ himself. DJ is somewhat ridiculously competent, and comes perilously close to snuggling up with the whole female cast of NGE, and he certainly can be a tad cocksure. It's characterization, as in, ya know, writing prose and stuff. Authors do that.

I mean, here is a version of Evangelion with characters that are interesting, three-dimensional, and capable of DOING something without flying apart and wallowing in angst for forty-eight hours afterward. Oh, I grant you, I still find the premise a bit...odd. The bastard son of Lara Croft and Fox Mulder? The heck? In EVA? X-COM? J&K from MIB? And did I see Sailor Mercury in there? And Worcester-3?

"Come on, Hutchins," says cynical bastard me, "What are you trying to pull, here?"

If I were forced to cite a real flaw, I would have to say that these people show a staggeringly unrealistic depth of emotional and psychological understanding for their ages, and indeed seem to pontificate on deep, abstract thoughts and feelings that most people wouldn't even be able to articulate. And with hormones-a'ragin, to boot. DJ, one gets the feeling, could talk the Hatfields and the McCoys out of their feuding, whilst simultaneously plumbing their inner psyches and healing all their inward hurts. One must admit, it seems a bit farfetched.

Then, as I read on, I realized that, MSTed, the story is disrupted. It doesn't flow properly, and you don't get a sense of the craft with which it's put together. Read straight, it's a heck of a piece of work, and you at some point just forgive all the wierdness and suspend your disbelief so you can busy yourself with the next page. It has the supreme quality that denotes good fiction. The reader WANTS to keep reading it. It's fun, intelligently written, and well paced, and the authors have obviously made an effort to bring the second-stringer characters to the fore once in a while, but in a plausible way. It does not deserve the criticism it's gotten, by a long stretch. I refer one and all to the works of Issei Mataloun or Tom Dyron if an example of bad fanfiction is to be made.

All in all, NXE stands on its merits. Never mind DJ's overwhelming Britishness. Never mind the references to In Nomine. Never mind that it's crazy. It's crazy and GOOD. I'm glad I took the time to read it, and I thought you should know you have another fan to welcome into the fold. I look forward to sifting through the other works on the EPU site, and would congratulate everyone who worked on NXE for their splendid showing.

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Bring on the Storm.

I am ready.