Process of Stacy Rowe Evangelion Pilot

This was going to be my afterword for Stacy Rowe, Evangelion Pilot. However, I felt that there were a lot of in-jokes that people who weren’t mutual fans wouldn’t understand, and so that took up most of the afterword instead of some meaningful commentary. So here’s all of the stuff that I wanted to say, divided by subtopic.

History
I’ve been wanting to do an Evangelion/Daria crossover since before My Date with Daria. My first idea was to use Daria and Quinn and have them go to Tokyo-3, but with Units 05 and 06. At the time, I didn’t know that a movie had been released in Japan with 05 and 06 in it. Quinn would have led Touji, Kensuke, and Shinji around by the nose while Daria would have taught Rei the virtues of sarcasm. But when I found out about the movie, I threw the fic out and went on to write fanfics for both Daria and Evangelion.

My most popular Daria fanfic revolved around Stacy, the most neurotic member of The Fashion Club. The fanfic was basically a coming of age story where Stacy attempts to understand what popularity really means and evaluates her relationship with The Fashion Club. It was a fanfic that I had never been able to match until recently, when Otherwise Known as Quinn the Great came out (and then only in a few people’s opinion). It was really Stacy that allowed me to create such a great story, since she’s a character that everyone can relate to, and her character was undeveloped enough that I could manufacture a life beyond The Fashion Club and still keep her in character.

So with that in mind, I decided to write another Stacy story, but I wanted to feature her in a comedy. The plot was going to be this: what if Stacy met a boy who was as callow, neurotic, and conformist as she was and went out with him? Watching that would be funny. Then I realized that there was already a character like that: Shinji Ikari. And, low and behold, Stacy Rowe, Evangelion Pilot was born.

Stacy
Stacy turned out better than I expected. She’s a lot more compatable with the Evangelion cast than Daria would be. Not only that, shallow teenaged girls always make the best sci-fi heroines, because they don’t care how all of the gizmos work, cutting down on the "used car salesmanship"—taking time out of the story to explain the gadgets to the readers—that plagues s-f today. Would Stacy care that the plug suit contains a bio-monitor, or would she care that it makes her look good? Would Stacy care how the LCL helps her synch with her Eva, or would she care about how bad it tastes? The answer to both is the latter, obviously.

Stacy and Shinji
Brittany once said in The Daria Diaries, "Opposites attract, but so do sames." This is the central theme to most of the relationships in Daria, and it’s also what makes Stacy and Shinji such a cute couple. The only real problem is that they come from two different series. In that respect, they’re a lot like Romeo and Juliet, with the Eva cast as Montigues and the Daria cast as Caplets.

I’m not very good at writing romance and dates (in Boy Fiend, I glossed over the dating scenes with Daria and Mack. Did you notice that?) so if the scenes with Stacy and Shinji aren’t the greatest, I apologize. What I definitely didn’t want to do was the dreadful "love admission" scene. Not only are those scenes completely contrived and corny, but it would have been completely OOC for both of them. Having them interact shyly with one another and then letting the attraction take over is much more natural and readable than that. At least it worked for Daniel and Kumiko in Karate Kid II.

Stacy and Asuka
I mentioned in my Afterword that Asuka isn’t as bitchy as I made her out to be. She’s a good friend to Hikari and was even good enough to be Shinji’s first kiss in the series. (Hilarious scene, by the way.)

But if that’s the case, then why does she take such an offense to Stacy? In order to answer that, you have to understand Asuka. Where Shinji and Rei see their fellow Eva Pilots as teammates, Asuka sees them as her competitors. She wants to be nothing but the best at her job, much like Helen, Quinn, and Sandi. So when Stacy shows up with a top-of-the-line Eva, bumping Unit 02 down a notch, Asuka gets pissed. Stacy also replaces Asuka as the most popular girl in school and then surpasses her in the synch tests. This also exacerbates the situation.

But the real tragedy of this relationship is that under different circumstances, Asuka and Stacy would have been great friends. They both enjoy the same activities, and Stacy really isn’t the competitive type, so she’d have made a great sidekick.

Asuka is also a really funny character. Before I wrote Stacy Rowe, I was thinking of having her guest star in my Daria-fics for a while, having her join The Fashion Club and torment Upchuck.

Rei and Stacy
If there is one fear all Eva fanfic writers have, its writing Rei out of character. You can almost picture the hoards of rabid Rei fans sitting at their browsers, ready to send their angry variants of "REI DOESN’T ACT LIKE THAT AT ALL, YOU MORON!!!" straight to your e-mail box. It’s just that she’s a difficult character to nail down. My first attempt in Asuka Versus Godzilla failed miserably, and I was determined not to make the same mistake in SREP.

Then I listened to Shinji’s observations on Rei’s motherliness and said, "Ah-ha! I can use that by making Rei Stacy’s mentor and make them have some kind of weird mother/daughter relationship. And better yet, she can break out of that ‘emotionless robot’ image that the Asuka fans think she has."

Here’s how it works: Stacy reminds Rei of Shinji, and given that Rei is genetically engineered in part from Shinji’s mother, it brings out the motherliness in Rei. Stacy accepts this in part because of her rocky relationship with her mother, but also because Stacy is eager to make friends with Rei.

However, in order for Stacy to mature, she has to grow out of her need for mothering. That’s what the scene in the bathroom is about.

Touji and Hikari
As individuals, they’re a lot like Mack and Jodie, but as a couple Touji and Hikari remind me of Trent and Daria. Like Daria, Hikari has a crush on a guy who seems completely oblivious. What really adds to this is the fact that until the last quarter of the series, Touji can’t stand Hikari. (At least, that’s what it looks like to me.) It’s probably the latent shipper in me that had them hook up in SREP. My next stand alone Evangelion fic will be about them.

On characters in both Daria and Evangelion
Sometimes I wonder if Hideaki Anno, Glenn Eichler, and Susie Lewis attended the same film and writing classes. Both of them create characters that mirror facets of the human personality in their respective TV series, Neon Genesis: Evangelion and Daria. The only real difference is the ends: Eichler and Lewis strive for comedy and satire while Anno strives for drama and action. This was what made it easy to stick Stacy in the Evangelion world.

On writing crossovers
This is the second crossover that I’ve ever written, so I’m no expert at it, but here are some things that I think can contribute to a good crossover:

It helps to write fanfic for both the series. I knew how to write all of the characters well enough beforehand, and so I had a good knowledge of how they would react.

Try a ratio of 90:10 instead of 50:50 crossover. In other words, take only one or two characters from one series and cross them over into another series. To compensate for having only those few characters, tell the story mainly from their point of view.