Shinji and Warhammer 40K
| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Shinji and Warhammer 40K |
| Author(s): | CharlesBhepin (bluepencil) |
| Date(s): | 2007-11-12 |
| Length: | 700,000 words |
| Genre: | Adventure/commentary |
| Fandom: | Neon Genesis Evangelion, Warhammer 40,000 |
| External Links: | AO3 link , https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3886999/1/Shinji-and-Warhammer40k |
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Stub: This is a total braindump! Feel free to rearrange and sort things out. |
Shinji and Warhammer 40K was a semi-popular (?) (at least locally) fanfic when it came out, it has had several iterations and is at least partially saved on AO3 but was originally published on fanfiction.net. It is a combination of two fandoms, possibly fitting a crossover.It has multiple points of interest, both on the writers and readers side, but could be broadly categorized as coming from an impulse or desire for "fix it fic". In SaWH40k, the youngish boy, Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion finds a set of misplaced figurines from the tabletop war RPG, Warhammer 40K. In the course of the story, the figurines allow him to play a few small games with his uncle and aunt and other older people in his village. Because a large thematic point of the Original Neon Genesis Evangelion is about how Gendo Ikari purposefully exacerbates Shinji's feelings of loneliness to make him more manipulated and useful for Gendo's own ends, mainly by sending him to be a ward of his aunt and uncle with no explanation to them - this change of fate becomes very relevant. In this story he comes to think he is perhaps not completely unloved and disliked. And mounts resistance against Gendo instead of being overall broken as he is in the original anime. However this comes at the "cost" of having multiple voices of Warhammer characters who give him guidance, with comic results. However, you can tell there is a spirit of liking for Warhammer 40K in the story because, to a unrealistic but fun extent, it allows him to make friends with it, though in odd ways, and hear heartwarming messages.
This article author doesn't know how far it spread, but remembers passing it around their friend group at the time very much. As well as hearing of it from NGE fans a few times later. It didn't have the direct questions of gender (how does variance function in a world with the overwhelming presence of all male and all female battalions of supersoldiers, etc?) or alien societies, or "badassery" that many popular or interesting Warhammer 40K fics did. But since as we discussed in Discord recently, a big theme in Neon Genesis Evangelion is the pressures of ( Japanese) masculinity, just as much as Utena deals with femininity, and SaWH40K definitely engages with that side, maybe it did or does have those themes. We just enjoyed seeing Gendo Ikari get a taste of his own medicine.