"The many kinds of wimps", by Edmund Wong. :)
edmundw@sympatico.ca
Well, this is my first attempt at a fanfic. In fact, it is my first
attempt at writing any fiction that was more than a few paragraphs long.
While this 16-year old high school student is hopefully somewhat capable
of writing a course in Java programming (which is what he should be
doing instead of this right now), he has never attempted to write any
fiction of length.
Unless if those fabricated interviews for last year's business course
counted.
Anyway, this fic currently lacks a lot in terms of plot, direction, and
similar creative aspects. Don't worry, I've got a few things planned. If
you really wanna know, there's an even more long winded piece at the
bottom explaining things.
In short: If you're feeling kind, read my measly two scenes and tell me
if I can write. :)
------------------
Ikari Shinji was a spineless wimp.
That would be the (somewhat accurate) conclusion most would reach after
prolonged exposure to the said individual. (Spine, of course, being
defined in its slightly more abstract definition of "strength of
character; courage or willpower")
Of course, spineless wimps could be divided into two categories: those
who deny it, and those who don't.
Of the two groups, the former could be considered to be a "lesser"
spinelessness. After all, if you're denying it, then you're standing up
for yourself, right? Which, theoretically, requires at least a small bit
of a spine, right? Therefore, spineless wimps of the first category
(from this point on referred to by the name of "Category-1 Wimp") could
be described as lacking a spine in terms of amount. They have a spine,
they just don't have much of one.
On the other hand, Shinji would often be placed into the second
category. A spineless wimp of the second category (from this point on
referred to by the name of "Category-2 Wimp") could be described as
lacking a spine in terms of presence. As most people see it, Shinji was
a wimp who was ready to apologize to anybody and everybody who showed
the slightest bit of dissatisfaction towards any aspect of the life,
character, or visual appearance of any individual within a fifty foot
diameter of his body, and also a few outside of the said area.
Of course, those who know him a little better would probably lean a bit
more towards defining Shinji as a Category-1 Wimp than most other people
would. To Shinji's credit, he does stand up for himself some of the
time. The fact that he often relents and allows people to mercilessly
trod on him after he does is irrelevant at this point.
It also goes without saying that it takes a certain amount of spine to
run around the city in a gigantic multi-ton purple robot beating up
equally gigantic extraterrestrial life forms both humanoid and
non-humanoid in appearance using (albeit in slightly enlarged form)
standard issue military weaponary with sensors wired directly into your
brain that lets you feel in excruciating detail any and all pain that
the said robot would experience if it were a slightly enlarged human
being.
Soryuu Asuka Langley was not one of these people.
As she continued to chastize Shinji regarding his spinelessness on this
particular Tuesday morning, it suddenly occurred to her that Shinji was
not paying attention to what she was saying. Instead was simply nodding
his head and mumbling apologies while he drank his tea.
It took an additional moment for her to realize she wasn't paying
attention either. In fact, she had already forgotten what had originally
brought the matter up. She paused briefly in her verbal assault as she
attempted to retrieve details of the aforementioned incident.
That was when she noticed the time.
"AARGH! We're gonna be late!"
--------------------
School was not a particularly interesting place for Ikari Shinji.
Perhaps it was the fact that he did not perform so well in school. This
was, of course, not to say that he was dumb. On the contrary he was, in
fact, a relatively intelligent individual... after you discount the
stupidity that comes from being the wimp that he was. He knew that both
his parents were relatively capable people, although he didn't know much
else about either of them.
It is hypothesized that the performance of Shinji in school is directly
related to the amount of motivation he has to listen to the teacher.
Which, in turn, is directly related to the amount of interest he holds
in the material that is being taught. Which is inversely related to the
amount of self-pity he is feeling for himself on a particular day.
As the computer and mathematical types would see it, it goes like this:
performance = motivation = (total_interest - self_pity)
In layman's terms, the less pity Shinji feels for himself, the better
he does.
It can therefore be concluded that Ikari Shinji did not do so well in
school because he pities his own existence too much. This conclusion, I
must admit, does not entirely make sense on its own.
An individual who was monitoring the performance of Shinji would
probably notice the rise in his marks as of late. From these facts and
the above conclusion, one could also conclude that Shinji was feeling
better about himself lately.
On this particular Tuesday morning, Ikari Shinji was not in the depths
of self pity nor the peaks of confidence. However, he wasn't anywhere in
between either.
On this particular Tuesday morning, Ikari Shinji was sleeping.
Indeed, the depths of slumber are both deeper than his self pity *and*
deep enough to completely obscure his peaks of confidence from view.
On this particular Tuesday morning, Ikari Shinji's slumber was also
deep enough to induce R.E.M. sleep. In other words, Shinji was dreaming.
Sometimes, dreams can be quite disturbing.
Unfortunately, Shinji does not take disturbing dreams well. In this
particular case, Shinji had bolted up to a standing position.
Unfortunately, Shinji was slumped over the desk while he was sleeping,
which meant that both his chair and table had been toppled over.
Blinking himself into the world of the waking, Shinji looked around at
the eyes staring at him. Then he looked down at himself and realized the
situation he was in.
"Umm... Sorry."
He then stooped down to straighten out his chair/desk combination with
the intention of going back to sleep. Unfortunately for him, it was
rather difficult to go to sleep with awareness of the stares that his
fellow students were giving him at this moment. In the other side of the
classroom, he heard some giggling.
Shinji groaned.
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Author's Notes (can I really call myself an author at this point?):
The form this fic manifests itself as is a test of my English literacy
skills. More than anything, it is proof to myself that I can write about
more than classes and linked lists in English.
Although the non-programmer reading my writings regarding the above may
need some convincing that the said writing IS, in fact, English.
Ah well.
Anyway, as I said, I wanted to write this to test out my ability to
write fiction. Basically, I want a bit of that C&C stuff.
'But why should we comment on something that has no plot?'
Hey, look at it this way. If you think my writing is horrible and enough
people bash me about it, then I'll stop filling your inboxes with my
abominations. :)
Since there's not much plot to comment on, I am looking for C&C on
writing style, spelling/grammar (although I try to get that one covered
myself), characterization, and other qualities you people consider that
a fanfic should possess. For example, sometimes I find myself using the
same words too much. I try to clear that up, but am I successful?
Apart from plot. I'm getting that covered, okay? :)
And since there's no plot that you guys are aware of right now, the
title is very far from permanent. If I were writing this on paper (which
I'm not, partly because my writing looks worse than chickenscratch - if
you really wanna know, I'll scan you a sample :D - partly because I type
around twenty times faster than I write, and partly because I've got a
monster blister on my right pinky that is impeding my ability to utilize
a standard writing utensil correctly), the title would be written VERY
lightly in pencil. And there would be an eraser strategically positioned
right next to it. This "fic" has a title because you would probably not
be reading these long winded author's notes if I had posted it as
"Untitled" or "(no subject)".
I've already got a few comments from other individuals. It's been
established that I like long sentences. Really long sentences. Long
sentences that never seem to end and annoy the hell out of the poor
reader trying to make some sense out if it. I'm trying to remedy that.
Really.
I also seem to have a tendancy to write completely redundant sentences.
I guess I write English too much like the way I write code. (If you
really wanna know, I start out using two million variables to ease
debugging and then start shortening the code and memory usage out after
it starts to work.) I am expecting sentences to disappear next time I go
back to this.
I am also expecting comments on my usage of certain things too much.
Like big words or dashes.
Or, for that matter, words period.
I wrote this all in around an hour at 2am, so go easy on me, will ya? :)
P.S. I'm Canadian. British Commonwealth spelling is used here, okay?
English may not be the first language I learned, but I can actually pass
myself up for being literate in English - which is more than I can say
about my Chinese... :)
P.P.S. Can I really call the above two scenes a "fanfic", or am I
cheating myself? :)