A Little Angel on My Shoulder

"WHO THE FUCK CARES, WE'RE DOING THIS FOR THE AWESOME."

—Zeruel, Angel of Might

One day, in the Creative Writing section of Spacebattles.com, a discussion was had regarding ideas for Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfictions. Among them, a single question was asked.

"What if, when the Angels are killed, they become literal Shoulder Angels and haunt the pilots?"

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Tropes used in A Little Angel on My Shoulder include:

General tropes:

• Audio Adaptation: One fan plans to do all the snippets. Trailer.
• Aborted Arc: Several. Look, if you want a consistent, solid storyline, you have come to the wrong place.
• Big Brother Mentor: Sachiel seems to be acting as this towards Shinji, as strange as it seems.
• Big Damn Heroes: One of the takes on SEELE's attack on NERV.
• Body Snatcher: Bardiel, although it's always temporary. His favorite victim seems to be Kaji for some reason.
  • In a less literal version, he likes to make Touji look crazy by annoying him to the point of outburst in public. Not surprising really.
• Buxom Is Better: Sahaquiel, the Tenth Angel, is a firm supporter of this trope.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Gaghiel.
• Covert Pervert: Arael. Emphasis on the Pervert part.
• Crack Fic: If you're looking for serious stories or continuity between different authors... YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!!!
• Defeat Means Friendship: Whether the pilots want it or not.
• Depending on the Writer: Ramiel is either an Ork or a bit, the Angels are either invisible to everyone else or interact with everyone, and Tabris/Kaworu either becomes a Shoulder Angel or returns to his old body, Adam.
• Emo: Matariel (the spider) is played as this, but it's always played for Moe rather then Wangst.
• Expy: Gaghiel is Nappa, and Asuka is his Vegeta.
  • Sandalphon (the Lava Monster Angel) is essentially Osaka.
  • Bardiel shares certain traits with a certain factory bot.
  • It seems to be generally agreed that Sachiel is more or less post-timeskip Simon. He even appears in a lookie-likie (although green haired) human form when Shinji is riding the Mind Screw Train.
• Fetish Fuel Station Attendant: Unit-01 (and possibly the other Evas) are this for Sachiel, the Third Angel. One early snip had the Positron Cannon that killed her as one for Ramiel.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: The entire premise.
• Hello: How Zeruel, Angel of Might, introduces himself.
• Image Boards: Iruel discovered these while in the MAGI.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Bardiel, sort of. On one hand he's doing his best to make up for what happened to Toji, on the other he's a complete Jerkass to pretty much everyone else.
• Large Ham: Most of the Angels have had their moments, but Zeruel, Angel of Might, is this pretty much all the time.
• Lemon Fic: Iruel loves writing these, in fact he thinks he's actually good (not). He also ships everyone/everyone.
• Mega Manning: The Instrumemory system, which, in the words of K 9 The First 1, is "where the Angels merge with the Eva to temporarily give it mix-n-match abilites used for Awesomesauce and Great Justice."
• More Dakka: Ramiel. Seriously, Depending on the Writer, she's like an Ork!
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: How Zeruel, Angel of Might, introduces himself.
• Norio Wakamoto: It has been discussed that, if this were ever made into an Anime, he would be Zeruel in the original Japanese. And all would be right with the world.
• Powers as Programs: The Instrumemory system again.
• Rule of Funny: The end-all be-all reason for anything. See Crack Fic
• Shout-Out: Oh brother, so many. The title alone is a Shout-Out to Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.
• Unsettling Gender Reveal: Sachiel has a thing for the Evas. Bardiel's ghost form is a chibified Unit-03. No prizes for guessing what happened.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Zeruel is this to Adam. Subverted in that Adam is the Best Dad Ever. Yes, really.

Through the Warped Mirror tropes:

• Alternate Universe: Nerv gets invade by alternate universe duplicates of themselves who are totally evil.

The Sohryus tropes:

• Absurdly Youthful Stepmother: Rei Ayanami, to the Angels.
• Accidental Marriage: The entire plot gets kicked off when Asuka and Shinji get drunk and decide to get married.
• The Bet: Sachiel and Raye make a bet on whether or not Asuka and Shinji will stay together.
• Cloning Blues: Rei now has one of her clones walking around Tokyo-3. Raye Ianomi, a coldly logical girl who wants to distance herself from Rei, and who greatly admires Dr. Akagi.
• Everythings Better With Ninjas: "Translator's Note: Hikari Horaki means you're already dead."
• Evil Stepmother: Averted or played straight depending on the Angel, but in any case Rei is their stepmom.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Asuka asks Hikari to help her learn to cook to be more womanly.
• Happily Adopted: Asuka and Shinji were this before getting married, and now they're not.
• Insatiable Newlyweds: No, not Asuka and Shinji, but Rei and Kaworu, who aren't married, but boy howdy: Do they ever act like it.
• The Maiden Name Debate: When Asuka and Shinji get married he changes his surname to Sohryu, hence the name of the story.
• Shout-Out: As with all stories in this series there are a lot of shout outs. Here are some of them.
  • In the first snip, the Angels choose to inform Shinji that he is, in fact, now a man.
  • Calvin Coolidge gets one when Raye quotes the entirety of one of his most famous speeches: "Ash."
  • The subplot with the Angels at law school contains a lot of shout outs to Community.
  • The fic's name is a reference to the Jimmy Wolk fanfic The Ikaris.
  • Shinji's nightmare features shout outs to The Familiar of Zero and Inuyasha, mostly in the characters' styles of dress. However, unlike many other shout outs these are not Played for Laughs.
  • In an effort to counter Shinji's ideal woman (dominating basically), Asuka asks Hikari to teach her to cook. Complying, Hikari gets her Alton Brown on.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Averted with Prime Minister Minami. His popularity is in the tank, and he wants to get it up by pointing out that no divorces have gone down on his watch, but only because the mind control ray was unfeasible.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: A string of no less then five of these phrases go off in a row at one time.