>>2173464It's a similar appeal in many aspects, just that Rei is even awesomer, and then some more awesome in completely different ways. But if Rei's happy, I'm happy, and there is an atypically high incidence of happy Rei around him. Can't be a bad thing.
As for Shinji himself, he is at worst a realistically depicted teenager and at his best really impressive in his own, silent way.
Also, he's one of us XD
One thing I notice about comparing RS fics to AS fics is that the writers of the former actually tend to LIKE Shinji, while the latter spend most of the fic bashing him and blaming him for not solving all of Asuka's problems/blame them all on her... They claim to like Asuka because she's "strong" and "not a doormat", but in the end, they write such mysogynistic crap, like all Asuka needed was a dude to fix her and that's all she depends on. It's like they never heard that ep 25 line about not waiting for your problems to be solved for them.
This isn't to say that there isn't the ocassional non-Shinji hating AS writer who understands that Asuka has flaws as well, but they're far and in-between.
That said, Rei writing (with, or without Shinji) seems to have gone out fashion lately. All the good Rei fics? They're so OLD... It's like Asuka tok all the good writers and Kaworu all the good fanartists.
*cries*
I wish more people appreciated teh Rei.