Well, actually, in an earlier version, the whole reference was going to be a lot bigger. The whole "Mala gets drunk and recounts his most recent mission" was originally part of that reference. It was going to be how he'd ended up killing a small girl just because she'd picked up an extra-dimensional artefact and had torn through the shadow-like Lovecraftian monster they'd been tracking. They get the orders to shoot from HQ, she tears through several powered armour squads, before Mala and Akiry shoot the untrained girl in the back.
Yeah, I was originally going to have a Nanoha reference character shot dead by FSB after she sealed the first Jewel seed. I'm rather glad that I changed it; now it actually advances the plot, rather than just be an extended reference to MGLN which would also be a bit depressing. Interestingly, you can still see the vestigial remains of that sub-section; the unknown sorcerer's familiar, the ferret with jade-like eyes, looks like Yuuno.
And one of the things that I'm deliberately doing is creating reference characters for each of the major branches of the NEG, who I can use any time I need to give information from that viewpoint. We have:
The NEG High Command - the three field marshals
The Evangelion Project - all the canon characters
The Engel Pilots - only a few early appearances, mostly rendered redundant by the Eva viewpoint, as they're close enough
The FSB Agents - Mala and Akiry. Their job in the story, basically, is to see the seedy side and the hidden cruelties of the NEG, then get depressed
The OIS team - just introduced, mainly focussed on Mary Anderson as she tortures, brutalises, interrogates, drags away idiot teenagers who as a prank tried to buy a copy of the Necronomicon in an official NEG bookstore (that's an automatic 20 year jail sentence)
The Tager Team - I have them jokingly referred to as "The Player Characters" in my notes, due to their tendency to blow things up and kill people.
Nyarlathotep - only there so that I can do cryptic references and malign hints from a source apart from AHNUNG and Gendo.
Now, I'll have to get an EoD viewpoint character in later, as that'll be needed for the endgame.
Actually, that's a thing I was inspired to do by the Open Door; having some lesser characters you can do mini story arcs on while the main meta story happens really helps universe immersion, as well as meaning that I don't get too bored just focussing on the same characters. I have to admit, I think I get bored in the same way that you said that you do, and start planning new stories/ RPG campaigns instead of just writing what I mean to do, and having sub-stories are a way of letting me vent some steam and even kill off characters without crippling the main universe.
