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asuka & rei

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"Ever heard of the Hedgehog's Dilemma? Hedgehogs have a hard time sharing warmth with other hedgehogs. The closer they get, the more they end up hurting each other. People are like that as well."

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also aside from me on my Bible special interest when i was 5 nonsense. the fact that after becoming whole again lilith still chooses to present herself as rei is something i think a lot about. she’s basically a god, yet she relates herself more to the little girl she was for such a brief time more than she does her original form. despite how traumatic and cruel rei's life was, lilith felt most comfortable as her, as one of her creations. and by the end, even the mixed form she takes is gone, and she is simply rei, as she appears in shinji's vision at the end of eoe. and idk i just think there’s something kind of sweet in a warped Evangelion way.

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does anyone else think about how EoE makes so many things just like. Apparent. or More apparent. shinji's objectification/sexualization of asuka (and his physical violence towards her). gendo's sexual abuse of rei (and expanding upon his and ritsuko's "relationship"). naoko's distracted/neglectful parenting of ritsuko. misato's inability to show affection without sex. maya's attraction to ritsuko, fuyutsuki's attraction to yui, hyuga's attraction to misato, aoba's lack of attraction (and nihilistic worldview). asuka's mother never truly abandoning her. and, notably, shinji's Entire Worldview.

you can like. argue "ohhh end of eva is SO out of left field, the characters don't act like themselves, this is such a bad movie" but if you watch through evangelion MULTIPLE times, it's just so clearly not the case. everything that happens in EoE was a clear possibility and the end result of everything that had happened in the series up until that point. it does not come out of nowhere, it just takes the subtleties, the hints, the escalation of events, and pushes them right into your face. i don't think there's hardly anything in EoE that isn't realistic for the characters involved (which is both interesting and deeply heartbreaking tbh), it just takes a level of comprehension, and yes, likely a couple of rewatches, to see that absolutely none of this should be an unexpected or shocking result.

tl;dr at least part of what EoE's message is "this is what happens when things happen to people"

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Can I ask why you read Gendo and Rei's relationship as incestuous? Not saying you're wrong of course, I just never read it like that, apart from that one scene in EoE (and I'm not fond of EoE characterizations in general, so I never really bothered with that)

i suppose that's fair! to me the dynamic between gendo and rei is extremely blatantly a case of incestuous abuse, but i guess the beauty of evangelion is that you can read it in so many different ways — the framework of incest can be as easily applied as that of child labour or human sacrifice or profaned divinity or rogue AI, and they all coexist together as valid interpretations that each build on the other.

obviously, the main assumption one must make to consider gendo and rei as incestuous is that they are in fact father and daughter: gendo is her creator and provider, he is the person rei spends most of her time with (aside from ritsuko, who gendo pushed into an unwillingly maternal role in a mirror to misato and shinji), rei is the name yui and gendo wanted to give their daughter, naoko mistakes rei for gendo's child, shinji is continually jealous of rei's closeness to his father. plenty of evidence builds up to indicate that it is on some level a familial relationship, even if gendo did not father rei in a genetic sense.

once we have established the familial dynamic between them, it becomes pretty clear that it is thoroughly rotten: rei is a clone of gendo's dead wife born of her death, and gendo openly leers at rei's body, fills a room with soulless clones of her he uses as replacement parts, touches her where he otherwise only gets physical with the women he sexually exploits, and the culmination of that is the hand rape in end of evangelion. it's a very basic peau d'âne premise, and this is just the physical, not even getting into the psychological aspects of the relationship (such as rei's fervid unwavering devotion to him despite the labour and suffering he demands of her) or the symbolic (such as shinji putting on gendo's glasses and seeing rei naked, rei mirroring ritsuko who has a sexual relationship with gendo, or rei mirroring misato's sexually implicit father issues whereas asuka mirrors ritsuko's mother issues). rei sees gendo as father, god and creator, and her reclaiming her own identity in lilith as the true mother, goddess and creator is imo all the more narratively satisfying if you acknowledge that about their relationship.

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reading about identified schemas modes and:

child modes

vulnerable child - rei

she seems self-centered and distant. both asuka and shinji are a little surprised at her attitude at the begining, with asuka firmly believing she must hate her or have an immense ego. but rei actually hates herself and feels alone. she also believes that there's something wrong inside her. and, about her relationships, she understand others deeply and cares about them at some level. she presents depressive symptoms and, even though she doesn't want to be alone, she isolates herself most of the time because she has been abandoned and emotionally neglected all her life.

angry child - shinji

he damages others, especially asuka, because of his repressed rage. he screams "be nice to me!" and demands answers for others about himself and his feelings. he believes he has been wronged and betrayed but the world. that's quite the reason he initially choses instrumentality. he is bitter and feels like a victim. he always doubts himself and feels vulnerable, so he ends up reacting violently when he feels his needs are not being satisfied. but I would argue that he only displays his rage when he feels it's safe enough to do it. for example, again, with asuka. he wouldn't treat gendo that way. with misato, it's more a passive-aggressive response.

impulsive child (but also vulnerable child) - asuka

this is mainly because of her reactive formation, as she is also a vulnerable child, but she does present some impulsive qualities. her own battle with azrael is prove of that. she fights recklessly and ends up putting herself in danger because of her need to validate herself through piloting. she gets aggressive when she feels intimidated or surpassed in areas that give her self validation in general. she also adopts an entitled persona, as part of her vulnerable child schema, to hide her true insecure self from others. she won't admit how much she craves others affection, so she pushes them away.

I also want to talk about dysfunctional coping schemas and everything I just need a rest lol

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me 🤝 kaji

passive suicidality

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My English class TED Talk script

TED Talk Title: Why We Shouldn’t Become Soup

Neon Genesis Evangelion is an anime that covers the relationships between several people with volatile personalities in a post apocalyptic world, uniquely fighting otherworldly beings while returning to the womb and experiencing intense pain, and suffering through their view of themselves and their idea of others’ perspectives.

The buildup of the series comes to a climax during the movie, leaving some philosophical questions to ponder over. For example, the Human Instrumentality Project and a look at whether individuality is a gift or a curse by showing the alternative: eternal togetherness or unity. Once this project is put into motion, all of humanity is subject to be a sea of ‘LCL’; soul fluid that melds into one eternal ocean of consciousness. The reason for this is the universal fear of loneliness, which was touched on earlier in the show with a discussion about the hedgehog's dilemma: the fear of hurting other people the closer you get to them, similar to a hedgehog trying to find warmth amongst others in its species during the winter.

Shinji shows this fear by continually running away from his caregiver, Misato, and his responsibilities as a pilot because he doesn’t want to get closer to the other pilot, Rei Ayanami, who he has started to care for. This is similar to his father, Gendo Ikari, and his fear of being a poor father. Instead of getting closer to his son after his wife’s death, he leaves his son behind which damages him more than his father’s presence would have.

Misato, the most recurring adult main character in the show, is afraid of getting close to Ryuuji Kaji because she is confident that she cannot open herself to him. Her personality is so cheerful on the outside, when in reality she has been stuck as a little girl who was sent away by her father who died in a nuclear explosion. She is afraid that Kaji will be like her father and leave her to fend for herself, and that she will be unable to reciprocate his feelings in the way that it matters. Ultimately, he dies and leaves Misato alone. Her fears are confirmed, but she is able to brave them through the closeness of Shinji as her pseudo-son in her final moments.

Asuka has a fear of others as well, taking it out more violently than Shinji by forming relationships where she thrives off of her superiority complex (which is really an inferiority complex) and can be considered the best. As she was a child prodigy who graduated college at age 14, she has all of the knowledge of an adult but little of the maturity that is expected of her, making her the extreme example of being a teenager: having all of the burden with none of the respect of experience that others want you to have already. She gets close enough to Shinji to be in sync as a fellow pilot, but never talks about her true drive to be considered good enough: her mother committing suicide while holding a doll of her, symbolizing that she wasn’t enough for her mother to stay alive for and would be more beneficial if she had been exactly as her mother wanted.

The will of God was sent to turn everyone into LCL to rid all people of the inescapable loneliness that they feel because they cannot understand each other. Like the angels before humanity, that are single entities of a species and nothing more, becoming one in the ocean of consciousness would eliminate loneliness and the social suffering that so many people in the post apocalyptic world fear. To retake the importance of being the central descendants of god, humanity feels they must ascend individuality. But in doing so, there is an infinite amount of unwavering suffering and no amount of time to alleviate the pain of one's sense of self when there are no other selves. Similar to how we can fight with our family members, but if we were to be only one self, we would be alone. You can’t be a family if you are just one person. In an effort to curb the societal loneliness felt by an entire population, the will of the few has caused an incurable loneliness that rids all of humanity of the chance to love another and try to understand by turning everyone into one thing. In summary, it is better to suffer for the sake of possible happiness and hope that you will understand people and make friends, than it is to give up and wallow in your own solitude.

The movie ends with Shinji understanding the sacrifice to live as an individual, which is the loneliness of consciousness. He lets the rest of the sea of consciousness decide whether they live for opportunity rather than be essentially comatose in an emotional stasis. The message of the series is that it's better to be lonely and try to be happy than it is to give up and be nothing at all. Even if everyone is unified in that nothingness.

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REI

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My malewife

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The army really asked "Hey, what do you think would fit the aesthetic of employing vulnerable teenagers to risk their lives over a nefarious goal they don't even know, I'm asking because we want to set up a recruiting event at the Anime Con".

Then some PR lackey was like, "you won't believe it I know the exact show"

Edit: Apparently the cosplayer likely isn't affiliated with them and just took the picture. I think that should be said.

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evan jelly on

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Merry chrysler

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“I was looked at, but I wasn’t seen.”

-Albert Camus, “The Misunderstanding.”

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“We are mistaken as to the degree to which we believe ourselves hated or feared: we ourselves may know very well the degree to which we differ from a person, tendency, party, but others know us only very superficially and therefore hate us only superficially.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 337

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NURSE: You'll die. MEDEA: I long to. NURSE: Run away. MEDEA: Running has grieved me. NURSE: Medea— MEDEA: I'll become her. NVTRIX. Moriere. MEDEA. Cupio. NVTRIX. Profuge. MEDEA. Paenituit fugae. NVTRIX. Medea— MEDEA. Fiam.

- Seneca, Medea 170-171; my translation