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adamworu · 4 years ago

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The Subtle Horror of Evangelion

What keeps us all hooked to Eva time and time again? You get through your initial, confused watch of either Evangelion endgame, probably sometime in your adolescence wondering what the hell it is you just watched. The original source material is suffused with unsettling imagery, and sometimes too-close-for-comfort shorts. It’s so much to process that one watch is never enough. The imagery isn’t enough, however, because the mid-to-late-90s series comes with things you’ll pick up the more you focus on certain characters’ struggles or the interesting world-building. They arise little by little with every re-watch, adding onto what interested you in Eva to begin with.

There’s always that little voice asking you “What it is that really draws me here?”

Oh. The horrors.

The tragedy of it all.

These things never leave you the second you bear witness to them, whether you become aware of them or not. You’re disturbed over it, a tad worried, no doubt, but you’re strangely hooked.

Horror works better on limitation, it’s why found footage capturing pale, ghastly, monstrosities of the deep wood will always stand as exponentially terrifying. While most all of us have taken cracks at Eva’s budget at some point, that’s what really drives these terrors home. Its low budget nature made it work.

Evangelion has commentary which forces a viewer to reflect. Most no one enjoys that. It’s the fear, however, that has its audience come back. Evangelion’s reflection alone isn’t what gives Eva it’s charm decades after its run. It’s the little things, most everyone misses, the anxieties, the terrors, all of it. Most of those things, fly over a lot of fans’ heads.

Buckle up, there’s a lot to go through…. (warning for mentions of abuse, body horror, means of suicide, nudity, blood, and gore)

Table of Contents

I. Icebergs for Dummies

Tier 1: The Tip of the Iceberg

II. The Hedgehog’s Dilemma

III. The AT-Field as a Universal Metaphor

IV. Kensuke Aida + War Idealism

V. Shinji is the Audience Surrogate

VI. Abuse in Evangelion

Tier 2: Just Below the Tip

VII. The Infamous Elevator Scene

VIII. Naoko + Casper

IX. The Other End of Existential Horror

Tier 3: The Body of The Iceberg

X. War Horrors of ‘Ambivalence’

XI. Unit-01 Berserk Scene

XII. Dummy Plugs + CNS

XIII. Kaworu + Adam’s True Power

Tier 4: Pre-Abyss

XIV. The “Nihilist” Lens

XV. The True Nature of Sync Rates

XVI. Unit 01+ MPE Gorging Scenes

XVII. Ancient Ruins of Arka

Tier 5: The Abyss

XVIII. Split Second Misato Death

XIX. Humans Are The Villains in Eva

XX. The Ultimate Paradox

XXI. Conclusion

I. Icebergs for Dummies

For those unaware, the iceberg image illustrates that things are much deeper than they appear, just like an actual iceberg. You’ve probably seen this selfsame iceberg--- separated by tiers--- a few times looking through late night internet rabbit holes (Putting it out in the open: I’m personally guilty of this!), fictional or non. It helps you understand why you’re so enticed to certain material, that you’d revisit them. The highest parts of the iceberg are the things in the material most everyone knows, the surface level stuff. The lower you go, however, the lesser known the parts of the material are. These are the things the person are aware of.

Eva has some iceberg illustrations if you look around, albeit they don’t go through the more saddening, sometimes graphic factors of Eva, only theories navigating through Eva’s universe. Evangelion is so deceptively packed with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it subtleties that if an iceberg were centered on that, the diagram would be packed. And I’m being generous as I write this.

A few ground rules, before we begin: The iceberg will deal with the more obscure and dark material as the tiers get higher rather than it only being relegated to obscure bits. The lower the tier, the higher the iceberg and the more subtler the anxieties which graduate into horrors the deeper you go.

Yes, Evangelion is occasionally horrifying. No, Evangelion is not lovecraftian. I think people use the term lovecraftian way too freely. It’s not enough to see something with (sometimes too many) limbs twisted in ungodly angles. Or legs where legs shouldn’t be. The same applies for creatures assuming forms we don’t entirely comprehend. Eva has never delved into the angels being incomprehensibly terrifying specifically because they come from a cosmic expanse.

Some of these actual horrors, big and small, hit you after adolescence, something that makes you feel deeply for the characters’ dilemmas. It’s a feeling that grows and sometimes aches, rather than fades over time for many of us.

Tier 1: The Tip of the Iceberg

II. Hedgehog’s Dilemma

III. The AT Field as a Universal Metaphor

IV. Kensuke Aida + War Idealism

V. Shinji As the Audience Surrogate

VI. Abuse in Evangelion

II. Hedgehog’s Dilemma

Evangelion has its hand in so many psychological and philosophical cookie jars, from Freud, to Maslow, Johari, as well as Dostoevsky. The very tip of the Subtle Horrors of Evangelion Iceberg is something viewers are introduced to in the fourth episode of the series. It is one of the many psychological concepts dotted throughout the original show. Out of all those psychological concepts, this is the most explicit and most recurring.

The Hedgehog’s Dilemma describes the conundrum of two hedgehogs. The closer two hedgehogs become to one another, the more they harm each other with their spines. If you want to properly live, you need the closeness and intimacy of others. By allowing yourself to be close, however, you end up at great risk of being hurt. It’s the very reason what drives those who live to become guarded. Being perpetually apprehensive or building up walls isn’t a remedy for pains, however. The Hedgehog’s Dilemma isn’t just about why people become guarded after relationships ended on bad notes. It’s about the overall inevitability of pain.

Life is a continual push-pull of relationships, because we’re all creatures of comfort. We guard ourselves to varying degrees and sometimes even tell ourselves we won’t get close again, but personal comfort is one of our most ultimate drives.

The Hedgehog’s Dilemma not only describes that harm happens to us anyway, but illustrates that because comfort is universal we seek companionship regardless.

III. The AT-Field as a Universal Metaphor

The AT-Field is the most crucial rabbit hole in understanding the largest meta-narrative of Evangelion.

If Hedgehog’s Dilemma explains the what and the why people become more or less guarded, then AT-Fields explain the how. People build up walls around themselves all the time. You walk away from someone because they crack a smile at you... and it seems off.

Because you feel an anxious pang.

That’s an AT Field.

AT-Fields, or Absolute Terror Fields bear a few metaphors, one of which being boundaries. You see it as Shinji’s fear of becoming intimate, knowing the future implications or Asuka’s masculine protest (putting up a front). We can see an excellent example of the AT Field used by Asuka, her “Wall of Jericho” in episode 9.

You also see it manifested through the angels, the strange creatures in Eva who supposedly desire to merge with Adam, their mother. Seeing this in the angels makes you realize that the AT Field is actually a metaphor for boundaries which implicates us all. In episode 22, Arael, 15th angel, seeks to understand Asuka. The angel uses its AT-Field (a beam of light) no, its boundary, to breach Asuka’s boundaries.

AT-Fields can be used to not only build up personal walls but to breach them as well. The irony of Arael’s action is that Arael’s AT-Field being erected while it floats just over Earth’s gravitational field makes it immensely similar to the Second Child; they’re both guarded.

The AT-Field is a funny sort of thing because it also sometimes explains how two people who are so alike can be guarded from one another. Sometimes you gain contempt for someone because they’re too much like your least favorable traits. You see this with Shinji and Asuka, both children without their mother desiring validation. Shinji calls Asuka a child midway into episode 9 and Asuka isn’t shy on voicing ideas of Shinji as dense or immature. They’re throwing stones in glass houses.

AT Fields are used to get the user out of dangers both physical and perceived. Sachiel, 3rd angel in the original series’ pilot episode, uses its AT-Field, in the form of flotation, to get itself from enemy fire. It never shows this until it is attacked first.

AT Fields are also responsible for one’s identity and physicality in Eva. Without the AT Field you don’t really exist. When Rei assumes the form of the person the character being cast into Instrumentality loved most in End of Evangelion, she’s causing the character to give up their AT Field. With that gone, they lose their physicality, turning into LCL (given the lovely term ‘tanged’ by fans). The ‘tanged’ individual suffers metaphorical death. Evangelion argues that in order for one to exist, others must perceive you and you must perceive you, a point best illustrated in episode 16. Since everyone is converted to LCL, no one really ‘exists.’ Rei describes this unnerving state as the inability of differentiating who you are and others, since everyone lacks a physical state without AT-Fields. Metaphorical death can be argued as worse than physical, since we all exist to make an impression of some sort. It’s what ties all the Eva cast together and the cause of their dilemmas. Validation. You can be living, yet very much forgotten or simply unknown.

There is living and there is “living.”

You can’t “die” unless someone knows you. You were never there. AT Fields are the thing that make us live, but as a drawback, prevents us from understanding each other fully. Kaworu states in episode 24 that AT Fields are the wall of the mind and the heart of the soul, an unapproachable piece of sanctuary. When all else is taken from us, all we have left is our place of respite.

I’d also like to pitch the saddening reality that the AT-Fields are what prevent us from understanding angels as a whole, our genetic siblings as scared of this world as we are. The psychological angels want to understand us, that much is true. The angels, however, use forms of communication at the expense of our boundaries. Because people greatly value boundaries it makes it hard for us to comprehend angels. The creatures are hardly malicious when you realize they wonder why we all do things that actually hurt us, as well as the fact that they do understand our minds. But, because they breach our boundaries, we become even more wary of the (mostly) unknown. Angels may be us, but the strange forms they take are something we aren’t familiar with. The feeling is mutual with angels, wondering why there are many of us, our forms and outward appearances so identical. It’s a truth as old as time that we all fear the unknown.

The anxiety of an AT Field means comprehending that there’s very little chance to 100% get others. Because we’re all wary in some degree, because we’re set in an idea or perception of someone, even if the someone in the past no longer applies. It’s not healthy for you to continue dwelling on relationships not meant to be, keeping yourself up at night asking why, because both of you have closed off each other for good. There’s always that chance the other can come back and if they do seek to understand despite past hardships, that’s good. If they don’t, all you can do is move on and accept it.

IV. Kensuke Aida + War Idealism

Kensuke is one of Shinji’s classmates, a supporting player in the series. He’s close with Toji Suzuhara, a boy who takes his anger on Shinji, after finding out that his sister has been injured during Shinji’s fight with 3rd angel Sachiel. As Suzuhara beats him down, Kensuke downplays the incident. Kensuke’s and Toji’s relationship is particularly interesting because the latter is affected to some degree by war (the war by humanity to prevent our destruction by angels). Kensuke glorifies the sentient, implicitly eldritch, multi-armored war-machines.

Kensuke can be best described as the ‘wow, cool robots’ drawing you’ve probably seen floating around. This is in relation to Gundam’s war commentary, but replace Gundam with Eva. Kensuke is enamored with the Evangelions and totally, willfully ignorant to the war horrors. Adolescents are forced to be the salvation of humanity, feeling every bit of damage to their own bodies whenever the Evangelion takes any hurt. Even after the war for humanity is long over, the pilots will be afflicted with traumas that will always hang over them.

Kensuke’s glorification is also what draws him to be Shinji’s friend. He uses Shinji’s status as a way of becoming a pilot himself by meeting up with Misato, putting himself at the cockpit of a strange creature magnificent machine.

When Toji becomes hospitalized after his battle in a hijacked Unit-03 vs. A Dummy System-controlled Unit-01, Kensuke expresses discontent at not being a pilot. He’s annoyed because “everyone” but him is a pilot.

Thing is, Kensuke isn’t heartless, just ignorant. Idealism is one of the uglier things that runs thick in the heart of Evangelion. His is one of many cases of unhealthy idealism in Eva, another example of making it difficult for those living to understand one another.

V. Shinji as the Audience Surrogate

Shinji as the audience surrogate isn’t always touched up on, but is sort of understood subconsciously by a lot of the viewers. Shinji’s character is specific, yet so generalized that him being a surrogate for the audience just… works. Don’t believe me? Shinji gets two psychological exploration-based episodes whereas Asuka and Rei each have one. Episodes 16 and 24 are both psychological angel episodes, albeit the latter is more in-series subversive. The 24th episode doesn’t involve a breach of subconscious boundary, but the pilot (Shinji) is in the hot-seat, being made aware of their issues. Leliel, 12th angel, contacts Shinji in the former of these. Both characters talk to one another, shown as a series of horizontal lines and vertical lines, sometimes intersecting. These lines are a strong reference to the Johari Window, a tool in psychology which helps someone become more aware of themselves. The Window’s quadrants are as follows

1. the part known to the self

2. the part known to others

3. the part known to the self and others

4. the part known to no one

Leliel also states that the self only exists of one perceives themselves as well as others. The angel also states that Shinji could better his reality, to which Shinji absolves himself of responsibility by arguing the horrible state of his reality. It’s a subtle pushing to Shinji and by extension the viewer into free will. Kaworu builds up on these concepts with Eva’s in-universe concept for boundaries. Free Will versus Determinism is brought up here, with the idea that AT-Fields are brought up because the living (again, not people – emotional complexities aren’t only human) will them into existence. By exercising free will, it means enduring pain, one of Shinji’s, and again the audience’s greatest fears. Any relationship has pains and conflicts. This is all a buildup of free will, determinism, self-awareness, and the Hedgehog’s Dilemma. Understanding all of these means swallowing the “pain is inevitable” pill. The problem with much of us is that we like the idea of relationships rather than being in one. We want to feel validated but without the conflict, even if the conflict can be solved. We’re all Shinji because we’re all aware to life’s hellish catch-22s, so we run. There’s times in our lives where we run as far as possible from these woes, these truths, but there’s pain in running too. It’s why escapism seems like such a viable action for some of us.

Pain is inevitable, but pain can be mitigated.

More damning evidence to Shinji being a viewer stand-in lies in either endgame of Evangelion (pun intended). In EoE, after the Komm Susser Tod sequence of everyone on Earth being tanged, we’re treated to a shot of EoE’s live audience.

We hear Shinji’s voice about his reality while he talks to Rei toward EoE’s end. There are shots of the city, of people going about their daily lives cementing that this is about us. End of Evangelion shows us a less favorable side of Shinji, a departure from the lauded end series “Congratulations” scene, in which he does understand free will rather than perpetually dwell on negatives. Shinji reacts unfavorably toward Asuka in EoE after his mother’s speech to the audience that ‘anywhere can be paradise’ and Shinji stating he doesn’t know where his happiness resides. Shinji (We) still has a ways to go if he wants to be a better person.

It’s probably why many of us are either inclined to champion Shinji or harangue him, and either reaction is fair. Many of us are aware of audience surrogates, but never to this extent. Shinji isn’t his best person, but he can be. Being his best means self-reflection. Droves of people who first were exposed to Evangelion were teens, and again many of Shinji’s woes are specific yet so generalized, hence our feelings of defense and possibly disgust.

No one likes scathing, yet accurate call-outs on their person, but they’re paramount for us to understand ourselves and others.

VI. Abuse in Evangelion

One of the worst things recurring in all of original Evangelion is a bevvy of abuses.

Abuse comes in many shapes and forms and it’s many characters’ realities. Abuse happens not because the universe ‘wills it’ (determinism aka, ‘that’s just how people are’). Abuse, be it conscious emotional absence, actual neglect, among other ungodly acts fly though the cast.

Abuse is cyclical and a lot of those doing it often get away with murder because they have power.

Much of Eva is comprised of children being forced to sort through adults’ emotional baggage. Those children become adults and the cycle continues.

We all know a Gendo. Or even perhaps a Misato. Hell, even a Ritsuko.

Anno states that Gendo’s character is of a societal meta-text, which explains many viewers’ ire in relation to the character. He’s responsible for many of the seedy goings-on in Evangelion be it the financial (see: Jet Alone’s orchestrated out-of-control nature to give NERV more funding) or abuses (see: Rei, Shinji, Ritsuko, and, Naoko). It’s for this reason why Gendo’s actions are a sore spot for a lot of fans.

Anno: I’m not sure that it’s a real father [that Gendo represents]. Well, not a father in the sense of a parent with a blood relation to his child, but more, I think, [in the sense of being] a representative of society or the system. That’s why he has that expression.

Takekuma: So, he’s kind of amorphous.

Anno: The angels are the same. I made them appear amorphous in that way because, for me, society is unclear, the enemy is unclear.

Takekuma: Gendo is [a representation of] the boundries or the pressure of society itself.

Anno: That might be it. Perhaps Gendo is [a representation of] society itself.

http://wiki.evageeks.org/Statements_by_Evangelion_Staff

After many re-watches of certain Eva episodes, it just hit me, as I’m writing this why I’m sometimes apprehensive on an adult-exclusive lens of the show. This happens a lot in adolescence and our struggles are made trivial because of the mishandled baggage. As children, you’re meant to be subservient to parental whims. You have this sort of obligation to solve their problems. Give them closure. It doesn’t even need to be parental baggage, but just from adults in general. You see the way the adults act not just with the children but with each other. You see the way Gendo justifies neglecting Shinji, objectifying Naoko and Ritsuko or Naoko’s emotional absences as a mother to her daughter (also manifested through the MAGI). It’s these immature excuses as to why they can’t extend empathy to those around them.

It’s always excuses.

Eva’s original series has always been a show about children.

Tier 2: Just Below the Tip

VII. The Infamous Elevator Scene

VIII. Naoko + Casper

IX. The Other End of Existential Horror

VII. The Infamous Elevator Scene

The Elevator Scene is a sequence that sometimes gets glossed over due to Evangelion’s fleeting budget. It took me years to realize the true gravity of the awkward silence of both the 22nd episode and its Director’s Cut version. The Director’s Cut version has Asuka abruptly jerking in the silence, but that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment speaks volumes. Understanding the scene means understanding why Asuka quietly stews in her anger. Understanding why Asuka stews means understanding Asuka from her debut to her emotional breakdown.

Asuka’s appearance in the 8th episode, Asuka Strikes!, is marked by a bold persona that carries on until the end. She isn’t shy on imparting her prowess to Shinji, stating that Units 00 as well as 01 were the prototype and the test type, respectively. Her Evangelion, Unit-02 is the finished product. She even states that she graduated from university. Despite these impressive feats so early in adolescence, the only time in which they’re noted is when Asuka talks of them. Misato takes in both Shinji and Asuka, but only ever “dotes” on Shinji. Gendo pays attention to Shinji because he pilots Unit-01, and 01 contains the soul of his late wife. Rei is the clone of Gendo’s late wife, hence Gendo’s attention and overall creepy, selfish obsession with her. Asuka and Shinji’s relationship, with Misato as their caretaker strongly mimics a Golden Child and the Second Fiddle. The only difference is, Shinji gains more attention due to Gendo’s and Misato’s respective baggage. Again, Eva is a series where children are forced to handle the baggage (with no break in the cycle) and when the child doesn’t have anything the adult particularly can clue in on, they become neglected.

That’s Asuka’s dilemma.

It’s why Asuka forces herself to grow up.

It’s why Asuka is driven to be competitive to Shinji and Rei, later growing contemptible at both.

Asuka suffers a few curses, one of which being the youngest, the inevitability of being consciously sidelined dawns on her, leading to her selfsame breakdown toward series’ end. She aligns youth with trivialization, so naturally, she’d front with the opposite. She never gets help in relation to her period. Misato and Ritsuko realize something is up with Asuka but they never really offer her the support.

There’s also the flashback to her trauma in episode 22’s beginning. She’s replaced by her mother post-Contact Experiment (which led to a deterioration of her mental health) via a doll that looks like her, red hair in pigtails. It’s the leading factor to her feigned boldness, her ego. The way in which she is marginalized in the series brings it all back.

Rei breaks the silence with a few words of compassion and all Asuka can do is express disbelief. She mistakes compassion for contempt.

For pity.

The idea that anyone would extend kindness, especially now of all times, is unbelievable.

Asuka also experiences a dilemma here, a dilemma those like her face. She already knows what it means to be vulnerable and deeply hurt, but she needs to make herself vulnerable because now, more than ever, she needs the support. Being vulnerable will cause past traumas to flood back in full force, but by stewing she deprives herself of any support. Rei offers that support, but a few words of support in a wave of trivialization can’t help but feel a bit too strange.

Asuka’s greatest anxiety is realized in the twenty second episode. It’s of being and staying second fiddle, that she’s always been set up to fail. Even 2 episodes after the fact, in which she actually starves herself does she realize once more how she’s permanently ‘below’ others.

Asuka’s curse finds itself in real life, and it’s for that reason why I believe some find themselves resonating with her. Asuka’s gradual descent into bitterness is something I find myself waking up some nights thinking about after 7 years going through Eva; hers is a cautionary tale on being emotionally distant to cries of a damaged youth. Casually imparted knowledge of past achievements, and the competitive attitude mixed with embitterment, some of which from a genuine place but also a product of neglect. We were forced to play second fiddle, we forced ourselves to grow up to feel more legitimate, forced to carry an ire that stews because it seems no one listens.

VIII. Naoko+Casper

The late Naoko Akagi is a woman of multitudes. Those multitudes are compartmentalized into the 3 MAGI. They are Balthasar, Melchior, and Casper.

Casper shows itself to be the most prominent aspect of Naoko’s personality, her as a woman. Ritsuko states that, after the defeat of Iruel, 11th angel, that Casper is the part of her mother which remained that way to the end.

Balthasar and Melchior have been bested, be it by rival MAGI, or Iruel’s assault. This calls back to the fact that Naoko’s other facets aren’t anywhere near as prominent. Naoko has cited her own emotional negligence, of only showing emotions should it ever benefit her.

Casper on 3 occasions fights tooth and nail, Iruel’s assault, an attack by multiple MAGI in End of Evangelion or the defiance of Ritsuko activating the self-destruct sequence. Ritsuko does this to seek vengeance against Gendo for coming to the immense realization that he never genuinely cared for her. Gendo has always used Ritsuko for her body. This would destroy NERV, meaning killing herself and Gendo.

Then you realize why Casper overrides the sequence.

Casper’s stubborn behavior wasn’t actually to defend NERV but to protect Gendo. Casper’s defiance aka Naoko’s emotional absence toward her daughter allowed Gendo to kill a bewildered, rightfully angered Ritsuko.

The saddest part of Casper’s, no, Naoko’s choice is that Naoko got away with murder. Evangelion is a story about children dealing with the selfishness of adults and the adults never receiving justice for their wrongdoings. The relationship between Ritsuko and Naoko is an excellent example that this doesn’t just implicate the young pilots. Ritsuko dies in End of Evangelion with the truth that her mother, as a woman, in the end chose the man who manipulated both of them.

IX. The Other End of Existential Horror

Some spend their whole lives trying to make a mark. Others can’t help but be known.

People get smart sometimes to get themselves out of a current situation. Kaworu and Rei’s existences are such that they’re deadlocked from living. Their existences are the product of an experiment, to be later heavily watched and raised as the Last Messenger. The latter is the result of Gendo’s obsession with his late wife.

Kaworu and Rei’s existential crises are opposite from the rest of the cast; while others do their damndest to become known, they cannot be unknown. Rei’s character centering more around her identity than other characters is also initially and sneakily alluded in the opening.

The Johari Window is a tool encouraging self-awareness in the person, alluded to twice in the show, with the second time being in the sixteenth episode. Both usages of that illustration, for Rei, and Shinji drive home crucial aspects of the meta-text.

This would also tie Rei to Shinji in End of Evangelion forcing Shinji to reflect on his own awareness and will. Rei is an astute, young girl whose arc is about her personal relationship with identity, something she is all too familiar with due to her objectified nature. Rei’s arc is even more so entrenched in identity than other characters that she is one of the characters imparting personal and universal realities.

Ayanami Rei’s existence from start to finish is inundated with the issues of others, causing her to internalize being always expendable. In Rei’s Poem in episode 14, it becomes clear that she sees herself based on usage. She likens herself to a field of flowers, which slyly alludes to the Dummy System’s “parts” 9 episodes later, other Reis.

Rei is seen as malleable vessel which houses thoughts rather than her own person and she can’t do anything about it. So she resigns to her reality. Even if she does tell off Gendo in End of Evangelion for his objectifying, she’s not even out of the woods. She never will be.

I used to think Rei’s “slap” to the face to the man with the (most) baggage was empowering. Then I learned about abuse during adolescence, how kids who lack a support system act while away from their abusers. Even saying an emphatic “fuck you” to your abusers isn’t enough to be a happy ending. Rei is a girl who lacks a support system and she suffers from it. Start to finish.

Kaworu’s crises are much trickier to pinpoint because there’s so little to work with. He doesn’t get an episode dealing with personal, subconscious explorations. Getting his character means first getting how Evangelion re-contextualizes what “Ode to Joy” symbolizes. It also means understanding the AT-Field and most people won’t pick that up on an initial foray. Or maybe even a second. Most people don’t pick up that the AT Field implicates anything living and physical or its metaphor for boundaries and identity. There’s the common misconception that Evangelion is a “human” show.

Kaworu marks off his appearance humming “Ode to Joy” while Shinji wonders who to turn to. It’s a song generally known for its jovial nature, but most importantly, Ode to Joy is:

known also as the “Choral” Symphony. Its finale is a musical setting of Friedrich von Schiller ’s “Ode to Joy,” a hymn to the unity and freedom of humanity.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ninth-symphony

The Choral Symphony assumes a more horrific context later on. Kaworu is the last messenger and what his action is would lead to the mass annihilation to lilin/human or angels. ‘Unity of man’ is changed in Eva’s context – it marks either unity of man or the death of man. It doesn’t matter who Kaworu allows unity to, because his hands would be stained with death anyway. Then you realize why Kaworu deploys his most powerful AT Field during his descent to Heaven’s Door.

This is his reality.

Kaworu’s status as the Angel of Free Will isn’t about him being the only complex angel, as a lot of people think. It’s about being the sole individual handing that freedom to others.

You realize his terrifying dilemma goes to the tune of being feared for his own existence as an angel (which he notes to Shinji) and not being able to properly live.

Sometimes you ”hurt” people by existing.

Sometimes people hate you for the simple act of existing.

Kaworu’s and Rei’s terror is the other end of existential horror, that you can’t help but forced to be known. Sometimes you have knowledge but aren’t allowed to do much with it.

Tier 3: The Body of The Iceberg

X. War Horrors of ‘Ambivalence’

XI. Unit-01 Berserk Scene

XII. Dummy Plugs + CNS

XIII. Kaworu + Adam’s True Power

X. War Horrors of ‘Ambivalence’

Episode 18 is where anxieties graduate into horrors both implied and visceral. Unease hangs over the episode, with the mystery of Unit-04’s disappearance and tests being done on Unit-03. Misato tells Shinji that because tests would be done, there’d be a pilot there. Misato uneasily withholds this info from Shinji and Kensuke breaks the silence with his recurring desire of being a pilot, still ignorant of the war horrors. There’s a subtlety that Shinji picks up on with Toji but not enough to put two and two together: that the big-eater himself isn’t feeling so hot.

The continual chirp of cicadas and birds nor the peel of the school bell are enough to break the unease of the viewer or of Toji. Toji goes from indirectly being affected by war vs angels to being chosen, drafted even, a child at the first line of defense for the apocalypse. We get a flashback of him beating down Shinji, before it cuts back to present day Toji. He will be in Shinji’s shoes.

Toji balls a fist, a recurring theme in Eva, to the tune of “What is your hand for?” Toji is finally about to take things into his own hands.

Asuka takes a few cracks at Shinji to Hikari that he hasn’t quite gotten the memo, but when Shinji asks her even she’s halted in words.

Then the day comes.

Tests are being done and suddenly Unit-03 goes rogue with Toji in her (note the Evangelions have the souls of the pilots’ mothers, save for Rei). Unit-03’s’s strange behavior is revealed to be the work of the 13th angel, Bardiel. Shinji’s ignorance is made worse by Misato’s absence (with Misato telling Ritsuko she’d tell Shinji the pilot’s info after the tests). Units 00 through 02 are sent out for the new threat and Shinji sees this new threat. Anxiety rises.

The song “Marking Time Waiting for Death” accentuates the anxiety. Unit-03’s silhouette eerily contrasts with the sun, her body slightly hunched and approaching slowly.

Fear washes over Shinji when he deduces that with an Evangelion inside, there must be a pilot.

Yet he still doesn’t know.

The other pilots are aware, and show reluctance to the revelation. A hijacked Unit-03 sets herself on Asuka, Rei, and even strangling Shinji. Shinji allows the angel-hijacked-being to strangle him, because killing another human being is simply horrific.

Eva has its hand in the war morals cookie jar here because Shinji stands at a conundrum, to other let this creature take his life or to murder flesh and blood. This dilemma goes double-time in war. Gendo asks why Shinji hasn’t dealt with the 13th yet, with a somewhat horrified Shinji pleading about the pilot. Gendo commands for the unfinished Dummy System to override Shinji’s controls and then suddenly...silence….

The Dummy Controlled Unit-01 springs back and we’re treated to a close-up of Unit-03/Bardi3l being strangled.

A nauseating crunch sounds and the unit goes limp. A controlled Unit-01 proceeds to raise hell on the incapacitated enemy, resulting in the unit’s blood and guts flowing through the streets. NERV’s personnel can’t do anything save for become fearful at the Dummy System’s capabilities. Terrible, visceral noises sound one by one as blows strike, as the unit’s severed limbs and blood splatters riddle the urban battlefield. Shinji hears every second, every squelch and splat.

Imagine the pain of 03’s pilot.

But the terrors don’t cease here.

01 doesn’t stop at just raising hell on the incapacitated 03, and we’re treated to another close-up shot of 01 tightly holding onto 03’s entry plug, before crushing it.

Somewhere away, Misato receives news that Unit-03 has been dispatched as an angel. Shinji feels the weight of having actually killed someone, before Misato actually breaks the news that the pilot is not only alive but that the greatly injured pilot is his classmate.

It never really hit me until now how this scene holds another horrifying subtlety. Compare this to episode 3, where Toji’s first interaction with Shinji involved him punching him, the very scene playing at this episode’s beginning. The 18th episode ends now with ,Toji and Shinji are both joined in the same camp, of children emotionally and physically marred by war, not able to fully control their situations.

XI. Unit-01 Berserk Sequence

Shinji stands in a situation where he can no longer take the terrors aligned with the Evangelion. He’s gone from sustaining injuries great and small from combat with the eldritch angels, to indirectly harming a friend through it. He resigns from his position as a pilot, understandably running away even with the approach of the 14th angel.

After a talk with Kaji about how he can control his future and he only, Shinji once again puts himself at the forefront of further pains. He must once more thrust himself to the terrors that align with the war-machines whilst struggling with other traumas.

During his fight against Zeruel, his Evangelion dies out and it all floods back to him. Shinji once again finds himself at a position of no power, frantically pressing at his controls to no avail.

He can only hear blow after blow of the 14th’s onslaught. He and Unit-01 are at their most vulnerable.

Until Unit-01 springs back.

W hat follows is the famous Berserk sequence, a scene whose terror can be thanks to Evangelion’s low budget.

We see the Evangelion in all her terror and the sort of off-ness that carries in this scene.

Episode 19 has no problems on treating us to front-row tickets to terror.

Unit-01 snatches part of Zeruel’s appendage and adds it to her mass. A sickening squelch sounds and her new appendage contorts into place in an instant.

She moves over to her incapacitated, angelic meal and doesn’t hesitate to chow down. The shots feel too personal yet nowhere near in the sense of the show’s meta-textual reflections. It’s almost like stumbling on a cryptid and when she shoots a look at the viewer, it feels as if she’s looking at us, like we’ve interrupted her dinner. Or perhaps she did finish the meal... and she’s in the mood for seconds? Perhaps even thirds?

The bizarre and eldritch nature of the Evangelions goes full force with this imagery. Episodes 2 and 16 laid the foundation of how off the Evangelion Unit-01 was with how she openly mutilates her targets. Or even the unsettling roar of Unit-01 that’s not entirely bestial. The sound is straddles a line between the blood-curdling bestial and the human. But here? Eva Unit-01’s position, from her hunched figure, to her more feral position as she feasts, feels far too organic...and far too human.

The Evas themselves aren’t human, but the souls housed within are. Eva’s souls are souls of the respective pilots’ mothers, an example of the mother and child symbolism omnipresent in Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Shinji’s mother is Yui and as we go through the series, we realize the s2 engine appliance was intentional. An s2 engine offers infinite stores of energy and this is needed for Instrumentality. With the s2 engine within her grasp and the fact that Evas don’t subsist on anything, this would make the consumption of 14th completely recreational.

It’s super tempting to frame this scene as containing some abomination that now stands unchained and indiscriminate in its targets, but it isn’t. It’s sort of understandable because Units 00 and 02 don’t come close to exhibiting this sort of behavior nor were they in this circumstance. Neither Unit-00 nor 02 have any desires in regard to Instrumentality. In the end, we should look to Yui and her own endgame, because Yui’s running the show here.

XII. Dummy Plugs + CNS

Ritsuko states the Dummy Plugs are machines which imitate pilot’s thinking. There’s a bit more than the possibility of this being 100% AI due to the apparatus Rei is in.

This very likely implies the respective person’s thought processes added with AI programmed in a way which best “describes” the pilot (basically how they are perceived). In episode 17, Rei is situated in this apparatus strongly resembling the central nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord.

{The central nervous system CNS is responsible for integrating sensory information and responding accordingly. It consists of two main components:

1. The spinal cord serves as a conduit for signals between the brain and the rest of the body. It also controls simple musculoskeletal reflexes without input from the brain.

2. The brain is responsible for integrating most sensory information and coordinating body function, both consciously and unconsciously. Complex functions such as thinking and feeling as well as regulation of homeostasis are attributable to different parts of the brain.

https://mcb.berkeley.edu/courses/mcb135e/central.html

Ritsuko imparts the unsettling revelation about Rei and by extension the Dummy Plant itself (after Misato coerced her into learning about Rei). The Reis are the core of the Dummy Plugs (and the System used to brutalize a hijacked Unit-03 and its trapped pilot). This scene adds more to the extent of Rei’s objectification, of her being replaced. It adds on to Rei III’s comment of being ‘the third.’

Rei isn’t savage by any means but the sheer brutality of Dummy System’d Unit-01 5 episodes prior may hint at her straightforward nature.

I’d like to pitch that Ritsuko’s approach to Rei’s Dummy Data was also the product of her subtle animosity toward Rei. When she refers to the Dummy Plug as a machine which mimics human thinking, she’s talking about Rei. She also refers to her similarly in episode 23 by referring to Rei as spare parts, as if Rei herself is some soulless machine whose parts can be switched out if need be. This could also call back to Rei’s poem, in which she calls herself a vessel which holds human thoughts.

Another question remains: how does Kaworu play into this?

The MPEs (the Mass Production Evangelion series) use Kaworu’s Dummy data, meaning that there are cloned Kaworus stored off somewhere, perhaps floating with soulless smiles the same as Rei has.

Treated as spare parts.

This also implies that Kaworu is more or less reduced to an object.

What’s more disturbing is the nature of the MPEs gratuitous method of ravaging and mutilating Unit-02 and by extension Asuka.

Kaworu hasn’t ever demonstrated any degree of malice, so this can’t really insinuate a ‘Kaworu is secretly evil’ narrative. But this can tie back to a recurring theme of humans fearing and despising angels. It’s because of this that the revelation of our genetically identical nature or the fact that they can comprehend our psychology is framed in-show as kind of shocking. It is because we’re so disturbed at the angels’ existence (or anything else we don’t comprehend) that we view them as inherently savage in nature. Kaworu’s quick-to-perceive personality most likely translated itself along with the AI. This would also rule in the somewhat strategic way in which the MPEs act against Asuka, exploiting her attack patterns through surprise attacks.

Some of Kaworu’s as well as Rei’s Dummy Data are the product of universal (Kaworu) and personal (Rei) contempt by people. Let that sink in.

XIII. Kaworu’s + Adam’s True Power

The bottom of the fridge horror portion of this iceberg is something that has subtly plagued me for years. We’ve only ever caught glimpses of Kaworu’s abilities in his debut episode. I picked up on it little by little with each re-watch of the episode, with every other time his abilities dawning on me. If I wasn’t focusing on how his character fits in the greater framework of Evangelion, I was cluing in on his abilities.

One of his abilities is being able to block out light, magnetism, and subatomic particles. Some of the forces which make up the universe. This witnessed by the viewer when he realizes the whole of humanity’s welfare hangs by a thread, due to the coexistence of angels and Adam.

Adam.

Adam’s soul lies within Kaworu. Adam. Who utilized an Anti-AT Field which caused Second Impact. An Anti-AT Field, which killed off much of the Katsuragi Crew in Antarctica.

This makes Kaworu the most powerful angel in the original Evangelion series.

Eva has shown that ownership of an angel’s soul (or partially, if you’re onboard the Rei I is in Unit-00 theory) allows the person to inherit the angel’s abilities through Rei. Rei blocks off Kaworu’s immensely powerful field with one of her own, canceling out both as a result. As we know, AT Fields for people are a figurative affair. People lack the physiology to exhibit a physical AT Field because they don’t have cores like angels do. Angels’ souls when possessed by humans have a sort of ability to circumvent parts of human physiology (if you’re looking for the whole package, you should eat angel’s flesh too). Rei also shows the ability to float, implied in episode 24 and shown explicitly in End of Evangelion.

But this raises a few questions about the last messenger is the ability to block out some of the forces of the universe Adam’s powers or Kaworu’s? Another ability that continues to plague me the more I think about it is Kaworu’s AT-Field usage on Heaven’s Door to bypass its lock.

We haven’t actually seen Adam’s other powers (if the angel has any) because the it’s anti-AT Field was halted via Lance of Longinus. Other than its ethereal appearance in flashbacks, we only see an incapacitated Adam in embryonic form. That’s it. We don’t know if Adam exhibits any other powers due to this impediment. If Adam does have more powers, this would add onto both the fridge horror factor of Adam and Kaworu.

Tier 4: Pre-Abyss

XIV. The “Nihilist” Lens

XV. The True Nature of Sync Rates

XVI. Unit 01+ MPE Gorging Scenes

XVII. Ancient Ruins of Arka

XIV. The “Nihilist” Lens

There’s something that implicates the whole cast. Something that goes beyond the meaning of the AT-Field, and the all-too-known Hedgehog’s Dilemma.

Eva is filled to the very brim with psychological concepts, but there’s one thing which ties this all together. It goes much larger than the desire to become validated or cycles of abuse and unresolved issues to a newer generation.

Free Will Vs. Determinism ties the entire cast together and is disturbing in its own right. It not only ties the cast together but also contributes to Eva’s meta-narrative.

Episode 16’s sequence with Leliel, Shinji, and the Johari Window gives little breadcrumbs to this psychological dilemma. Leliel teaches Shinji about his own identity as well as slowly ushering him to a sense of self-awareness. Leliel also attempts to usher Shinji out of filtering reality with only convenient parts. Shinji argues that he can’t really be held culpable for his actions, because the one and only reality is that reality is awful, bar none. Not his reality, but reality as a whole. This deterministic stance becomes ever more blatant 8 episodes later with the appearance of Nagisa Kaworu.

Kaworu’s designation is the angel of free will. The irony of this stands in the fact that Kaworu isn’t the only angel who can exhibit free will (with some of the angels before him taking the time to try comprehending people). Kaworu’s status comes from his identity as the last messenger, bringing about freedom for one species (humans/lilin or angels) at the expense of the other. Kaworu knows his reality well and in the end, seeks to better the reality of those around him. Eva doesn’t romanticize the prospect of free will, however, because Kaworu is so aware of his own person and how he can hurt those around him that it greatly bothers him.

The metatext doesn’t just position Shinji as being in the wrong, but also the audience. Remember the point I made before about Shinji being the audience substitute? It’s further hammered home from the series’ tail end and into End of Evangelion.

“That’s just the way things are.” is a common response to things in life we feel resigned on changing, because we don’t know how to change them. This quote is a parallel to Shinji’s “humans aren’t made to float!” in episode 16.

Shinji does know how to change much of his reality, but by doing so he’d be pushed into free will. Free Will is the solution and it means holding yourself accountable rather than believe that it’s everyone else with the problem. With the idea that you can change your reality, it offers you the opportunity to love yourself.

If you love yourself, then it becomes much easier to love others.

Eva’s free will and determinism metatext hammers home the extension of empathy.

Shinji/the viewer’s greatest problem is that because we don’t love ourselves it makes it difficult to extend the love to everyone else. Shinji’s love translates as idealism. Because of his unhealthy idealism, he is hindered from understanding people.

By ascribing your beliefs from determinism to free will, it opens your mind to an entire world of possibilities, but therein lies the terror. It is because of these possibilities that Shinji and by extension, the viewer, likely fears free will. Shinji finds ways make himself validated, but with free will, the argument could be made that it doesn’t matter. There’s the anxiety-crippling likelihood that none of it actually matters, because your existence doesn’t matter. If we’re going on this bent, acts of making an adequate impression on others are acts of personal denial. In the end, these are what they are, possibilities.

The greatest terror of it all is that we don’t know.

User power-chords makes an excellent point about the inherent darkness of an internal locus of control.

User power-chords posits the idea of existential absurdity for Shinji not as a certainty but a possibility. There’s always a likelihood that our desires to comprehend the world around us, to find ultimate understanding are in vain.

Cheesy as it sounds, people fear ambiguity because we seek a satisfying end. We don’t just seek answers. We want outside closure and inner peace, but we won’t always get it. It’s why we rationalize relationships that end on bad notes. Sometimes you worry about your falling-outs...and it hurts. You never got the answers your wanted so this pain carries, for months, sometimes even for years. Dwelling on the issue serves no purpose other than to keep that hurt with you. The best thing to do sometimes is to find your own closure, your own meaning.

No, Evangelion isn’t actually pro-nihilism, but it presents us with that likelihood. That’s what makes this aspect of the narrative so terrifying: The consideration that we find meaning in the meaningless.

XV. The True Nature of Sync Rates

The nature of injuries and having them in adds onto the innate horror --be it war or otherwise-- and themes of the Evangelion. The severity of the injury is based on how high the pilot’s sync ratio is. An average rate while sustaining damage will bring hurt to the actual pilot in the respective spot. Some examples:

Sachiel makes multiple headblows to Unit-01 and Shinji in episode 2, causing head trauma.

Ramiel’s, (5th angel), particle beam attack in episode 6, an attack so severe that Shinji needed medical care.

Unit-00 and Rei being infected by a Bardiel hijacked Unit-03 in episode 18. Toji’s condition in episode 18 stands as a large example of the innately disturbing nature of sustained injuries.

Toji’s condition becomes all the more nauseating when you see Evangelion parts and blood flow through Tokyo-3.

Toji could feel every last second of strangulation, body blow, and feel the unspeakable pain of his arm being severed. Let that sink in.

Asuka receives the worst of these considering the nature of her sync rate being high. The higher the rate the more kept the damage is. The circumstances behind Asuka getting the worst of it goes back to the AT-Field. Asuka understood the meaning of the AT-Field, that the more you open yourself up to others, the more hurt you become. The realization dawns on Asuka as her mother from within the Evangelion shields her from the onslaught of JSSDF troops.

It’s then that Asuka finally comprehends what the Absolute Terror Field is. Despite her emotional needs being neglected, realizing she’s set up to fail, and going comatose she still goes on.

Asuka, despite everything, takes a chance and opens her heart knowing the double-edged nature of the AT Field. What happens next?

Asuka took a chance.

She opened her heart...

...and she got hurt all because she opened herself.

XVI. Unit 01+MPE Gorging Sequences

The brutality of both Unit-01 and the Mass Production Evas holds three layers: of visual horror, implied horror, and thematic horror. Unit-01, after taking Zeruel’s s2 engine into herself, proceeds to then brutalize the 14th angel by way of still gorging on it. The feeding was entirely recreational considering Evangelions don’t subsist on food to function. This was more about the sheer act of brutality for brutality’ sake.

The Mass Production Evas also fall under this category, the way in which they deal with Asuka after incapacitating her with a replicated Lance of Longinus is also sadistic and gratuitous. They also proceed to gorge on Asuka, her fate made worse through the simple fact that her sync rate is heightened.

The MPEs don’t even swiftly finish her off. She is in a state of tremendous and unimaginable pain. They fly above her slowly, circling above her mangled Eva.

They are almost mocking her as she can do nothing, save for writhe. Asuka’s seething, repeated “I’ll kill you...I’ll kill you….” is then silenced by the MPEs spearing her down.

The brutality doesn’t end there, as we see much darker implications of the damage sustained toward the end of the first half of End of Evangelion.

Shinji bears witness to the implications after seeing the decimated remains of Unit-02 being carried off by some of the Mass Production Units. The sickening reality of it all dawns on him and he is once more exposed to the woes of war and the nightmarish aspect tied of the Evangelions.

XVII. Ancient Ruins of Arqa

We’re ending the pre-abyssal end of the iceberg with Evangelion’s original proposal.

Eva’s proposal, a far cry to the show today, had a more sci-fi angle to it. Psychological concepts weren’t exactly pitched nor was it self-aware. The angels weren’t even referred to as the angels, but as the Apostolos. Instead of the 18 we were presented with in the original show and the movies, there were 28 Apostolos.

The Apostolos designs stand as testament to how far of a departure the proposal was to the final cut. They look far more menacing than the more amorphous, much softer defined, beady-eyed angels we’re used to. To top it all off, the Apostolos were the de facto villains of Evangelion’s prototype pitch. The Apostolos in the Proposal, toward the end, proceed their onslaught as a group rather than the series’ one by one. Toward the series’ end, the 12 strongest Apostolos begin their assault on North America, annihilating the continent in its entirety.

Only 12 of the creatures laid waste to a singular continent.

Episode 24: "Now, the Promised Time"

Rei breaks down. Her secrets are revealed. At last awakened, the twelve strongest Apostolos descend from the Moon. Both Eva Unit-06 and the American continent vanish completely. Humans acknowledge their helplessness in the face of the Apostolos' crushing power. The promised time, when people will return to nothing, approaches. A human drama in the depths of despair.

Episode 25: "Arqa, the Promised Land"

The laboratory holds the ancient ruins of Arqa, which have become key. In order to stop the twelve Apostolos, the United Nations' head members annul the Human Instrumentality Project and resolve to destroy the Apostolos. Shinji's father objects. Shinji and the others stay at the laboratory for Rei. A drama of people conflicting over incongruous objectives.

https://wiki.evageeks.org/Resources:Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_Proposal_(Translation)

The aforesaid creatures were so powerful in the original pitch that Human Instrumentality and the ancient ruins of Arqa would be the way of stopping the onslaught.

Tier 5: The Abyss

XVIII. Split Second Misato Death

XIX. Humans Are The Villains in Eva

XX. The Ultimate Paradox

XVIII. Split Second Misato Death

As the last and most explicit aspect of original Evangelion, it would only make sense that EoE specific content would take its place in Tier 5. End of Evangelion is a 90 + minute tour de force with disturbing imagery back-to-back. Split Second Misato Death refers to one of the most unsettling images sprinkled all throughout the movie. Here are a few of the many examples of EoE’s building up on Evangelion’s ugliest parts.

Everyone cites the infamous hospital scene not even 5 minutes into the film as the first proof, but user power-chords has pointed out, Shinji has actually attempted suicide (refer to the ‘Free Will v. Determinism’ part of the iceberg.)

After Misato is mortally wounded and sends Shinji off in an elevator not long after, the JSSDF blow up that part of NERV. A few people have pointed out the most disturbing facet of this scene: through freeze-framing that you can actually see Misato’s body during.

The JSSDF scene partway through End of Evangelion in which NERV personnel are summarily annihilated.

For those missing the small detail of Shinji’s attempted suicide ,Shinji’s depressed state is made more clear when the JSSDF locate him. When they do they attempt to kill him execution style. Shinji doesn’t move.

“I don’t want to die…!” during the JSSDF’s assault, Asuka is awoken from comatose state. She is protected by her mother via an AT-Field by Unit-02. She gains back her self-preservation after this realization, and multitude of images play. One of them is an extremely gruesome close-up of Asuka’s face. (extreme body horror warning, proceed with caution)

The Komm Susser Tod scene beginning with Shinji strangling Asuka in harsh coloring, Naoko’s same action toward Rei plays right after. A few disturbing child drawings follow after, predominantly featuring death. (seizure warning, body horror warning)

End of Evangelion’s flooring nature comes from the fact that it builds up on the subtly horrific and makes these terrors explicit. Whatever existed beyond closed doors becomes now available for us to see,

XVIII. Humans Are The Villains in Eva

At the penultimate point of the abyss lies a horror as old as much of time. Of the humane being more disgusting than the monsters.

That we can be monstrous.

This fact becomes known with the appearance of the JSSDF as dispatched by SEELE, methodically mowing down NERV personnel with little to no weaponry of their own. We’re treated to NERV’s personnel in their hallways, some forced with the moral dilemma of leaving their own to die while surviving or helping their own while both end up being gunned down.

It becomes apparent that SEELE has been gradually, intentionally chipping away at NERV’s Defense Budget, getting rid of the (little) competition they have after the defeat of the Last Messenger.

There’s a degree of contempt and casual sadism that comes with how they kill the personnel. In one instance, a NERV worker surrenders to the JSSDF, before being killed off in execution style in the distance (one headshot plus two extra shots for good measure).

When you look back at it, this sort of sheer, unabashed brutality wasn’t felt about the angels. Human attitude about the angels is largely fearing, anxious. This attitude accentuated itself through a sometimes nervous soundscape. Of observing these weird, ghastly creatures as they creep and swim. And the feeling’s mutual. The problem is that we don’t know.

But here? We do know.

When the JSSDF move in, the anxiety of angels graduates to the full-force dread of creatures that have killed before. The greatest enemy to humanity has always been with them all along, forcing them to a catch-22. The dread falls on Maya because she understands this perfectly. NERV has only ever shot at targets rather than living flesh…

...and SEELE knows this.

SEELE’s slow, but sure suppression of NERV’s budget is kicking a man while he’s down, but the man in question is a child instead. The JSSDF have more than enough firepower, calling it overkill goes beyond an understatement.

The JSSDF demonstrate the lack of remorse further with the discovery of Third Child, Shinji Ikari. One of the members presses the barrel to Shinji’s head before Misato steps in and kills the members.

The JSSDF isn’t the only damning evidence of how ugly members of humanity can be, however.

Humanity’s on-occasion grossness shows itself in small ways throughout the series, in dislike and conscious emotional distance for individuals, or beliefs of the angels being unintelligent and/or savage. Other times it manifests fiscally, in orchestrating more ethical approaches to stopping certain destruction to go seemingly haywire in order for NERV to receive more funding. This all due to a rival company of NERV challenging the very idea for its usage of child soldiers.

The worst of this damning fact is that many of the morally repugnant members exist on a higher echelon of society. There are Gendos running around, doing as they so please and they’re the tip of their echelon iceberg.

XIX. The Ultimate Paradox of Evangelion

“Anywhere can be paradise as long as you have the will to live.”

We’re treated to these words as Shinji finds himself on shores surrounded by an isolate hellscape, with Asuka next to him. The strange and altogether horrific nature of End of Evangelion has gotten fans believing on End of Evangelion’s endgame was in certain, nihilistic. But Eva dipping its hand in the likelihood of meaning in the existentially meaningless isn’t even the ultimate terror of Eva’s self-aware universe, nor is it the tendency for man to become contemptible towards itself.

Evangelion greatest terror is the paradoxical nature of free will.

Yui’s words to her son as she drifts off into the ever-expanding cosmos, her status as a deity realized, is that paradise is universal. EoE assumes this unconventionally positive approach to a whole series worth of characters’ woes. The issue is: finding paradise is ultimately conditional.

Free Will’s paradoxical nature is what gives credence to the ongoing Free Will vs. Determinism dilemma. People can use their free will to take away yours entirely and this is most evident with Rei. Her existence is the result of a man’s unhealthy attachment to his wife, her lack of self-preservation the result of being conditioned as a multi-purpose vessel; her desire to merge with Lilith to become an omnipresent mother-figure was not hers. The nature of disallowing free will exists on a spectrum, as people can use their free will not to take away the whole of others’ freedoms, but to disallow them proper emotional growth. The adults around Asuka weren’t around for her during the series, leading to her eventual downfall.

Unit-01, throughout much of the second part of EoE holds the power to give or deny people’s physicality due to her status of having both Fruits of Life (the s2 engine held by angels) and Wisdom (from the Lance of Longinus merged with the Eva earlier on). This gives Unit-01 her deity status and while within Lilith-Rei, Shinji realizes that not everyone would be there in his life, that he can’t be in the center of others’ lives. It’s for that reason why he denies people’s physicality (“They can all just die.”), which turns people into LCL.

Shinji gives allows people the ability to come back from Instrumentality after realization arises that without other people, there’s no way to tell if Shinji, himself exists or not. Kaworu and Rei also give him the reality that with people back, pain will become an inevitability once more. With all the souls gathered by Lilith-Rei, they are released after her death.

With the souls of those cast into Instrumentality dispersed, those turned into LCL now hold the ability to come back from Instrumentality if they so choose.

While the idea of anywhere being paradise rings true, it’s not entirely satisfying to say that EoE is unconventional in its uplifting message to the viewer. Evangelion is at its core a cautionary tale. It warns the viewer into extensions of empathy and openness that others would properly live. This goes double for those with power. Without that compassion, we’ll have Asukas, Misatos, Ristukos, as well as Reis, those in the world whose downfalls come from emotional absences, neglect, objectification, and forced baggage. We would have Shinjis, those wanting to be at the nexus of others’ importance because they were deprived while young.

Kindness is a powerful thing and the lack of compassion present in all of Eva implicates most everyone. It leads to yet more abusive cycles, with the only thing breaking that cycle being a hand for those in need.

XX. Conclusion

What more can be said over this juggernaut which is a host to a bevvy of darkness? Evangelion is testament that anxieties and horror don’t need to start out as blatantly shocking or visceral to make an impact years down the line. They also don’t need to be out in the open to initially hook you either. You pick up on a few anxieties as well as horrors and you realize deep down, there must be more, which drives many of us to engage in this often times unabashedly dark source material.

Some of us are doing it later in the throes of adolescences, others are doing so well into their 20s, possibly dipping into their 30s. Point is, it draws in a lot of us and for a lot of us, it doesn’t ever let go.

Some of its charm could be chalked to the visceral ways in which characters interact. Even after years of re-watches, I’m still learning new things about the child soldiers, and I’m quite sure there’s others finding small details. There’s also the possibility of Eva’s approach to terror. I think Evangelion “humanized” its horror. It didn’t make horror a universally human feeling, but made it so that the true big bads looking to cause apocalypse weren’t actually the eldritch. Many of the angels are more or less lost kids looking for their mother (I still think Ramiel’s “singing” in episode 5 was it calling for its mother!).

With those newer details after 20+ years, there will be more added to the iceberg. Hell, there should be more added to the iceberg. This iceberg is the tip of an even greater iceberg. I’m still learning about their adults and their desires as well, how cyclical their actions are. For others, the draw-in factor lies in its low budget. Personally, it’s all of these for me: the low budget helped cement these darker aspects of the series due to horror and the genre’s overall relationship with limitation. It works best on limitation and had Eva worked with a much higher budget, I don’t think the content would be as effective, or perhaps it’d be much more difficult to make it so.

Evangelion is such a well-done, deceptively compact series that each lens a fan assumes has its own interesting rabbit hole. Your circumstance shapes the experience, and this too involves how you navigate the series’ menagerie of terrors.

I’d also like to thank the reader for getting through the largest rabbit hole in Evangelion. I’d also like to thank you for getting through the whole of this meta from a fan who slowly began to resonate with the characters as the years went on!

#neon genesis evangelion #shinji #kaworu #asuka #rei #seizure warning #body horror warning #suicide mention #correct me if im wrong #credit goes to twitter user decoratedboar for the iceberg picture help #and fixes

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comrade-meow · 3 years ago

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Bad data generates bad research; bad research generates bad treatments; bad treatments generate bad outcomes. The physiological differences between males and females are vast, and stamp their mark on every organ of the human body, not just the genitals and gonads. Ignoring these differences will muddle our data, blur our understanding of physiology, and hinder the discovery of new treatments for diseases. Females are much more likely than males to have autoimmune disorders. Males are more likely than females to develop Parkinson’s disease. Males and females may present with different symptoms preceding a heart attack. Males and females metabolize drugs differently. Blatantly ignoring sex as a variable hobbles the process of scientific inquiry and limits the types of questions that researchers will ask, thereby limiting the answers they get.

About this story: last November I came across some anonymous tweets from a person claiming to be a medical student at an American university where professors were teaching that sex is a social construct. I decided to try to find out if these claims were real, and I contacted the Twitter user, striking up a conversation with “C”. We agreed to meet on a Zoom call, and that C would show me C’s student ID, with their name and the name of the school covered, and that we would then do a written interview. C’s desire for strict anonymity is well founded in my eyes, due to the damage that could be inflicted on C’s career prospects if they were caught speaking to a publication about the ideological lies being peddled and the culture of fear at their institution.

On our thirty minute Zoom call, I met a highly intelligent, critical-minded, and determined young person who was expressing deep concern over the ways that gender identity ideology is distorting the teaching of medicine and the repercussions this may lead to in our next generation of doctors.

C held up their ID so I could see their picture on what was clearly a medical school ID. C told me their school can be categorized as “top tier.”

The irony of using “they/them” pronouns for a single person is not lost on me. I find it interesting that due to the tyranny of gender ideology, I must adhere to one of their tenets and accept the use of the plural pronoun for a single person whose sex I know. But the fact that I have to do this is because any information about C could potentially be enough to raise suspicion (just read their words to understand the climate of intimidation they witness in class everyday), and the knowledge of an individual’s sex is still a crucial identifying feature, no matter what the gender ideologues want us to believe.

C and I agreed that I would offer people on Twitter an opportunity to pose their questions directly and that C would respond in written form. Out of the many responses, the medical student chose what they considered some of the most representative and important of the questions. These are their answers below, beginning with a short message they wanted me to share.

-Sasha White

Thank you, Sasha, for having offered me this valuable opportunity to answer these questions. Before we start, I would like to clarify my stance on basic issues regarding sex and gender identity, so that people can keep these in mind while reading.

Biological sex is not a social construct – male and female are distinct material realities which have significant implications for medical and surgical treatment of many different conditions. These physiological differences are relevant on the levels of clinical practice, research, and policy, and absolutely must be acknowledged in order for physicians to best treat their patients. All patients should be treated with compassion, respect, and high-quality medical care, regardless of their professed gender identity. I remain agnostic as to what it truly means to have a “gender identity”, but will respect the wishes of my future patients in regards to their social presentation and pronouns. I believe that dysphoric adults should be able to pursue transition. Physicians should be aware of relevant aspects of trans healthcare, including hormone therapy and surgery, so that they can better advise trans patients on how medical treatments may impact their gender-related care, or vice versa. It is possible and desirable for us to have a healthcare system which is inclusive and respectful of transgender patients, in a way which does not pretend that biology is arbitrary or merely a social construct. Despite my liberal beliefs, the loudest voices at my institution would falsely accuse me of blowing transphobic dog-whistles, hence my anonymity. This hostile climate is corrosive to an inquiry mindset and critical thinking, and will ultimately be a disservice to the scientific community and to future patients, trans and otherwise.

IDD64 @IDD64 asks: “What happened to “nobody’s saying sex isn’t real”?”

This is actually what compelled me to speak out about this practice in the first place. Well-intentioned non-medical people often assume that medical schools are teaching something like, “Gender identity can be fluid and varied, but biological sex is real, binary, and relevant in medical contexts.” This idea is around five years out of date in the most progressive of institutions. I have been told multiple times in several classes that biological sex is a social construct – not just gender. Granted, I can speak only for my institution, but this change has been frustrating and disturbing to witness.

Robert Woolley @RandomlyBob asks: “Do any of the required textbooks also avoid using those words? If not, might you ask those professors if they think the books are either inaccurate or offensive?”

Our curriculum is constantly subject to revision. Around two-thirds of our written materials have been updated with this new language. For the one-third that has remained out-of-date, our class has received multiple apologetic, itemized emails from course instructors in which they provide corrections, beg for forgiveness and patience, and avow to “do better”. In class, we have been given multiple histories in which the patient’s sex has been deleted, even for cases involving disorders which can manifest differently between the sexes. The words “female” and “male” are being erased and replaced.

Born a space baby @ggynoid asks: “What’s the dynamic like for class participation? Do people start with pronouns? Do people tend to agree, disagree? What’s the female-male ratio in the class typically on these sort[s] of classes?”

When school first began, we were heavily encouraged to include pronouns in our Zoom names and email signatures; around 70-80% of the class did so. Most students and professors would start off verbal introductions with their name and pronouns, though that has subsided since we all have grown to know each other.

A vocal minority of students are loudly in favor of the most extreme aspects of gender ideology, while the majority seem to be vaguely supportive in a nonspecific way. I think that this comes from a mixture of naive goodwill and fear – they are trying to be good allies, and this is the only way they know how. Additionally, it is heavily implied that to ask critical questions, even in a way which is ultimately patient-centered and supportive, is perpetuating bigotry, so they just nod along. A silent minority seems to be secretly skeptical. I have met four or five students who have disclosed to me in private conversation that they disagree with one or more aspects of this dogma but they are hesitant to come forward in group settings. I am sure that more exist, but they are hard to find. None of these people have been transphobic.

The female-male ratio is approximately equal, with slightly more females than males in my class.

David Poole @MrDPoole asks: “Do you think the people telling you these things actually believe it or are they being forced to do it?”

I think that a very small minority of our professors actually believe that male and female bodies are interchangeable with the exception of genitalia and gonads. There are definitely more woke students than woke professors, and the most radical of students are far more radical than the wokest professor. Most of these professors are very fearful of saying the wrong thing, so they delicately couch their language by referring to “XX and XY people” or other such euphemisms, even though that can lead to inaccuracies.

The social consequences for misspeaking are highly magnified, especially when most classes are delivered online (due to the pandemic). Our class has been quietly accused of having a mean streak in regards to social justice. We have had petitions circulated (drafted by few, signed by many) to name, shame, and “hold accountable” various lecturers who used the “wrong” language, to the point of humiliation. One professor broke down crying after a genetics lecture which relied heavily on the use of “male” and “female” by necessity. (Though the lecture also made ample space to talk about transgender and non-binary individuals, this was not enough to appease the critics.) Another professor referred to “pregnant women” rather than “pregnant people” and spent a very uncomfortable few minutes after class abjectly apologizing for having caused offense “by implying that only women can get pregnant”. It was incredibly disturbing to see, for multiple reasons. One, this is based on bad science and zealotry that has the potential to harm patients. Two, the magnitude of the “crime” pales in comparison to the magnitude of the outcry. Three, it is a total inversion of the expected social order to see these physicians —some of whom are literally leading scholars in their field— be reduced to fearful puddles if a student so much as looks at them askance. Keep in mind that these professors are extremely liberal, compassionate, and well-meaning, yet they are turned upon with such venom and verve by the people who they are trying to please.

Chopper @RodeoChopper asks: How are cases presented? Normally the first line is “This is a such and such year old (male/female) with a past medical history significant for…”

Here are some examples of formats I have seen in our coursework:

“This is a 43-year-old woman with ovaries, presenting with …”

“A 3-year-old child, assigned male at birth, not assigned gender as of yet by parents, presenting with …”

“This patient is a 7-year-old child, gendered as a boy by his parents, who …”

“57-year-old woman with testes, here with …”

“A 16-year-old patient (gender non-binary, pronouns they/them) …”

“A 32-year-old woman (she/her/hers) …”

“A 16-year-old patient presents with complaints of …”

Of the myriad problems with this structure, the most concerning is that most of these cases do not accurately identify the sex of the patient, which is crucial in being able to weigh the likelihood of potential diagnoses and treatments. A person’s pronouns are not relevant when deciding to prescribe a particular antibiotic, and at which dose. Additionally, I find it somewhat irritating to be expected to state the obvious for things that are the default of the human experience. We do not say, “This is a 42-year-old woman with both her arms and legs”, although there are certainly women in this world who are missing one or more of their limbs.

MaryWrath @WrathMary asks: “So how are reproductively different bodies described then? How are cardiac arrest and stroke symptoms described, explained and taught as we know now they present differently across the two sexes? There are clearly two bodies in our species so how are the professors acknowledging?”

Organs are referred to by their actual names – penis, testes, vagina, ovaries, breasts. However, referring to patients as male or female is strictly taboo. If there are relevant but subtle sex-specific differences, then they will often be downplayed or ignored altogether. As an example, we were told that the higher risk of heart attacks in men was due only to the presence of testosterone, and not for any other reason, which is patently false. When the differences are utterly impossible to ignore, “male” and “female” will simply be rebranded as “people with testes/ovaries”, “AMAB/AFAB”, or “people with/without Y chromosomes”. My personal favorite is “persons with [testosterone/estrogen] as their primary sex hormone.” Oddly, “man” and “woman” are still used, often with redundant qualifiers (“56-year-old man with testes”).

thames pilgrim @thames_pilgrim asks: “What are the most dangerous medical implications for turning a blind eye to someone’s sex due to a belief that talking about “male” and “female” might offend?”

This is a very important question which should be addressed at the following interrelated levels: clinical practice, research, and public policy.

Clinical practice: Transgender patients who do not disclose their birth sex might be at risk for improper medical treatment. (I have seen a natal female person who identified as a nonbinary man, be suspected of having testicular torsion; this person did not disclose their sex to the physician, which resulted in a delay in their care). Out of fear of being branded transphobic, physicians may not accurately and completely inform trans patients about their sex-specific risk for certain medical conditions. And for all patients, if a poorly-educated doctor is unaware as to how disorders manifest differently between the sexes, then patients can be harmed through the failure to rapidly and accurately diagnose and treat their medical conditions.

Research: Bad data generates bad research; bad research generates bad treatments; bad treatments generate bad outcomes. The physiological differences between males and females are vast, and stamp their mark on every organ of the human body, not just the genitals and gonads. Ignoring these differences will muddle our data, blur our understanding of physiology, and hinder the discovery of new treatments for diseases. Females are much more likely than males to have autoimmune disorders. Males are more likely than females to develop Parkinson’s disease. Males and females may present with different symptoms preceding a heart attack. Males and females metabolize drugs differently. Blatantly ignoring sex as a variable hobbles the process of scientific inquiry and limits the types of questions that researchers will ask, thereby limiting the answers they get.

Policy: Patients who are not transgender may be misled by “inclusive” educational materials and miss out on crucial preventative care. This is especially impactful in women’s health; whether due to language barrier, subpar sex education, or cultural taboo, not every woman will even know that she has a cervix, but she will know that she is female. Additionally, recommendations made by professional medical associations are widely used in clinical practice; if these guidelines are generated based on faulty data, this could negatively impact patients on a wider scale.

However, the most pernicious of possible harms is not the denial of sex; rather, the denial of sex is just one manifestation of a greater problem, which is the corrosion of critical thinking itself. Whatever you call it – this postmodern poison, the triumph of dogma over data – it is fundamentally incompatible with critical thinking, the most powerful all-purpose tool a physician has at his or her disposal. Starting with a conclusion and working backwards, all while twisting the data to fit a narrative, strikes me as more religious than scientific.

Marjorie Hutchins @leakylike asks: “Part of being a doctor is taking on ethical & safeguarding responsibilities[.] Why aren’t medical students challenging something which [could] have health implications for patients?”

Our positions as students are precarious, especially if one is labeled as being on the wrong side of history. Consequences for speaking out can include shunning, being anonymously reported to the school for “remediation”, being informally blacklisted from research and leadership opportunities, and potentially expulsion. Until I have earned my degree and have completed residency, I need to remain anonymous. To do otherwise would be to kill my career before it has even begun, which would also limit my ability to help many more patients in the future.

Although I am very biased, I think it should be on the onus of administration and our tenured professors to stand up against this madness, rather than on lone students to publicly put themselves at risk of debt and ruin. For now, I resist in the small ways that I can; I wish to do so more publicly when I am more secure.

#Anglo.txt

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gourmetpunk · 3 years ago

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It’s No Game #2: Dancing About Architecture

My Masters in Information Science was mostly a waste, but I got to take at least a couple electives that made me consider things in a different light. Even when these courses were a little sloppily taught themselves, most contained at least a couple ideas worth pulling out of their contexts and extrapolating on in other fields. Case in point: a course I took on “Information Architecture” got me thinking on its applications to video games, which was certainly not the intention of the professor that taught it.

I should give a brief summary of the central concept of the course before I continue: “Information Architecture” is just a fancy way to talking about the way information is laid out in a multi-faceted system someone might have to access that information through - usually something like the arrangement of links on a website, or the controls for interacting with various webpages. It encompasses things like the structures of menus, the “flow” of navigation and the options available for searches, among other aspects. This isn’t exactly new stuff, but talking about it in terms of “architecture” did make a new connection for me that I hadn’t considered before: the fact that physical and non-physical “spaces” are both products of (usually) deliberate design that can guide occupants of those spaces towards certain uses. Just as a house without a back door forces everyone to enter and exit through the front, a site without a “home” button on every page also encourages users to interact with it in a certain way (probably either leaving as soon as they reach a “dead end” or grumpily having to re-type the URL or search for the site again when they want to go back).

One strange intersection of these two architectures can be found in the design of a video game, where the line between what constitutes a “physical” and “non-physical” space to the player is a little blurry. On one level, technically everything in a video game is “information” and therefore “non-physical” – OK, yes, some smart-ass is going to interject here by arguing that the same could be said of the “real” world, so what’s so different about that? But I want to set aside philosophical debates about the material vs. ideological nature of reality for a second here and simply point out that there is a way in which video games are much more tangibly “all information” than the real world is: we can see their underlying informational structure by which they operate, and manipulate it to make it operate otherwise, in the form of its coding. What I’m saying here is basically “It’s Media”.

Sure, you might say, but so is any other medium – TV, film, music, books, etc. What makes video games so different from other media? Well, this one’s easy enough: you interact with video games and “navigate” their content very directly in a way that you don’t with those other media. As a result of this, video games are typically structured as a medium to be interacted with in such a way, and thus you have developers creating a sort of “simulacrum” (sorry) of real life experience to make the navigation of their information engaging to players. Typically this experience strives to resemble the real world in some respects, and one of the most common ways in which it does is by simulating physical space that the player can “move” around in – thus video games are also pseudo-physical as well as informational space. (Please note that I’ve been using the term “video games” here and not, say, “computer games” or just “games”, and while this doesn’t usually have relevance, here it actually does: my points with regard to physical space just don’t apply to non-graphical games like Dwarf Fortress – so I really am only talking about “video” games here.)

Now obviously no video game is a perfect simulacrum of reality, and this is probably for the best. But what makes the medium interesting in its aspirations towards physical space is the extent to which you can actually witness the gaps between the informational and pseudo-physical spaces in video games as you play them (note: from hereon out I will replace “pseudo-physical” with “physical” in descriptions of games, as I hope it will easily be understood what I’m referring to). Here I’ll contrast three different games that take the same basic action of swinging a weapon and approach it in three different ways. The first and simplest approach is that of something like Dark Souls; you have a weapon that exists as information in the game, but is also represented in its physical space. When you press a button on the controller, your character in the game swings their weapon – but the player has little control over how they swing the weapon. The game’s information with regard to the weapon is pre-programmed to respond in a very limited number of ways to button presses, and the character’s attack will be identical each time the button is pushed with a limited number of modifying circumstances, such as holding a direction down while attacking, or attacking while moving. The “combos” the weapon is capable of can only be performed by singular button presses with the occasional circumstantial context modifying it slightly. The weapon’s movements exist more as information here than as actions in a physical space.

Contrast this with a fighting game like one from the SoulCalibur series. In these games, characters wield weapons which have a wide range of possible movements, and the player has far more options with regard to buttons they can press to trigger attacks. Many of these attacks try to fit their triggering control combinations to the aspect of physical space they take place in – eg., an attack that starts low and rises would be accompanied by directional motion of the control stick alongside the relevant button presses. Many fighting games take this approach to motion and attacking within their physical spaces, and in this they come closer to replicating attack movement in physical space than something like Dark Souls as they add a multi-dimensional element to it. Finally, take a game that uses advanced motion controls such as The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword (I would use a Virtual Reality game for an even more obvious example, but I haven’t played any and don’t feel like doing research into them to determine how well they actually follow physical movement). While some may argue whether the mechanic was a worthwhile addition, the game is notable for including swordplay that follows the actual position of the player’s own hand as long as they hold the motion control remote. Thus the player can, to a certain extent, control the exact position of the main character’s sword in the game’s physical space – if they raise their hand, the character raises his sword, if they lower it, he lowers it, etc. This represents the highest level (again, short of Virtual Reality) of a video game mimicking the action of swinging a weapon within its physical space.

You could consider the three aforementioned examples as each constituting a dimension of space in video games: Dark Souls’s weapon movements are largely one-dimensional (a single data input, on or off, in the form of a button press), SoulCalibur’s are two-dimensional (with the on/off gaining a new dimension in the form of directional control) and Skyward Sword’s are three-dimensional (with its controls being determined by player movements in real 3D space). But note that a simple increase in dimensions does not necessarily result in a more “realistic”-feeling battle; Skyward Sword’s controls were notorious for being exact in their demands of the player’s movements (having to slice across a very specific space to defeat an enemy), as well as for slowing the pace of combat due to enemies having to be programmed to make their 3D “weak point” available to the player in time for them to react.

Meanwhile, Dark Souls has something going for it that the other two games cannot match: it has expansive, detailed 3D environments to a noticeably larger degree. Because the player’s attacks in the other two games only work from certain angles relative to the camera, their combat stages couldn’t have a lot of depth to them if the combat was to get serious and precise. By avoiding having to worry about that level of directional attack precision, Dark Souls opens up the floor to what might be considered more creative stage design for boss fights. Thus you see boss fights in multi-leveled buildings where players might learn to take advantage of higher ground, boss fights in narrow spaces that can be navigated carefully with the right dodge to sneak in more attacks, boss fights where parts of the arena can damage you if walked on, etc. Furthermore, the lack of focus on precision attacking with regard to space is made up for in the form of precision with regard to time (parrying, for example, can open up an enemy to further attacks if timed right) and more aggressive enemies that don’t need to be programmed to make their physical weak spots obvious. These are not necessarily points that make Dark Souls a better game than the others – I point them out to reveal how decisions about how to simulate physical space in a video game always involve trade-offs and may have both benefits and disadvantages to the player, depending on what they are looking for. (You’ll notice that trade-offs will be a major recurring theme in this series of essays, but I’ll talk more on that another time).

But so far I have only spoken to the extent of a single action as it can be represented in a game’s physical vs. information space. This is a very simple kind of information “architecture”, as it is really only the design of a lone object. What about the more complex structures in a game that straddle the line between information and physical space? A great example of this can be found in the concept of menus and “bases”. Each of these structures exists as something usually seen as distinctly informational or distinctly physical, and yet there is a strange amount of crossover through the functions each may serve in a game.

Consider a “home base” structure in a video game. It could be that of the Hunter’s Dream in Bloodborne, or the space station in Super Mario Galaxy, or the main character’s farm in Harvest Moon, or the dormitory in Persona 3, or the End Of Time in Chrono Trigger, or the castle in Suikoden II. Each of these bases is notable for having a specific physical structure that the player can move around in while also serving very specific informational purposes that could theoretically be replaced by a non-physical aspect like a menu. What separates these bases from the rest of the game’s physical spaces is the fact that they exist primarily for the purpose of players obtaining informational content. Typically, you do not fight enemies or otherwise make “progress” in these spaces; they are intermediary, spaces “between” the parts of the “real” game, and yet the developers have inserted them as necessary rest stops for the player on their journey through the game, sometimes to the point that they may spend more time at the bases over the course of the game than in any other single area, even if they are rarely there for more than 5 or 10 minutes each time.

The main purpose of the base is, at its root, to act as an information management system. Here, the player engages with aspects of the game that are the most informational and the least physical in nature, such as changing equipment and party members, levelling up or otherwise adjusting stats, saving the game, and selecting a level or area of the world to warp to, among many other functions. As previously stated, all of these functions could potentially be replaced by menus and conceived of in terms of pure “information architecture”, but they have instead been “physicalized” and organized around a space designed in terms of more traditional architecture. You’ll also notice that not every game does this; many games scrap the idea of a home base entirely and are run purely in terms of information architecture for the management of these systems (think of a straightforward level-based action game like Contra III), or they minimize the home base’s functions as much as possible (the Metroid Prime series’ “home base” of a ship does little more than save and transport the player to different areas, neither of which is a function unique to the ship in the series’ worlds). Some don’t even like the idea of a home base, seeing it as a dated idea that is very much the product of its rise to prominence in the 90s. But love them or hate them, home bases are undeniably interesting from the perspective of the tension between physical and informational architecture. On one level, they can make or break the experience of game due to how much time the player has to spend interacting with them. It is common for the developer to design an “interesting” space to visit for the benefit of players, but there is again sometimes a tradeoff between “interesting” and “usable”; Suikoden II’s castle is, uh, interesting in its Byzantine structure of corridors, barracks and floors, but I found it infuriating to navigate in the early stages of the game when I was just trying to do a simple task like save my game or sail to another town – and even more infuriated once I learned the actual layout of the castle better and realized that I was never going to use approximately 70% of its spaces for anything relevant to the gameplay. This is a case where I wish the space had been collapsed into a menu and reduced to pure information rather than have it try to simulate physical space.

Perhaps a more controversial example would be the space station in the original Super Mario Galaxy, which is circular and multi-tiered. The castle in Super Mario 64 was definitely a complex hub for its time, and Delfino Plaza in Sunshine doubled down, making a full town that was basically a playable level in itself (and which almost disqualifies it from being a true “home base” – let’s call it an “edge case”). But the original Galaxy (and this is crucial, because the sequel changed a lot of this design, possibly in response to complaints) is a strange step back from Sunshine; it’s smaller, but not necessarily easier to navigate. There are no stars to be found there, making it more like 64’s castle than Sunshine’s Delfino Plaza. At the same time, the player must have some skill simple to navigate some parts of it in any kind of efficient manner; a well-timed wall jump will save you having to climb an entire set of circular stairs, and a hop across a platform moving in the opposite direction can help to land you closer to the next level-select point than you would be if you took the long way around. In other words, the base is structured like a level with no real rewards beyond an increased efficiency in level selection time if the player is familiar enough with navigating its shortcuts. Some see this as slightly annoying, as it delays the time it takes for players to access the higher-up levels on the station, and this is a valid complaint; I, however, enjoy the way it makes a game out of level selection in itself – certainly it feels more rewarding than fumbling through the castle in Suikoden II.

So there can be different justifications for these home bases’ physical representations in the face of a potential reductionist design to remove them entirely. Conversely, we could see how the opposite argument can be applied to reduce elements of the “real” gameplay to information architecture. This will be discussed more in-depth in a future essay on player agency, but consider the possibility of a player having to make a meaningful choice that will impact how the game’s story (or even gameplay) proceeds from that point on. This is an informational aspect of the game, but it could be represented physically in the game’s space, and sometimes is; imagine a player being presented with a branching path in the road, or a building they can choose to enter or leave, or a situation with a hostage where they can choose which angle to approach from, with NPCs responding accordingly to reveal the consequences of the player’s decision. This, however, is harder to program than a simple two-way switch in which a player can select one option or another in a dialogue or menu screen, thus fully “informationalizing” the process. Many more games tend to do this, such as Mass Effect, Deus Ex and a whole host of JRPGs. Please keep in mind that both are valid approaches, though they do differ through the experience a player will have with the game; choosing the “informational” approach to design will more likely cause a player to see their journey as a series of fixed points and branching paths for which they must plan carefully at every step, while a “physicalized” approach to choices could lead players to treat their decisions (and, as a result, their gameplay style) as more spur-of-the-moment improvisation and experimentation. The advantages and disadvantages of the extreme ends of each approach should be obvious, and there’s also nothing stopping a game from containing both kinds of decision-mechanisms, implemented at different points.

But why stop only at the point of “crucial choices”? Why not turn every aspect of a game into information rather than physicality? Well, the logical endpoint of this is, of course, a text-based game – in other words, not a “video game” at all. But there is an interesting angle here in that you can classify some games through this lens as more or less text-based due to their de-emphasizing the physicality in favour of information. For example, it would be hard to call most first-person shooters anything close to text-based, but Dark Souls might be closer to text than Halo is, and a main series Final Fantasy game would be closer than Dark Souls. At the furthest end of this, you have “visual novels”, which often allow for only the most limited navigation of a physical space (Danganronpa, Phoenix Wright), if any at all (Heaven Will Be Mine has none, only abstract depictions).

What this all comes back to is an “architecture” of the game in the abstract sense. The game is both an informational and physical space that players will be guided to interact with in different ways depending on how designers build it, just as it is with real architecture. And this is true even when the player is trying to interact with the game’s space in a way they aren’t “supposed” to. Consider the case of mountains or other large structures in a game; no matter what kind of game it is, there will almost always be a decent portion of players whose instinct is to try and climb the mountain. Now this is a particularly interesting case of the informational and physical aspects of video game architecture – the mountains may exist physically in the world of the game, but the informational aspect of their programming will determine how much resistance the player encounters in their task. For example, Breath Of The Wild and the most recent Assassin’s Creed games have built-in climbing mechanics, often actually intended for climbing mountains. There are some structures that are not “supposed” to be climbable, but players nevertheless attempt to do so, sometimes to gleefully glitchy results. Other games might not have a climbing mechanic, but they could have a jumping mechanic that might let the player’s character rest on angles of a certain incline. Thus players might execute jumps at just the right angles to climb a mountain that they were not intended to be able to (this was often easier in older games with simpler polygon constructions for the environments, where a player could find the “sweet spot” in the design that the developers had overlooked). A game like Horizon: Zero Dawn tries to make climbing impossible unless the player is at a spot intended for it, but the player can still jump, and because of this, sometimes ��climb” their way up the side of a mountain they weren’t supposed to. Many RPGs, however, will forbid this kind of interacting with the physicality of mountains by way of control design as well as environment design; not only are the mountains programmed as sheer walls the player can’t even interact with aside from bumping into them, the player might not even have the option to jump, let alone move in a multi-tiered structure without guidance along a direct path.

But this is all with regard to the physical space of the game; what about its purely informational space? The design of these spaces can be just as important depending on your game, as a player could be spending a lot of time in menus and decision screens in an RPG. Thus the “architecture” of the information the player will have to regularly access becomes a matter of concern; there is once again an “interesting” angle and an “efficient” angle. Battle menus can make a game incredibly frustrating when they don’t do things like save the last action the player was resting on when it comes back to their turn – at least in some cases! In others, such a feature might be confusing and misleading to the player’s familiarity with the menu. What about things like displaying turn order for a battle? If this is important the gameplay, do you want the player to be able to see it so they can plan their moves carefully? Or do you want them to have to figure it out by trial and error each time? In a game where the player amasses a lot of items, do you have multiple methods of sorting through these by name, type, etc.? Are these the same methods players actually want to use? Speaking of which, how does such a vast array of material make a player feel about the way they interact with that material in the first place? Would someone maybe value having a limited inventory space just so they will be forced to make important choices about what to keep and what to use or get rid of?

Such questions about the information architecture of these various types of systems in games also leads to consideration of how the information architecture can be physicalized for basic tasks like data management and menus, not only through the functions of a base but by other means. The existence of “save points”, for example, is a feature common to many games, and what is this if not the converting of information architecture into physical architecture? “Saving” is no longer a purely abstract informational concept accessible only by menu, it is represented by something that exists in the real world of the game. Alternatively, one might make sections of a menu more “physical” in their construction by using things like skill trees (or the bizarre variant of the multi-tiered “crystarium” in Final Fantasy XIII) or an inventory with physical space limitations such as those in Parasite Eve and Resident Evil 4. As always, there are tradeoffs inherent in such approaches, though most of these are minor enough that I won’t bore you with the details.

So far, I’ve talked a lot about the implications of architecture for gameplay, but what about that part of architecture that comes up most frequently in real-world popular discourse – what about the aesthetic side of it? The aesthetics of video game architecture are partly tied up in a larger discussion about graphics, which is something I might touch on in a later article just because it consumes so much space in popular video game discourse (and not necessarily without reason – I have stressed that these are “video” games we’re talking about). But it’s not just a question of how pretty (or ugly) the developers can make a structure look; aesthetics in gaming architecture are also deeply determined by the different kinds of access developers will give players to the world as it is constructed around them. This is probably at its most obvious in games with particularly large worlds (which from a design perspective is not necessarily the same thing as being “open world”, so keep that in mind regarding the games I’m about to discuss). Much has been made of the worlds in Dark Souls with their interconnected zones and how these zones do or do not fit coherently together into a lifelike map. Many have praised the original Dark Souls’ world for being interconnected on a level at which all space can be mapped out to produce a picture of a coherent 3D space whose different points intersect only where it makes sense for them to, while some of the same crowd has condemned the world of Dark Souls II for breaking with this coherence and instead creating physically-impossible links between spaces. But I would dismiss this as a mere subjective preference for “realism” that some gamers inexplicably value over the fantasy games provide. There’s nothing wrong with physically incoherent spaces in video games; to some degree, they are almost always necessary in terms of setting limits to the environments, and by dodging the constraints of a hard architectural realism, developers can sometimes come up with creative spaces that impress aesthetically even if they defy spatial logic as it exists outside the game.

Dark Souls II, for example, affords an ominous view of the poison windmill in the Harvest Valley from the valley below. Some players might be sharp enough to notice that the pathway into the windmill they end up taking to progress through the level doesn’t actually make physical sense – they shouldn’t be able to traverse the space and end up where they do by heading in the directions the paths lead them. The ensuing layout of the level, however, does provide a very interesting internal structure to the windmill and players can still feel the reward of looking down at the valley they just cleared from the top once they reach it. The Old Iron Keep provides a similar thrill when players make their way to the top of the statue that looms over the fortress and are able to look out through its eyes. Should they be able to see what they can see from that spot by spatial laws? Who cares? It can still be appreciated in terms of the interior design of the structure they passed through and the spectacle provided at the end of the journey.

The extreme end of this approach is a game like Antichamber, which basically exists specifically to show off the kind of architecture that can only be possible in a hybrid informational/physical space like that of a video game. There’s no real plot to speak of in the game, just a mind-bending space to explore that seems to contradict itself at every turn, with many objects programmed to change appearance and function as soon as the player turns around or approaches them from a different angle. What is impractical in the architectural design of a normal game here becomes the driving force behind the gameplay; the game is a puzzle game, and the puzzle is navigating the space it takes place in, trying to figure out the patterns in its structure and the different ways the player is able to interact with its logic. But it is also an aesthetic experience all in itself, not just through the minimalist block-colour design of the rooms, but through the disorientation it invokes in players unfamiliar with its space.

#Video games #Video game criticism #Architecture #Information architecture #Antichamber #Dark Souls #Dark Souls II #Suikoden II #Soul Calibur #Halo #Skyward Sword #Super Mario Galaxy #It's No Game

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stellar-imagines · 4 years ago

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HEADCANONS REQUEST: ❝S/O with Railgun quirk.❞

[ Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia ] [ Characters: Midoriya Izuku, Bakugou Katsuki, Aizawa Shouta, Takami Keigo ]

「Headcanons of Midoriya, Bakugou, Aizawa and Hawks with S/O who has a Railgun quirk.」

MIDORIYA IZUKU

♤ Midoriya, oh this boy, here is a handful. He's all over you when he witnesses you using your quirk. There was one instance where Aizawa wanted to see everyone's special moves and all that. Boy was watching when you pulled out a small coin from your pocket and raised your right hand and flipped in into the air. You were focusing the currents to the palm of your hand and aiming at the walls of concrete that Cementoss had readied for you. When you propelled the coin using electromagnetic force, everyone was surprised that you had cut through the walls and the wall of the gym.

♤ Not a page but an entire notebook dedicated to you and you only. Often trains together with you just for the sake of seeing more of your quirk in action. The entire notebook has the full details of how your quirk works, your capabilities, and applications that you were capable of. He finds everything you do amazing, from creating lighting spears, summoning real lightning, creating powerful electromagnetic and a sword made of iron sand. And when you use your quirk for minute operations, it intrigues him.

♤ He finds it quite intimidating when your quirk goes off when you get a bit angry or surprised. Midoriya has witnessed you pissed when someone was messing with you during the joint training with another school. You unleashed your quirk out of anger and had Aizawa stepped in and scolding you for letting your anger get the best of you. He knows not to get on your bad side and anger you in any way.

♤ Trains occasionally with you because you're super strong and challenging. On your free time, you both would either work out together, do your homework together, or just relaxing in your room together. But as students from the Hero Course, it was more natural for the two of you to train with one another. Midoriya provides great advice and has a lot of ideas for you to improve your quirk and all that. Even when he gets his ass handed to you during training, he's still praising you for your abilities.

BAKUGOU KATSUKI

☆ You bet this guy falls in love because you whooped his ass in training. To say that you had a similar quirk like Kaminari was a great mistake. Bakugou blatantly pointed out that your quirk was much stronger than the other electric quirked user — which earned a whine from the blonde male who was comforted by Kirishima who knows how it feels like. Honestly, he thinks that it's kinda hot how you're able to defeat him with ease and assert your dominance by saying that he should challenge you when he's much stronger.

☆ Calls you “Biribiri” as a nickname and just annoy you. He thinks your quirk is super strong and the fact that you have such control over it amazes him even more. Different from Kaminari who seems to have almost no control with his quirk and gets his brain fried whenever he exceeds his own limits, you were capable of discharging a maximum output of 1 billion volts. That aside, you have the ability to observe and manipulate electric, magnetic, and electromagnetic fields.

☆ Bakugou finds you a worthy sparring opponent. Your quirk was a strong one due to its large output and a vast range of applications. Not only that but he's actually very fucking proud of you at the Sports Festival because you were able to beat the shit out of your opponents so easily. He might not be the type to compliment you directly but behind your back, he's boasting. This guy tells everyone that you're a fucking badass, super strong, and to top it all off, you were cute, pretty, and all his.

☆ There was one time where you accidentally walked into his room while he was in the middle of changing. You were so surprised that your quirk went off which resulted in a blackout in the entire city. Bakugou finds it really funny until this very day and teases you about it whenever the two of you are alone. But Aizawa isn't amused because he had to explain the situation to the principal and apologize to the workers in the electric company on your behalf.

AIZAWA SHOUTA

♡ Aizawa never judges anyone based on quirks but he can't say that he wasn't surprised when he first saw you using your quirk. This guy doesn't show that he's amazed at all though, he keeps his usual stoic demeanor in front of you as if he was trying to maintain his image in front of you. Behind the scenes, he's super proud of you and tells everyone that you're the fucking best out there. Of course, you don't know any of this because he never says it out loud.

♡ Your powers were very dangerous but with your abilities and the way you utilize it in battle, makes him relieved to have you as a partner. Aizawa observes you more than a normal person would and you noticed that a bit later into the relationship with him. He was an observant kind of guy to begin with, he pays attention to all his students which proves that he's a person who analyses. This guy knows every single little thing about your quirk but he keeps it to himself.

♡ He's quite nurturing and loves to see you improve day by day. Aizawa may not look like the type be in a relationship and people have rarely seen him with a girl before. However, in reality, he's very attentive and involved in his role as your boyfriend. This guy knows everything about you. He trains with you quite often, mostly on hand-to-hand combat and occasionally refining your quirks.

♡ His favorite past time is just sitting around in his apartment with you and doing nothing at all. Aizawa is constantly swamped with work, whether it was grading papers or evaluating his students performance training, preparing new training assignments for students, and whatnot. The guy likes a break from all those things and just relax but if you convince him to train with you, he will oblige. After all, he has front row seats to watching you train your quirk.

HAWKS (TAKAMI KEIGO)

♧ This guy, despite not looking like it, he's quite intrigued by your quirk. Hawks isn't the type to judge someone by their quirk to begin with. However, with a flashy quirk like yours, he unconsciously associates you with your quirk. These things include giving your nicknames relevant to your quirk or making puns related to your quirk. Though it was endearing and funny at first, it didn't take long for you to lightly hit him whenever he cracks a stupid pun in your presence.

♧ Training isn't that common for Hawks and it was usually just him keeping his body in shape. On the other hand, you would train your quirk. He enjoys watching you train, it was an opportunity to admire your abilities and throw in some compliments casually. Speaking of compliments, this guy never seems to get flustered when he's making stupid puns and cheesy compliments. He's just super proud of what you can do.

♧ The person who relies on your quirk for small things just for the sake of annoying you. Of course, just harmless little things like making you use your quirk to turn on the television when he can't find the remote. Hawks find it amusing that your quirk is capable of hacking things, like electronic locks, computers, and anything that is digital or electronic. Once he asks you if you could automatically respond to the emails from his annoyingly strict secretary, you end up telling him not to be such a child.

♧ He knows what you're capable of doing in combat and he knows not to mess with you because you're able to destroy him effortlessly. But he can't help but think that you actually look cute when you're a bit mad. Those tiny, non-harmless sparks of electricity the forms on your cheeks and hair when you're slightly irritated at something was just super cute to him. Hawks loves to poke your cheek and mutter how cute you are when you're angry which often results in you threatening to bit his finger him and zap him with a million volts.

Total: 1404 words Published: 27.06.2020

Thank you for requesting! ｡٩(ˊᗜˋ)و*｡ Sorry to make you wait for so long! ― author Lou

Thank you for requesting! Hope you enjoyed it! ― author Natsuki

Requests are closed for now! Matchups are closed!

Please do not mind the grammar mistakes and typos.

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simpcircus · 4 years ago

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Accidental

Warning(s): cursing, fluff

Word count: 2.8k

A/N: Sorry for taking way too long for this request! I hope I don’t disappoint you too much, anon TT

“T’as d’beaux yeux, tu sais?” The flirtatious voice of a man you knew so well entered your ears from afar and you were trying your hardest to ignore the tinge of jealousy that was currently present in your chest.

Not too far away from you, there stood Polnareff in all his glory - shooting his shot with a bunch of young looking women using his flirty lines. Him being a smooth talker is old news and everyone in the team already knew how flirty Polnareff could be. His words are so sweet as if they’re coated with honey everytime he speaks, and his dazzling smile has never failed to charm you.

While you had to admit that you did fall in love with him due to his flawless outer appearance at first, Jean Pierre Polnareff is definitely more than his loud and silly demeanour. Time and time again, your assumptions about his personality were proven wrong as he kept showing new sides of himself to you. He’s an honorable man and despite his mild narcissism, you could tell that he means well. You also learn later on that Polnareff is a compassionate person and it only adds to his many charms.

It’s practically impossible for you to not fall in love with the frenchman honestly.

You had to hold back a sigh when you heard him shoot another flirty line to the girls. You’re well aware that jealousy is a disease, especially when he’s not even your boyfriend but you couldn’t help yourself. God you wished it was you instead that he’s flirting with because your feelings for Polnareff have started to become much more serious - to the point where he’s the only person you could think about nowadays.

It scares you on how much the Frenchman could affect your mind despite him not even trying.

With the scorching sun hanging in the sky above you, the level of your annoyance only accelerated the more you heard him flirting with those women. It was hard to ignore the bitterness in your chest and at this point, anyone can spot the frown on your face as you stared at the ground in silence.

“Are you okay (y/n)?” A gruff voice grabbed your attention, successfully pulling you away from your envy filled thoughts. Your eyes were quick to look up from the ground, only to see Mr. Joestar’s concerned face. “Ah, Joestar-san. I’m fine, don't worry about it.” Your lips quickly stretched into a smile to reassure him that there was nothing to be worried about and the man nodded. However, despite the nod he gave you, it was obvious that he’s not buying it - though the man didn’t want to be seen as intrusive, which was why he decided that it’s best for him to excuse himself.

Keeping your little crush for Polnareff to yourself wasn’t as easy as you’d expected it to be. While it was unnoticeable for the other crusaders at first,the extra observant ones like Kakyoin and Avdol were able to catch up rather quickly. It’s a relief that Avdol isn’t the type to focus on unimportant stuff like this, but Kakyoin seemed like he enjoyed teasing you about your crush for Polnareff. The redhead would give you knowing looks and you couldn’t do anything to stop him.

“I take it that you’re bothered by something, but I wonder what could it be” Kakyoin instantly appeared by your side as soon as Mr. Joestar was out of your sight, the tone of his voice was showcasing his curiosity and concern. You weren’t sure if it’s the right choice to tell the crusader about your jealousy, especially knowing that Kakyoin will tease the hell out of you later on.

Polnareff's flirting, your deafening silence and foul mood seem to give him an idea of what’s actually going on and you could almost see a lightbulb appearing on his head when he managed to piece everything together. Kakyoin’s violet eyes went back and forth between your sulking figure and Polnareff before he continued speaking. “I don't wish to assume, but is it about him?”

‘Just how observant this guy is?’ A small thought echoed in your head as you could feel a drop of cold sweat went down your back. He figured it all out by himself and you didn’t even say anything that could hint about your feelings.

“Fine. It is about him.” The frown on your face deepened as you admitted to your feelings, and Kakyoin instantly gave you the smirk that you knew so well. It's almost like he's proud of himself for being able to guess your thoughts correctly. “Maybe you should just tell him about your crush, (y/n). How long are you planning to keep it to yourself?”

Like hell you would.

“Non non non non non” You furiously shook your head at his suggestion, your arms were now crossed against your chest. “I would rather die than confess to him. Of course I didn’t want to die literally but you get what I mean.” Your face turned red at the thought of coming clean about your crush to the frenchman while Kakyoin let out a snicker out of amusement at your reaction.

"Even the way he speaks has rubbed off on you. Just how infatuated are you with him (y/n)?" You only glared at Kakyoin after his words but the redhead paid no attention to your silent threat.

Your friend parted his lips to continue taunting you but his words were cut off by some distant angry voices coming from Polnareff’s direction, and both of you were quick to turn to look at them. The women he was flirting with earlier looked unhappy while their mouths spouted appalling insults to the silver haired man.

“This guy really thinks he had a chance with us by relying on his shitty flirting skills. Pathetic!”

“You think your hair is cool but it’s actually not.”

“Your chance of getting into a relationship is probably as big as your non-existent eyebrows!”

The change in Polnareff’s facial expression wasn’t hard to spot. You were gritting your teeth while your eyes shot daggers at those women.

“(y/n), calm down.” Kakyoin tried his best to keep your anger under control even though he’s well aware that his effort was useless. Your mood was already foul to begin with, so he wouldn’t be surprised if you do anything that could cause harm to the women. Their obnoxious laugh only fueled your anger and as soon as another insult left their lips, you started stomping your feet towards their direction.

“Maybe you should mirror yourself first before approaching girls like us next time-” “The one who needs a mirror is you.”

Your voice was stern as you spoke and Polnareff’s eyes widened after realizing that you came into his defense. All his life, the man has never thought there will be a day when the person he’s interested in would defend him against a bunch of rude women. It made his heart flutter and Polnareff was trying his best to keep his composure around you. Though, he had to admit that his current situation was kind of embarrassing.

“How dare you!” One of the women glared at you but you weren't intimidated at all. Your journey with the other crusaders to Egypt has led you to meet countless enemies who are stand users. With the way they're dressed - lacy overpriced dresses that hung on their bodies like table cloth, unflattering homemade curls with badly drawn eyebrows and unblended eyeshadow - you wondered what exactly Polnareff saw in them to make him want to flirt with them. A bunch of rude, unfashionable and obnoxious women wouldn't scare you.

"Hah! Looks like the guy couldn’t even stand up for himself. How sad!"

It was the last straw for you, and your patience has finally run out, completely. As if a switch inside of your head got flipped by an unknown force, your cold eyes burnt with nothing but fury and you could tell that those women were greatly intimidated with the look in your face. They took a few steps backwards everytime you moved closer to them - while Polnareff watched in awe at how much power you have in scaring the group away.

He instantly took note to stay on your good side.

"What rights do you have to freely insult him? Are your insecurities that bad to the point where you would settle for cheap insults instead of just politely declining his advances?" You were trying so hard to not yell out of anger. The amount of unadulterated rage you have for these women were forcing you to lash out, give them some good beating with your stand and create a scene, but the more rational side of your brain stopped those barbaric thoughts - constantly reminding you to keep your cool especially when Polnareff's around to witness your actions.

Their deafening silence gave you the green light to continue talking and defend the frenchman who has stolen your heart. "Haven't you heard? If you have nothing nice to say then it's better if you just stay silent. This so-called 'pathetic' man might look 'uncool' or 'sad' but that still doesn't give you the right to insult him."

Polnareff wasn't sure if he should be offended by your words, or feel grateful that you're trying to stand up for him. Either way, his pride has taken a little hit.

"So you're defending him, yet your words implied that he is indeed, uncool and sad. Wasn't that a contradiction?-" "I'm not done yet!"

Your fists clenched by your sides while your nails digged into the flesh of your palms. At this point, all your thoughts about Polnareff have spiralled out of control and words of appreciation on the tip of your tongue are threatening to spill out from your mouth. You couldn't bear the thought of letting other people see him as a terrible person when he's not. You couldn't bear the thought of letting other people look down on him just because of his flirting tendency.

"I obviously can't change your opinion towards him, but I'll let you know that you're wrong."

All your life, you have always held onto the whole 'opinions couldn't be wrong because everyone has different perspectives' concept. However, this time's an exception.

“This guy right here” You paused your sentence to point your finger at Polnareff, your eyebrows furrowed in determination to prove those women wrong. “He’s AMAZING”

"He's more than how he appears. You probably think of him as a degenerate, but let me tell you again, you're wrong. He's great and he cares a lot for his friends." Your mind reverted back to the time when Polnareff risked his own safety just to save you. The enemy stand was too strong for you to defeat on your own, but you were still reckless at that time - which was why you were so quick to throw yourself into the battle despite all the warnings from the other crusaders. If it wasn't for him, you probably would have died.

"Polnareff doesn't deserve any of your insults! He almost got himself killed to save me, and I'll be damned if I say I didn't feel bad about it. All this time, I thought of him shallowly - just a prideful man who loves to boast about his abilities to literal strangers, but I was just as wrong as you are."

Polnareff stayed in silence as he listened to your words, his mouth slightly agape with shock. Butterflies fill in his stomach with every word of appreciation that leaves your mouth. Is this a dream? Or reality? He just simply couldn't believe it - his crush is speaking highly of him.

"The more you know him, the more charming he gets and I'm happy to know him as the person he really is. There isn't a day when I would complain about our fated encounter. It almost felt like a blessing, even, to know Polnareff. Everything about him is perfect despite his flaws. If you couldn't accept someone's flaws and opt to insult them instead, then I would kindly ask you to stop and leave. Your negativity and audacity aren't needed here."

It does feel nice to be able to speak out your thoughts.You had to mentally congratulate yourself for not completely losing your cool and still remain respectful while you were trying to defend Polnareff. However, those angry women seemed to target their fatuous insults towards you, but it was a relief that their attention wasn't fully directed towards the frenchman behind you.

"Look at them desperately trying to defend that walking trash."

"They probably like that poor excuse of a man so much."

"Where has their taste in men gone to?”

With the level of your anger increasing again, your brain could no longer think rationally as you began verbally lashing out on them, the tone of your voice raising higher and higher the more you spoke.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Are you so idiotic that I have to repeat myself? I said, you have no right to insult people. Yet here you are, still running your foul mouths like it's the only thing you could do in your sad life!"

Their faces turned pale at your outburst and Polnareff was getting more and more worried for you.

"H-hey (y/n).. Let's just leave-"

"No, Pol. I'm not going to let them get away - not after they've horribly insulted you."

You took one final step closer towards the group and they weren't moving an inch, as if you were about to end their lives in the most brutal way if they do.

"Jean Pierre Polnareff is a beautiful man inside out and it saddens me that your eyes have failed to capture his magnificence. He is the literal manifestation of art and inner beauty itself. Flaws or not, he's perfect in every way and I love him for who he is!"

And just like that, your biggest secret was no longer a secret. Polnareff was in utter shock, his eyes widened as he looked at you in disbelief. His face was covered in red; a rare shy response to your accidental confession - but you had it worse than him. The embarrassment you had for your own sudden, unplanned confession was unbearable and you wished you could just throw yourself deep into the depths of the atlantic ocean, never to be found again.

"L-let's just leave these two idiots, girls! We're clearly wasting our precious time here."

The women quickly turned to the opposite direction and left while grumbling about how scary you were, but you didn't pay much attention to them. Not when Polnareff has found out about your feelings for him.

Other than embarrassment, there was fear present in your chest as you didn't dare to look directly at him. Your heart was pounding loudly as you stood there in silence, awaiting for Polnareff's response. After a long moment of speechlessness, the silver haired man finally cleared his throat to ease the tense in the air.

"Thank you for having my back, amour. Those girls are being mean to me for no reason!" Polnareff's tone was lighthearted as he spoke and you quickly shook your head. "I-it's fine. I'm just trying to help, that's all." You still weren't able to look at him in the eye and Polnareff took an initiative to confirm his suspicions about your feelings for him.

"Say.. (y/n), do you really mean what you said earlier?"

A nervous laugh immediately left your lips as you rubbed your nape, your face still red from embarrassment. "Oh about the whole 'you're a great person and no one should insult you' thing? Of course! Insulting people is a bad thing to do anyways-"

"(y/n), mon amour."

You froze as your brain finally comprehended the fact that he called you 'amour' and your face only got redder than before. Did he really feel the same? Does Polnareff like like you?

The dumbfounded look on your face only caused him to laugh, and you'd dare say it was music to your ears. However, a small sigh left his lips shortly after he was done laughing. "Though, this is a little unfortunate, cherie. I've made an extravagant plan on how I wanted to confess to you but looks like you've beaten me to it!"

"Wait- you like me too, Polnareff?"

Polnareff let out a playful chuckle before decreasing the distance between the two of you, and leaned in towards your direction. Despite his playfulness during the current moment, there was warmth and adoration in his gorgeous blue eyes as he looked at you. "What if I say yes? Will I get a kiss, ange?"

You had no idea where your sudden surge of confidence came from, but it was surely useful for your current situation. Flashing him a cheeky smile to match his playful demeanour, you gave him a quick 'sure' before leaning into him and planted a quick yet sweet kiss on the corner of his lips, purposely missing his actual lips.

Polnareff was the one left in shock and just when he was about to whine about your little kiss, you were already walking away with a giggle. "Come on, let's get going Polnareff! Jotaro's gonna get mad at us if we're late"

#jjba x reader #polnareff x reader #JJBA #jean pierre polnareff #polnareff imagine

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bnha-general-fan · 4 years ago

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A little scene that I wanted to share about a demon!mic erasermic fantasy au idea i may write some day. Feel free to use it if you like.

Basically: King All Might, knight Shouta. In this AU the future king is selected via magic orb that judges if the person is worthy of the throne, and in turn worthy of the Mythical Artifact™ One for All, which is lost but every future king should be able to wield in case of an emergency. Said emergency being the legendary black mage AfO.

OfA and AfO are dismissed as fairytales.

But then AfO invades the kingdom with Shigaraki, the late Queen's grandson. All Might and AfO duke it down, All Might loses and is presumed dead. Shouta manages to get prince Izuku to escape before he himself escapes too.

Then one day, weak as he is from lack of food and rest, an amateur cult captures him to make him the sacrifice in a demon summoning ritual. Only they fuck up and the demon, who finds Shouta interesting, decides to make a deal with Shouta: he helps him in whatever in exchange for letting him 'borrow' his soul to study. Poor Shouta is so out of it, and the situation is just so unreal, that he agrees.

Cue to Shouta having to deal with a demon as the same time he looks for the missing prince and gathers a group to fight AfO. Along with a quest for the Mystical Artifact™ One for All that only Izuku can use which can help defeat AfO.

***

There comes a time in one’s life when you have to take a step back, gaze at all you have lived and done till then, and ask yourself a single question: how the hell did I end up in this situation?

If Aizawa Shouta had to answer that question, he’d probably say that it started when he decided to join the kingdom’s army. Now, joining an army may seen to have little to do with his current situation, where he’s about to be used as a sacrfice by some random cultist group to summon a demon, but hear him out.

If he hadn’t joined the army, he wouldn’t have discovered just how good he was at fighting. He wouldn’t have been recognised, and placed as one of the king’s guards.

If he hadn’t been placed as one of the king’s personal guards, he wouldn’t have met the king, a man he previously disliked thinking he was just a rich asshole who didn’t care about the country, but who he ended up liking because he was the exact opposite. He wouldn’t have developed the friendship and loyalty he had towards said king.

Which meant that when the supposedly non-existing dark mage of legends appeared in the kingdom with the previous queen’s biological grandson, who was supposed to be dead, on tote and waged a war in said grandson’s name for the throne, he would have made the smart decision and left before things went FUBAR, instead of staying and fighting because damn it, Toshinori is as self-sacrificing idiot who would gladly give his life for the country and Shouta wasn’t going to let him.

If he’d left, he wouldn’t have had to witness his king, the man he considered a friend, be murdered and vanished in a flash of magic. He wouldn’t have had to send the young prince away with some trusted people while he fought as a distraction. Wouldn’t have to be forced to flee and live the next several weeks scaping the search parties and avoiding enemy troops.

And he wouldn’t have been kidnapped by a cult who wanted to use his death to summon a demon. Why they wanted to do this, Shouta didn’t know and, honestly, he didn’t really have the energy to care. He just wanted to get out of this situation, put himself together, figure out how to rise an army powerful enough to defeat AfO and his puppet, and place the rightful heir to the throne in his place.

The cracking sound of lightning, as well as the sudden darkness of the room, shook Shouta out of his thougths. The cultists, who up until then had been chanting something in a language Shouta didn’t understand, shup up as this happened. After a few seconds, the candles around the althar began to lit themselves up one by one, though the area right above it was still encased in inky darkness.

Shouta knew this was the best moment to attempt to escape the bonds he’d been working on loosing, knew that he could manage to get away if he managed to be silent enough, but he just… couldn’t. Because the darkness above the althar was visibly writhing, bubbling, and slowly solidifying into a humanoid shape. And Shouta, who was just a soldier and had never witnessed something like this, could only watch in horrified fascination as the humanoid-shaped darkness rippled one more time and, in a blink, transformed into a truly breathtaking being.

Long, flowing blond hair. Tall and lithe. Sun-kissed skin. The being could be described as angelic if it weren’t for the gnarled horns growing from the sides of his forehead and the blood-red wings that matched the amused eyes doing a lazy swoop of the room, pausing briefly on Shouta before focusing on the cultists surrounding the althar.

“Well,” the demon spoke, his voice sending shivers down Shouta’s spine. “This has to be the clumsiest summoning I’ve ever been through, and let me tell you, I’ve been through some disastrous summonings. But this? This is just sad.”

The words broke the solemn atmosphere, sending everyone in the room into confused murmurs.

“Ah, you’re not even aware of bad you’ve fucked up. Lovely. Let me guess, you wanted to give me this guy as a sacrifice and demand my obedience in exchange. Am I close?” The demon snorted at the hesitant nods from the masked humans, revealing his sharp fangs. “And you thought, what, that I’d kill him and then ask what my orders were? Without a sealing barrier I have to bargain to free myself from? Or the threat of a holy magic user who could hurt me until I agree to your demands? There’s not even a holy object in the room!”

Ah, now that the demon pointed it out, Shouta couldn’t see any of those obvious things to bring to a demon-summoning ritual. Because of course Shouta would have to get kidnapped by an incompetent group, why was he even surprised? With how his luck had been behaving lately he should have expected something like this.

Well, with the way things were going maybe he’d catch a break and the demon would focus on the cultists, giving him a chance to run away.

“Though you at least did something correctly, which is to bring something that would interest the demon.” Red eyes focused on Shouta, and the demon grinned. “A pity you have no way to stop me from simply taking it and getting rid of all you.”

...Shouta didn’t know why he even bothered to hope anymore.

‘This may as well happen,’ he thought, utterly done with life at this point.

The demon moved from where he was floating above the althar, his red eyes staring into Shouta’s black ones.

“Of all the people in this room, you are by far the most interesting.” It said with an intrigued expression. “There’s something about you…” Shouta didn’t dare to move a muscle as the demon inspected him, not even when he saw the demon reach some sort of decision that clearly involved him somehow.

“Say, why don’t you form a contract with me?”

On the outside, Shouta’s reaction was merely a blink of surprise. On the inside though, he was freaking out and trying to process the request, because what the hell was this demon thinking?!

“You intrigue me,” the demon continued, “and your soul is… something I want to study a little more. Sadly, the only way I can stay in the human world for more than a few hours is if I’m in a pact with a human, so let’s strike a deal: you’ll have a powerful demon by your side to aid you in whatever you need. And in exchange you'll let be borrow your soul every now and then. Deal?"

Despite the sharp teeth, Shouta felt that smile was too charming to be from a demon. Weren't they supposed to be ugly? Monstruos?

'Focus!' He told himself. But between the unreal situation, the lack of sleep, and the fact that his last full meal had been several days ago his usually clear mind wasn't up to the task.

"...borrow my soul?" Was his brilliant answer.

"Don't worry, I'll give it back!" The demon chirped with a sunny smile that went too well with his handsome face.

This... this had to be a dream. This was too unreal, too fantastic for a poor soldier who'd only heard of demons in bedtime stories. This couldn't be real.

'Fuck it.'

"Okay."

Shouta stared blankly as the demon looked taken aback for a moment, before his charming grin turned into something more demon-like.

"Then we have a deal," he said as he extended his hand. Blinking tiredly, Shouta's last thought was about how cold the demon's hand was before finally passing out.

#bnha #aizawa shouta #yamada hizashi #demon!hizashi #fic idea #erasermic #feel free to write/draw if you like the idea

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dreamwithoutreason · 4 years ago

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Really need people to understand that there is a difference between your diagnosis being stigmatized (what usually happens with mental illness) and your diagnosis resulting in you being subjected to ableism (disability) because those two things are a bit different and the distinction is important.

I want to start by saying that I am in no way attempting to minimize the struggles that mentally ill people face. I am mentally ill and have depression, anxiety, and ADHD as well as a physical disability, Cerebral Palsy. The line between the struggles of people with mental illnesses and the struggles of disabled people is thin but there is still a line. I just want to highlight some of the ways that disabled people are especially discriminated against in a world built and run by abled people and how that can be different from how mental ill people experience alienation or stigmatization. These differences are also why I think that comparing a mental illness to a disability can be problematic. I am, however, also aware that there is overlap and that some diagnoses can be considered to have a foot in both arenas, this is in no way meant to be a hard and fast rule. I also don't claim to speak for the entire disabled community but a lot of the things under the ableism list are things that I've experienced myself which is the place that this post is coming from. I want people to realize that ableism is more than stigmatization and that it is engrained in the world that we live in.

Stigmatization comes from people misunderstanding your illness and how seriously it can impact you and your life. I would consider stigmatization to be things like:

People using your diagnosis as an insult or joke, further stigmatizing it. Ex: When ppl say things like "I'm so ocd" or "I'm so bipolar"

People ignoring your symptoms or attributing your symptoms to your character. For example, instead of recognizing the symptoms of your illness like executive dysfunction, someone might just call you lazy.

General lack of understanding or sympathy towards mentally ill people

Lack of accurate representations of mental illnesses in media. Most of the time the character with the mental illness is made to be the villain or antagonist. Once again, very stigmatizing and gross.

Also, for both mentally ill and disabled people it can sometimes be difficult or expensive to get the right medications you need.

Examples of everyday ableism and systematic ableism that's ingrained in our society which particularly affects disabled people include:

Someone using derogatory language to belittle and degrade your existence as a person. It positions you as less than. Can often be a targetted, direct attack at a disabled person. Ex: the r slur, words like "cripple", and using "deaf", "blind", or "disabled" as insults.

Mocking the way someone walks, moves, speaks, or exists as a disabled person.

No one taking you seriously because you are disabled/being subjected to infantilization. People assuming that you can't do anything for yourself.

Able-bodied people assuming the needs of a disabled person without asking them. Often this comes from a place of trying to be helpful but make sure you always ask what you can do to accommodate someone before assuming what they might need help with because it can be infantilizing

Example: I've had a lot of people assume that I need help putting on a jacket or getting my shoes on so they automatically start helping me with it and they basically end up treating me like a child because they assume that I can't do something.

People touching you or your equipment or mobility aids without your consent. Mobility aids can be like extensions of our body so do not touch them without our permission. This urge to violate a disabled person's space comes from the subconscious assumption that disabled people don't have their own autonomy.

Example: many times when I was a full-time wheelchair user people would come up behind me and just start pushing my wheelchair without asking or saying anything. Their intention was to help me get where I was going but it was very jarring to suddenly start being pushed without asking.

Being denied a job because you are disabled.

Job applications including physical ability requirements for non-physical or desk jobs to discourage disabled people from applying. Ex: "must be able to lift [x amount] of pounds"

Being denied the accommodations you need to be able to function in a school/work/home/other environment.

Lack of captions or audio descriptions

Being expected to work and move at the same pace as your peers all of the time.

Constantly feeling the need to "prove" yourself to the abled majority.

The idea that being abled is the ideal and that you need to do everything in your power to try to be as close to abled as possible. The idea that you shouldn't be comfortable with your disability. The notion that being disabled cannot be a whole or fulfilling identity.

A good example of this that people don't often think about are the viral videos that are like "Sally worked for months so that she could [struggle] to walk down the aisle at her wedding! Isn't that sweet?" Or the videos of kids feeling pressured to walk across the stage at graduation. These videos imply that struggling to perform ability is somehow better than being comfortably disabled.

The idea that disabled people can't be desirable, attractive, or sexy. The idea that they don't make good romantic partners.

Using disabled people as inspiration porn. This happens a lot with viral videos of disabled people where the comments amount to "if they can live with a disability, then you have no reason to complain about your life!" Disabled people do not exist to inspire you.

Also another personal example but one time in gym class I did more push ups than a girl who was able-bodied so she got all defensive and said "well if she can do that many then I'm gonna do more!" Like girl.... anyways...

Having to jump through a million hoops to get disability benefits. Or being denied disability benefits for arbitrary reasons.

Also once you get disability benefits it's barely anything. Also when you're on benefits you're not allowed to save up money and if you get married you lose benefits. I could make a whole other post about how disabled people are expected to live off of nothing but...

MOBILITY AIDS ARE SO EXPENSIVE HOLY SHIT

The world was built by and for able-bodied people. Architectural/environmental ableism occurs when there are no ramps, no accessible bathroom stalls, no elevators, no disability parking spaces, and/or no space for wheelchairs/mobility aids in public places.

This also happens a lot with public transportation. When I tried using the metro with my friends in DC, I had to have a security guard help me get down the escalator because there wasn't an elevator nearby. Right before I got on it, I saw a man force his wheelchair onto the escalator.

A smaller example but it can be as small as there not being a sidewalk ramp. One time I couldn't even cross the street because there was no sidewalk ramp and I was in a wheelchair. Once again, the world was built by able-bodied people.

Eco-ableism. It's when disabled people aren't considered when it comes to environmental activism. The best example of this is the straw debacle that happened last year. Every abled person and their mama wanted to complete ban plastic straws without acknowledging that a lot of disabled people need to use blendable, flexible plastic straws.

Another example that I've witnessed myself has been with automatic doors. I've had to tear down signs at my university that were put on automatic doors that said "save a polar bear, use the other door". Stop blaming disabled people's survival for environmental issues and blame big corporations.

Almost a complete lack of disability representation in media. Disabled kids don't have many people who they can look up to. I know I didn't have any.

The ableism that comes from abled parents of a disabled child.

For years I was told inaccurate information about my disability by able-bodied people, including my mother. It was only when I started researching my disability myself that I actually began to understand it.

Related to the previous point, lack of information or knowledge about certain disabilities

People assuming that just because someone is in a wheelchair that they can't move their legs or walk. This feeds into the idea that disabled people are "faking" their disability. The idea that someone is "faking" can lead people to be attacked or have people tell them that they don't "deserve" things like benefits or parking spaces.

People who straight up pretend they don't see us. I've had so many people try to cut me in line over the years just because they didn't think I would say anything or wanted to pretend they didn't see me.

I have friends who have delayed speech as part of their disability. If you know someone who has delayed speech or a stutter, don't fucking cut them off or try to finish their sentences for them. It's super rude and disrespectful.

DON'T FUCKING SAY THE R WORD. DON'T SAY IT! DON'T SAY IT EVEN IF YOU ARE DISABLED! THE R WORD IS SO ABLEIST AND STIGMATIZING STOP SAYING IT! DON'T PUT IT IN YOUR WRITING EITHER!

Lastly, about half of people killed by police have some sort of disability or mental illness. Disability is intersectional and it's important when talking about things like the BLM movement, women's rights, lgbtq+ rights, etc.

Hope this helped you learn something about ableism and how prevalent it is!

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script-a-world · 5 years ago

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(sorry this is long) I'm creating a fantasy matriarchal society that's a combination of like America post WW2 and like the amazons/valkyries crossed with magical girls. I could use some help figuring out the gender dynamics, since part of my goal is to use the swap to highlight some inequalities that still exist in our gender expectations today by flipping them. I'm trying to figure out if it's better to have the men be primary caregivers (1/?)

since there’s no reason to assume that the gender that gives birth has to be the caregivers) or if I should go the “matriarchal society would value childrearing above other jobs” route. Some thoughts I had: Women are the main magic-users in society (magical girl/amazons blessed directly by the god who rules the city with power)and that perhaps all young women are expected to go through military service of some sort before becoming matrons, politicians and doctors. (2/?)

Maybe women are associated with Life and Death and “important duties” that revolve around them, including duties regarding both killing and saving lives. So healing, leading armies, fighting, hunting, childbirth (possibly care?) and politics are feminine jobs, while “lesser duties” that revolve more around menial labor are relegated to men (manual labor, maintenance, ‘uneducated’ jobs, support jobs like scribe and secretary, cooking, cleaning, perhaps some jobs like fashion design or art). (3/?)

Do you think this is a good balance? What are some other ways I could divide gender roles? The world situation is a magical land with about early 20th century level tech (trains and private schools and like phones/radios).Also, what is the best way to objectify men in this society? I was thinking of making it so men are seen as useless/only for the purpose of providing sexual pleasure and siring children to women. (4/?)

They don’t’ actually create children or take the ‘important jobs’ (the poor dears just don’t have the brains for it, they’re too simple and direct, men don’t have the emotional maturity to handle serious issues, they lack empathy, they only want sex anyway so it’s not like you need to worry about their emotional needs, etc). I’d love some suggestions on how a society like this might work or if there are other ways to divide the gender roles, (5/?)

as well as some ways men might experience objectification in society. How would fashion be different, and how would this society put pressure on men to look or act in certain ways (and women as well). Any suggestions? Thanks, and sorry for the long question(6/?)

Mod Miri Note: If you have a question that requires multiple asks, please use the google form! That way there’s no risk of parts of the question being lost.

Tex: “Do you think this is a good balance?” No, I do not. I disagree with the notion that a group of people ought to be objectified, neglected, abused, pigeon-holed, or otherwise mistreated under the guise of inversion as a way to tout a certain prescription of thought. I think this methodology perpetuates stereotypes, and with stereotypes come all the -isms that are used as excuses to treat people poorly just because they’re different from the originating group.

I’m going to be radical and say “none of the above”. There’s a few reasons for my answer, but aside from the brief overview in the previous paragraph, let me go through and try responding to all of your points in a more precise manner.

Let’s start with American culture post WWII - and I’m going to assume that, because of this choice, you’re working from an American perspective. This is important! But I’ll handle that detail in a bit.

Post-WWII culture is heavily influenced by WWII culture. For women, this meant enlistment in the military, as well as filling the gaps in the domestic labor force left by men being shipped off (History.com, The Atlantic). Their service in the military - quite often voluntary - was as critical and crucial as their domestic work (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2, Wikipedia 3). They usually received lower pay than men, true (though interestingly the women in the UK were often treated better; Striking Women), though governments of the time admitted that without women the war effort would have crumpled.

Rosie the Riveter is a popular piece of propaganda (where it was also considered patriotic for women to join the workforce and military service; National Women’s History Museum), but don’t let that dissuade you from thinking that women were not recognized for other types of work during the war. Many women in the US were recognized for their military service (USO), and other women’s histories endure today - Lyudmila Pavlichenko (Wikipedia), Vitka Kempner (Wikipedia), and Virginia Hall (Wikipedia). I’m going to toss in the official synopsis of Queen Elizabeth II’s involvement in her own military to round things out (The Royal Family), complete with a picture of her in uniform (Wikipedia).

Many women after the war went back to strictly domestic duties, and I think that parallels their wartime efforts - both situations are of the “all hands on deck” type, but the play of gender roles here means that the duties of a functioning society are divvied up by different functional spheres - and make no mistake, men and women relied on each other equally as much to cover the gaps, despite the sexism inherent in modern Western society. The difference between war and non-war time cultures was that the latter wasn’t necessarily cultivated by patriotism that could unite the different “factions”. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History gives a thorough examination of this topic.

The following era - typified by the birth of the Baby Boomer generation - saw a marked increase in economic prosperity (Wikipedia). With that came increased social mobility for women (Citation 1), usually catalyzed by the actions of their fathers (Citation 2). This may typically be achieved by consistent, conscientious public policy formation (Citation 3). In short, many cultures - if they haven’t already - are realizing that it’s good for business to let women control how they participate in society and the flow of money.

In the US, this was precipitated by the boom of social development (American History; archived version). Aside from the Truman administration negotiating price fixing to prevent inflation, a significant factor was the passing of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (AKA the G.I. Bill). This primarily benefited the Greatest Generation, though other pertinent legislation by the 79th Congress benefited the Silent Generation onwards: the Fair Deal, Revenue Act of 1948, Taft-Hartley Act, Employment Act of 1946, National School Lunch Act, and Hobbs Act.

It’s debatable how well this impacted long-term economic development, considering the almost immediate rise of McCarthyism in the US in 1947, which was heavily intertwined with the Truman Doctrine that precipitated the Cold War. The results of the war, at least economically, were… mixed (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2). I have no doubt that this impacted the social mobility of women in all affected countries - which is all of them, but I’m sure hairs could be split on this if you wish.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s tackle the Amazons.

The modern, popular interpretation (that is slow to be shaken by archaeological evidence) is mostly mythological (Wikipedia). While some ideas are thrown in the way of a Minoan Crete ancestry to the myth, there are more similarities drawn to the Scythian and Samartian cultures on the Eurasian Steppe (CNET). It’s possible that instead of the equally-extreme pole end of the gender dichotomy that is patriarchy-matriarchy, the Scythians just scandalized the Athenians with a comparatively more fluid society (Smithsonian Magazine).

As for Valkyries… there’s been a revival of them in pop culture, probably as a net-casting to see what’s out there aside from Amazons. TVTropes covers the many, many ways media utilizes them as a trope, to varying degrees of mythological and cultural accuracy. As they state, valkyries are a form of psychopomp, as they decide who among the battlefield’s dead will go to Valhalla (ruled by Odin) or Fólkvangr (ruled by Freya). Freya seems to have assumed the “type” (as opposed to characteristics salient to a particular individual) of a valkyrie, as the female counterpart the warrior archetype. To wit, Freya herself may be a type (Wikipedia).

Here’s where the issue gets thorny - modern popular understanding of valkyries, and by extension Scandinavian women, is skewed through the modern lens.

@fjorn-the-skald has a lovely series called Viking History: Post-by-Post, or An Informal Crash Course & A Historical Guide to the Vikings, that typically focuses on medieval Iceland. In his post “Lesson 13.c - Women in the Viking Age, Part III: Were Women “Vikings”?”, discusses the particular penchant of modern times to romanticize and/or skew history to their own biases - in this instance, how medieval Icelandic women functioned in their culture, as well as how valkyrie myths play into this.

The TL;DR of that is: “viking” women were a societal anomaly, the battlefield was a male domain (and they were expected to die on it), a woman’s prowess of the domestic sphere was highly respected to a level often equivalent to men, and the domestic sphere was the sphere of commerce. Scandinavian culture prized strong women, just as they prized strong men, and their culture rested upon the concept of different genders having their own distinct, complementary, and equal domains.

Fjörn builds upon this history in an ask about gender roles outside the usual dichotomy of male-female. Valkyries, and shield-maidens, may be classed as a third gender in medieval Scandinavian culture, because women were temporarily occupying the male role in their society. While valkyries are of divine origin, shield-maidens are not, though they seem to have taken on a supernatural bent by performing feminine qualities while living in the male sphere (something that they can literally wear, by the donning of their armor).

That probably comes across as distasteful to, especially, a modern American perspective, but many ancient cultures are like that. There’s a footnote on that ask about links to a contemporary perspective of same-sex relationships, as well, to round out that talking point.

With those historical and mythological details discussed, let’s move on to magical girls.

Interestingly, the genre and trope derive from the American TV show Bewitched (Nippon.com). Its evolution reflected Japan’s changing tone about female sexuality, focusing on girls. Magical Girl doesn’t seem to be intended to attract the male gaze in a sexual light - and in fact was generated as a form of female empowerment by by way of growing up (TVTropes), but it seems to happen anyways (TVTropes).

Magical girls, as a genre, originated in the 1960s - the archetypical Sailor Moon encompasses not only magical girls, but also the kawaii aesthetic. Kawaii, incidentally, followed after the magical girl trope, and plays upon women performing as girls in society.

As magical girls are intended for young girls, a demographic known as shōjo, it is considered a subgenre of the target audience. Please note that shōnen'ai (Fanlore) and yaoi (Fanlore) are also subgenres of shōjo.

For some context, the adult female target audience is known as josei, the young adult men is known as shōnen, and adult male audience is known as seinen. Many manga and anime are often misattributed to the wrong category, so it helps to know which is which, and why.

Kumiko Saito argues (through an unfortunately paywalled article that I’m more than willing to disseminate to those without JSTOR access) that magical girls reinforce gender stereotypes as well as fetishize young female bodies. She argues this point more eloquently than I can, so I’ll be quoting a few sections below.

Page 148 (7 of 23 on the PDF):

The 1960s “witch” housewife theme waned quickly in the United States, but various cultural symbolisms of magic smoothly translated into the Japanese climate, leading to Japans four-decade-long obsession with the magical girl. Bewitched incorporated the concept of magic as female power to be renounced after marriage, thereby providing “a discursive site in which feminism (as female power) and femininity has been negotiated” (Moseley 2002, 403) in the dawning of Americas feminist era. Japans magical girls represented a similar impasse of fitting into female domesticity, continued to fascinate Japanese society, and came to define the magical girl genre. In direct contrast to the American heroines Samantha and Jeannie, however, whose strife arose from the antagonism between magic (as power) and the traditional gender role as wife or fiancée, the magical girls dilemma usually lies between female adulthood and the juvenile female stage prior to marriage, called shõjo. In other words, the magical girl narratives often revolve around the magical freedom of adolescence prior to the gendered stage of marriage and motherhood, suggesting the difficulty of imagining elements of power and defiance beyond the point of marriage. In fact, these programs were broadcast exactly when the rate of love-based marriage started to surpass that of miai (arranged marriage),4 which implies that the magical girl anime, founded on the strict ideological division between shõjo and wife/mother, may have been an anxious reaction to the emergent phase of romance.

Page 150 (9 of 23 on the PDF):

The combination of magical empowerment and shõjo-ness framed by the doomed nature of transient girlhood naturally created ambivalent, messages in Akko-chan as well. In the societal milieu in which Japan was undergoing the politically turbulent era of Marxist student movements at the largest scale in the postwar era, Akko-chan’s super- human ability to transform into anyone (or anything) is quite revolutionary, implying a sense of women’s liberation. Despite this potential, her metamorphic ability never threatens gender models, as she typically dreams of becoming a princess, a bride, or a female teacher she respects. The use of magic is also largely limited to humanitarian community services in town. Akko-chan’s symbolic task throughout the series focuses on how to steer her power to serve her friends and family, leading to the final episode in which she relinquishes magic to save her father. Akko-chan embraces the cross-generic mismatch between the radical idea of empowering a girl with superhuman ability and the hahamono [mother genre] sentimentalism idealizing women’s self-sacrifice. All in all, the new setting adopted in this series, that a mediocre girl accidentally gains magic, became a useful mechanism for the underlying theme that the heroine is foredoomed to say farewell to magic in the end. This rhetorical device transforms latent power of the amorphous girl into the reappreciation of traditional gender norms by equating magic with shõjo-hood to be given up at a certain stage.

Saito discusses the thematic shifts in the magical girl subgenre in the 1980s to a more sexualized view, and the according rise of both an older audience and otaku fans, the latter of whom, she clarifies, make a habit of recontextualizing canon to categorize characters into stereotypes that are stripped of the majority of their original context.

On pages 153-154 (12-13 of 23 on the PDF):

The conventions of the magical girl genre transformed significantly against this paradigm shift. Both Minky Momo and Creamy Mami originally targeted children, recording a decent outcome in business and eventually leading to the revival of the genre. Because the plots are directly built on the genre clichés, however, the jokes and sarcasm of many episodes appear comprehensible only to adult viewers equipped with the knowledge of the Töei magical girls. The intrigue of these programs largely lies in the way they parody and mock the established genre conventions, especially the restrictive function of magic and the meaning of transformation. The genre is now founded on the expectation that the adult viewer has acquired a diachronic fan perspective to fetishize both the characters and the text’s meanings.

Creamy Mami presents the story of fourth-grader Yū, who gains magical power that enables her to turn into a sixteen-year-old girl. Yū’s magical power is more restrictive than Momo’s, for her superhuman capacity simply means metamorphosis into her adult form, who happens to become an idol singer called Mami. Given that the magic’s ability is self-oriented cosmetic effect and bodily maturation, the heroine’s ultimate goal by means of magic is to grow old enough to attract her male friend Toshio, who neglects Yū’s latent charm but falls in love with the idol Mami. The series concludes when Yū loses her magic, which correlates to Toshio’s realization that Yū is his real love. Mami’s thematic messages teach the idea that magic does not bring much advantage or power after all, or rather, magic serves as an obstacle for the appreciation of the truly magical period called shõjo. The heroine gains magic to prove, although retroactively, the importance of adolescence preceding the possession of “magic” that enables (and forces) female maturation.

It’s noted in the article that the 1990s-2000s period received criticism for showing a physical maturation of girls, so codified euphemisms via garment changes such as additional frills and curled hair were used instead. This “third-wave” magical girl challenged standing norms of its predecessors by doing things such as likening adult responsibilities (“childrearing and job training”) as a sort of game, as well as the transformation implying that the character’s power is in being herself, something that juxtaposes previous norms.

Due to shifting power dynamics and other changes in Japan’s culture, it became more common for boys to become magical girls as well, further separating the magical girl concept from a strict reflection of gender roles. As such, Japanese culture - insofar as my English-based research can guide me - no longer immediately implies a direct and distinct correlation between magical girls and the female gender.

An analysis of Puella Magi Madoka Magica (PMMM) by Tate James (2017; PDF) discusses an additional dimension of the magical girl genre. Two pertinent points of the piece is that 1.) PMMM dismantles archetypes pitting women against girls, and 2.) PMMM reinforces the gender stereotype that the best type of girl is a passive girl.

Now for the issue you’ve raised about who ought to be the primary caregiver of children.

Consistent, immediate, and continuous interaction between a mother and her child benefits both of them (Citation 4, Scientific American 1, Live Science, Citation 5, Scientific American 2, UNICEF, WHO). Mothers have a distinct neurobiological makeup that predisposes them toward caring for infants (Citation 6), and likewise infants have a predisposed preference to their mother’s voice and heartbeat (Citation 7). I would like to think that is sufficient evidence as to why nearly all cultures encourage mothers as the primary caregivers.

This said, cultivation of a father-child dyad is immensely beneficial to the child (Citation 8, Citation 9), and can alleviate the effect of maternal depression on the child (ScienceDaily). Partnered men residing with children have lower levels of testosterone but a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and adiposity (Citation 10). It’s interesting to note that higher prolactin levels in the mother’s breastmilk has a correspondingly higher level of sociosexual activity with their partner in cotton-top tamarins, which stimulates pair bonding (Citation 11), as well as in other species (Citation 12).

Paternal postpartum depression is recently recognized in fathers, to severe and reverberating deleterious effects on themselves and their family (Citation 13). Screening tools for detecting depression in Swedish fathers is not sufficiently developed, and many men may be passed over despite reaching cut-off suggestions in other criteria for depression (Citation 14).

It has been observed that while human mother and fathers have the similar oxytocin pathways, the exhibit different parenting behaviours when exposed to elevated levels of oxytocin - primarily that fathers will react with high stimulatory behaviour and exploratory play (Wikipedia).

Men being socialized in a culture of stoicism and an encouraged reaction pattern to violence have poor mental health that can culminate into death and other long-term effects (Citation 15). Suicide in the US is currently the leading cause of death at time of posting this response, that the total suicide rate increased 31% from 2001-2017, and in 2017 male rates were nearly four times higher than females (NIMH).

On the topic of magical culture: it’s incredibly difficult to research because it’s a component of overall culture, and one that’s not typically available to strangers/foreigners/the uninitiated. As such, a lot of authors default to what they already know. It’s not a bad thing, but if someone wants to reach outside their comfort zone, they’re going to have some trouble.

I’m going to go off the three, four-ish, cultures you’ve already come to us with: American, Scandinavian, Scythian/Samartian, and Japanese just to round things out.

For a very, very rough overview of America, we have:

Native Americans of the contiguous US

Hawai’i

Alaska

Whatever the colonizing peoples brought over (including, but not limited to, English, Scottish, Irish, Norwegian, German, and Italian)

Whatever the myriad cultures of Africa brought over as slaves

Hispanic

NB: I’ve put Hawai’i and Alaska as separate items because they’re not part of the contiguous US.

European settlers were of a few groups:

The merchants working on charters

Indentured servants from the merchants’ homelands

Slavs

Immigrants in post-colonial eras

This is an important distinction because 1.) contemporary culture matters a lot politically, 2.) how people came to the US determined how they and their family were treated, and 3.) the contemporary job culture determined their social class.

(Slavs, as a note, are the origin of the English word “slave”, something that Western Europeans historically liked to propagate.)

I’m not going to go into the details of everything the US has to offer in terms of cultural diversity aside from a nudge in the direction of Santería. What you pick up to research is up to you.

Scandinavian folk magic is known as “trolldom” (Swedish-language Wikipedia), and the region was known for their cunningfolk. Please note that klok/-a, klog/-e, and related words relates to the English word cloak, and these people are so named because wearing one was an integral part of how they interacted with the supernatural.

The InternetArchive has a book (albeit in Swedish) about the history of magic in Sweden, which is available in multiple formats. If you’d prefer to have something in English, you can either buy this book, or inform your library you’d like to them to buy it for you.

I’m a little surprised you hadn’t mentioned either the völva (Swedish Wikipedia, English Wikipedia) or seiðr (Wikipedia), as they’re quite a well-known part of Scandinavian folk culture. Fjörn, as always, is my first stop for this area of research, with the post “Lesson 7 - Viking Spirituality”, the Víkingabók Database, the tag of Old Norse words, and the post “Norðurbók: A List of the Tales and Sagas of Icelanders” as incredibly good starting points. I encourage you to peruse them, especially because the words you learn will help you be more precise during research.

The Scythian culture is quite far reaching, as they had occupied most of the Eurasian Steppe during the Iron Age, and much of this area can be found in modern-day countries such as Russia, Iran, and China, among others. Because of how far their peoples spread out, the Scythians intermixed with their neighbors, and as such there are sub-groups to the culture.

The Sarmatians were more Russian, as that’s where a large amount of their territory laid, and were absorbed into early Slavic culture. Both their and the overall Scythian language group is eastern Iranian.

In order to help you orient yourself, here’s a map from Wikipedia:

Description: Historical spread of Iranian peoples/languages: Scythia, Sarmatia, Bactria and the Parthian Empire in about 170 BC (evidently before the Yuezhi invaded Bactria). Modern political boundaries are shown to facilitate orientation.

Japanese magical culture is intrinsically tied to their religion, and as such it would be beneficial to read about Shintoism and Japanese Buddhism. The wiki for Japanese mythology is a thorough primer, though if you get stuck, then I’m sure @scriptmyth would be glad to help you on not only this culture, but others.

As for the jobs you’ve proposed - I’m going to jump right into scribes because the irony of that is it’s historically a male-dominated job, and is the progenitor of jobs such as “public servants, journalists, accountants, bookkeepers, typists, and lawyers”. It is, with even greater irony, European women that are noted in Wikipedia, and that medieval women are increasingly thought to have played an integral part in manuscript writing (New Scientist, Science Advances).

I’m not the best person to ask for medieval culture, unfortunately, so you’ll need someone more knowledgeable than me on the subject to direct you to the finer points.

The wiki for women in war links to a lot of lists, so I would suggest poking around for historical references by era (that will likely lead to by culture) to orient yourself on how women have participated in war in the past. There’s quite a bit of mythology to be found there, as well, so if you pick up some specific goddesses you get stuck on, then pop over to @scriptmyth.

Likewise, the wiki for women in government is an interesting read, as is women in positions of power. Since both are primarily modern-times oriented, I would suggest looking at the list of queens regnant for a more historical perspective. I would have difficulty giving you more than that, as you would need to pinpoint your reference cultures first.

As history often neglects women’s contributions to society if they weren’t a ruler or similarly powerful ruler - and, frankly, that frequently applied to men as well the further back you go - I’m going to toss a couple of starting points at you for the area of medicine:

Women in medicine § Ancient medicine - Wikipedia

Women in medicine - Science Museum: History of Medicine

One thing to keep in mind is that as goalposts changed for medicine - the standardization of knowledge and the need to attend a medical school to be legally allowed to perform medicine - the availability of women to participate went down.

Another is that medicine, historically, relied upon herbal medicine, and Wikipedia itself notes that there’s a heavy overlap with food history - something that’s traditionally a domain of women. This abstract by Marcia Ramos‐e‐Silva MD, PhD, talks about Saint Hildegard von Bingen, and the first page available tells you that medieval women were in charge of quite a lot despite not being allowed to participate in the male-dominated sphere of war. The Herbal Academy dips briefly into not only the saint, but other historical aspects of herbalism that might interest you.

The wiki of women in the Middle Ages, along with that of Hildegard of Bingen, nicely rounds out this particular topic.

I need to bring out the fact that Ancient Egypt was and is well-known for the equality and respect afforded to their women - in the interest of staying on subject, particularly in the field of medicine (Ancient History Encyclopedia). Isis was well-known as a goddess of healing (Wikipedia), an aspect she has in common with goddesses in many other cultures (Wikipedia). As an added side-note, Merit Ptah in her popularly-known context has been concluded to be an inflated misunderstanding - and misconstrued interpretation - of a historical figure with significant fabrication (LiveScience, Oxford).

The presence of women in medicine fluctuated in every culture, an in ancient times often shared some correlation with the use of magic (Citation 16). Healing, historically, has a high correlation with the supernatural - and if you care to look, women are usually responsible for the domain of the supernatural. (Or at least the feminine part, which was complementary and complemented by the masculine part.)

I’m going to hop back to politics real quick to bring up abbesses, particularly the social power they exercised as women heading religious orders. An article by Alixe Bovey for the British Library gives the TL;DR of medieval women and abbeys, though if you’d like something with a bit more detail, Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 by Eileen Edna Power is also available.

Abbeys, with their rise and fall, are important to modern American culture. Midwives, to be even more particular, have the most direct impact. In Western Europe, a midwife may under certain circumstances perform baptisms. This was a debated topic of its time, as baptisms were rituals of the Church, and the Church had strict regulations allowing only men to perform their rituals.

During the 1500s - and up to the 1800s, in some cases - midwives were defamed to be witches. You’ll notice that this corresponds to a standardization of medical knowledge, with its corresponding legal restrictions on who may practice medicine. For the Church, the politics playing behind the scenes of midwifery and female physicians fluctuated with their observations about women’s power relative to their own (Citation 16).

Malta is an excellent case study of this phenomenon (Citation 17), and encapsulates the movement of witchcraft accusations that took place throughout this period - something historians noted as corresponding to the rise of Protestantism (ThoughtCo). There’s some debate that the increasing orientation to wages in contemporary economy facilitated this adverse behaviour against women, as well as various other social pressures as politically mitigated by the Catholic Church (Wikipedia).

As the practice of medicine was segregated according to sex - male patients to male physicians, female patients to female physicians - there were proportionally fewer men in trades such as midwifery than women despite the medieval shift toward male encroachment of territory (Wikipedia). This corresponding money- and thus male-oriented intrusion into the female sphere of medicine can be seen with the invention of the obstetric forceps (JSTOR). The rising culture of appropriation constituted the witchcraft trials that, incidentally, influenced American culture during their colonization years.

A pertinent name to remember for American history of the witchcraft trials is Margaret Jones, a Puritan midwife and the first person to be accused of witchcraft in the trails taking place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Wikipedia).

The Salem Witch Trials, as an offhand note, could well be an anomaly due to ergotism (Citation 18).

One thing I’m willing to bend on - a little bit - is manual labor, but mostly because you’re describing something very similar to what’s already been invented: corvée labor. There’s plenty of other forms depending on what culture you’re going for, though unlike what you’re proposing, does not necessarily imply the direct and permanent subjugation of people.

I will absolutely quibble with the idea of “uneducated” labor equating to “less valuable” labor - universities offer non-vocational degrees, typically in the areas of research and/or religion, and guilds were created as a means of quality control (that unfortunately got out of hand and committed crimes such as rent-seeking). Women in guilds were a thing, vulnerable to the same fluctuations as their other occupations outside the house.

If we are defining “uneducated” labour as “menial” labour, then this set of occupations inherently varies by culture, as does its relative weight of importance. One example of this would be writing; it may be menial but important, whereas holding negotiations could be a “major” role but wouldn’t exist without the support of workers “less than” them.

Correspondingly, gender divisions may not necessarily mean an assignation of “lesser” or “greater” when compared against each other. In medieval Europe, at least, the creation of textiles was split along the general lines of spinning and weaving. Women held the former (hence “spinster”), and men held the latter. Spinning was often not formalized into guilds then, but it was an important cornerstone of the economy that could support entire families. A guest post on The Freelance History Writer’s blog seems to indicate that this gender division was due to influence by the Bible, which seems to corroborate with the history of both professions as detailed on Wikipedia - the further back we go, and also the less connected to Christianity, the more textile work women presided over. This granted them greater control over their presence in society, since the selling of textiles was useful leverage to support themselves and others.

A similar discrepancy can be found with agriculture. Hamer women in Ethiopia are traditionally the one to cultivate sorghum, a cornerstone crop to their diet, and they exhibit preferences in which varieties they grow according to criteria such as which is easiest to grind and long-term storage feasibility (Citation 19). Accordingly, there’s been an increasing orientation around the growing of crops rather than the pastoralist habits of their men, with trading standards occuring at one goat for one Dore (“pile of maize or sorghum”) (Citation 19).

A study examining the male sphere of hunting within a society discusses the various cultural implications of defendable vs non-defendable meat sharing, with respect to how the meat is distributed and its corresponding social range (e.g. immediate social circle vs entire community), something I find interesting given that the kilocalories obtained from meat is roughly equal to that of the female sphere-acquired agriculture/gathering (Citation 20). The division of labour along gender lines when it comes to food flow in a community seems, historically, to be both comparable and compatible to each other - a recurring theme with many of the topics I’ve already covered.

Gender roles in their historical perspective - especially the further back you go - are often complimentary to each other, and are an economical way to divide up the burden of maintaining a society to a functional level. There are plenty of exceptions to this (see: third genders), as well, and many cultures exhibit the idea that a productive person is good for society; their roles may look a little different from the person next to them, and not only is the work considered equal in terms of importance, but also with a bit of poking around, you’ll find that few cultures have harsh punishments for anyone “stepping outside” their predicted roles.

Men are already objectified plenty. That their treatment by society looks different than women’s, or other genders, is by no means an excuse to sweep things under the room and pretend that they have it best - or worse, purposefully ostracize them in a fictional work to further mock, ridicule, and isolate them. This contributes to the societal issues in your culture that you wish to address, and stems from a uniquely pervasive perspective from modern American culture that differs from many other cultures in the world.

TL;DR - The way you wish to objectify men is already being done, especially in American culture. It is harmful, and will have an impact that will reach further than you might anticipate. This approach is counterproductive to your goals, and the cultures/media you cite either directly contradict your beliefs of said sources or otherwise undermine your beliefs. It is vastly more productive to take a deeper look at the origins of the issues you wish to address in your writing, as well as the reference material that you wish to use. Learning perspectives outside your native culture will benefit you immensely, and the results could surprise you.

Citations

Citation 1 - PDF - Doepke, M., Tertilt, M., Voena, A.. (2012). “The Economics and Politics of Women’s Rights,” Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 339-372, 07.

Citation 2 - PDF - Fernández, R.. (2014). “Women’s rights and development,” Journal of Economic Growth, vol 19(1), pages 37-80.

Citation 3 - PDF - Duflo, E. (2012). “Women’s Empowerment and Economic Development”, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 50, No. 4: 1051-79.

Citation 4 - PDF - Crenshaw J. T. (2014). “Healthy Birth Practice #6: Keep Mother and Baby Together- It’s Best for Mother, Baby, and Breastfeeding.” The Journal of perinatal education, 23(4), 211–217. doi:10.1891/1058-1243.23.4.211

Citation 5 - Faisal-Cury, A., Bertazzi Levy, R., Kontos, A., Tabb, K., & Matijasevich, A. (2019). “Postpartum bonding at the beginning of the second year of child’s life: the role of postpartum depression and early bonding impairment.” Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology, 1-7.

Citation 6 - PDF - Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., Rigo, P., Esposito, G., Swain, J. E., Suwalsky, J. T., … & De Pisapia, N. (2017). “Neurobiology of culturally common maternal responses to infant cry.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(45), E9465-E9473.

Citation 7 - PDF - Webb, A. R., Heller, H. T., Benson, C. B., & Lahav, A. (2015). “Mother’s voice and heartbeat sounds elicit auditory plasticity in the human brain before full gestation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(10), 3152-3157.

Citation 8 - PDF - Pan, Y., Zhang, D., Liu, Y., Ran, G., & Teng, Z. (2016). “Different effects of paternal and maternal attachment on psychological health among Chinese secondary school students.” Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(10), 2998-3008.

Citation 9 - PDF - Brown, G. L., Mangelsdorf, S. C., & Neff, C. (2012). “Father involvement, paternal sensitivity, and father-child attachment security in the first 3 years.” Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43), 26(3), 421–430. doi:10.1037/a0027836

Citation 10 - PDF - Lee T Gettler, Mallika S Sarma, Rieti G Gengo, Rahul C Oka, James J McKenna, Adiposity, CVD risk factors and testosterone: Variation by partnering status and residence with children in US men, Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Volume 2017, Issue 1, January 2017, Pages 67–80, https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eox005

Citation 11 - PDF - Snowdon, C. T., & Ziegler, T. E. (2015). “Variation in prolactin is related to variation in sexual behavior and contact affiliation.” PloS one, 10(3), e0120650.

Citation 12 - Hashemian, F., Shafigh, F., & Roohi, E. (2016). “Regulatory role of prolactin in paternal behavior in male parents: A narrative review.” Journal of postgraduate medicine, 62(3), 182–187. doi:10.4103/0022-3859.186389

Citation 13 - PDF - Eddy, B., Poll, V., Whiting, J., & Clevesy, M. (2019). “Forgotten Fathers: Postpartum Depression in Men.” Journal of Family Issues, 40(8), 1001-1017.

Citation 14 - PDF - Psouni, E., Agebjörn, J., & Linder, H. (2017). “Symptoms of depression in Swedish fathers in the postnatal period and development of a screening tool.” Scandinavian journal of psychology, 58(6), 485-496.

Citation 15 - Pappas, S. (2018, January). “APA issues first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys.” Monitor on Psychology, 50(1).

Citation 16 - PDF - Kontoyannis, M., & Katsetos, C. (2011). “Midwives in early modern Europe (1400-1800).” Health Science Journal, 5(1), 31.

Citation 17 - PDF - Savona-Ventura, C. (1995). “The influence of the Roman Catholic Church on midwifery practice in Malta.” Medical history, 39(1), 18-34.

Citation 18 - PDF - Woolf, Alan. (2000). “Witchcraft or Mycotoxin? The Salem Witch Trials. Journal of toxicology.” Clinical toxicology. 38. 457-60. 10.1081/CLT-100100958.

Citation 19 - PDF - Samuel, T. (2013). “From cattle herding to sedentary agriculture: the role of hamer women in the transition.” African Study Monographs, Suppl. 46: 121–133. [Alternate PDF link]

Citation 20 - PDF - Gurven, Michael & Hill, Kim. (2009). “Why Do Men Hunt?.” Current Anthropology. 50. 51-74. 10.1086/595620.