qmisato:

people really underestimate how darksided nge’s fandom is 

on one hand you have the pretentious evageeks-type neckbeards who have systematically asphyxiated even the slightest insinuation of gay text/subtext by deliberately mistranslating the show’s subtitles and supplementary material, withholding key interviews, and recontextualizing the narrative to make it more agreeable to their tastes while parading around as ‘experts’ (evageeks/4chan) or whatever; all of this being exacerbated by their misogyny, by their ableism, by their homophobia and sexualization of the eva girls

but on the other hand you have the people exclusively fixating all their interest/discussion on the boys and paying the shallowest of lip service to the girls, where fandom love for kaworu+shinji generates tons of meta/passionate discussion but asuka+rei+misato get nothing except for some cute fanart/gifs with empty tags like “queen!/princess!!/badass lady!!!” attached, where rei only gets worthy mention as a footnote in kaworu-origin discussions, where an assbackwards misogynist sentiment like “asuka abused shinji because she forced him to snap/sexually assault her” is actually something that’s popularly expressed around here. because shinji ikari defense squad, right?? right

and it’s funny, because either way the female characters lose out. one way or another nge fandom stays idolizing boy’s emotions+narratives at the expense of girl’s narratives/pain/complexity, which is really ironic given that the source material, you know, deals with girls/women navigating male-dominated spaces and being punished for their girlhood/womanhood, and a boy mc navigating male-dominated spaces and being punished for his perceived effeminacy while also taking his frustrations out on girls because of his scarydeep internalized misogyny. life imitates art