neon genesis evangelion gifset series - flashbacks
NEIN. ERHANGTE. GROLL. MENARCHE. SCHACH. DOPPELSELBSTMORD BEGEHEN. WEI ARGERLICH. STIEFMUTTER. DER VERLUST. DAS WAHNSINNIG. // (listen)
A mix to define Asuka Langely Soryu’s battle with Arael; girl vs machine. Featuring tortured female-fronted voices soused in fear and anxiety-ridden lullabies, evoking sensations not unlike hearing a mother speak from under several layers of heavy industrial and vocal machinery. Resamples and distorts classical poetry; dialogue and music from Episode 22: At Least, Be Human/Don’t Be for a sound that is distinctly Evangelion. Dedicated to sohmer/starros.
TRACKLIST:
prologue / THE LAMB - john taverner (ft.) baile
rising action / LOVIN YOU - hagan x minnie riperton | GUIDANCE - madi larson x ajgor | SKINNY (NOVUS REMIX) - bones | STRETCHED OUT - abbi press | SEVEN SEALS - cvrl (ft.) Øfdream | LOTA - saphir and ben fox | WHEN I DIE - beya lekhari | DO YOU LOVE ME? - hikikomori
epilogue / ADDER(F)ALL - tei shi
To think people discredit the legitimacy of kawoshin because of the lack of obvious sexual attraction between them takes me aback. That is the whole reason WHY kawoshin is so real and important and why shinji is so head over heels for kaworu
Throughout the whole series shinji is put into sexual situations. He is mocked and harassed for not experiencing sexual attraction i.e. them making fun of him for not wanting to bang misato, assuming his want to understand rei is because he wants her. He gets teased by adults to be more sexual (i.e. misato and then kaji in the rebuild which /:) and is constantly put in a sexual eye by asuka because of her own conditioned views of sexuality. He is surrounded by it and confused by it and hes obviously uncomfortable but he also seems to be frustrated that being close to someone must mean something sexual and it confuses him further
Then kaworu comes along. Kaworu doesnt expect any of this from him. They sit together naked and its nothing sexual. They just hold hands. They sleep together and its not sexual. Shinji feels for the first time he can open up to someone. Kaworu just loves him and showers him in affection. They learn and talk together. Theres nothing sexual there but thats what makes it so special. Its why shinji is so happy. Hes surrounded by this push to be sexual and he finally founds someone who will love him and not necessarily want that. He found someone who helps him understand that he can be loved regardless of that. Kaworu loved him without any conditions
yikes. this is an ugly post, and we need to collectively move beyond this line of thinking, asap
newsflash: people don’t discredit the legitimacy of kawoshin because “it wasn’t obvious enough” or “there wasn’t any sexual attraction” - people discredit the legitimacy of kawoshin because of the wonderful intersection between homophobia and misogyny. people discredit the legitimacy of kawoshin because they are obsessed with het ships; they are obsessed with asuka; they are obsessed with shoving asuka into het ships that sanitize and make her complacent, especially with the boy mc who has tremendous power over her, the boy mc who has tried to kill her twice, the boy mc who barged into her hospital room, saw her emaciated and comatose, and demanded that she help him despite of it, the boy mc who deliberately locked her hospital room door before masturbating to her body. people discredit the legitimacy of kawoshin because they are obsessed with the ‘de-bitchfiying narrative’ by which asuka, The Red Devil, is knocked down a few pegs. if you’ve ever read evageeks or other asushin-dominated spaces it becomes evidently clear that shipping asushin for asushinners isn’t so much about not finding “merit” in kawoshin – they don’t care if kawoshin was “subtle” or “overt” b/c it literally does not matter to them. they’re homophobes. – rather, it’s about asuka, and their obsession with asuka fulfilling the perfect waifu role, with shinji
but how interesting that this whole second paragraph conveniently neglects/erases the fact that shinji was pervasively objectifying+sexualizing asuka (and rei! and misato!) throughout the entire show. did you forget wall of jericho, where shinji lingers at asuka’s breasts before responding? (but shinji doesn’t act like kensuke and toji do around misato, so that must mean he doesn’t sexualize her, uwu!!) or when asuka falls in his bed and shinji ogles at her breasts before attempting to kiss her in her sleep? (but asuka forced him into that uncomfortable situation, uwu!!) or the entirety of eoe, where it’s revealed that shinji is deeply repulsed by overt displays of sexuality on part of asuka+misato but secretly gets off to them, because he objectifies them, because shinji cannot comprehend the fact that women can be more than a mother, a madonna, or a whore? where shinji yells at asuka, misato, and rei (yes! even rei!) for not attending to his needs while his subconscious projects smiling, placated, and most importantly naked images of asuka, misato, and rei gazing at him fondly in the foreground? ‘men/boys feeling uncomfortable w/ “female sexuality” whilst simultaneously objectifying them for it’ is a classic misogynist cocktail - i.e the boy frustrated at patriarchy who copes by retaliating against women - this theme resurrects itself in evangelion (and other works) over and over and over again
but is this all just… not mentioned because it taints smol birb infantilized fandom shinji? because it attacks the dominating narrative that vilifies asuka, the very same narrative that paints her as an abuser and/or “equally complacent in the asuka-shinji abuse”, the narrative that claims asuka levies power over shinji and not the other way around?
and of course shinji and kaworu can sit, bathe, and sleep together sans sexual objectification from either side – shinji loves kaworu. kaworu is the only character in the show shinji loved and respected. like, that’s the whole point. shinji, like all boys under patriarchy, objectifies girls/women as a desperate vie for control. shinji does not feel the need to exercise power over kaworu because they are equally matched, their love is equally matched. c+p’ing this to underscore:
Specifically, it is important that Shinji takes to Kaworu immediately and how Kaworu’s Position as being a boy affects the way Shinji receives him.
Shinji’s sexual assault on Asuka in EOE is 100% motivated by Asuka being a girl and Shinji being a boy, and is about power and overpowering someone who is more vulnerable than you. & When you truly, truly look at who Shinji has the power to hurt the most, it all leads to Asuka. He objectifies Asuka, he sexually abuses Asuka in the hospital room, he strangles Asuka twice. The way that Asuka protects herself verbally as a defense mechanism is contrasted with the extremely violent ways that Shinji seeks power over her.
These events do relate to Kaworu, too, because who immediately resolves to forgive Shinji and encourage Shinji to forgive himself for whatever sins he may have committed? The thing with that is that it’s not exactly Kaworu’s place to do that, but Asuka’s.
i am so tired of these infantilizing metas that implicitly suggest shinji’s assaults on asuka are not shinji’s fault, but asuka’s, metas that obscure and shove context neatly under the rug. shinji is an incredibly complex character, and he’s one of my personal favorites, but yikes. yikes. yikes.
i’ve been thinking a lot about misato, and why she resorts to alcohol and sex, specifically as means of self-medication/preservation
obviously there’s this tendency to characterize her as this errant drunkard, despite the fact that she only saves her binge-drinking for the home. she’s smart as hell - we know that misato hates the dark, that darkness begets all these traumatic memories of second impact – and i like to think that misato literally drinks herself to sleep every night, quite plainly self-medicating with alcohol, harnessing the ways in which it suppresses debilitating memories and emotions so she can function during her waking hours, as a military officer no less: a functional alcoholic in every sense of the term
and with regards to sex; how misato’s childhood is characterized by a very conservative, purity-fixated upbringing, and then the trauma of years long isolation in a bare-bones holding cell with no means of communication, no therapeutic companionship, just a couple of toys to keep her sound. for years. sex, for obvious reasons, so intensely connecting person to person in the most tangible form… misato’s going to find that especially useful in preserving function, feeling alive (”to prove i exist”) versus the isolation symbolically associated with death. (it’s interesting, then, when misato is shoved into a holding cell again in episode 21, kaji dies the very same day.)
but much the same with alcohol, misato exerts this unbelievable amount of self-control and restricts her sexual expression to just one person - yet shame and guilt plague her still, shame that shapes and defines how she thinks others are perceiving her as a woman. misato has self-surveillance, self-awareness, and self-policing in incredible spades. she’s only allowed herself to ‘medicate’ under very narrow, very specific contexts, and that’s pretty fascinating, i think
thought i’d do really nice, fine lines on top but i tired of this very quickly lol
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 (”shinji is a depressed wimp!”), by their homophobia and sexualization of the eva girls
but on the other hand you have the people exclusively fixing all their attention on the boys and paying shallow lip service to the girls, whereby fandom love for kaworu and shinji churns out tons of meta/passionate discussion but asuka+rei+misato get squat except for some cute moe-y fanart/gifs tagged “queen!/princess!!/badass lady!!!” et al, where rei only gets serious 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/complexity, which is ironic given that the source material, you know, centers around girls/women navigating male-dominated spaces and being punished for their girlhood/womanhood, and a boy mc similarly suffering for his perceived effeminacy while also taking his frustrations out on girls because scarydeep internalized misogyny. life imitates art
Away up high, the behemoths circle round to fly. The weaving contrails catch the sun. They fly in peace, in perfect flight, the broken backs of splintered trees, smoke in the dusk, a gentle breeze. They stir the embers, fan the flames. And acrid smoke drifts from remains of what once were men; now charred lumps of black and bloody, streaming meat. That night the rats come out to eat, the dead and badly wounded. (x)
So something I’ve noticed is the huge amounts of art/meta/gifsets showing Asuka & Rei and Kaworu & Rei as visual/mythological opposites, or talking about the differences between them wrt externalizing/internalizing mental processes.
While I think discussions about Asuka/Rei and Kaworu/Rei are important, I don’t think those two relationships are necessarily representative of a true oppositional force in the show? (I would label those relationships as a symbiotic duality that define one another in a vaguely codependent or complementary way.)
Anyways, here’s some meta about Kaworu and Asuka as Opposites and the space they occupy in the show as it relates to Shinji and misogyny.(god this is so long rip @ me)
This nails Asuka and Kaworu’s diametric opposition so well: why it’s thematically necessary that Kaworu and Asuka never get to interact, pertaining to who really gets to “forgive” Shinji within the larger narrative, and how gender circumscribes the right to unconditional love. Everyone needs to read this.