ngenewyear:

Hey, Bloodshog; hope this makes you smile. :D   Ended up combining two of your requests: Asuka + a tattooed Maya.  I loved that last headcanon in particular, and figure she’d go for a mix of programmer nerdery and good ol’ AT fields.   She’d be the type to reach out to Asuka on a bad day too, I reckon. 

Happy New Year,

- krad

asukalanglee:

Ritsuko gives Rei a haircut.

ritsumaya:

i am so disgusted by the fact that so many people take ayanami rei’s genuine development, multilayered complexity, struggle with an abusive caretaker, existential conflict, genuine difficulty with expressing emotion and socialising due to an isolated and artificially rigid upbringing, and acceptance of an inhuman origin even whilst validating a very human identity - and transform rei into a generic, childlike moe archetype that does not know or understand anything beyond humbly accepting orders from a master

What are the Angels trying to do, anyway?

circuitbird:

It’s time for another Evangelion post, this time to address a question sertraline-queen posed about whether the Angels are attacking NERV in an attempt to stop Gendo and his machinations.

A while back someone asked, “Can you please explain the Human Instrumentality Project like I’m five?” and I hope that post can partially clarify the answer. It will also give you the basic rundown of SEELE’s goals and why they are actually disparate from Gendo Ikari’s.

As far as I can tell, the answer to that question — whether the angels are conscious of Gendo or SEELE’s goals and wish to stop them — is no. Remember, the Angels are Adam-derived beings (that is, borne from a Seed of Life and not a Seed of Knowledge) and their behaviors more or less conceptually echo this. While they are far from totally unconscious creatures, they do behave very much like children or babies. They have a basic survival drive, exhibited by their retaliation against NERV’s attacks, but whether they have a unified or even sensible motive is unclear. Kaji suggests that their reasoning is varied: some of them are looking to recover Adam and wipe out mankind, some are looking to engage or “reunite” with Lilith, and some — according to him — seem to have no motive whatsoever. Now, I’m not sure how accurate his assessment actually is, although the actions of the various angels would corroborate these conclusions. I think the only thing we can safely surmise is that the Angels have this intense, passionate drive to “get at” what is fundamentally their parent, Adam, or what arguably represents an object of sexual unification, Lilith.

In jest and in passing I have suggested that the Angels are “pissed,” but if they feel any rage, I think it is over these figures — parental and sexual objects — being made inaccessible to them, prompting a reaction that is like a kid single-mindedly shrieking for what it wants and ignoring anything unrelated. Whether or not they have some complex reason for their behavior is symbolically unnecessary, and I doubt they do; I think the Angels’ activity is meant to represent the unconscious desire to essentially crawl back into the womb (see: Otto Rank and The Trauma of Birth) or, alternatively, fulfill a sexual inclination (see: Freud). They don’t grasp at Adam or Lilith very elegantly, as is to be expected of a life form that lacks a full grasp of the meaning of its own intent; they seem sort of like naive, scared, and relentless id-machines. Aside from Zeruel, whether they feel a discrete antagonism toward humans specifically is debatable.

When the Angels DO express any sort of discernible reasoning, it is emotional and childlike in nature — and Kaworu, Tabris, displays these characteristics as well (albeit with more awareness and complexity than previous angels, presumably because he contains human DNA). Armisael is capable of expressing pain and a need to merge with the nearest entity to try and resolve that pain, but it lacks the insight to characterize what it is feeling as loneliness without Rei’s “help.” And Armisael communicates strictly through mimicking her image — like a baby, it doesn’t yet have a fully developed sense of self; instead, it just copies what it sees and pushes to do what it desires (at Rei’s obvious expense).

You do have to wonder why the First Ancestral Race, upon the knowledge that it was going to become extinct, would decide that its descendants could not possibly be endowed with both the Fruit of Life AND The Fruit of Knowledge, even though they themselves possessed both; recall that their Lances of Longinus are programmed to prevent this evolution from occurring again. I’m inclined to believe that there is something about this dual nature that originally led to the FAR’s own destruction, hence why they would try to protect their own progeny from inheriting the condition. But we are unlikely to ever get an answer beyond what we feel suits our own personal interpretation of events.

isammakesstuff:

just some fanart of an obscure show, you might have heard of it.

ritsumaya:

real talk time why don’t we talk more about the adults of evangelion like put away your shinjis and your asukas and your hikaris and toujis and kensukes and even your reis and kaworus

talk to me about the adults. talk to me about misato and ritsuko and ryouji and yui and ritsuko and naoko and gendo and fuyutsuki and maya and shigeru and makoto. talk to me about maya battling between hir loyalty to hir akagi-sempai and hir simultaneous deep sense of justice and morality. talk to me about fuyutsuki working as a doctor in the hell of the post-second impact world despite the lack of supplies and the shortage of food—or anything else.

talk to me about yui taking a younger ritsuko out on the town in her effort to meet her friends’ children, and the two of them discussing naoko, with yui cautioning ritsuko to try to make amends with her mother and ritsuko ignoring those in favour of discussing what’s happening with the EVA project because if she can bury her emotions in science she doesn’t have to feel them. talk to me about misato laughing her ass off at the thought of ryouji never having any experience with torrents and setting up a seedbox with ritsuko’s help in university. talk to me about makoto and maya celebrating shigeru’s birthday by dragging him out while they’re on break and making huge nuisances of themselves by window shopping at the mall and ending up at the bar somehow and getting shitfaced, then talking through their issues with their respective crushes, and shigeru’s the only one who remembers the following morning (because he’s the only one who didn’t completely drunk in the course of romantic talk).

talk to me about misato lying awake at night listening to her mother scream over the phone with her father and turning up the music in her earbuds and promising God that she’ll be a good girl, she’ll be the perfect girl, she’ll be the sweetest girl that ever walked the earth if only God would give her a happy family again. talk to me about naoko and fuyutsuki enjoying lunch together as they talk about the logistics of the project and naoko assures fuyutsuki that everything they’re doing is for the good of humanity and fuyutsuki wants to believe her, and she wants to believe herself, too. talk to me about yui growing up as the daughter of a member of SEELE and hiding behind doors and learning to sneak her way through computer databases to find out what lurks beneath the surface.

talk to me about ritsuko meeting maya in college during some completely unrelated comparative history class and the two of them having to work on a project regarding the cold war together and the entire time maya is just thinking about how smart and incredible and talented ritsuko is and ritsuko doesn’t even remember maya but imagine maya’s face upon hir first day at NERV out of nowhere—“my name is akagi and i’m your superior”. talk to me about how the one time misato’s mother comes down to the university to talk misato doesn’t even show up because she’s tried so hard to push that part of her away and ritsuko comes down to meet with her. talk to me about how when misato’s professor calls her in to ask her about the second week of missed classes this semester—“you did this just a few months ago!”—and misato quietly explains that her mother’s funeral was last saturday.

talk to me about makoto and gendo being stuck in the elevator one day for a long time and makoto is terrified of saying anything and gendo asks him what he thinks about the cafeteria food and makoto’s sure that he’s about to get fired and then he realises that gendo is trying to make small talk. talk to me about ritsuko carefully tending a bonsai tree even in the middle of the rush of finals because if she can keep a bonsai tree neat and clipped then she can figure out the rest of her life, at least until the day her cat knocks over the pot and it shatters and she doesn’t have the reserves to start over with a new one. talk to me about yui picking out ryouji’s potential and giving them a helping hand and taking time out of her day to talk to them and always had that gentle smile that ryouji would later adopt for themself in the years to come.

talk to me about fuyutsuki going out new year’s shopping and trying to figure out what to buy ritsuko as a gift and shigeru popping by to suggest that new album from her favourite punk rock band and fuyutsuki’s eyes vanishing into orbit at the thought of ritsuko loving punk rock. talk to me about ritsuko and misato and ryouji trying to quantify whatever the hell their relationship is after ryouji spontaneously moves into ritsuko and misato’s dorm and never being able to figure it out but as long as the college kids see ryouji as “boyfriend” and misato as “girlfriend” and ritsuko as “friend” then it doesn’t make a difference. talk to me.

ok just talk to me about the adults of evangelion. i’m serious and i’m waiting.

    don’t worry. it’s not as bad as it looks.

December 8, 1986; Misato Katsuragi's 28th Birthday

You’ll discover the importance of going forward once you’ve taken that first step.