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