#the force is a metaphor for humans' need for intimacy

[threadsoflacee]

thinking abt how easy it is for hannibal and will to formulate their complex thoughts, lay them into metaphors and communicate with each other thru theatrical sensitivity and sneaky intimacy, but also how hard it is for them to just say "i’m sorry". or "i care for you". or "i love you". i wonder how they would learn to show this to each other the right—not killing people as offerings—way. hannibal kills abigail to say "i’m furious at you", folds a man into a human heart to say "i’m heartbroken, but i forgive you", turns himself in to say "i will never leave you" …. but on the run postfall, he would learn to try and be more discreet with his expressions of vulnerability. perhaps he would drug will and incapacitate him to take care of him and show him his love. and perhaps will wouldn’t fight back and let him pump every possible drug into his veins, just to say "i trust you". and when that phase is over, will would guard their hideout like a dog and make sure no one ever gets in to say "this is mine, you’re mine". and hannibal would make him food and stitch up his wounds to say "i care for you". through the forced proximity of death they’ll learn how to appreciate each other quietly and reciprocally. no need for blood shed or slit throats or burnt bodies. they’ll cook for each other and bath each other and allow a few tears to fall around each other and it won’t be as brutal and violent as their love is but it’s a proof the love is there anyway

[who-dat-homeless]

My big take on why spock did undertake Kolinahr despite being more comfortable with the "human part" of himself at the end of the season three is that the the whole five year mission (and especially you can see it in season three) was questioning his belonging to vulcan-kind. And not (only) in a way of "haha you're feeling in emotion YOU'RE A FOCKEN HUMANNNNNNN!!!!"

I need you to understand that he experienced very traumatizing events, that questions his "vulcanity"(akin to humanity, man idk how else to call it).

tw: mention of rape

Like let's just for the sake of this post imagine that the main "humanity" defying things are bodily autonomy and our free will. And when a human gets raped they are a) objectified/sexualised in the process b) sometimes afterwards a person objectifies themselves as a coping mechanism, either way this traumatic thing breaks a bond between a person and their sense of "humanity"

Back to spock - in season three we have two episodes that deliberately and violently break his bond with his vulcan identity. We have "plato children" and "all our yesterdays". In both episodes Spock is forced to go against Surak's teachings - the very essence of being a vulcan (to spock ofc)

In Plato children, Spock was forced to show emotions and then even endangered kirk, and I need to point out the method of how it was forced upon him - his body was controlled, i.e. he himself, in his mind, did understand that it was wrong, he didn't wanted it and he was mentally present while this thing was happening to him. Like the whole thing was awful and absolutely horrible for him and it's generally, without joking, a fuking traumatizing event for him, and I personally think he would've come back to it and go through a mental hell all over again. And I also want to notice that at least his mind was under his own control.

Which is not the case with All of our yesterdays. In that episode (however fucking stupid I think it is for lore contradictions and implications and etc.) Spock loses control not only over his body, he loses control over his mind. Basically everything that was happening in the plato children (showing emotions, forced intimacy etc) is present in the episode, but on top of that spock is forced to actually like it. And i need to emphasise it HE'S GOING THROUGH THE SAME FUCKING TRAUMATIC EVENT OF BREAKING HIS IDENTITY AND THIS TIME HIS MIND CONTROLLED TO LIKE THIS ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST HIS BEING!!! HELLLOOOOOO

And I think there's a difference between "we're trying to show spock that he's also a bit human" and "we're breaking spock's vulcan identity". In the first one we're still acknowledge Spock as vulcan, but also proposing that he might try embracing an additional identity, in the second one we're just breaking his sense of self.

And I think that this two instances(and maybe others that I forgor lol) is the root of why he undertook Kolinahr. And then, on top of that root cause of "I've lost the sense of being vulcan" there was this problem with "oh god I think I've become too human"

And also I think the time at starfleet just generally changed him so fucking much that at some point he(metaphorically) just didn't recognize himself in the mirror.

So I think Kolinahr was a kind of an attempt to return to his old (outdated) self, regaining his "vulcanity". Though at the end of the day he's not a human nor he's vulcan, he's not the sum of his separate identities but something more grate than that, that's why he failed Kolinahr, that's why he came to terms with who he is

[fushiglow]

Hello glow!!! Thank you for another lovely satosugu work! :)

I absolutely love how real and tangible your writing is - seeing them start with different states of being turned on and building together really paints such a lovely picture of what intimacy is without the expectation of a perfect start-stop :) 3 cheers to realistic sexual dynamics!

Also, I think that your link at the end of your post goes to Violent Delights instead - but maybe that's just an issue on my end!

Thank you so much for this lovely feedback (and the heads up about the link), I can't tell you how much your words cheered me on Friday! They came at a time I really needed to hear them so, if you don't mind, I'm going to use this ask as an opportunity to say a few things about my writing and why I do what I do — no obligation to respond!

Quite honestly, I have been feeling a little anxious about how I'm perceived as a writer recently. When Over the Threshold started gathering some steam in January, I only had five published works on AO3 posted over the course of six months. By the end of August, I'll have 18 published works for Jujutsu Kaisen, 16 of which will be complete. I have never been this productive in a fandom before!

A lot of the reason for that is because I'm finally learning how to work with my AuDHD brain. I love writing, I really do, and I'm constantly excited by the possibilities that reside within my brain. I have more ideas than I have time or hands to write them, but I want to explore as many of those ideas as possible. In the past, I would have forced myself to stick to the thing that I was "supposed" to write, rather than following the burst of inspiration and writing the thing that I "wanted" to write. To no one's surprise, that usually meant I ended up writing nothing at all.

I'm someone who seeks out challenges, and all the fics I've published in 2024 have been experimental in some way. Come Get Your Honey was a challenge in extended metaphor. Balance was a challenge in seamlessly blending two very different universes. Mailman AU was a challenge in format. Violent Delights was a challenge in pushing myself to new and uncomfortable places. Thunder was a challenge in encapsulating an entire world and history within a single motif without ever actually seeing that world and history.

I'm really proud of every single one of those works, as well as the speed I've written them at. I've published 92k words on AO3 already this year and written far more, so I feel like I can no longer justifiably call myself a slow writer. However, all the works mentioned above have artistic merit in the more traditional sense — i.e. they're not smut.

At the time of writing this, three of my five most recent works contain sexual content with varying degrees of explicitness, and it's hard to escape that pervasive (and flawed) idea that smut is "less serious" as a form of writing. Even writing smut in the first place has been a slow process of overcoming some of my own biases. However, sex is part of the spectrum of human experiences, and it's also deeply political. Whenever I explore it in my writing, you can be sure that I always have that at the forefront of my mind. That's why these works, too, have represented something new and challenging and exciting for me.

Discreet Delivery was the first piece containing explicit sexual content that I ever shared publicly and, with how rife top/bottom discourse is in this fandom (most of which is based on heteronormative ideals that I vehemently disagree with), I really wanted to make a statement straight out of the gate. I'm very proud of how I managed to weave a switch/vers narrative into a oneshot, and the feedback on it was wonderful.

Headroom, however, presented a very different kind of challenge. It was extremely difficult to write, because it doesn't follow the beats of a traditional sex scene. There's no satisfaction for Satoru nor for the readers, and that made it tricky to keep it engaging. I was also very nervous about showing a different side of these beloved AU characters and establishing a new dynamic between them while incorporating some of the broader themes from Over the Threshold.

Finally, Tell Me I'm Pretty was pure subversion, writing Suguru in particular in a way I've never seen before to challenge expectations about "roles" in sex. It meant I had no blueprint to work from, but I'm not interested in reproducing the same dynamics I've read a thousand times. However, that also means that I felt very anxious about how people would receive this fic — especially on GeGo Day.

The truth is, everything I write I write for myself first and foremost, but it's hard to keep sight of that when you're blessed with an engaged audience. This is a huge reason why updates to Over the Threshold take time. This fic is deeply important and deeply personal to me, but its growing popularity adds a pressure that I don't want to influence my writing. I feel a constant underlying need to outdo myself with every new fic and chapter I post, but that's unrealistic and unachievable.

Obviously, I want readers to enjoy what I write, but I know the moment I start writing for other people is the moment my writing suffers. That's the main reason why I'm reluctant to put anything behind a paywall, even if I feel frustrated with the way fanfics are casually consumed on the internet. Readers occasionally make demands of me without any respect for my time and effort and creative vision, and sometimes I look at what I've written and think, "Am I really going to give that away for free?". However, asking for anything beyond tips would change the game for me. Enjoying my writing is far more valuable to me, at least at this point in time.

All of this is to say: I really loved writing Tell Me I'm Pretty. I had a blast with it — until it came time to post, at which point I suddenly felt full of self-doubt. For you to appear in my inbox and tell me that you appreciated the realism of the intimacy in this fic? I couldn't have asked for anything more, thank you so much ♥️

TL;DR, I write for myself, but god, it's the best feeling in the world when readers resonate with my writing. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to let me know. I love you all to the moon and back!

[antigonick]

just stumbled into one of your snippets and i'm OBSESSED with your writing style. it is so fluid and punchy and such a delight to read. if you ever feel like answering, how does your writing process works? what are your inspirations, style and tone-wise? and what themes do you enjoy exploring the most?

have a lovely day! 💌

Oh, that's... WELL. That's! The best compliment you could have sent me, thank you so much, I don't know what to say.. I'm actually trying to write a... I'm gonna call it a novel when it's just a mess of fragments right now, but—yeah. Fluid and punchy is exactly what I strive to achieve with the character's voice so this is so nice to hear. WHATEVER. THANK YOU.

Anyway! My writing process is really... steeped in rhythm, I guess? It starts with character writing, which leads me to character voice, which leads me to finding the right "mind" tempo, and from it cascades the headspace I need to write. In that, in the idea of perspective and voice influencing the story first, I'm indebted to Faulkner, to Marlon James, to Woolf's The Waves, to Shirley Jackson—to the perspectivism twists of horror and gothic writing as a general rule. Rereading her, I think Emily Brontë has shaped my metaphorical network very early on, and my handling of violence, especially in dialogue—though more recently, Tamsyn Muir made me tick about dialogue too. Malin Rydén is one of my utmost inspirations, not a little because the main character of my story was first created for his story, but also because he was my gateway into harder, grittier speculative fiction and digital literature, which both inspire me now for the story I'm trying to shape—horror out of the gothic castle and into the terrible anticipation of what comes next, with more politics, with ghosts and body horror twisted to technology. In terms of pure form, I'm extremely impacted by poetry—E. E. Cummings, Alice Oswald, Emily Dickinson—those who deconstruct syntax to wrangle it into breath. He didn't influence me because I discovered him too late, but I feel a kinship to some of the early stylistic experimentations of Frank Bidart too. Hanif Abdurraqib, whose first name I gave to one of my main characters too because his voice is incredible: it moves. Charles Olson's Projective Verse gestures at what I feel when I write, you know? "ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION (…). Always one perception must must must MOVE, INSTANTER, ON ANOTHER! (…)" and then "Breath allows all the speech-force of language back in." Even silence can be your story-weapon.

I'm interested in... blowing apart labels, dichotomies, I think, making them harder to grapple with—right and wrong, love and hate, personal and universal; transgressions, fluidity; how language fails, how language betrays; the way human connection can both fuck you and raise you up, in its constant failure and constant trying, in the violence of intimacy, in the tension between hardness and vulnerability—more than anything, I'm interested in the way individual desires clash with collective needs or personal ideals, in the lies and justifications you can find for yourself, in what it means for you when you come to dismantle them (or refuse to). I love palimpsest, stories retold again and again, and/or I love difficult, ugly settings, speculative and dystopia topics, I want the story to be political in itself, even when it's not politicking; and I LOVE mindfucks: using our terribly faulty, terribly subjective perception / perspective / memory / dreams / FEARS / intellect to tell a story that is both fascinating because it's unique, and trapped by it. Can't escape yourself. What are you gonna do with yourself (against yourself, for yourself) now?

Formally, I try to use that in writing: trapping the reader in one voice that swallows them really, ideally that jostles them a little, that blurs the boundary between them and the character: extreme immersion. I like to try and convey emotion / impression and even action as it is experienced, rather than explaining it clearly. In that phenomenology has influenced me, I guess? Deleuze, Guattari, Merleau-Ponty, and poetry again, I guess. Archibald McLeish says "a poem should not mean / but be...", and that's what I try to do with the character I choose, and then I let them be, and they drive both the story and the writing that should echo it—form and content cycling each other like mirrors.

Goddamnit, that got so long. Anyway. THANK YOU for being interested, I'm really touched.

[follows-the-bees]

A while ago I made a post comparing character traits and audience reactions to them of SPN with OFMD (Dean is to Ed, Stede is to Cas (and Sam), and Izzy is to John) but left it at that. But as I'm writing fics about both of them I really am noticing the similarities even more and you know what, I do want to elaborate. Similar characters traits and then on audience perception/reaction.

Dean and Ed

Characteristics: both underneath it all are soft but have been forced to be hard due to the world/harsh circumstances they are in. When left to their own devices, they will always choose softness first. Both of them want a partner not just for physical intimacy but emotional, they want to be loved and really seen for who they are, not the mask they put up. (Sexual: both are shown with sub undertones)

The childhood trauma in both is strong and affects them as middle-aged adults. When they are in moments of high trauma they become selectively mute.

They also wear a (metaphorical) mask a lot of the time. Their main journey is growing and learning to be comfortable and love all aspects of themselves.

Audience perspection: some of the audience falls for that mask and think those are the traits of the characters. (I.e. Dean is some womanizer with toxic masculinity he never outgrows, Ed is a violent man, etc.) They can also be divisive and there's no in between: you either love or hate them.

Stede and Cas (and Sam)

Stede and Cas are outsiders in their worlds, just a little bit out of touch with it: Stede lives in books and fantasy and is forced into societal expectations that are not truly him. Cas is an angel who has to learn the world of humans. (both can be read as neurodivergent)

Audience perception: audiences often HC them as neurodivergent.

Sam, Cas, and Stede are also accused of being selfish (and while this isn't 100% true, it is not to the extreme as sole claim it to be). Selfish has a negative connotation, but both acted in a way to get away from a bad situation, last extreme action. Sam leaves for college to get away from the hunter life and home situation that makes him uncomfortable. Stede also does the same thing, he leaves his home life for the sea. It is years of built up frustration and a last resort to get out of there. (We even learn in the pilot: "do you want to live?" "I don't know!" And Cas will leave to try to do things so. His own. Not including Dean and Sam because he's trying to protect them.

Izzy and John

Characteristics: now you would think the comparison would end before it started with John being the literal father of Dean and Izzy being a father-figure to Ed, but my friend, you have not forgotten to exclude ships in your searches. *Shudders* also, Ed looks at Izzy as a father-figure, while Izzy looks at him in a pseudosexual power thing with the Blackbeard.

Both of them represent the old ways, the man up, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps toxic masculinity. John causes both parentification and enmeshment with his oldest, Dean, Izzy caused Ed to keep up the Blackbeard persona for years past when he wanted/needed to. Izzy was based on Iago from Othello, and Salieri from Amadeus.

Audience: both are canonically abusive, emotionally and John is implied physically as well. Izzy is shown being physically abusive to others Fang and Black Pete. But a small group of fans will hand wave the abuse of both with the "they were just trying to do their best — trying to keep the subjects (of their abuse) alive in a rough world."

[absolute-flaming-trash]

I'm not sorry for this.

Pairing: Mahito x Fem!Reader

NSFW

Word Count: 2712

Warnings: Yandere, Dubcon, Forced relationship, Implied past noncon, Implied murder (not reader), Implied kidnapping, Oral (f recieving)

Hope was a dangerous thing to have.

It meant that there was some metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel. That, to some degree, there was a positive outcome to your situation - a concept that was the very definition of delusional.

Yet you still had it.

This would not be, by any means, the first time you’d attempted to get away from Mahito. The few “successes” you had miraculously achieved were, in reality, his own experiments on human behaviour.

What would you do? Where would you go? Who would you seek out?

To each of these questions, he gained a bountiful supply of answers, the last of which especially so - growing in size and deformity in an area of the sewers that he had sectioned off specially for you.

If hope didn’t drive you to madness, the moans belonging to the twisted remains of friends and family were enough to fill in the rest, so surely it had to be madness that gave you the idea you had.

Initiating intimacy with Mahito on your own free will.

Perhaps you could argue with yourself that it was bravery instead that led you to consider such a daunting task, but the truth was far more disturbing:

What more did you have to lose?

With plans A, B, C, all the way through fucking Z failing so spectacularly, it seemed the only option left. Even if it made your stomach clench so violently you needed it to stare at the horizon to keep bile from rising up your throat.

Maybe, by some absolute miracle he would let you roam free after you convinced him you had come to return his affections. Escape would come later, you needed to take this one step at a time, but it would open the opportunity for some trust to be gained and his guard to be lowered just enough that you could get the hell out of there. Giving him an inch so you can gain a mile and (hopefully) more away from him.

It was just a matter of actually going through with it.

You knew you were staring, but it wasn’t like he paid it any mind. He was too absorbed in his book - an arm propped behind his head on the pillow while he used the other to lean the book against his knee. His free leg dangled over the side of his hammock, pushing against the ground and rocking himself from side to side. It was difficult to see the title from your position on the floor, but the illustrative diagrams were enough of a hint that it had to do something with human anatomy.

The implications of his choice of literature were shoved into the recesses of your mind as you slowly stood and made your way towards him.

Each step closer was filled with trepidation, and the skin on your hands burned as you wrung them together.

Mahito acknowledged you when you got within five feet of him.

His smile was as big as it always was, the stitches around his eyes slightly enlarged by the ridiculous glasses he wore.

“Hey.”

Your sheepish greeting made him smile wider, and he pushed the glasses up to rest on top of his forehead.

“You were staring for quite a while,” You cringed inwardly at the call out, “Is it because of my new look?”

Your eyes flickered up to the old fashioned cat-eye style frames. They made him appear almost comical, and perhaps the sight could be if they had belonged to him in the first place.

“They’re certainly something, I’ll give you that.”

He giggled. “I think the same when it comes to human eyesight.” He placed the glasses back over his eyes and leaned towards you - his eyes narrowed into slits. “Some of you have terrible vision.”

All you could do was laugh nervously at his playful tone after he failed to look away from you and the awkward silence grew. The bones in your hands screamed in protest as you wrung them further.

“I actually… wanted to ask if I could join you?”

Mahito’s eyes widened slightly - the glass lenses greatly exaggerating the expression.

Inwardly you were dying from how feeble the execution of your request was, but it was thankfully met with relief when his bemused expression melted away into one of obscene delight, and he leaned back into the hammock with his arms in an open gesture.

“Go right ahead.”

He made no motion to move over and give you space, so it was awkward climbing in. There were a few moments where you genuinely believed you were going to flip the whole thing over and cause the two of you to eat shit on the concrete below, but you managed to get your bearings and lay beside him.

Well… really you were half on top of him with your head resting on his chest.

You had been close to him before, but never anything like this. Without the resistance you normally put up, you were able to notice the hollow silence that took up the space where a heartbeat should’ve been. The hairs on your arms stood on end with the revelation, and you did your best to breathe calmly through your nose.

He smelt like death and easter lilies.

You draped your left arm over his torso - your right arm crushed somewhat awkwardly underneath you, but it was surprisingly not too uncomfortable. Your legs were quickly tangled with his, returning to their position as a prop for his book as he began to pick up where he left off.

The sound of his voice resonating through his chest made you jolt unexpectedly, and his amusement bled into his voice as he spoke.

“Since the human cerebral cortex, with its underlying white matter, occupies 75% of the whole brain, its relative expansion is frequently equated with brain evolution…”

Ah, you had been somewhat right in your earlier assumptions.

Your fingers traced lazy patterns on his chest while he read, his voice soon becoming background noise to your thoughts. Every fiber of instinct was screaming at you that this was a terrible idea. That there must be something you hadn’t tried yet, and there was still time to save yourself while maintaining your dignity.

The thoughts were squashed with a moderate amount of difficulty.

You were fully aware of how bad of an idea this was, but you had made your bed and were determined to lie in it.

You could do this.

You had to.

After a few minutes you craned your neck to look up at him properly. The glasses had slid down to the end of his nose, and a small voice in the dark corner of your mind admitted that the sight wasn’t half bad. You waited until he turned his head to face yours before crossing the point of no return - pulling yourself up his body to close the gap in a soft kiss.

You tried your hardest to make it seem real.

It didn’t last long, maybe three seconds at the most with no response on his end aside from his entire body going completely rigid underneath your touch. Mahito’s face held none of the amusement it did before when you pulled away. He reached up and took the glasses off his face, all while his heterochromic eyes searched yours curiously.

“What are you up to?”

It was a simple question that made your blood freeze.

“Nothing, it’s just… ” your brain scrambled to come up with a believable excuse, “I’m tired.”

You kissed him again before he could have a chance to respond, pouring as much affection as you could scrounge up into the action. You released his lips only to speak a few words between breaths of air.

“I’m tired… of pretending… I’m not yours.”

His movements were almost lightning fast. There was a loud *thud* from the book as it fell to the floor, forgotten while he buried his hands in your hair to hold your head in place and deepen the kiss. It was an overwhelming sensation that was only amplified when he flipped you underneath him, semi-straddling you so he had a knee between your legs and the other by your hip.

The force combined with the sudden sway from the hammock made you squeak in surprise, and you felt him smirk against your lips before his tongue entered your mouth.

It took everything not to resist as he explored your mouth with fever - a whine threatening to bubble up from the back of your throat. The intensity of it scared you, but what scared you the most was the zing of pleasure that shot down your spine. You mimicked the action of his hands, threading them through his hair to keep it from coming between your lips and his.

You were trembling by the time he pulled back, lips shiny and swollen and stretched into a grin that held pure unfiltered glee.

“Three months,”

Your brows pinched together in confusion, but your jaw fell open in a gasp when his lips descended on your neck - the action of sensitive flesh being pulled between his teeth combined with the ache quickly building between your legs cutting off any questions you had in the form of a choked moan.

“Five days,” His hands twisted your head roughly to the side, shoving it against the pillow to allow him more access to your neck, “Ten hours… twenty-four minutes.”

The sensation of his teeth sinking into the junction where your shoulder met your neck elected a sharp yelp, but his hands kept you in place as he added another mark to the collection. The pain was short and sweet, quickly replaced with a horrible rush of euphoria that littered your skin with goosebumps.

“I knew you would break eventually.”

There it was. 

The devastating reminder that broke you out of your lustful haze, and you felt the urge to rebel creep back into your heart.

But that was the point, wasn’t it? To have him believe that you were well and truly broken in by his desires? Besides, if you really had been with him for as long as he said… it had certainly been a while since you felt as good as you did.

There wasn’t any harm in enjoying the process, was there?

You pulled his lips back up to yours before you could think about it further. He groaned into the kiss, reigniting the low spark you felt earlier.

With cautious, shaking hands, you skimmed your fingers down his chest, catching the edge of the fabric of his shirt and gently pushing your hands underneath to explore his skin. He had no blemishes you could feel, the only breaks in his flesh coming in the form of raised stitches that twitched beneath your fingertips.

His upper body had all but melted against yours, his own hands moving along your body in their own exploration. You doubted he’d be able to discover more about you, but that wasn’t a thought you wanted to entertain for the sake of Murphy's law, so you relaxed as much as possible in his hold.

However instinct is what drove you to immediately grab his wrists when you felt him raise the hem of your own shirt - an action that was purely done on autopilot.

Granted you did not plan on things escalating quite this far, at least not this soon, but when Mahito’s eyes immediately locked with yours, your breath hitched in paranoia. You could see the dark remains of suspicion still swirling amongst the blue and gray, and you swallowed nervously.

“Can I?”

The backpedal of a question hung heavily in the air, and you could almost see the cogs turning in his mind as he regarded you. The silence stretched on long enough that you began to brace yourself to be called out as the fraud you were until he slowly lifted himself off of you to sit on his knees - never taking his eyes off you as he did.

Relief sagged in your shoulders, and a different thrill shot through your system as you sat up and pulled your shirt over your head, leaving you half naked in front of him.

All your bras had been destroyed some time ago.

The knotted rope of the hammock felt strange against your bare skin as you laid back again, and Mahito’s sharp cackle made you flinch from the sheer volume as it echoed across the vast space of his makeshift lair.

“Maybe not so broken.” He hummed in delight, hunching back over you and running his tongue up your ribcage to encircle one of your nipples. Your head fell back against the pillow, back arching when his lips closed around the newly hardened bud.

It felt like his hands were everywhere at once, gasping and groping so incessantly that you nearly didn’t notice the borderline abrasive tugging at the waistband of your pants.

If true doubt hadn’t filled your soul beforehand, it sure did now as Mahito trailed down your body, leaving bites and open mouthed kisses in his wake.

It was a disgustingly human-like action, but then again almost everything about him was on the surface.

You simply had to endure.

“I want you to keep looking at me, okay?”

The excitement in his voice didn’t betray the fact it was a command, not a request as he slid off the hammock and pulled the last remainder of clothing off your body with practiced ease. He roughly adjusted your body so you laid across the hammock horizontally with your hips at the edge and knees over his shoulders. He knelt so your pussy was directly in front of his face, and heat burned in your cheeks as he parted your folds with two fingers - keeping his eyes locked with yours as he languidly ran his tongue up your slit, flicking your clit sharply with the tip and you practically mewled.

His laughter vibrated against your core, causing your hips to jerk up into his mouth, and his hands looped under your legs to hold onto the fat of your upper thighs, securing your lower body in place as he devoured you.

He was a messy eater, and the noises extended beyond obscene. There was never a steady rhythm, the motion of his mouth and tongue going either too fast or too slow and never really giving you a precise pattern that you could hold onto. Just mindless exploration meant to drive you further to the point of madness.

And the sick thing was it worked. That horrid coil that you hadn’t felt in ages was rapidly building, and rational thought took a backseat as you buried your hands in his hair for the nth time that night - holding on for dear life while your hips responded to his clumsy movements.

He smiled against your cunt, tongue swirling around your clit as he watched your face pinch together at a height of pleasure that you just weren’t able to reach. You weren’t holding back anymore, whines pouring freely from your throat with increasing volume and pitch.

You practically shrieked when you felt something hot, wet, and slimy plunge into your core. You’d been so lost in the mirth and lust in his eyes that you didn’t notice the second tongue that formed, the one that now wormed its way in and out of your cunt while the other worked over your clit, and you were gone.

The walls became familiar with your screams once again when you came. You had broken eye contact with Mahito when you threw your head back against the ropes, but you couldn’t find the capacity to care as your body shook violently. Air was hard to come by, and it only grew worse as Mahito picked up the pace, never giving you a chance to recover in the post-orgasmic bliss.

“Wh-what are you doing?” You gasped.

You were granted a brief moment of relief as the tongues were pulled from you, but it wasn’t out of mercy.

“I’m not finished.” There’s an underlying tone in his usual glee. A warning that kept you firmly fastened in place.

“I want to see what it truly takes to break you.”

© absolute-flaming-trash 2022. Do not repost, modify, copy, or claim.

Taglist:@prettycutebunny, @sai-my-beloved, @we-are-so-close, @shorkbrian, @biby-24k, @forcefulkitten, @siphite

[markiafc]

curiously and politely paging @fancifulpurposelesslovely to ask about summer sons thoughts, if that's okay!

in particular, the andrew/sam power dynamic + what that means for their relationship post-canon, because i think we both picked up on the same undertones in the text but came to different interpretations. and i'm just intrigued to poke more at your take and hear more about it.

on my end, the baseline of it is, i think andrew's passiveness and his over-reliance on a second party to act as his lighthouse is present throughout the events of the book. he expresses this desire explicitly and implicitly, to be owned, leashed, and led. and i've always seen it as a result of trauma more than anything else, relating to the cavern and therefore to eddie as well. i often think andrew's arc is about many things, but one of the top things is that he's learning to be a real boy. instead of being half a human being, living only a small portion of personhood. the way he was after the cavern and early on in the book.

i think there's andrew grows a lot throughout and comes into his own; the eddie/andrew relationship feels like it is hardcore bdsm-coded but for two boys who don't know anything and they're just kids thrust into this dynamic to cope, and even eddie seems to become miserable and burdened by having to carry andrew through life. it feels like to me he really did want that space away from andrew. he really wanted to have a world, a time with things he forged in nashville just for himself, albeit temporarily. the cavern is this thing that forced them both into this shape and they never got the help to learn another way of being, no matter how miserable it made them amidst the intimacy and love.

and the story is, to me, andrew slowly expanding his horizons, unearthing parts of himself and his life that he had been cut off from, and finally getting a feel for who he really is, a complete andrew blur. he discovers and accesses his sexuality for the first time, both sexual sensibilities and his sex drive. and unlike with eddie, he lets himself engage with his agency as a human being; he breaks into a whole new world through sam, and finds that he's able to have a different kind of dynamic with him, finds that he can grasp at his anger and annoyance at being ordered around and act on it. theres no need to make himself do what sam wants just because sam wants it, and he feels comfortable delivering a rejection. ("i'm not your bitch so tell him yourself.")

the cavern stunted him as a person and eddie too, and there's a throughline there about overlooked childhood trauma. especially for male queer victims in a suburban setting, already expected to be social and sexually active with women and drug-using.

character arc-wise, and mostly centering andrew blur, i've always thought he would outgrow the heavily codependent dynamic he had with eddie, where his primary role in life was to act as eddie's right hand man of sorts, everything eddie wants eddie gets, and andrew blur exists to provide a personal service to eddie fulton. hobbies, academics, careers, relationships, every sector of his life he has developed not for himself but in devotion of someone else. someone he was forced to become metaphorical bride to at 12.

post-canon, after andrew's matured and come into his own, i imagine he can bring these new parts of himself into the relationship with sam, things he never had with eddie. and it would be different, something straying further from bdsm dynamics.

and this got real long, but i'm curious because i feel like you know more about the bdsm side of things better than i do. and my own is pretty rudimentary, so andrew never struck me as someone who is submissive and enjoys it.

this is not to say sam/andrew don't have those vibes, they soo do, andrew/eddie were 10000% like that in practice, and andrew definitely has the submissive markers. though to me, he embodied that role, developed those traits and lived that life with eddie due do a unique set of traumatic circumstance.

so, no hate or judgement, i just wanted to share and wanted to hear more about this book. especially from a different perspective, when i feel like we both did read the same book and saw the same things. i'm more than happy to trade takes.

open invitation to talk about this book and the andrew/sam power dynamics, basically!

[natequarter]

I posted 15,946 times in 2022

4,783 posts created (30%)

11,163 posts reblogged (70%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

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@avatar-tuner

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I tagged 11,785 of my posts in 2022

Only 26% of my posts had no tags

#queue - 5,074 posts

#doctor who - 1,596 posts

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Longest Tag: 139 characters

#“the house was seen as a disturbing development even before its founder began speaking out in favour of alternative time structures and imp

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

i think a lot of writers have like. ideas that reoccur in their work a lot. and i don't mean anticapitalism or grief or whatever i mean very specific ideas like intimacy through combing hair or mangled limbs which usually originate from a rl experience (the examples are things i use or think of using a lot)

10,636 notes - Posted February 3, 2022

#4

i love a good metaphor for guilt i love blood i love daggers i love betrayal i love characters kneeling holding a sword aimed downwards i love people literally and metaphorically covered in blood and crying i love characters being stabbed in the back i love characters obsessively trying to cleanse themself of guilt but it just. doesn't. work! i love guilt complexes i love guilt so overwhelming that it literally affects your perception of reality i love martyrs and i love traitors and i fucking LOVE guilt

13,156 notes - Posted May 19, 2022

#3

we need to abolish homework

29,585 notes - Posted January 20, 2022

#2

the unstoppable force (adhd) vs the immovable object (also adhd)

43,904 notes - Posted March 14, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

i think we as modern humans have a tendency to forget that historical people were also humans who had thoughts and feelings and dreams just like we do

60,848 notes - Posted October 9, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[moonlightserenities]

Common Courtesy

In the sentiment of gratitude is the form of courtesy that establishes the true nature of leadership through caring consideration.

Common courtesy opens the doors to the deeds of kindness that gathers love.

 True courtesy is the confidence from a deep moral foundation that shows euthenics personality.

All things in their beginnings must be guarded from the force of destruction in the nursery of the caring mind. Common courtesy is the mirror of what we do and as we do, reflections of light that encourages the values that flow naturally.

Presence must stimulate in the heart with the feeling which must always kept alive. Common courtesy is trying to do the right, which seems to be right at the moment, in other moments the same may seem wrong. Therefore one must not attempt to impose the right upon one who does not see the right from wrong.

Public relation in business and politics have lost all common courtesy, otherwise they would not need so much poor expensive advertising.

Expectations of common courtesy in the show of life are called the princess and the pea. Being courteous to the fellow human and share the intimacy of trust is to establish the true nature of confidence in each other.

The refining progress of courtesy and the deferential equilibrium is the persistence in nature’s wisdom.

To accomplish the impossible is the diligence in fine words and the courtesy as necessary. Courtesy is the metaphor of respect in the true sense of creating eternal youth.

It is the natural ability of the wise to travel through time and creating space for common sense. The virtue of courteous communication has the frequency of poetic sense, giving reason to ponder in realizations.

Common courtesy is the safe place between heaven and hell, not needing to face any purgatory.

Common courtesy is not the intention to teach, but to show all one can see.

Common courtesy is the truth that illuminates the sense of life, where all things become clear in the nature of things.

[raw-revelations]

Sex Life

related content: Slut Shaming is Bad

I believe that your Sexlife and your sex life are separate. Now I don't mean physically [even though it is] but they are. It sounds silly, but hear me out. I think that a person's sex life is the life force behind their desire to have sex. That desire is alive, it exists and has a heartbeat that can go stagnant without dying.

A lot of people, I've noticed, have this fear that if their sex drive goes down, it'll never come back up. That it will die. But your 'sex life', is alive. It was born with you and will live within you for as long as you breathe. However, that doesn't mean It will always give signs of life for the same things. It just may beat for different things. As you change and grow, so does the life of your sex. Your organs and bodies change with time and in order to develop a personal relationship with yourself and with your partner, you must accept the physical parts of yourself just as much as the emotional.

image source: google

On the other side of this concept, your 'Sexlife' [I believe] is the concept of intimacy exploration through another being. Some consider sex to be the easiest form of intimacy. Other's find it to be the hardest. I always wondered about the disconnect between those two opinions and why they are so contrary to each other. I think I've cracked it, or at least part of it.

I believe it's because our 'Sexlife' force that drives our physical desire for contact with another is separate from our 'sex life' which is the life in our sex organs. If you're sitting back wondering if the different capitalization in 'Sexlife' and 'sex life' is significant my answer is 100% yes. I capitalize the S in "Sexlife" to exhibit an emphasize on mind and soul connection. The two words are connected by an elimination of space which is a metaphor for the act of intimacy as a physical relationship vs an emotional one. The crave of intimacy must be accepted by our minds as much as our bodies and vice versa.

However, 'sex life' is lowercase to emphasize the relationship of our human sex organs having a life they want to live. I could consider each of my concepts as a 'mode' of sorts. Some people who fear intimacy avoid sex as to not allow the physical connection affect the brain, they might have a strong relationship with the 'Sexlife' mode. They might see sex as a gateway into their shame box, and have people see all their uglies. Some may have a great relationship with 'Sexlife' mode and see sex as a way to embody their divine humanness and connect with themselves and another at the same time. Those who see sex as the easiest form of intimacy may have a great relationship with the 'sex life' mode and see their organs as performers of pleasure without intimacy.

image source: google

I could debate this rhetoric for many hours, but that's not the point . The point is, we are different. And each and every part of us is alive and needs to be treated with emotions of its own.

It sounds convoluted and complicated but it's like meta emotions. Our feelings and senses have feelings and senses of their own that we need to consider and get to know better before accusing ourselves of being not good enough or that there is something wrong with us.

Sex can be a shameful topic and I want to release so many people from that stigma by discussing things that are uncomfortable, but we'll start with this.

for now.

[dmcalicornmascarasnake]

THE DOWNFALL OF WANTING KNOWLEDGE

The story about Adam and Eve can be interpreted in so many ways because the metaphors  and symbols used can have different interpretations with a different perspective and context. One interpretation that can be filtered out is the nature of human beings to try to understand everything and how this urge can lead to a harder and "less" happy life. The bite of the apple resembles how an event or information / the quest for the truth can change your perspective on everything and can take away your freedom/trust can represent the first stages of the  conscious, so the development of a child to a teenager in paradise and then on earth to adults. Full developed consciousness means responsibility. You consciously can alyse and reflect which actions lead to which outcome. So the urge of knowledge should lead to feeling responsible that is needed for a family system/society etc. to work. Moreover giving Adam the apple alias the truth means that if you give your knowledge to someone else it can change his perception which can lead in a drastic change of life circumstances and lifestyle. The story is a warning that you always have to critically think before you accept new knowledge, and when to give information to other people. Moreover, it represents  how mankind can be led in a certain direction, so called "planting a seed" . It explains how little information can grow to a tree can happen completely subconscious and when the fruit is there and you know what it is about/taste can lead to major changes in your behavior etc. which can be very dangerous. The temptations of the fruits of the subconscious are high because humans are curious but that means they can be manipulated very easily. The story of Adam and Eve teaches that not giving or presenting the full truth can lead to unexpected negative changes. In addition it can be seen how teenagers are easily influenced and that forbidden things interest them because as children they were protected from major consequences by their family but with the first glimpse of consciousness they are faced with them There is a switch of trust from the family to yourself. It is needed to have self trust in your perception and decision making in order to sustain a family or your tribe where you are in. It talks about how sexuality can change your life forever and the bliss of not having responsibility is gone. Sexuality is the key for interpersonal relationships and how you relate to the world. You have a much more conscious perception of what affects what, who and how. If  living for yourself in harmony with the universal energy like children do  is a representation of paradise and adulthood like earth You are aware of your own limitations and the loss of safety you had as a child. Responsibility supplements freedom and you have to know when you are ready. Adam and Eve were not ready because they did not know the consequences of sexual intimacy because high instinct with the first stages of consciousness can lead to unprepared and harder life. Our thirst for knowledge is often triggered by fear. The conscious knowledge we accumulated through our lifetime and the history of humankind is completely absolute and unnecessary which is the original fault of humans which led to their downfall and the constant search to get to paradise again. The biggest trigger is the fear of humans. They should look at the world through a different perspective. It seems like they have a problem with trusting nature also. The evidence shows it is much more effective than human thinking. It is interesting because the difference between human fear and animal fear seems like the concept of time and the future. If a human being builds something and knows how it works, it can create those things as long as there are ressources. It is a system which always functions similarly with similar conditions. Nature does have its principles that still are functioning today but the different forces of the system lead to different outcomes and the nature of humans are not built for fast adapting or surviving those drastic changes. The problem is not that human beings try to protect and foresee the future but the disintegration of nature leads to much more fear because it limits perspective and information observation. If humans would try to integrate themselves into nature and protect and support it, Human beings would reach the paradise state they instinctively are born with.

[tros-for-dinner]

May the Force of others be with you

[palimpsessed]

Hey. You post a lot of great stuff about Carry On. Can you talk about the biting in AWTWB. The Baz/Simon scenes.Trying to wrap my head around it to understand why Simon did that. Why he bites Baz and keeps biting. Bites his fangs through his cheek. Is it because Simon wants to be bitten? That he wants Baz so much and Baz can't be harmed? I'm really trying to understand it but . . . what do you think?

Anon, thank you for this ask, and also for liking whatever I'm doing on my blog.

Can I talk about the biting? You bet I can!

Why does Simon bite Baz? Is it because he wants to be bitten? In a word, yes! But of course, there's a lot more to it than that. And this went off in another direction than I thought it would, so I hope you can stick with me on this journey! Under the cut because it’s a bit long.

There is a motif running throughout the trilogy of love being a consuming force. So much of Simon and Baz's identities are tied up in hunger very early on: Baz, as a vampire, constantly craving blood; Simon, as the Humdrum, constantly sucking up magic; both of them starved of love and intimacy. There's also a lot of fire imagery, going all the way back to when they first met, and fire is another consuming force.

Simon and Baz are obsessed with each other. The only thing they think about is each other. ("Trying not to think about you…S'like trying not to think about an elephant that's standing on my chest.") They are consumed and they want to consume, and, at least in Simon's case, they want to be consumed.

In WS, Simon reflects on misunderstanding his feelings for Baz prior to eighth year, and the way he does it has always stuck out to me: "I thought about him all the time. I missed him so much in the summer. (I thought I was just lonely. I thought I was hungry. I thought I was bored.)" The second item on that list is what catches my attention. Simon missed Baz and he thought he was hungry. I think it says a lot about how Simon's love for Baz feels if he mistakes it for actual hunger.

In the biting scene you mentioned, Simon says to Baz: "If it were me, if I were you…I'd drain you fuckin' dry, Baz, and it still wouldn't be enough." That's intense. And it's absolutely Simon. We know how much hunger he's capable of; his hunger was so potent, it became a whole other being! I've long maintained that his hunger for magic is a metaphor for his hunger for love. Because Simon is so full of love, and just utterly bereft of people to give it to, and once he has people to love, he doesn't know how to do it without also hurting them. He's never had good relationship modeling. (He thinks Baz should know he loves him because of how many things he's killed for him.—He thinks about teaching Baz how to break someone's neck like it's a fun couples' activity.—He gets turned on by killing things and watching Baz kill, too.—Date night is helping Baz hunt down rats.) Simon is a mess. He wants to love so badly, but he just doesn't know how to do it. ("Is this what people do?")

Simon loves Baz so much, he can't fathom ever getting enough of him. Ever being able to consume enough of him. He can't stop biting and smelling and grabbing because he wants more, more, more. He fits his teeth over Baz's old scars because he needs to claim him—make his own mark on Baz, possess him.

Part of this, as you said, is the fact that Baz is a vampire. Baz can take the roughness (which is not to say that he should just because he can). Simon's fixation on Baz's vampirism, which used to play out as paranoia, has changed into a desire to be bitten. Simon is thinking about Baz's vampirism, thinking about draining Baz dry if he were the vampire, and Baz, the human.

The other part of this is that Simon is unfettered, but really only in the aggressive, physical sense. He's long hidden his desires behind aggression without realizing that's what he was doing. (In CO: "I just want to run him down and knock him over and figure it all out." In AWTWB: "I wanted to jump on you, I didn't really think past that.") He doesn't know how to be unfettered in the vulnerable, emotional sense, and that's what keeps him from being able to be intimate with Baz. ("I don't know how, Baz…To get enough.")

Simon desperately wants to have sex with Baz. Which is what he's trying to do in the biting scene, but all of his desires are warring for control, and he can't sort out what he wants, and what he should be doing in that moment, with Baz.

What this is all leading me to may be a bit off topic, but I think it's all tied up in Simon's head.

Simon doesn't know how to be gentle.

His hunger and his desire for Baz have never been gentle. It's aggression, it's violence, it's possession; it's a forest fire, it's not a hidden waterfall.

Simon has never learned how to be at peace. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Rainbow said she made Simon "fight of flight"—literally, he has wings! There's a reason that Simon couldn't handle the inaction at the beginning of CO and before the events of WS. There's a reason that Penelope thought that they were "being lulled" because there was no war actively being waged. There's a reason Penelope tells us in WS: "Lesson learned: Relaxation is the most insidious humdrum." These are characters who are so traumatized by childhoods being foot soldiers in a war waged by the adults they trusted, they don't know how to live without fighting! They don't know how to live in peace.

We all have "I can touch you less gently, but I won't love you less kindly" burned into our eyeballs by now, but let's move earlier in that conversation to what sparks this: "What if I asked you to be less kind to me?" —What if I asked you to be less kind to me?— Simon doesn't feel comfortable with Baz's kindness or gentleness, because it "makes me feel like I'm being turned inside out. Like I need to get away." Let's sit with this for a bit. Baz's loving touches make Simon want to run because they're kind and gentle and he doesn't know what to do with kind and gentle. His mind isn't programmed for kind and gentle.

It makes complete sense that Simon would show Baz affection in a way that Simon understands, considering, as I said before, that he hasn't had anyone in his life to show him a healthy way to do this. What does Simon most want from Baz? Love. What does Simon understand love to be? Consumption. He wants roughness and aggression, he wants the inferno, because these are things he understands.

Simon wants Baz's teeth, so he gives Baz his teeth.

This is how Simon feels comfortable. I made this post while processing my feelings about AWTWB. It talks about Simon trying to love Baz the way he wants to be loved, and Baz trying to love Simon the way he wants to be loved. They want to give each other everything, but they haven't actually communicated their needs to one another, and that's what keeps them from being able to work through their problems. It isn't until they voice their needs that they're able to be intimate. This is what I'm really trying to get at here.

"Is this what people do?" Simon asks, over and over again. When Simon was in therapy, he learned a technique to break up "life into bites you can swallow". He tells us he's doing this again in AWTWB "because [the future] is too terrifying. Too uncertain. There are parts of it that are too bright." —There are parts of it that are too bright.— Simon doesn't know how to be happy. He doesn't know how to cope with happiness. "Is this what people do when they're in love? Do they just keep touching and talking? And then what? Like what is it all leading to? I don't mean sex, I mean… If I knew what I meant, it wouldn't be so frightening." When Simon is having all these overwhelming feelings about his future with Baz, they're on the Tube, and Simon sees a guy giving him and Baz "a dirty look". He interrupts his introspective on therapy to tell us that he wants the guy to cause trouble "because I would dearly love to punch something right now. That's a decision I could wrap my brain around." He can wrap his brain around punching someone, but not around a bright future with the man he loves.

Simon doesn't know how to be at peace. He doesn't know how to be in love. He doesn't know how to be happy. I think this is what we're seeing at play when he bites Baz. He wants something so badly, but he doesn't know what it is, can't articulate it, can't get at it. In a way, when he bites Baz, Simon is trying to ask for what he wants, without words, and without really knowing what it is that he does want.

He can't figure out how to let himself be happy and feel good while being happy. He can't stand gentleness, or softness. In his head, he can't give that to Baz, because he can't handle it himself.

So, yes, Simon bites Baz because he wants to be bitten. And he bites Baz because he knows Baz can handle it. And he bites Baz because there's an emptiness inside of him that he's still trying to fill, and he doesn't understand how to do that. Someday, he will fill it. He and Baz are going to figure that out together.

I hope this makes sense. With your indulgence, Anon, I'm going to tag in @theflyingpeach who is all around brilliant, and I know has their own thoughts about this scene (and demon Simon 👀👀👀) that I would like to see more of. 🥰

A follow up to this ask can be found here.

Further reading on the relationship between consumption, food, and love compiled here.

[havenoffandoms]

Hey congrats on 900 followers! Would I be able to request the touch starved prompt from your list with the pairing Aiden/Lambert please? Love all your writing!

Hello!! Thanks for requesting this prompt and this pairing! I’ve been on a right Lambden kick recently, so I felt inspired. I hope you like it! 

Prompt 13: Touch-Starved

Pairing: Aiden x Lambert

Warnings: None

Prompt List

Lambert was apprehensive about many things concerning Aiden when the two started travelling together. Being stabbed to death in his sleep comes to mind, or having Aiden go all batshit crazy if Lambert dared to beat him at Gwent. Lambert has heard many rumours about Cat witchers in his long life. Cats are batshit crazy. Cats are emotionally volatile. Cats are backstabbing sons of bitches… literally and metaphorically. Cats are bad. Cats are evil, etc, etc. All these rumours circulated in Kaer Morhen long before Lambert even set foot in that ramshackle castle. He was too young to have witnessed the Tournament, but he heard the older witchers talk. Later in his life, when only a handful of wolf witchers were left after the sacking, Eskel gave Lambert a more detailed account of the Tournament.

“The Cats betrayed us, went on a rampage. Killed many wolf witchers in the process. Geralt and I lost many friends that day,” Eskel told him one evening, when the oldest surviving wolf was too far in his cup to notice that he was oversharing. “Radowit’s court mage Astrogarus promised the Cats monopoly on killing monsters within Kaedwen in exchange for attacking the Wolves during the tournament. Turns out Radowit was a backstabbing motherfucker himself. He ordered his soldiers to shoot all of the remaining witchers of both schools in the arena.”

“Lemme guess,” Lambert spoke, his own speech slightly slurred, “pretty boy saved the day?” 

Eskel shook his head. “Fled. Mousesack helped him escape the massacre. Poor bastard never forgave himself for abandonin’ our brothers, but what choice did he have?”

Don’t get Lambert wrong. He’s not saying that Aiden is harmless, far from it. The guy’s lethal with his swords, deadly with a pair of daggers, not to mention a stealthy and clever thief. Aiden is mercurial, hot-tempered and a bit feral when he wants to be, and his morals are at best dubious. Whereas wolf witchers had their emotions beaten out of them at a young age, cat witchers feel too much, too strongly. Lambert’s witnessed Aiden flip tables when peasants beat him at Gwent, but he’s also witnessed the Cat shed a tear after bringing the news to a mother that her son did not survive the ghoul attack two villages down the road. 

Lambert was apprehensive about many things concerning Aiden when the two started travelling together, but the Cat had never ceased to surprise him. The most unexpected trait Aiden has displayed to date is his insatiable need for physical contact. It’s not like Lambert hates being touched - he’s only human, albeit a mutated one, but still human. He enjoys a hug as much as the next person, especially when said hug comes from one of his brothers (or, dare he say, Vesemir) at the end of a long and difficult year on the Path. Lambert has also never begrudged a bed partner a post-coital cuddle session. Aiden’s need for physical contact is… on a whole different level. 

The first time it happened, Lambert almost shoved the Cat off him and sent him packing, until he realised that Aiden was not only hugging him, but clinging onto him. His sharp nails were digging in the soft material of Lambert’s shirt, the fabric creaking in protest under the firm grip. When Lambert looked down, he noticed the pinched eyebrows and tears trailing down Aiden’s face. It wasn’t until a broken sob pushed past the Cat’s lips that Lambert reluctantly returned the embrace, arms wound tightly around Aiden’s trembling body. Aiden eventually settled in the safety of Lambert’s arms, his features softening as he sank back into a peaceful slumber. 

Neither mentioned the previous evening’s impromptu cuddling session, but from that moment one, it was like someone had flicked a switch. Aiden came up with every possible fucking excuse to touch Lambert. Their hands would always accidentally graze each other when they packed up camp, or tacked up the horses. Aiden would bump shoulders with him when they were travelling on foot. If they sat next to one another in a tavern, Aiden would press his leg against Lambert’s, and if they were facing each other, a tentative foot would gently nudge Lambert’s shin and linger there. It’s not like Aiden was trying to hide his intentions, either. They rarely paid for two rooms anymore, because even if they did, Aiden would always end up in Lambert’s bed anyway, arms wound around Lambert’s body like a koala clinging to its mother.

Lambert doesn’t hate Aiden’s need for physical proximity, he’s just… confused by it. Aiden rarely takes any lovers to bed, even though he clearly craves physical intimacy. Lambert is more than happy to cuddle with Aiden, especially when they are forced to sleep under the stars and the early autumn frosts begin to settle over the region. It saves them from lighting a campfire, which may attract the wrong kind of attention to them. That’s all that’s ever transpired between the two, though… cuddling. Lambert enjoys the cuddling as much as Aiden does, but for Aiden it seems to be about more than mere enjoyment. The Cat simply refuses to go without physical intimacy which at times can be… alright, it can feel overbearing, but Lambert’s not about to complain, not when most humans turn away from him in disgust and contempt when he tries to chat them up. 

Over the course of the next few weeks, Aiden almost develops a form of separation anxiety. He refuses to let Lambert out of his sight, going so far as to follow the man everywhere, and that’s the moment when Lambert snaps. 

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” he asks, his tone hiding none of the irritation he feels at being tailed by this overgrown tomcat. Aiden stops dead in his tracks, his eyes growing wide at Lambert’s words. 

“Huh?” 

“You’ve been following me since this morning… I have errands to run and it’s hard to do that when you’re breathing down my neck!”

Lambert instantly regrets his words the minute they leave his mouth. Aiden’s shoulders visibly sag at Lambert’s comment, his content expression melting into something sadder and the sight tugs at the wolf’s heartstrings in all the wrong ways. Aiden averts Lambert’s eyes shyly, the tip of his ears turning a pretty shade of pink as embarrassment washes over him. Lambert heaves a sigh. Way to act like a fucking dick. 

“Sorry, Aiden. I… I didn’t mean to sound like an ass, but-”

“It’s alright, I… I knew this moment would come eventually.”

“What are you talking about?” Lambert asks, a confused frown etched on his face. Aiden doesn’t look at him when he replies in a voice far too small to belong to the lethal, cocky witcher Lambert has come to know over the past few months. 

“You’re gonna ask me to leave for good. I get it. I… I’ll go back to the room and pack my things.” 

As Aiden turns around to leave, Lambert’s hand shoots out and grabs a hold of Aiden’s wrist. Before Lambert’s brain has a chance to catch up, he finds himself pulling Aiden into a nearby alley, away from prying eyes of judgemental humans meandering the stalls of the midweek market. Aiden looks so unsure now, so vulnerable like this, and it makes Lambert want to wrap the Cat up in warm blankets and cuddle him and forget the world for a while. Instead, he settles on pressing Aiden’s back against the wall and draping himself around the Cat witcher as much as he can. 

“That’s not what I meant,” Lambert breathes in the air pocket between them as he locks eyes with Aiden, “you’ve just been… especially clingy recently. Are you sure you’re alright?”

Aiden averts his eyes once again, but Lambert is quick to grip the other man’s chin and force Aiden to meet his gaze. Even that simple touch pulls a small hiss from Aiden, whose eyes flutter shut as he relishes in the feeling of Lambert touching him anywhere. Lambert purses his lips, eager for an answer. 

“Aiden-”

“Winter is around the corner,” Aiden whispers, his tongue darting out to lick his suddenly dry lips. Lambert’s frown deepens. 

“And?”

His question is met with a pointed eye roll from Aiden. 

“And… wolves return to their dens for winter, don’t they? I was just… enjoying the last few weeks in your company before you leave and never come back.”

As the final piece of the puzzle slots into place, understanding dawns on Lambert. He pulls away from Aiden and the small whimper the loss of contact triggers does not go unnoticed. Something old and fragile aches in Lambert’s chest as the meaning of Aiden’s words sink in. Aiden isn’t just worried about being separated from Lambert for a few months, but he’s worried that Lambert will never come back.The wolf links his fingers with his Cat’s, squeezing softly as he leans into Aiden’s space and rubs his bearded cheek against Aiden’s jawline. The latter quickly melts under the soft ministrations, the soft content rumble deepening into a continuous purr as Lambert nuzzles the crook of Aiden’s neck. 

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” 

“Yeah, right,” Aiden snorts in response, “cause you’re so good with feelings and shit.”

“Not everyone’s a sappy sentimental bitch like you are,” Lambert teases gently, earning himself a half-hearted slap up the back of the head. “I don’t have to go back to Kaer Morhen this winter.”

Aiden tenses, his soft purring stopping abruptly as he takes in Lambert’s words. Lambert continues to rub his cheek against Aiden’s jaw, his neck, his cheek… wherever he can reach, the action meant to soothe the brewing storm in Aiden’s mind.

“It’s your home,” Aiden offers weakly, “I don’t want… I… it’s your home.” 

“I can send a letter to the old man. Let him know I’m alive. We could find a den somewhere else… an attic somewhere, or an abandoned castle.” Lambert nuzzles the spot right behind Aiden’s ear, earning a pleased hum from the Cat. “Or you could come with me.”

“Sure. Cause that’s gonna end well…” 

“That’s settled then. I’m spending winter with you.”

Aiden pushes Lambert away, their eyes meeting once again but this time, Aiden searches for any trace of a lie in Lambert’s amber gaze. He finds none, because Lambert is one hundred percent honest in his offer. He would ditch Vesemir, Geralt and Eskel for a year to spend it with Aiden… and the thought should scare him more than it does, truthfully. He’s only known the Cat for a few months, and yet… well, maybe Lambert was dreading the winter as well. How about that? It’s not like he felt equally anxious about leaving Aiden, it’s just… fuck off. 

“You mean that?” 

“Mhm. Fair warning… I hate the cold. If I’m spending the winter with you, you’ll have to find a way to keep me warm or I will bite your head off.” 

In Aiden’s defence, he does keep Lambert warm all winter long. Their cuddling finally turns into something more, and from the moment Lambert and Aiden cross that fateful line there is no going back. Aiden becomes insatiable, always seeking Lambert’s body in some shape or form, never letting the wolf out of his sight again.  Lambert may have been apprehensive about many things concerning Aiden when the two started travelling together, but it turns out that all his worries were for nothing. Turns out Cat witchers are still crazy, and feral, and mercurial… a tad possessive as well, something Lambert doesn’t hate... but they’re also the cuddliest sons of bitches on the Continent. 

Lambert can live with that, he thinks. 

Request a prompt.

[adamworu]

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!

[captain039]

PART 2

Made for you

Connor x omega!reader

Warnings: ABO, depression and anxiety, intimacy, sexual, police things, swearing, daddy dom and little girl.

Previous chapter <-

Connor had avoided you, you knew it from the moment you walked in the station he was gone. It hurt watching him busy himself with others and other things. After what had happened, when he confessed he wanted to take care of you. You didn’t know what to think, was he trying to open up a romantic relationship? Or was he being a overly concerned friend. Your mind bat and balled with ideas and you couldn’t get a break. You never realised how much you needed till now, you were lonely, you were wanting, wanting that presence by your side to make you feel safe and calm again. You forced feelings away, you didn’t want to overthink again and again till it tore you inside to out. You were low on energy and mood by the end of the day and ready for bed. You shut down your screen and headed to out. You were stopped along the way, Reed stepping in front of you.

“What’s wrong?” He asked trying to hold back his smirk.

“Nothing” you sighed not wanting to deal with him.

“You’ve been moping around the last two days, your little robot friends avoiding you, so what’s happened?” You wanted to punch his stupid face as he spoke.

“An omega shouldn’t be lonely” there it was, his stupid grin and advance to get you in his pants.

“Need someone to take care of you?” He grinned. You backed up a bit at he leant in. You jolted slightly when you ran into someone. You glanced back seeing Connor behind you. He had a frown on his face as he stared at Reed. You glanced between the two before turning to Connor.

“Let’s go?” You said quietly and Connor looked to you, his face softened as you nodded and walked to the door ignoring Reed. You stood outside and looked to the darkening sky.

“I’m sorry detective” Connor broke the silence.

“I was trying to determine a way to handle these feelings” he spoke quietly.

“Handling feelings is hard” you said and he nodded.

“It is” he sighed.

“I don’t have any good approach for this situation” he added turning to you. You turned to him also giving him your attention.

“This situation?” You asked softly. What was the situation.

“You- you avoided me for two days Con” you sighed.

“I know you had to determine things, but you did leave me in a mess” you admitted. His eyes glazed over slightly a pained look in them.

“I’m confused” you sighed.

“I don’t think you know what taking care of me would mean” you added heart clenching.

“Me specifically is- a messy bedroom that had bombs thrown in it and then more added mess” you mumbled off, he tilted his head slightly at your metaphor. He stepped closer as you watched the ground with sudden interest. You froze when a forehead met yours. Connor had leant down to lean against you gently.

“Connor?” You questioned lifting your head. He leant back slightly looking you in the eyes. His LED swirled yellow slowly like he was calculating. You stepped back and he frowned at your movement.

“I want someone to take care of me” you muttered honestly.

“I can” Connor spoke quickly and you flushed.

“Please, let me” he lifted up his hand and you stared at it for a moment. You sighed lifting your hand and pressing it to his, he stared at it like he didn’t expect you too almost. He had a soft smile on his face as he looked back to you with bright eyes. You went to pull back but he intertwined your fingers and tugged you closer. You kept your eyes to the ground but let him hold you. You nuzzled into his shoulder slightly, eyes closed from embarrassment. You could smell the same scent from the park, the calming alpha scent, it was him who did it. You smiled wrapping your arms around him finally. Your mind buzzed and your heart hammered in your chest. You felt butterflies in your stomach and hoped nobody would come out of the station or down the street. You felt safe and comfortable there though.

“Allow me to drive you home, detective” Connor finally spoke, voice quiet in your ear. You let out a soft laugh and nodded stepping apart from him. You handed him your keys and he smiled taking them.

It was nice to have someone drive you around, you looked at the lights shining the night, the light rain that started to patter down.

You got to your house too quickly it seems as Connor pulled into your driveway. You got out as did Connor, he locked your car before going to your door with you. You smiled slightly as he opened your door and stood waiting for you to go inside. You shook your head slightly as you walked in, you laid your things on the table as Connor closed the door. You stood by your table as Connor laid your keys down by your things and stood also. You grew awkward inside wondering what to say or do, what were you to him now?

“What-“ you stopped your words but Connor had already given you his attention.

“What are we- this?” You struggled with how to put it as you gestured between you and him.

“I’m not good with, this” you added quietly staring at the table embarrassed. You heard Connor move and tensed when he stood right by you. You looked to him, his brown eyes looking to you. You wanted to say something, have some form of written assignment that ‘this’ would require you to do. You were startled though when lips met yours. You were shocked as he went to pull away but you chased him. Connor smiled as you kissed him back. You let your hands rest on his chest, slightly gripping his jacket. You were the one to settle back on your feet and pull back. Your face were no doubt flushed as you looked at his chest and avoided his eyes. You came closer and rested your forehead against his chest in order to hide yourself almost. Connor embraced it, he wrapped his arms around you gently and pressed his lips to your head.

“You should get some rest detective” he spoke and all you did was nod.

“Goodnight” he chuckled lightly and you stepped back looking to him again. You looked at his face, it was so human, a light smile on his face, features relaxed and eyes dazed slightly.

“Goodnight Connor” you said and he smiled a little more. He kissed you again catching you by surprise before he left for the door.

As the door closed you stood a little processing, heart pounding and mind suddenly blank. You had a smile on your face and your body was warm.