Hello again, after a very long absence. I'm only back to say that I've given up. And to vent. I've grown so apathetic over this thing during the time that, no matter how petty it is, I'm content with being one of those "500" people that just complain about a thing in the wiki and do not do anything to change it. This was the reason why it took me so long to be done with it. There was always this little voice in my head telling me to stick to my word. But after several attempts to give the reply I promised during the past few months, and several thousands words later, I realized that I'm putting a lot of sustained but intermittent effort into a monumental waste of time. So many times I logged in, wrote a huge post (which I see is far from unusual around here) but couldn't get myself to click submit. Because writing a reply felt like a chore and there was a lot of vitriol behind that click, especially in the beginning. Traces of which linger in this "resignation letter" too, as you can notice. I tried to be but I can't be charitable.
Because after I've completed my crawl through the thread Mr. Tines brought up and a lot more things became clear to me. But most clear in the sense that, as I pointed out initially, quite a lot of tidbits in that article form not so much an analysis and interpretation of the relationship Shinji and Asuka have, as they do a misrepresentation meant to make them fit a certain preconceived idea. That very thread is the result of
nothing other than shipping debates (favourite "couples" discussion). The bias is undeniable. It was pretty obvious from the start but now it reached "the sky is blue and water is wet" levels of obvious. The fact that I even had to argue about these things was so disheartening because at its worst, so much of this arguing would be, plain and simple, arguing against some random poster's fanfic passed off as the real deal. When it wouldn't be arguing semantics and other such anal meanderings, because "possible pairing" and "couple" are two different things, right? Why do I even have to point out this fact? I'm so sick of hearing my own thoughts about it.
Sure, some interesting interpretations and analyses were made. With varying degrees I agree with some and disagree with others. But there was just so much dubious stuff brought up, even almost going as far as replacing the original with something that I cannot describe as anything but a fan edit (if "bullshit" is not to your liking). I'm just calling it what it isー
Stuff like pulling lines out of the original context and putting them in another (read: script rewriting), giving birth to a chimera that lives only to feed a blatant misrepresentation of the show that supports a certain preference e.g. no,
that is not what Shinji wishes for at all. Or stuff like blatantly false portrayals of details in scenes used to justify, yet again, not an interpretation of the show but a convenient train of thought that builds a misrepresentation of Evangelion's narrative e.g. no, Asuka did not
wear just a towel out of the shower in that scene. This is of course a minor but pretty interesting happening, as it was
plainly contradicted just a couple of posts later, only for this to go by not only
entirely "unnoticed" as the discussion continued, but also fatter in lies, when a fan got to pretend he's the sound director for the episode (the volume and texture of that track even changes when Shinji pulls out his headphones for fuck's sake). Textual criticism is one thing. Pretending you're writer and director for the series, that is something else entirely.
And of course, other erroneous tidbits like treating ambiguous things as if they're certain and cherry-picking the "pros" while brushing aside the "cons". Little by little, the snowball grew bigger. A lot of "support" for many of the points brought up comes not necessarily from the series, or Revival of Evangelion (mainly End of Evangelion), the edit or continuity upon which most of these arguments are supposedly founded, but from the yessing of a "majority". Which, quite ironically, just so happened to be an oft repeated "argument". As was a hefty dose of circular reasoning. Surprisingly many arguments implicitly started
from the premise that somehow Evangelion is Shinji and Asuka's
love story.
Soluzar and
Reichu outright admit that. And the justification is, how to put it, explicitly unstated? Or should I say, ironically,
too deep for anyone who begs to differ on this "axiom"? For example,
even one of the most ambiguous and controversial scenes in the franchise is blatantly "obvious" - Shinji and Asuka end up together on the beach precisely because their future lies together and that they are destined, in a sense, to also seek that happiness together by the threads of fate that binds them. It's so simple isn't it? Because Asuka is Shinji's SO, she ends up with him on the beach, and Asuka is Shinji's SO because she ends up with him on the beach! Why is that hard to swallow? Because the outcome is
predetermined. It's self-validating but meaningless. It's not hard to reach a conclusion when you embed it in the premise.
Again, there's a difference between analyzing what is given to reach a conclusion, and refitting that to match your interpretation. I saw the latter more often than the former.
It's a headache. As Kendrix pointed out, I've stepped inside the LAS nest, and right or wrong, I just don't have the time and energy to invest into this. Nor do I have the will to overcome this numerical deficiency. Add on top of it the fact that what I went into expecting to be an edit job that would tone certain things down and rewrite the article in a more neutral language grew into me having to write a rebuttal article and whatnot and I... I don't see the point to be honest. I've lost the point at some point along the way. It's not worth the trouble. If I have to invest so much effort into something I'd rather do it on my own terms, like, on some blog or some shit.
With that said, about my editor account, you could as well deactivate it because I'm not going going to be anywhere near the vicinity of the evawiki in the near or far future. I apologize for wasting your time, and I regret wasting mine. This ended up being just a slowly burned, and thoroughly fruitless knee jerk reaction.