Taken from the Eva community on Reddit It sounded intriguing so I posted it here:

Could these films be just another alternate reality explored in Instrumentality
What are your thoughts on this?
Is it at all possible?
or is Anno messing with everyone again




Link to Reddit post:
http://www.reddit.com/r/evangelion/comments/1pn0ac/what_if_rebuild_is_simply_another_alternate/

Sequel theory threads have discussed this possibility before. Of course, we won't know for sure until Final is out.

SSD, he's not talking about the Sequel theory. He's talking about what if Rebuild is occurring in EoE Instrumentality in the same way that AU is.

Personally, dataprime, the problem is that while I think solipsism is interesting to ponder, it is ultimately irrelevant because even if it were true, we don't have a reliable way of telling if it is (ie., we can't know whether or not we are all brains in a vat); and since we don't have evidence for it, we might as well assume that it isn't and get on with the in-universe scenarios.

monitoradiation wrote:SSD, he's not talking about the Sequel theory.

SSD didn't say so. She said that this idea has been discussed before in a few threads - mostly sequel theory threads.

qu4d wrote:SSD didn't say so. She said that this idea has been discussed before in a few threads - mostly sequel theory threads.

You're correct - I was too hasty. SSD, my apologies.

OP: We don't know, and in all likelihood won't know until FINAL actually comes out. Hell, we might not know then, since Anno could choose to make everything a giant clusterfuck and force us to spend several months analyzing this crap.

monitoradiation wrote:while I think solipsism is interesting to ponder, it is ultimately irrelevant because even if it were true, we don't have a reliable way of telling if it is

I think it's become a boring cliche, to be honest. You just KNOW that any time a discussion of reality comes up, SOMEbody will mention "what if we're all in the Matrix?" or something similar. It's become just as common in fiction discussions. Take just about anything, and someone will propose that "it's all really a dream" or some such bullshit, as if they were blowing your mind and not just taking a page from the textbook of narrative laziness.

Reichu wrote:"what if we're all in the Matrix?" or something similar.

That was EoTV; and also .

Also, obligatory link -- http://www.simulation-argument.com/

Mr. Tines wrote:That was EoTV

By "we're all in the Matrix", I mean those people who are all, "reality isn't real; it's just a simulation" or some shit. EoTV never (AFAIK) suggests such a thing. Unless this is part of the Tines/NemZ-ian perspective, in which case no comment.

Reichu wrote:part of the Tines/NemZ-ian perspective

Yes, that big blue consensus scape in the noosphere where we leave the characters to their posthuman endeavours.

Mr. Tines wrote:Yes, that big blue consensus scape in the noosphere where we leave the characters to their posthuman endeavours.

Never ceases to amaze how much you two push that view as if it's not a very minority opinion. ;p (Showing a scrap of self-awareness about the fact that one peddles a pet theory is not a bad thing.)

Mr. Tines wrote:Also, obligatory link -- http://www.simulation-argument.com/

I didn't go to the link because I'm on a cellphone. But if I may assume that the argument is that we are by probability living in a simulation because of the infinite (or nearly infinite) amount of simulations that will have occurred since the invention of simulated worlds...

Ugh. I have a big bone to pick with the simulation argument overall - the main one being that it seems to be employing probabilistic abductive reasoning and then asserting the premise as true without demonstrating it.

Note: If i'm misrepresenting the argument in the link, I apologize.

Where'd your watch go, Shinji?

If you read the Rebuild FAQs, you can see that there is a lot "references" from HIP, but Anno don't let us know for sure if it is another reality or just some trolling =/

If it is I expect Anno will never give the fans a definite answer. Cause why give the fans what they think they want? It's more fun to be unexpected.

Gendo'sPapa wrote:If it is I expect Anno will never give the fans a definite answer. Cause why give the fans what they think they want? It's more fun to be unexpected.

If anything, Anno will dangle more distracting and enticing "hints" that seem to indicate either sequel hypothesis or dream-sequence hypothesis.

To make things worse, most likely he will make it so that to dispel these will require in-depth knowledge of specific lines by specific characters, accounting for context. Most people will go for the seemingly easy (but likely incorrect) interpretation of sequel/dream hypothesis, making our lives forever difficult due to the overflow of Youtube videos on how the biggest secret to Rebuild is the sequel/dream hypothesis....

I can already see it...

How is it a secret? The series and the movies both inform the viewer immediately that nothing after the first scene is "real". This is the key to the subtle truths that Evangelion delves into, beyond matters of depression and interpersonal relationships.

Shinji dies seconds after he first appears on screen in both continuities. Full stop. His soul has transmigrated. The "Figure of Rei" is the same psychopomp everyone else sees. From one moment to the next he retains his school uniform because he thinks of this as part of his essential self, but his wristwatch vanishes. This transition is accompanied by the translucent, ghostly figure of a psychopomp that pulls people's souls out of their bodies and the flight of a flock of birds, symbolizing transcendence.

The essential thing here is not to stop at the realization that it's all a "dream". Because none of it is real, and yet it all actually happens. It exists in a third state that is neither real nor unreal for which there is no name. Or as the poet put it:

"Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me."

Through the understanding that Evangelion is an illusion is to unravel the meaning of the official English titles.

Shinji is alone, because he is in a dream, yet he is not alone because he is part of the illusion and the illusion is real to him. Dreamer and dream.

Shinji can advance, yet he cannot because he is dreaming, and his reality is shaped by subconscious, which will not let him move forward until he has mastered it. He denies his shadow, so his shadow comes to life, bends reality (editing the very fabric of the universe to insert a new track on his music player) and comes to life in a jet black monster version of the Eva, which eats his new friend and sours all his relationships. Bardiel is Shinji's shadow. It is an Eva that corrupts and destroys, not figuratively but literally as a possessive evil spirit.

He can redo, but cannot, because he never did in the first place. His mind refuses to reconcile the paradox. He is on the edge of lucidity, his whole being screaming at him that he's in a dream and he needs to wake up, but he refuses and delves deeper into the illusion, solidifying it and wallowing in his punishment.

"Evangelion is all a dream" isn't some half-assed TVTropes joke about a snow globe or the main character being in a coma or something. It's not lazy or half baked because it's supported by the text and relevant to the deeper, mystical themes hiding under the surface meanings.

"Eva is a story that repeats"- Anno

"Hell is repetition-" Stephen King

Ultimately, the strong, obvious hints that Eva is unreal are targeted at the audience's obsessive need to quantify and "explain" it and figure out what it "means" (implying that pursuit can end in a singular answer, a specific, quantifiable, provable, falsifiable Grand Meaning of Evangelion or What Anno Really Means or whatever you choose to call it).

Through his art, Anno is coopting your internal thought processes to satirize your own thought processes by forcing you to argue that a work of fiction is somehow "true" in some way.

He has taken control of your mind. He is a sorcerer.

Chuckman wrote:-snip-

I think I love you.

Reichu wrote:I think it's become a boring cliche, to be honest.

When I say that solipsism "is interesting to ponder", I'm pulling punches and giving the cliche respect that it likely doesn't deserve. What I really mean is that it's tiresome, insipid, and pedestrian, lol. Though I'd love it for someone to come along and shake up the cliche a little bit and show us how it can still be done to great effect...

Personally, I think Chuckman is the dream, because only a figment of one's own imagination could unironically criticize their obsessive need to formulate a Grand Theory of Evangelion by presenting a Grand Theory of Evangelion.

Just because I take the show/films to have a message doesn't mean I agree with that message. Frankly I think Eva gets hyperbolic with the whole "go outside you hug pillow humping losers" subtext and Anno's espoused views in line with that subtext are reactionary at best, as I've said before.

I do think that life is a dream. But you still gotta row, row, row your boat.

I hate irony. Irony is so pervasive on the internet that it has become the harbinger of a culture of total detachment out of fear of being criticized for being too involved or serious about something. As the poet also wrote:

"Let me live deep while I live..."

Alternately, Ecclesiastes 9:10:

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

What's most of interest to me in all this is the twisting, relentlessly complex way Eva asks its audience, "Why do you insist on treating this work of fiction as if it is a historical document?"

Eva is a work that looks back at its audience. Literally, in EoE with the live action scenes of a film audience. The abyss gazes also.