User-submitted articles/papers?

[cyharding]

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, so bear with me. I have an idea for the site and it involves creating a space where users can submit articles of a more academic nature in dealing with Eva. In Japan, there have been papers on the series in their academic publications. There is even a description of an anthology of these articles in volume eight of the Eva manga. Here in the West, the only example I can recall is in Susan Napier's book on anime, and there isn't much devoted to it.

I think that those who would be willing to to take the time to write a good paper should have the place to do so. The topics on these papers can cover a range of disiplines like literature, film, sociology, etc... I don't expect dissertations or anything like that, but I would like to see something thicker than fanwanking.

So, good or bad idea? I'm not certain what it would take to get this acomplished, so I leave it to the good people on this forum to decide its fate.

[Ornette]

There was talk last year when the site was getting organized to allow papers to be submitted and entered into the wiki in a protected area, which allows other parts of the wiki to link to them (or sections), but I it hasn't been implemented yet, although a projected area and a special wiki user group should suffice for the submission at least.

Oh also, and unlike the encyclopedia part of the wiki, it wouldn't be licensed under the free doc license, it would by copyright by the submitter.

[Reichu]

The creation of an "essays" section was assumed on the integration of evamonkey.com -- which still hasn't happened... -- so I'm entirely open to this. Submissions would need to be approved, so a "review committee" of sorts would need to be organized.

[cyharding]

It is nice to hear that something like this would be considered. As I stated before, I don't exactly know how an essays section would be set up (I'm a little bit behind the times dealing with computer programs). But if this can happen, I'm more than in. And Reichu, I do agree that a review board would need to be set up for this to work. People with different academic backgrounds and disiplines would be for the best. And thank you for your responses.

[UrsusArctos]

We can't create anything so formally academic, but we can create a review committee that knows its stuff. "From different academic disciplines" is neither possible nor relevant to the subject we're dealing with.

[V]

"It is not only possible, it is essential" *cough* graduate student with philosophy minor *cough*....

[cyharding]

I was thinking that because people take up different subjects for the careers that they want, there would be an opportunity to pool people from these subjects together since nobody can know everything. If I take myself for example, my knowledge is more in literature, history and to a limited extent, science fiction and its relationship to pop culture. However, I don't know Japanese or anything about psychology or sociology or film studies. For this to work, there would have to people who know these subjects. I hope I made myself clearer on this.

[Dr. Nick]

I think this is a horrible idea, but then again, I've been conditioned to think so by Dennis Redmond's academic take on Eva.

[Reichu]

If he tried to submit his paper, I'd probably just go, "Hahaha-- NO."

We just have to sieve out the nonsense, and we'll be fine. There's plenty of perfectly reasonable things that can be written, and we can be absolutely opinionated and subjective about what makes the cut and what doesn't.

[cyharding]

Who is this Dennis Redmond? Or is it best not to know?

[Ornette]

Yeah. http://www.evageeks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1584

[Eva Yojimbo]

We just have to sieve out the nonsense, and we'll be fine. There's plenty of perfectly reasonable things that can be written, and we can be absolutely opinionated and subjective about what makes the cut and what doesn't.

Ya know, as radically skewered as Redmond's essays were I think they actually exhibit an important aspect of NGE in how what it means to any one person will/can differ entirely based on one's perception - which is an important theme of the series itself. For me, I'd say submit practically anything with a warning that these are in no way objectively insightful analyses into the series and for one's personal interest/entertainment only. Because I find there are such takes on the series that are genuinely insightful (Hiroki Azuma's for instance).

[V]

I don't care what one fan's crazed opinions are and no, a central theme of the series is not "we can make up any interpretation and its all of equal value"

The entire concept behind "making one guide/commentary/fansite" to Eva is in order to look for the correct answers, and there is such a thing as a wrong answer.

I don't need to read through a crazed fanboy's essay on why Rei has deep emotional resonance and maybe we're not even here right now; that isn't what this series was about.

[BobBQ]

And what if, say, a fan collars Anno at the next Otakon and Anno says the whole thing is a pretentious lash-out at his ex-peers that he made up on the fly by stringing together chunks of obsolete psychology and random religious symbols?

Where's your One True Interpretation going to be then?

[V]

....if Anno says that something "has no inherent meaning within the show it was just cool"....then it simply has no meaning.

For example, Anno has openly said that "we only picked specifically the name "Evangelion" because it sounded cool"...thus while there is some religious connection (particularly with "Eva = Eve" from Adam), those essay-length analysis things of "how calling it "Evangelion" fits into mythology"....are simply baseless.

By all means, its nice to make connections and "interpretations", but a major failure I feel of fandom in Eva up to this point is to blur the line between "interpretation" and "what was actually happening".

To use a LOTR analogy: Balrogs. There IS debate over exactly how and what they are manifested, but Tolkien did say they're basically fallen Angels. By all means there is room for "interpretation" within the decriptions which Tolkien has layed out, but general concept is only one thing.

Someone might right a rather interesting essay on how "Balrogs are like representations of demons in ancient Persian mythology". Now, Tolkien didn't base the Balrogs on that, and the connection was not intended by the author. In fact, he might have just said "I made up a generic demonic image and I wasn't even thinking of specific Judeo-Christian ones"

****more to the point; there isn't "ONE true theme of Evangelion as a whole", you misunderstand. There IS "one right thing" about each character and theme.

In short, I think those "essays about how Rei is really this existential metaphor and yeah this theory sounds batty but hey we're all entitled to our own solipsistic opinion" are simply wrong.....there WAS one intended thing about say, "Asuka is meant to represent Narcissistic Personality Disorder Type B", etc.

You see, I think for two long its been broken into the dichotomy of "either all of our hours of research into obscure jewish mysticism and existentialism are entirely accurate down to the tiniest degree....or, the series has no meaning whatsoever and they simply made it up"

Rather, I think they did think through quite a bit of the series....within reason. By which I mean I seriously doubt they sat down and read through tomes of existentialism and fully read the Book of Enoch and such. But does it REALLY matter? No, because it doesn't affect the series central themes, which were always more about Psychology then raw Existentialism. If anything, the end of the series has Shinji rejecting such existentialist stuff and affirming that "this felt real while I was there so I'll go back even if it hurts"

So I seriously don't think Anno is going to declare that literally the entire series was based on nothing. But if he turns around and says "The Chamber of Guf thing sounded cool but we didn't really think that one through"....I both wouldn't be surprised and wouldn't really mind, and further....how the heck would that affect the series themes and meanings?

I mean "well turns out the CHamber of Guf thing was just fluff, so forget that the psychological character drama of Shinji and Asuka ever happened at all"

Anno's been doing pretty good so far and I disagree with little he has revealed.

[UrsusArctos]

Hmm? V, you need to be a little more explicit with your Balrogs.

And leave aside any ideas of "ZOMG HURRR REVENGE", how much of NGE is there to look cool and how much has meaning is up to the fans themselves. The line between intended meaning and madness is as thin as it is blurred.

[V]

yes, it is blurry and often we are unable to tell just how far they thought out everything, and which parts simply have no intended meaning. Fuzzy.

[Ornette]

I don't know what you're ranting about, an individual writing something about Eva and submitting it to the site for review, or Dennis Redmond?

[Eva Yojimbo]

I don't care what one fan's crazed opinions are and no, a central theme of the series is not "we can make up any interpretation and its all of equal value"

"Evangelion is like a puzzle, you know. Any person can see it and give his/her own
answer. In other words, we're offering
viewers to think by themselves, so that each
person can imagine his/her own world. We
will never offer the answers, even in the
theatrical version. As for many Evangelion
viewers, they may expect us to provide the
'all-about Eva' manuals, but there is no
such thing. Don't expect to get answers by
someone. Don't expect to be catered to all
the time. We all have to find our own
answers." - Hideaki Anno

If you don't disagree with anything Anno has said, then above all, please respect this.

The entire concept behind "making one guide/commentary/fansite" to Eva is in order to look for the correct answers, and there is such a thing as a wrong answer.

When talking about the narrative that might be true. But there's much more to NGE than the base narrative and, in fact, I'd argue that the base narrative is the most superficial and inconsequential aspect of the series.

I don't need to read through a crazed fanboy's essay on why Rei has deep emotional resonance and maybe we're not even here right now; that isn't what this series was about.

You don't get the lone say on what the series was about V, and just because "you don't need to read" doesn't mean someone else wouldn't like to read an interpretation of the series that was shaped by a particular outlook. Looking for the "one interpretation to rule them all" is not only folly it goes completely against Anno's intentions.

....if Anno says that something "has no inherent meaning within the show it was just cool"....then it simply has no meaning.

For example, Anno has openly said that "we only picked specifically the name "Evangelion" because it sounded cool"...thus while there is some religious connection (particularly with "Eva = Eve" from Adam), those essay-length analysis things of "how calling it "Evangelion" fits into mythology"....are simply baseless.

V, I don't mean to be rude, I really, really don't, but you're bordering on real ignorance here about the relationship between artists, their art, and the audience. For one, artists are known to lie and intentionally mislead when it comes to giving answers about their creations. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the religious symbolism in NGE has a real purpose, if not an absolute meaning. It certainly isn't random or so many links between how they're used in NGE and their original source wouldn't exist. If nothing else they're a correlative to whatever they wanted to use it for at the time.

Even with the title, it certainly wasn't haphazardly thrown together just because it sounded cool. Anyone who knows a lick about the various meanings of the words and the various themes in the series could see that. It might not take a 5k word essay, but a decent sized one explaining the various ways the title has significance with ideas within the series would be far from baseless and useless.

By all means, its nice to make connections and "interpretations", but a major failure I feel of fandom in Eva up to this point is to blur the line between "interpretation" and "what was actually happening".

Another major failure I see in the fandom is ignoring or seriously downplaying depth, substance, and purpose of varying elements when it's NOT warranted. What's odd is I don't see any fandom or any scholars of any other serious art work doing this. If Kubrick put something in 2001, it had a purpose (and any little detail isn't too insignificant to discuss). But it seems like so many fans try to downplay some of the biggest aspects of NGE that make it what it is and it's endlessly perplexing to me.

As for blurring the line between "interpretation" and "what actually happened" I'll provide a quote from our fearless leader Reichu in that the thing that keeps us coming back to NGE is that even though we all saw the same series, we tend to disagree on exactly what we saw. That's the crux of biscuit. To ignore that high level of ambiguity is to disregard what makes the series so special in the first place because it certainly wasn't the plain objectiveness of what the hell happened and what it was all about.

the connection was not intended by the author.

Artist's intent is an inevitable debate when it comes to any work that doesn't spell out its intention at every step. The fact is that NGE doesn't, and it doesn't for a legitimate reason and that's so the audience will think about what they saw. But I think it's folly to try and just point out what Anno intended because it's impossible to do so.

I think they did think through quite a bit of the series....within reason.

I think Anno had a decent idea of what he wanted the narrative to be, roughly where he wanted to go, and intuitively what he wanted to express. He then proceeded to use every tool in the artistic playbook to get all of that across. I'd wager that Anno was able to express far more by artistic intuition and momentary creativity than he was able to verbalize before-hand. IOW, I don't think most of the depth in NGE came from "I want to say X so I'm going to do Y and Z to accomplish that". I think he merely knew unconsciously what he wanted to do and, more often than not, went with his gut - making the series more like jazz than a meticulous classical composition.

No, because it doesn't affect the series central themes, which were always more about Psychology then raw Existentialism.

Much of Freud and Jung weren't that far removed from the principles of existentialism. Further, I think it does effect the themes to the extent that Anno was trying to find as many ways as possible to express the same things. He did this through references, through narrative devices, through motifs, through visuals, through dialogue, etc.

But if he turns around and says "The Chamber of Guf thing sounded cool but we didn't really think that one through"....I both wouldn't be surprised and wouldn't really mind, and further....how the heck would that affect the series themes and meanings?

For those who know what the CoG is it's really easy to understand the concept in NGE. That is a space which lives/souls originate from. Again, it's far from a random reference thrown in to sound cool.

There IS "one right thing" about each character and theme. I think those "essays about how Rei is really this existential metaphor and yeah this theory sounds batty but hey we're all entitled to our own solipsistic opinion" are simply wrong.....there WAS one intended thing about say,

I'm pretty much finished making my case and not to get all righteously indignant, but I will simply say to Reichu and the lords of this guide that if this is the road you're going to take I want no part of it. I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree with this mentality more in principle if I tried.

[cyharding]

Wow! You said that much more elegently than I ever could. My hat's off to you...if I was wearing a hat right now.