A Question on Gender

[Reichu [ANF]]

I'll try to finish up with the SoLs today, but, even before I do, keep in mind that the Evas are a "window to Adam". They've been changed, yeah, but you can guesstimate how much. EVA-01 is more or less made out to be the "default Eva", ergo, one can probably say fairly safely that she is the one physically closest to Adam. (We can't say for sure, but it seems like common sense to me.) So the others' divergences into other eye numbers, head shapes, nostril positions, and blood compositions are no big deal. We still know what our window is.

The Eva-Adam connection entails that (within logic) whatever applies to one will apply to the other. So, if an Eva has all of the body parts that are provided in those biolistings (like ... an appendix and a hippocampus), odds are Adam does, too. They weren't spoonfed to us in biolistings outright, but the Evas' nature as female organisms entails that they are hiding something, well, characteristically female inside their abdomens. Is there any logical reason why they and Adam would not physically "match" in this particular regard...? Either Gehirn engineered the Evas into females, or they were just that way to begin with.

But I'm just ranting. There is evidence for both Adam and Lilith on their own, which I'll post a little later. (Adam is the one who gives us the direct intimations of actual parts, heh heh.) Script scavenging is fun.

Originally posted on: 19-Jan-2006, 14:31 GMT

[Mr. Tines [ANF]]

So bousou isn't amok? And I'd go with the Tokita quote.

Oh, be quiet, you. IS there actually a counterpart-word for "phallus"?

"Phallus" is a Greek loan-word adopted into Latin, but neither the Romans nor the Greeks had quite the same explicit dualism in their cosmogony as the Hindus.

Originally posted on: 19-Jan-2006, 19:52 GMT

[Reichu [ANF]]

Something from over here that has motivated me to fire off a nice, big zap of NGE Geek objectivity / reality at the "Sexless Evas/SoLs" (and the even more incomprehensible "Male Adam") people. Until I have compiled the relevant In-Depth sections for FGC, this is the last time I plan on saying anything new on the matter. In the future, I'll just be linking back to the same things that people didn't listen to or take seriously before (despite the amount of work, thought, and study that went into them, like pretty much everything else that I do).

*****

By the Reichu interpretation of the Evas being female

I'd hardly call it "the Reichu interpretation". It's more like "common sense", "overwhelming evidence", and "the blatantly obvious", as far as I can tell. Denying that the Evas (and Adam, from whom they were created) are females in every sense of the word essentially involves blowing off every single clue, statement, connection, and thematic precedent in the show itself and other canon materials in favor of quirky personal biases and highly inappropriate double standards that have no place in proper debate and the establishment of theories from which deeper understanding is to be built. There is no more justification, and should be no more tolerance, for the continued presence of these kinds of attitudes here than there would be in other "geek" environments -- whether with regard to this particular topic or any others where similar trends are encountered.

How on Earth do those on the "Evas/SoLs are sexless" bandwagon (or the other aforementioned party) decide on what basis they accept other premises and theories? I can think of a great many things in NGE that are only intimated in very vague, sparse, and/or indirect ways, or are hinted at but never directly stated, that virtually no one has any problems with. They are taken for granted, and many are "so self-evident" that they go without question. And if they need to be explained to someone unfamiliar with them, the aftermath is, overwhelmingly, a nod of the head and a "thank you".

So what exactly is the psychic snag that is preventing many people from grasping the true nature of the Evas -- one of the items in the show that is reinforced from beginning to end, again and again and again?

Please stop judging these entities as if they were not the humans that the show flat-out tells you that they are (along with flat-out telling you many other things about them that are gleefully "fudged around"). The double standards that must be appropriated to reject this absolute fundamental of NGE are, as I've said, totally unacceptable, and the way I have been chewed out by various people for this* over the years is getting very, very old.

I have repeated the arguments on the issue so many times that it has become utterly tiresome, and the substanceless, dismissive, and superficial "rebuttals" I have received have been even more tiresome. I have heard them all. It's apparently a lost cause with some of you. Which is a pity, since a lot of things will only fall into place once you just get over your personal inhibitions/"ideals" and accept something that is in a work of science fiction that can do whatever the hell it wants.

Anyway, I needed to let that out. Phew.

BTW, this is not aimed at "setting up" another redundant "debate". I tire of redundancy. I have no plans of making any public responses to possible follow-ups, so if you hope to "take it up with me", don't bother. This is intended as "something to think about", and NOTHING more.

*****

* Not to mention various other very counterintuitive and unfounded orthodoxies I have fought against over the years. The war is far from over, too, as has become very clear to me since the holidays of 2006. The show's "non-Lilim" elements have been so overwhelmingly dismissed by fans as superfluous "eye candy", it is ludicrous. Of course they're going to be "superfluous" if you look no deeper than the surface!

People become set in their attitudes far too easily, and the sorts of nonsense I hear about NGE on a regular basis represents a virus that has been transmitted from veterans to newbies, generation after generation. It is only when one is at least partially immune to this nonsense that progress is made and understanding gained.

It comes as absolutely no surprise to me that I'm finding out things about this show that I have never once heard proposed or speculated. If this stuff has been figured out before (certainly possible) and put forward, those who dared to go against the stagnancy of convention were apparently never taken seriously to the point of their ideas being extensively propagated, if at all. Boy, I have a lot of work ahead of me.

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Originally posted on: 01-Feb-2006, 21:45 GMT

[OMF [ANF]]

I'd hardly call it "the Reichu interpretation".

I'm not sure that anyone else came up with it before you did, so in the name of precendent, I dubbed the interpretation as mentioned. It had nothing to do with the validity of the interpretation. Sorry.

Originally posted on: 01-Feb-2006, 22:24 GMT

[MagicianCamille [ANF]]

Things.

*applauds*

Great post Rach, I hope you get through to some...enough...people.

I can understand why people won't accept the Evangelions and/or Adam being female. Not much more than ignorance, really.

Originally posted on: 02-Feb-2006, 02:15 GMT

[AsukaxSohryux [ANF]]

*applauds*

Great post Rach, I hope you get through to some...enough...people.

I can understand why people won't accept the Evangelions and/or Adam being female. Not much more than ignorance, really.

Evangelions female yes, Adam NO.

Originally posted on: 02-Feb-2006, 02:25 GMT

[BLACKANGEL32076 [ANF]]

Actually, the idea of "Adam", (not her real name, but rather the name given to her by SEELE), being female is very plausible. We all know that the Angels are the children of "Adam". We also know that they hatch from eggs. What gender of animal lays eggs? The female does.

That having been said, if "Lilith" birthed Unit-01 by trading some of her biomass to Unit-01 during the birthing process, then is she still female, or more of a hermaphrodite like a nemotode or a liver fluke or something like that.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense. I should know better than to post at 3AM.

Originally posted on: 02-Feb-2006, 07:07 GMT

[Reichu [ANF]]

Adam: http://animenation.net/forums/showt...723#post5474721

The stuff on Lilith is scattered throughout the same thread. I guess I'll scribble up a sort of "current synthesis" on EVA-01's origins here, just so I can link to it in the future and revise it if need be...

There is nothing "hermaphroditic" about EVA-01's gestation and birth. Once you put all of the clues in the show together and dare to "see between the frames", you can get a pretty concrete picture. Albeit one that is a little nasty, but this is "Eva": Would you expect any less? That is sort of the idea of putting the clues there in the first place, yes?

http://www.evacommentary.org/full-o...-op.html#cut237

EVA-01 is a surrogate daughter, derived genetically from Adam like the other Evas, and created from Lilith's body for complicated reasons I can't get into here, being as I haven't even sorted through them through completely yet. (Seele/HIP weirdness + Yui's motives + previously unexplored angles = huge mindfsck.) Due to the fact that Lilith is intrinsically the same type of lifeform as Adam and the Evas -- something I really need to make up a concise term for, because canon gives us nothing but confusing vagueries -- Lilith could gestate the Eva and deliver a healthy, brown baby head-first. Lilith's bizarre body composition -- a side-effect, I suspect, of being an LCL factory -- may have had something to do with the fact that we got a "live birth" instead of the mandorla that might be expected (judging from the way Adam's own reproductive system works).

Another strange side effect is that the Eva's body did not fully "clear" Lilith's body. You can see in the "Genesis of EVA-01" image that EVA-01 is fully developed, but for one thing: From the hips down, there is this strange cocoon of "marshmallow" stuff enveloping her legs. Look through that, though, and there are clearly fully developed legs within. The implication is that, during birth, Lilith's insides "snagged" and stretched out along with the child. The more you try to pull the kid out, the more of Lilith you pull out. But Gehirn apparently stopped once the feet cleared, and, after that, the "umbilical cocoon" grew to fit. I'll try to prepare some illustrations sometime, since the image in the show is rather confusing.

For whatever reason (not quite sure), they were left connected like that. EVA-01 basically sucked the biomass out of Lilith faster than she could compensate with her sole source of energy, limited bursts of "soul juice". (See: Evas moving without any apparent power source.) And her violators apparently weren't doing much to help. The legs went first -- if you put them back on, it becames quite obvious just how EVA-01 is really connected -- and then the arms started going. By the time Shogouki had matured, Lilith's right arm was nearly gone and her left upper arm had started to go, too.

The "Genesis" image seems to be a depicting the situation at least some time before Yui's Contact Experiment. They're apparently "preparing" the core in some way here*, and EVA-01's body has yet to be tainted by technology. This would give Lilith a little opportunity to regenerate her arms and start up on the legs, which is why there is a little more of her when next we see her (#15) than there is here (if you substract the "Shogouki part").

Lilith's bleeding (which can only be coming from one place; do we really need to post the "tampons" image again?) may have some connection to an "unpleasant parting" with her daughter, however exactly that worked. In any case, the bleeding appears to be SUSTAINED artificially, however it was initiated in the first place.

Ugh. I'm tired.

* OMF and I mused over this one -- the mysterious "sheet with the square-shaped cut" -- over at EMF a while back, but I don't think anything conclusive was really reached.

Originally posted on: 02-Feb-2006, 07:55 GMT