Physically I Am Here, Emotionally I Am Bouncing Back And Forth Between The Neon Genesis Evangelion And

Physically I am here, Emotionally I am bouncing back and forth between the Neon Genesis Evangelion and Squid Game sub-paracosms for the You & Me Multiverse

I have been cursed by my own brain once again...

The fucked up, vaguely human urge to create an ‘artbook’ type journal compiling everything you make with/for your paras/paracosm, complete with notes about concepts, sketches, face claims, and such things. It is just over a thousand+ pages of just unbridled, uncensored thoughts, no editing, just words and the process™️.

I am a monster and refuse to be alone in this urge.

I am now going to use @decaykid and @sugarcoatedsadism interest in my sub-paracosms to talk about them!

I’m gonna level with y’all the Squid Game sub-paracosm is a major WIP as I have to watch it (I definitely avoided it when it was at height of popularity) but Neon Genesis Evangelion?

Oh, a bitch has a whole backstory for its whole existence!

Warning: This gets LONG and WORDY and possibly a bit pretentious(?). So apologizes for all of this, but I am an English Major and all I know is analyze and over-explain. Also this might not be an ENTIRELY accurate depiction of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but like my head is just full of ✨THOUGHTS✨

So this whole thing dates back to when I first introduced this paracosm (back when it was just Barbie and Ken) and its origins is this episode:

(Episode 9: Both Of You! Dance Like You Want To Win!)

And it opened my eyes to the wild idea of having a NGE au for Barbie and Ken, but it meant trying to shove Ken into a Shinji shaped hole which wasn’t easy. Ken doesn’t have the same hang ups or draw backs as Shinji. Not to mention the episode was primarily about Shinji and Asuka having to form some sense of synergy which doesn’t necessarily fit the relationship dynamics of Ken and Barbie (imo anyway).

Shinji and Asuka share similar trauma which causes them to butt heads often because of how differently their experiences have shaped them. That point aside however, in theory the AU existed just fine with the both of them (Barbie and Ken), but THEMATICALLY?

IT ABSOLUTELY FUCKS WITH ALL FOUR PARAS!

Let me explain further, Asuka Langley-Soryu is without a doubt Barbie. I mean I didn’t really ‘make’ Barbie with Asuka in mind, but in the Asuka’s Breakdown™️ episode (something I spend a fair amount of time thinking about) and if you don’t know it:

(Also Known As: Asuka Confronts Arael)

And it struck a cord that something similar would happen to Barbie in this AU, she is the equivalent to her. The whole scene with the doll would be replace with a porcelain doll with the same hair coloring and eyes as Barbie and it would ultimately represent how the world (or more thematically appropriate her mother) view her. A porcelain doll, perfect.

And Barbie hates it so much because she wants to be anything but perfect, anything beside that. She wants to be human, a child, but she can’t ultimately because a generational curse of having to be perfect has ruined her and her family and she HATES that. But rather than own up to that, she just pushes everything and everyone away. She pretends that the perfect image is her, but is it? Isn’t it lonely pretending that she’s so perfect when all she ever wanted was for her mother to see her as more than just her accomplishments?

In my head, Barbie can’t stand the fact that this angel is forcing her to relive her most inner desires, her past of wanting to be so much more than this cut-out of herself and it’s awful because she can’t fight it. She can’t deny that it’s projecting all of her trauma in front of her, all of the things she wanted to abandon, and now she’s stuck reliving it.

In discovering this comparison, I decided to look at the other EVA children (the main four at least) and made a few more discoveries...

So obviously Barbara is Asuka, this leaves Shinji, Rei, and Kaworu roles to fill. I cast Midge as a more sociable Rei, but this is relatively odd when directly compared to Rei. Midge takes her role as a mouthpiece very seriously, but approaches it in a very silly way, making her infinitely more apporachable which is very different from Rei who is very quiet and isolated due to her personality. Both Midge and Rei have doll like images and relatively passive natures, but it’s more faked on Midge’s side.

It’s a shield to protect her from having person-hood by making it seem like she’s overwhelmingly simple, but not detached from the world around her (which she ultimately is). However, the tactic falls short when confronted by Barbie and Alan who both bring into question if Midge is person who is simply unused to the concept of having to be a person. Her doll like nature ruins her sense of connection and ultimately she’s feels more dehumanized by the whole NRVE team.

Especially when it’s revealed that her existence is a hyper-fabricated one.

Midge, in this role, is made to confront the multitude of ways that she is a doll and struggles to break free from the associations of that role. She no longer wants to be passive and simple, she wants to be complex and living with the ability to connect to others properly. It creates an uncanny valley which is also something that Rei creates by her own existence and narrative foil to Asuka.

Midge and Barbie are like that already so it makes it more interesting that these personalities butt against each other so often rather than being something that can worked around. Barbie as Asuka is more aggressive about being a person while Midge as Rei is so used to being a doll, an object of use, that they argue about existing in general.

This then brings in Alan as Shinji, and to my surprise and horror, who fits his role extremely well. I think it’s the combination of having a paras that easily fit the other roles presented, that makes Alan’s role as Shinji just WORK.

Shinji and Alan are similar in the same way that Barbie and Asuka are similar.

They both want to be understood, they both want connections, but unfortunately, they is a multitude of hangups blocking them from forming those connections. In that field the connection points become Barbie (Asuka), Midge (Rei), and Ken (Kaworu) (For a period of time). Alan feels abandoned by his father and is only coming to NRVE in some odd attempt to fix that gap between them, but he ends up being roped into piloting the EVA Unit.

Standard show formula follows of course.

Ken being Kaworu made me realize that I have to kill him, like it never dawned on that Ken being Kaworu means that ultimately he lives out his purpose and is then decapitated. All of the tender moments he has with Alan are kinda shattered when he dies causing Alan to retreat from the others because he doesn’t want them to suffer because of him (but they, holy fuck do they).

In the final scenes leading up to the end of Evangelion, I can only imagine how it feels to be Alan, truly how alone he felt that he asked Midge to lessen it for him, to fix it because he can’t do it.

And as such the illusions are dropped.

In a wasteland or possibly in a place above the world, there are four people, cuddled together in the wreckage of the past world. Alan feels loved, he doesn’t feel alone anymore...

And that’s the happy ending, the sadder, possibly truer ending this AU is the fact that Alan shares the same fate as Shinji, who rejects instrumentality and thrown into a post apocalyptic world where in his last moments are spent strangling Barbie while she looks at him with this blank anger and call him ‘disgusting’.

OF COURSE THIS IS ALL OFF THE FLY AND TECHNICALLY I COULD’VE EXPLAINED EVERYTHING A LOT BETTER, BUT LIKE IT’S AN AU THAT HAS BEEN IN MY HEAD FOR A WHILE!!! SORRY IF IT GOT WEIRDLY UNHINGED AT SOMEPOINTS!!!

THANKS FOR READING!!!

──────   lil book covers    ♥    by aqualvng.

pls don’t repost or claim as your own!! these are basic, i know this, i made them just from looking at books that were physically sitting beside me, but i still worked hard on them, so…,.,..,,,, ya know. 

tagging me is nice !! not required but appreciated, so that i can see what people make with my templates! it helps me learn and remain inspired<3 

mock up art is photography by the lovely xuebing du ♥ 

fonts used are: barcode font, exodus, socham, arial, coyote, sango uppercase, & proxima nova <3 

dimensions are 817 x 568 and there is an optional pattern texture <3 

lastly, please LIKE or REBLOG before you DOWNLOAD <3 

t shirt that says I PUT A NORMAL AMOUNT OF THOUGHT INTO STUFF

Does this fanfiction make sense? Hold water? Not an ounce! Does that mean I’m going to stop writing it? Not an ounce! I’m a moron with a keyboard and half an idea and that’s your problem now. God couldn’t stop me and neither could my dad, and now I’m on your screen with another thousand words of whatever the fuck this is. Bon appetite bitch!