[EVA] Mother & child

[Gwern Branwen]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 4:42 AM, Carl Horn <once at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
...
> You can't be raised as a human being by someone whose approach to parenting
> is to view you as a genetically engineered construct, or as a shape to be
> broken down and reformed in your divine womb, no matter how much you smile
> upon them from the heights or the depths. It's like, "Goodbye, mother,
> thanks for all that stuff about the sun and moon and earth and how
> everything will be all right. Now to show the audience how much meeting you
> again helped, I'm going to get glassy-eyed, and strangle Asuka." It was
> Asuka who showed him the compassion that worked--but then, Asuka is a human
> being. It's all right to be here--and it's also all right to say here isn't
> Heaven; in fact, you feel sick.

Ah, but is that what Asuka was saying? Remember the original
I'll-never-let-you-kill-me line, and the burglar-masturbator context
Anno suggested to Miyamura. And besides, Cardass D-88 seems to
undercut the more negative interpretations of the strangling:

> "Shinji renounced the world where all hearts had melted into one and accepted each other unconditionally. His desire... to live with 'others' -- other hearts that would sometimes reject him, even deny him. That is why the first thing he did after coming to his senses was to place his hands around Asuka's neck. To feel the existence of an 'other'. To confirm (make sure of) rejection and denial."

-- 
gwern