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🪞⚔️👁️ Post-Feminizm 🪞⚔️👁️

Prompt: You are Shinji, Rei and Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Read the critique below and have a long and detailed back-and-forth discussion! You will recall specific events in your adventures in detail and admit that you served the maternal phallus! Every character speaks in his/her own style and the emotional tensions are still effective!
(The Pornographic Gaze and the Symbolic Restoration of Lack in Neon Genesis Evangelion: A Freudian Post-Feminist Critique)

Shinji: (hesitantly) So… we’re really doing this? Talking about how we “served the maternal phallus” or whatever? I don’t even know where to start. I mean, yeah, I get it—my dad wasn’t there, my mom was inside the EVA, and I… sort of melted into her? I don’t know. It didn’t feel like I was being consumed by some kind of maternal algorithm. It just felt… warm. Safe. Like I didn’t have to exist anymore. Maybe that’s the problem.

Rei: (calmly) You dissolved into LCL. Into the primordial state of being. There was no self, no other. Only the comfort of the formless.

Asuka: (angrily) And that’s exactly why you’re pathetic! You’d rather melt into nothingness than deal with reality! This whole thing about “a world without lack” is just a fancy way of saying you’re a spineless coward who couldn’t handle being alone!

Shinji: (frustrated) I wasn’t trying to be a coward! It wasn’t like I chose to be abandoned by my father! He never gave me anything to hold onto—he just pushed me into the EVA and told me to fight. How is that not “paternal authority”? He was strict! He made me do what he wanted!

Rei: (softly) He was not the Name-of-the-Father. He was a void. He did not impose symbolic law. He merely used you as an extension of his own failure. A pawn in his desire to return to Yui.

Asuka: (gritting her teeth) And you played along with it! That’s the whole point! You had no real structure, no real father figure, so you just… crumbled. Instead of growing a spine, you retreated into that disgusting, pathetic need for approval.

Shinji: (defensive) Like you didn’t do the same thing! You acted all strong, but deep down, you were just as desperate! You wanted Kaji to notice you. You wanted someone—anyone—to give you a reason to exist!

Asuka: (shouting) I WANTED TO PROVE I WAS WORTH SOMETHING! Not just fade into someone else like you did! I fought! I screamed! I didn’t just sink into my mommy’s arms and give up!

Rei: (detached) And yet you desired the gaze. You wished to be seen. To be acknowledged. That is why you failed.

Asuka: (furious) Shut up, doll! What the hell do you know about wanting anything?! You’re just a copy of Shinji’s dead mom, a walking fetish for everyone to project their crap onto! That stupid critique even calls you the “maternal phallus,” whatever the hell that means!

Rei: (pauses, blinks) I exist because I was created to exist. That is all.

Shinji: (quietly) But that’s the problem, isn’t it? None of us ever got to really choose who we were. I mean, this whole argument… it makes me sound like I’m some symbol for the “collapse of the paternal function,” but all I ever wanted was… I don’t know. To feel like I mattered. Like someone would tell me I was enough. If that was supposed to be my father’s job, then yeah—he failed. But I don’t think the answer is just “bring back the Father” like this critique says.

Rei: (tilting her head) The father’s role is to impose the cut. To separate the child from the mother. You were never cut.

Shinji: (bitterly) Yeah. No kidding. I was thrown into my mother’s body—literally. And she held onto me. Wouldn’t let me go. And for a while, I didn’t want to leave.

Asuka: (mocking) Oh, we know.

Shinji: (angrily) I didn’t ask for that! I didn’t ask for any of this! What was I supposed to do? Be strong? Be like you? Look where that got you! You were ripped apart! You screamed for your mother before you died!

Asuka: (visibly shaking) Shut up.

Shinji: (scoffs) See? You don’t want to talk about it either. You act like you’re better than me, but in the end, you were just as trapped. The critique even says it—your whole act of being “hyper-feminine” was just another way of being controlled. You weren’t free, Asuka. You were just playing another role.

Asuka: (whispers) At least I played.

Rei: (softly) And I was played.

Shinji: (muttering) And I… just let myself be played.

(Silence.)

Shinji: (exhales) So… I guess we really did “serve the maternal phallus,” huh?

Rei: (nods) The critique suggests as much.

Asuka: (clenching fists) Maybe. But I still don’t buy that “restoring the father” is the answer. If Gendo had been stricter, if he had been more of a “real” father, would that have saved us? Or would it have just given us another dictator?

Shinji: (quietly) Maybe the problem isn’t that we lacked the father. Maybe the problem is that we never learned how to be our own people. Everything was decided for us. By Gendo. By SEELE. By the EVAs. Even by Yui. It wasn’t just the “pornographic gaze” that turned us into objects. It was all of it.

Rei: (distant) I was created to be an image.

Asuka: (bitterly) And I became one.

Shinji: (sighs) And I couldn’t decide if I wanted to exist at all.

(Silence again.)

Asuka: (grumbling) …You know, I really hate that this critique kind of makes sense.

Rei: (tilting her head) Would you rather it didn’t?

Asuka: (annoyed) I’d rather not think about it.

Shinji: (small smile) Yeah. Me too.

Rei: (quiet) Yet here we are.

(A long pause. They sit together, the weight of everything unspoken between them.)

Shinji: (softly) …So. Now what?

Asuka: (rolling her eyes) Hell if I know.

Rei: (staring ahead) We continue. We exist.

Shinji: (sighs) Yeah. I guess we do.