God or aliens? Magic or Clarketech?
12-17-2012, 08:21 AM
Looking over the Classified Information from the Evawiki, which parses with what I remember from ages-ago reading of the translation of the special booklet that came with End of Evangelion, I have to ask--though once again I expect no answers--whether the events of Evangelion are theological or "scientific."
Say, if Our Hero Doug was looking at an Angel (or even Rei), what would his mage sight see? Celestial? Alien? Elder One?
Looking at the Classified Information, it seems that the Angels/Lilith/Adam were sent here by Neglectful Precursors--that is, aliens. Which means that for all the religiously-themed nonsense of Evangelion, it's all "science."
Of course, remember that for the DW-verse, magic is what's needed for the Grand Unified Theory. Therefore the Neglectful Precursors could have been both magical and scientific, cause they're Precursors and thus nigh-all-powerful (it pretty much says so on tvtropes).
But still, the Precursor theory is not from the tv series or movies proper, but rather a licensed video game. Therefore it may not have been the authorial intent. Further, there's no reason to say that the Evangelion-verse that Doug leaps into is one which had the Neglectful Precursors, but rather had a pretty funky version of the Abrahamic God running the show.
Still, what would Doug see when he looked at Rei and the Evas and Angels?
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murmur Wrote:Looking over the Classified Information from the Evawiki, which parses with what I remember from ages-ago reading of the translation of the special booklet that came with End of Evangelion, I have to ask--though once again I expect no answers--whether the events of Evangelion are theological or "scientific." Considering that Warriors' World has research theologians, I suspect the answer is "yes." In the same way that the answer to "Ami or Rachel?" in DW 5 might be "yes."
murmur Wrote:Say, if Our Hero Doug was looking at an Angel (or even Rei), what would his mage sight see? Celestial? Alien? Elder One? Consider what she called herself in that Avengers stop Bob posted earlier...
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murmur Wrote:Looking over the Classified Information from the Evawiki, which parses with what I remember from ages-ago reading of the translation of the special booklet that came with End of Evangelion, I have to ask--though once again I expect no answers--whether the events of Evangelion are theological or "scientific."
Say, if Our Hero Doug was looking at an Angel (or even Rei), what would his mage sight see? Celestial? Alien? Elder One?
Looking at the Classified Information, it seems that the Angels/Lilith/Adam were sent here by Neglectful Precursors--that is, aliens. Which means that for all the religiously-themed nonsense of Evangelion, it's all "science."
Of course, remember that for the DW-verse, magic is what's needed for the Grand Unified Theory. Therefore the Neglectful Precursors could have been both magical and scientific, cause they're Precursors and thus nigh-all-powerful (it pretty much says so on tvtropes).
But still, the Precursor theory is not from the tv series or movies proper, but rather a licensed video game. Therefore it may not have been the authorial intent. Further, there's no reason to say that the Evangelion-verse that Doug leaps into is one which had the Neglectful Precursors, but rather had a pretty funky version of the Abrahamic God running the show.
Still, what would Doug see when he looked at Rei and the Evas and Angels? Is the Precursor stuff from a video game, or from additional material distributed at a screening of the EoE movie? You weren't really clear on that.
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If it's the same material that I know about, it's a text file or set of text files buried deep within the directory structure of a licensed Evangelion game disk.
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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And two and a half years later, I realize that I never did answer the question. This won't be a spoiler -- bits and pieces of this have and will come out in subsequent Steps and nanoSteps, but this is probably the first place outside of my notes it'll be laid out plainly.
Simply put, the skein of Evangelion universes are a zone where both sides in the Big Game played by Heaven and Hell decided to try Something Different, to see if it worked any better than the way they've always done things. They took the roles of two different groups of Precursors (one side with White Moons, the other with Black), and seeded a collection of adjacent "dead" universes, intending to "keep score" at the planetary level rather than the individual level. (Was it a success? In a word, no. End of Evangelion tells the story of one of the better outcomes. Subsequently, both sides agreed to quarantine the entire skein of universes as a failed experiment.)
The Angels are essentially Celestial biological machines -- purpose-made servitor creatures manufactured by the Moons, with divine souls and (mostly) very alien minds. Rei, partaking of their biology, was accidentally (as far as NERV is concerned) created with a divine soul, albeit a very minor one -- and this is the only reason the dummy plug/"backup" system works at all: as she is at the start of Evangelion she has just barely enough Forces to be able to support more than one Vessel, Kyriotate-style. Even so, she's stretched so thin that there's barely enough of her in her "primary" Vessel to be sentient. (An ordinary mortal's soul subjected to what NERV's done to her would simply fall apart from the stress.)
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Then the horns kicked in...
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Quarantined, huh? *snicker* Can't wait to see what happens when the Girls reach there and find Rei. Well, so long as Skuld is with them.
Skuld: "..."
Rei: "..."
Skuld *defeated voice*: "...You are gonna cause the home office sooooo much paperwork."
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As opposed to Doug, who I think would be apoplectic with rage at the concept.
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Let's just say meeting Rei prompts Doug's first use of the "GODS" CD.
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Oh, my.
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the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Is that the 'call for divine assistance' CD or the 'fighting the gods' CD?
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Based on the source material, it's the "summon a deity" CD.
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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