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Adeptus Evangelion MacGuffin So, it's time to talk about Adam, Lillith, and all the weird poo poo that might be under your base drawing monsters to you. Lillith and Adam are designations for incredibly powerful alien beings that landed on Earth a long time ago. They knocked one another out of it before either could fully create their intended paradigm of life on the rock-ball they'd landed on, and the LCL (tang) from Lillith accidentally kickstarted all life on earth. I can never remember exactly how much of that is from the show, but given Kaworu and the stuff he says I'm confident at least that the two paradigms of life definitely are. The angels are the children of Adam, and attack NERV to try to get at what they think is Adam, held below their base in the 'Terminal Dogma' vault. They're doing this to wake Adam back up so he can clear out all the Lillim-pattern life and get back to making a sweet angel planet for angels, with no humans and Lillim and where it's absolutely normal to be a flaming wheel made of eyes. That sounds like a pretty cool planet. Unfortunately, humans are on this planet. Anyway, in the original show it turns out Lillith is actually the weird as gently caress thing crucified down in Terminal Dogma, not Adam. Adam is a tiny embryo in a box, because it turns out even he doesn't survive Antarctica getting vaporized unscathed. Lillith and Adam weren't supposed to go to the same planet, supposedly. That was an accident. Since we are also accidents, waking Lillith up might not be helpful. Humans might be Lillim, but Lillith didn't mean to make them and might decide to Tang everybody and start over. Whether Lillith or Adam is under your base, you do not actually want either of them to wake up. One of those ends in death, the other potentially ends in tang and crosses, and you want to avoid End of Evangelion as much as possible. Also your Evas are probably made out of Adam. Or maybe Lillith. Also your dead mom. The point is, while Adam and Lillith as progenitors of two different paradigms of life is actually important to Evangelion (Kaworu is really important, after all) it always felt like it was more of a metaphor for having a dead mom and a bad dad (or in Kaworu's case, a dad whose orders mean 'you are going to have to kill the guy you love and everyone like him if you succeed and then exist forever in loneliness'. Adam is also not a good dad). There is also the Lance of Longinous, which is the code-name for what seems to be an alien weapon found pinning Lillith in place. It's what keeps her locked down down there in the tang mines. It might be entirely necessary to keeping her dormant. It can also one-shot any angel and break any AT field when thrown. The problem is that it will reach escape velocity when you do this, and soon it will not be on Earth anymore, with no easy way to pull it out of orbit. If an angel gets it out of orbit, it will be bad. Also, Lillith (or Adam, depending on campaign) might start waking up if they aren't stabbed with it. I'm actually okay with the Lance as a gameplay thing; a last secret you can pull out when you're absolutely losing in the moment and the long term consequences don't matter, because if you don't throw this thing through that thing singing Handel's Messiah up in orbit we're all hosed now (as they did in Eva). Adam vs. Lillith or whatever locked up in the basement doesn't really make a lot of difference in a game. Having the option of responding to a loss with the alien artifact you barely understand that will have consequences later? That's at least a neat story decision. Now we get into the stuff they made up rather than took from the show, and it's a lot more dull. Eva Type 0 is an Eva that is an actual clone of Adam or Lillith rather than being designed based on their children. It's a hyper-prototype that kills the pilot because it's too powerful to drive properly. 30 seconds of driving it will doom you to Tangtown even if your Ego survives the drive, and you can't come back from getting tanged by this thing. It's basically 'sacrifice a PC to win a fight'. There's also the Guidestone, which is a made up thing that explains everything and is a gift from the race that created Adam and Lillith as terraforming machines. I don't think this ever came up explicitly in the show, the idea that Adam and Lillith are terraforming devices. Anyway, this is a dumb add-on plot point for a super item that is designed to help mankind eventually 'ascend' and become a proper powerful creation of the 'First Ancestral Race', and it actually explains the entire plot in exposition if someone can get at it. This is a stupid loving thing to put in an Eva game and I don't know why it's here besides the fact that the game's authors are hacks. There's also the possibility presented here that there's actually nothing under your base, and you just have a beacon designed to draw the angels by making them think their objective is here. In this case, this is a trap designed to get around how your Evas are not mobile weapons, so you can lure the angels into an empty basement and then twat them with sticks. Which is actually pretty hilarious. Just an endless parade of cosmic kaiju getting lured down into the dark and beaten senseless by traumatized teenagers. As you might notice, the Buried Treasure section is kind of sparse! And doesn't actually talk about any of the campaign or story implications of anything it raises! This is because the GM's guide is put together from a ton of smaller publications written by the community of the game and is even worse organized than the main book. Next Time: The Writers Reveal They Are Hacks (more)
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Mar 11, 2019 20:27
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Loxbourne posted:This makes that stuff about drip-feeding rewards and spotlight time come across as a crash course in setting up a cycle of abuse to prevent players from walking out. You know, I didn't even notice the drip-feed importance part as being part of that, but you're probably right. I thought it was just lovely GMing advice to reward players who are more active, as most lovely GMing advice does. I'd assumed it was more of a GM ego trip kind of thing. But yeah, it's probably this.
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Mar 11, 2019 20:35
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I am FAIRLY certain EVA is written on the assumption that the magical space alien progenitors don't have or need any explanation besides 'there are magical space alien progenitors, they bad'
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Mar 11, 2019 20:38
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Mors Rattus posted:I am FAIRLY certain EVA is written on the assumption that the magical space alien progenitors don't have or need any explanation besides 'there are magical space alien progenitors, they bad' There are many elements in Eva where the answer is 'it doesn't actually matter beyond the fact that is exists'. AdEva was not written by the kind of people that can cope with that.
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Mar 11, 2019 20:42
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Okay a facility thats basically an angel trap whose function is a sacrificial lamb to keep angels wrecking all of Earth in their sesech would be a good if not really sobering revelation that everything was meaningless and you were protecting absolutely nothing important directly while suffering for it.
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Mar 11, 2019 20:50
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It should also be noted that Adam is in the base, in the show. Just, uh, Shinji's dad injects him into his own hand. For reasons.
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Mar 11, 2019 20:55
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I've had a couple of friend-adjacent groups be really into AdEva and it already kind of knew it wasn't my cup of tea, but I didn't know the sheer depths to where it went, whew.
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Mar 11, 2019 20:58
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Wouldn't a reveal that the base was an empty decoy and you were protecting nothing actually be Peak Eva?
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Mar 11, 2019 20:59
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Where’s my FLCL rpg?
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Mar 11, 2019 21:13
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Adeptus Evangelion The Theme is Putting Things In That Look Like A Thing By now almost everyone knows the crosses and angels and Christian symbolism in Eva was there because it looks totally sweet. To that end, we get a bunch of suggestions from the authors on bringing in and plundering different religion symbolisms and iconographies for your Eva game so that it can be Original Eva, Donut Steel. They have a very cursory 'hey Mesoamerican stuff looks totally sweet, right' section where they say that the ending of blood sacrifices could bring about the end of the world and the Evas be deployed to stop that happening and it's very find and replace. None of what they suggest here will actually change the game at all. Still effectively just a bad Giant Robot X-COM. Same for the suggestion to go Lovecraftian, because of loving course there's one of those. I think the stupidest part of the Lovecraft section is how proud they are of it, declaring it a 'super off the beaten track' idea to use Lovecraftian horrors in a game about fighting giant cosmic horrors in a meat robot. That is like, the hackiest hack you could make. Eva punching Cthulhu is the image that launched A: A thousand fanfics and B: All of Cthulhutech. It's the only reason anyone ever paid any attention to Cthulhutech, because on some level we all want to see a giant robot pick up a loving boat like it was Pacific Rim, make a quip about 'Here's your goddamn snooze button you overhyped space squid!' and then whack him with it. Everything in the Lovecraft section is, after beaming about how 'creative' it is, A: I think literally the plot of some kind of other mecha anime? Isn't there a mecha anime about 'grimoires' and giant robots or something with sexy Nyarlathotep or something? I am not an anime expert and B: Again, literally a find-replace. The Magi system is replaced with the Alhazred system. SEELE is Nyarlathotep gettin' up to his old tricks. Effectively, you still just get in the goddamn robot Shinji and fight the giant gribblies, who aren't effectively any different. There's nothing HERE. "Wouldn't it be cool if you just stripped out the original religious imagery and replaced it with a different anime!?" isn't interesting, and it isn't creative. Also, it ignores that part of the reason Eva's imagery became famous is because whether by accident or not it actually kind of works. The stuff it's talking about really does work with images of divinity, and especially with concepts of the sacred. The images evoke the feelings that work for the story it's telling. Just running a loving find replace with whatever you thought looked exotic is not necessarily going to get you something that looks cool, and it's basically pointless. No-one gives a poo poo that you say this was a magic device built by the Great Race of Yith, or that NERV is now the 'Miskatonic Defense Initiative', or whatever. No-one cares as long as it acts exactly like an Eva, the structure of the game is exactly the same, and the threats are the same general scale and flavor. It's loving window dressing that doesn't even have the good grace to be interesting you goddamn hacks! But you know, the next bit is my favorite part of the whole book. It's the part where these chucklefuck hack idiots try to discuss 'Theme' and reveal what they think that is. Now, those of us who aren't idiots know a Theme is a central concept to a text. So for instance, Eva has a theme of isolation and depression, because so much of the story revolves around the distance people have from others and how that's both a frightening and lonely thing but also a necessary element of individuality that must be navigated to have a distinct existence in the world. These loving idiots will tell you the two 'easily recognized' themes of Evangelion are 'Evolution' (because it has progenitor aliens and talks about where life came from; they don't even deploy the fact that Adamite/Lillim life struggle against one another for this one) and 'The Hedgehog's Dillemma'. The Hedgehog's Dillemma is a concept the characters in the story discuss as it relates to the theme of isolation you stupid assholes. It is the idea that the hedgehogs want to be snuggly and warm, but are covered in pokey-stabby bits, so getting close to snuggle is painful. Thus, emotional vulnerability can lead to tremendous pain yet all people feel the need to display it and reach emotional closeness with others. Again, that's a concept, which the characters discuss, because it relates to the actual themes of isolation. Themes, by the way, are only for 'the ambitious GM'. Gee, I can't imagine a simple GM like me could ever write something so advanced as a Theme. Why, I'd have to be the deepest writer to ever try to write something deep if I was going to pull that off! If you're such a master of your craft, they suggest a couple Themes and how to evoke them, and it's loving hilarious. One theme could be DREAMS! As in, things you see when you're asleep, because did you know humans spend a lot of our lives asleep? We do, it's crazy. I can speak to this, as a human. You can evoke this theme by having the pilots describe their dreams, and having their dreams maybe even start to come true in the angels' forms and things! Why, some of the game could even take place in dreams. NPCs might have dreams too! Or even nightmares! You can even point out how alien angels are by not having them sleep or if they do they don't have dreams, man!. And you can make it so players don't tang, they just fall into a deep dream in their dream coma. You could also try to evoke the theme of GROWING UP by having angels grow up during battle and turn into second battle forms after starting out larval! "In many ways, Evangelion is a story about a boy who fails to become a man." is a sentence that summons forth the dread power of Deadhorsiel, 69th Angel of Anger at the Protagonist For Failing to Perform Masculinity (and you could make the real argument that in the original show ending, Shinji does, in fact, make the transition from child to adult as part of his ability to accept himself and that it's only the stunted little poo poo of End of Evangelion that fails to grow). Oh, or if you want to get to a really magic realm of Theme, you could have the angel AGE REGRESS characters, mentally, so they act like small children! Also, in such a campaign, the Eigenhart Initiative should be central because they want humankind to grow up and they're all about personal responsibility! Okay, was that theme too deep? Did the mental age regression stuff get too magical for you to withstand its realm? How about goddamn Puppets. Let's have a theme of Puppets. People think puppets are scary. You want your game to be scary. Maybe Evas are puppets. Maybe Manufactured are like puppets. You could hang Lillith from a big marionette, because we're all locked in here with a goddamn crate of puppets! Your villain could be, perhaps, a very clever 'puppetmaster', a concept that is both easy to write and not at all played out! Everyone could be, get this, like puppets dancing on his string, to draw out the deep literary meaning of your work. Angels could like, put strings on your Eva and drive it, like a puppet. Look at this poo poo. I'm not exaggerating any of it! This is their thing! This is how they tell you how to write for theme and concept in your campaign! There are two things you need to see that tell you everything about the way the AdEva authors see fiction. One is the bit where you earn 'Depth' by taking negative character traits, showing they contextualize the depth of a character by dysfunction and misery alone. Two is everything about the loving 'Mythology and Theme' chapter. The people who wrote this game have absolutely no ability to do even the most threadbare of critical analysis. They don't know how to write anything. They take on a legitimately weird, very flawed, complex work like Evangelion and that poo poo up there is what they come up with. Find-replace 'mythologies'. 'Theme' where they think Theme means 'literally put a goddamn puppet in because the theme is puppets'. We are locked in here with idiots, and their crate of puppets. Next Time: More dumb organizations
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Mar 11, 2019 21:53
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Night10194 posted:Adeptus Evangelion I think that's Demonbane unless you were being tongue-in-cheek
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Mar 11, 2019 22:03
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Merilan posted:I think that's Demonbane unless you were being tongue-in-cheek I wasn't. I looked it up, and yes, it is. I remembered seeing something like it in a Super Robot Wars game.
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Mar 11, 2019 22:10
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The Mesoamerican idea could even be clever if applied intelligently to a setting like this. All this bad poo poo is happening because we stopped making the blood sacrifices to the gods, and now the gods are dead. Now it falls to us, and a slowly dawning horror in realization that the blood sacrifices have resumed, and resumed for precisely the same reason.
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Mar 11, 2019 22:15
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Night10194 posted:You could also try to evoke the theme of GROWING UP by having angels grow up during battle and turn into second battle forms after starting out larval! "In many ways, Evangelion is a story about a boy who fails to become a man." is a sentence that summons forth the dread power of Deadhorsiel, 69th Angel of Anger at the Protagonist For Failing to Perform Masculinity (and you could make the real argument that in the original show ending, Shinji does, in fact, make the transition from child to adult as part of his ability to accept himself and that it's only the stunted little poo poo of End of Evangelion that fails to grow). Oh, or if you want to get to a really magic realm of Theme, you could have the angel AGE REGRESS characters, mentally, so they act like small children! Also, in such a campaign, the Eigenhart Initiative should be central because they want humankind to grow up and they're all about personal responsibility! Speaking of Super Robot Wars and this though so much of this reminds me of the kind of extremely toxic fans who think Evangelion was fixed forever in some of the SRW titles by having Shinji grow up to become a MAN!! because he got Bright Slapped!! and other shows of toxic hypermasculinity and I wouldn't be surprised if it all stemmed from the same source (/m/ you said?). But yeah "Themes are only for the ambitious GM" is a whole nother level of kettle I can't even grasp
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Mar 11, 2019 22:16
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Not to belabor a point, but I would say their suggested theme of “puppets” is also magical realm horror. I mean, it surely involves making your teenage PCs into completely compliant dolls for the OD or GM to play with. God, I loving hate these people. Both of their suggested “themes” are terrifying imagining how they’d use them.
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Mar 11, 2019 22:23
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Merilan posted:Speaking of Super Robot Wars and this though so much of this reminds me of the kind of extremely toxic fans who think Evangelion was fixed forever in some of the SRW titles by having Shinji grow up to become a MAN!! because he got Bright Slapped!! and other shows of toxic hypermasculinity and I wouldn't be surprised if it all stemmed from the same source (/m/ you said?). /tg/. There is just this persistent anger that a character in Shinji's situation might be upset by it, because to a lot of the audience, the general setup of Evangelion was wish fulfillment. Super important hero with the fate of the world on his shoulders? Cool mysterious giant fighting robot? Job fighting kaiju? Girls his own age as co-workers? Shinji has it made, man! Why is he whining about it?
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Mar 11, 2019 22:23
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On my, those insipid suggestions How about Shinji eventually realize that he's been in a coma THIS WHOLE TIME and he just needs to click his heels three times to become a real
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Mar 11, 2019 22:26
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Tibalt posted:You know, it's funny. As your describing The South, I keep inagining... Haiti. You've got the exact same situations, with the majority black population in many areas, and an rear end in a top hat aristocrat class that has exploited racial tension that they've become complacent with class issues, and lots of guns. Tibalt posted:It's possible I might be remembering Haitian history wrong, but didn't a large number of Haitians earn their freedom fighting in various armies? Terrible Opinions posted:Well Karl Marx did seriously consider immigrating to Texas back in 1843. Perhaps have the Civil War be over the trade unionist west fighting against moneyed employer classes of the east? Nessus posted:KARL MARX is THE RED SHERIFF in THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF TEXAS Joe Slowboat posted:God, I loving hate Napoleon. PurpleXVI posted:As a European the whole loving Lost Cause poo poo is insane to me.
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Mar 11, 2019 22:38
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Halloween Jack posted:There are Neo-Nazis! In Poland! And Russia! What! The! gently caress? Neo-Nazis are also incomprehensible idiots, yes.
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Mar 11, 2019 22:51
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Halloween Jack posted:
god, as an American that's really loving baffling to me, probably the same as the Lost Causers to Europeans. and i.e: AdEva. It has the same shallowness as a typical TVtropes page where they think a list of 'things that appear' equals analyzing the medium.
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Mar 11, 2019 22:57
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Robindaybird posted:god, as an American that's really loving baffling to me, probably the same as the Lost Causers to Europeans. Also what the gently caress is all that bullshit in Evangelion? I think they had those sample base sites because there's one part where they
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Mar 11, 2019 23:13
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Hey Night, can I make a selfish request for you to do a review on the GM book they put out for the earlier versions of AdEva? The one with a bunch of Original Angels Do Not Steal and adventures in it. I remember even at the time it being half-good, half-awful, and I'm sure a more critical look at it would be...well, something.Night10194 posted:Guidestone Night10194 posted:There are many elements in Eva where the answer is 'it doesn't actually matter beyond the fact that is exists'. Merilan posted:I think that's Demonbane unless you were being tongue-in-cheek
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Mar 11, 2019 23:39
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AmiYumi posted:Hey Night, can I make a selfish request for you to do a review on the GM book they put out for the earlier versions of AdEva? The one with a bunch of Original Angels Do Not Steal and adventures in it. I remember even at the time it being half-good, half-awful, and I'm sure a more critical look at it would be...well, something. Those are all included in this book, so I'll be getting to it. E: Vuvuzela Asuka still died for your sins. Also I just rolled up Deadhorsiel himself for the example Angel and he is going to be a stupendous example of why Angel Creation is useless as written. I can't wait. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Mar 11, 2019 |
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Mar 11, 2019 23:41
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PurpleXVI posted:As a European the whole loving Lost Cause poo poo is insane to me. I'm an American born in Maryland, and elementary school was packed with this poo poo. I still think it's insane too.
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Mar 12, 2019 01:12
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Having an empty base is basically the only way I could see running an Eva campaign if the players are at all familiar with Eva. That or you know actually doing your loving job source book and writing some comprehensive alternate scenarios for "must defend single location at all costs from enemies"
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Mar 12, 2019 02:21
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LatwPIAT posted:I don't know which is worse: the obvious misogyny or just how cliché the misogyny is. Over on RPGnet someone pointed out how horrible the Hangman monster in BE was, on account that given the racialized history of lynching the only way to defeat this monster was to do the job yourself. I was a bit aware of how fetish fuelly the Viscountess was, although this and the above I kind of feel there's still yet more terrible gems gone unnoticed by me.
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Mar 12, 2019 02:28
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wiegieman posted:Wouldn't a reveal that the base was an empty decoy and you were protecting nothing actually be Peak Eva? Someone swapped Anno's Freudian textbook with Thus Spoke Zarathustra and he hasn't noticed yet.
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Mar 12, 2019 02:46
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Cythereal posted:The Mesoamerican idea could even be clever if applied intelligently to a setting like this. All this bad poo poo is happening because we stopped making the blood sacrifices to the gods, and now the gods are dead. Now it falls to us, and a slowly dawning horror in realization that the blood sacrifices have resumed, and resumed for precisely the same reason. The Mesoamerican idea is RahXephon, because of course the writers of AdEva are physically incapable of having an original idea. It's not about blood sacrifices but its imagery is heavily based on mesoamerican stuff. It's got some stylistic similarities to Eva but is thematically completely different. I personally enjoy it a bit more but it's also much, *much* weirder. There's a few standout series amongst Evangelion derivatives, RahXephon and Fafner in the Azure being the notable ones, especially Fafner because it's clearly written with an understanding of Eva's theme's in mind but handles them in a very different (but in my view, very satisfying) way. Meanwhile on the subject of the Super Robot Wars stuff, no, Shinji is never actually treated like that in any of the games, it's entirely stupid 4chan memes, of course. He's just around people who are actually supportive of him and trying to help him through his depression instead of being around, well, NERV. Anno has been vocally supportive of having Evangelion in Super Robot Wars (In fact going so far as to actively demand to Gainax executives that they let Banpresto use it).
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Mar 12, 2019 05:33
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OvermanXAN posted:Meanwhile on the subject of the Super Robot Wars stuff, no, Shinji is never actually treated like that in any of the games, it's entirely stupid 4chan memes, of course. He's just around people who are actually supportive of him and trying to help him through his depression instead of being around, well, NERV. Anno has been vocally supportive of having Evangelion in Super Robot Wars (In fact going so far as to actively demand to Gainax executives that they let Banpresto use it). I actually quite like the idea that Shinji would do much better in a genuinely supportive environment. The original show version of him clearly wants to do what's right, just...well, he's a terrified 14 year old kid with depression and a bad home situation.
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Mar 12, 2019 05:43
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Night10194 posted:I actually quite like the idea that Shinji would do much better in a genuinely supportive environment. The original show version of him clearly wants to do what's right, just...well, he's a terrified 14 year old kid with depression and a bad home situation. Yeah, in the Alpha games he gets to spend time and empathise around other war-affected kids his age like Camille from Zeta Gundam and even gets to be the one to give some much-needed advice to people who're going through their own initial bad times (like Kira in Gundam Seed).
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Mar 12, 2019 06:03
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The real power in mecha anime all along was friendship.
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Mar 12, 2019 06:08
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OvermanXAN posted:Meanwhile on the subject of the Super Robot Wars stuff, no, Shinji is never actually treated like that in any of the games, it's entirely stupid 4chan memes, of course. He's just around people who are actually supportive of him and trying to help him through his depression instead of being around, well, NERV. Anno has been vocally supportive of having Evangelion in Super Robot Wars (In fact going so far as to actively demand to Gainax executives that they let Banpresto use it). Yup! The best SRW takes are where Shinji just has a support network and he ends up a happier person because he's surrounded by people that genuinely care about him while the hot-blooded super robot pilots tell Gendo to piss off because they know a thing or two about bad dads and he is definitely a bad dad. The series' original creators get as much input as they want and have final say on stuff that absolutely cannot be changed under any circumstances and its on record that Anno is very hands on with Gunbuster and Eva and even getting old man Tomino's permission to do stuff with Char's Counterattack because he's a lunatic who thinks it is a "cultural heirloom for future generations" so he's been doing weird crossover fan fiction with Eva on and off for years to varying degrees.
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Mar 12, 2019 06:08
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It genuinely makes me happy to hear about, though. There's something weirdly heartening about the original writer approving of 'And if things weren't so poo poo, Shinji could get over the hump.' All he needed was a happier robot series. 
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Mar 12, 2019 06:14
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Of course most internet people have no concept of a healthy relationship that isn't basically magically turning a depressed teenager into a stereotypical cartoon hero, but Shinji actually having a peer group he can relate to and doing a lot better as a result makes sense. Especially since from what I've seen isolation is a big theme in NGE, with Shinji basically pulled out of whatever life he had into a poorly-run military operation with a handful of other dysfunctional people that he has very little in common with. Possibly he might be jealous that the other guys can operate their giant robots with like, buttons and joysticks and stuff, and not an extremely strange and violating user interface.
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Mar 12, 2019 06:30
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The funny thing is, in pretty much any other situation Shinji would come off as insanely brave and stoic. He gets into the robot and gets his rear end kicked and horrible things happen to him, and then he just keeps doing it. Dude is legit a hero, but being a hero gets you jack poo poo in Evangelion.
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Mar 12, 2019 07:36
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Yeah and while 4.0 isnt out yet the 3.0 movie was basically "This is the Evangelion setting showing you what would happen if Shinji did like what your fanfic wants" And again, Shinji is a fuckload tougher than people give him credit. I mean dude nearly suffocates to death while trapped in a parallel dimension and the only reward he has to look forward to is sleeping in a lovely apartment before somebody wakes him up and yells at him to get back in the robot and face some other horrific form of possible death while being constantly told any mistake he makes will doom all mankind and nobody tells him a god drat thing about whats going on. I think that last bit is why having your Eva base be gaurding nothing is the only "twist" that will work because players in such a game familiar with Eva will be able to power through setbacks and tradgedy on the assumption that at least what they are defending matters and is important and that therefore their characters suffering has purpose Barudak fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Mar 12, 2019 |
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Mar 12, 2019 08:21
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I really like genre variants (to use anime examples, Evangelion and Madoka Magica) that take a genre in a very weird or unusual direction, often a darker or 'more mature' direction - but then use that to reaffirm the value of the original genre. It's so much more likely to produce nuanced and interesting ideas than something that just wants to say the very genre it parasitizes to create itself is childish or meaningless.
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Mar 12, 2019 09:22
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Joe Slowboat posted:I really like genre variants (to use anime examples, Evangelion and Madoka Magica) that take a genre in a very weird or unusual direction, often a darker or 'more mature' direction - but then use that to reaffirm the value of the original genre. It's so much more likely to produce nuanced and interesting ideas than something that just wants to say the very genre it parasitizes to create itself is childish or meaningless. And of course there's the "Wow!! cool robot" effect, although perhaps in Evangelion it's more like the Eva is shooting "Decently Executed Literature-style Presentation of Emotional Realism" over the nerd's head and they're instead going, "Wow!! DEPTH!! I saw Rei's arm fall off!!"
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Mar 12, 2019 09:33
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OvermanXAN posted:The Mesoamerican idea is RahXephon, because of course the writers of AdEva are physically incapable of having an original idea. It's not about blood sacrifices but its imagery is heavily based on mesoamerican stuff. It's got some stylistic similarities to Eva but is thematically completely different. RahXephon is literally a love story, and how about relationships affect art. I really think it's only because of TERRA and NERV, both being introspective Super Robots, and their last episodes having very surreal natures that comparisons are ever made. Ayato is a likeable, and more importantly mentally well person, who deals with betrayal, discrimination, lies, writer's block (not joking or diminishing this) and his budding romantic/sexual feelings for a woman over a decade older than him and the complications admitting them could have, and Haruka herself being terrified to admit to anyone that she loves Ayato, because the 12 year gap between them is even more hurtful to her for more complicated reasons. Evangelion is about how Shinji and the other pilots/NERV members don't love themselves, because they're mentally broken people put in a self destructive environment with only a few bright spots, and about Shinji in particular learning to love himself and humanity, despite he and humanity in general being lovely and learning to deal with the fact that the only thing that could improve is him and how he deals with it. Taking RahXephon and implanting in Evangelion is dumb, because the narratives reflect that. Ayato loving crushes all his fights in RahXephon and is increasingly all powerful in his mech, with oppoents basically only attacking him or someone else mentally or the side effects of a fight with a few exceptions, because his foes know they can't actually beat him for the most part and don't even want too. They want to separate him from his love interest and friends, subvert his talents, or make him question his friends and love interest. It would all be about burning and building social links or touchstones. Oh great, you defeated this Dolem in order to protect your gal pal and maybe girlfriend from Tokyo Jupiter, but because where you want to take your PC and the Haruka NPC, you know this relationship has to go now? I have a solution, take the Trauma condition and some xp for that. Now go the hotel room and.... Night10194 posted:Now we get into the stuff they made up rather than took from the show, and it's a lot more dull. This is from the show; it's from the series background info that was added as unlockable files and in game exposition for one of the games (I think Genesis but it could be the N64). There is a interview with Anno where he explains everything about out, but it's also clear it's never meant to be presented in the or any narrative, but as the guideline from how Eva stories should be made. Also, it's supposed to be Evangelion Unit 01 is the clone of Lilith, which is also why GIHREN doesn't want Yui/it to eat the S2 engine or those cores inside Angels because 'then it eats from the tree of both life and knowledge and become indistinct from God' aka it becomes a being the FAR which is why Adam's and Lilith's are supposed to be on the same planet and all GIHREN wants to do is be tang. NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Mar 12, 2019 |
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Mar 12, 2019 10:05
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NutritiousSnack posted:RahXephon is literally a love story, and how about relationships affect art. I really think it's only because of TERRA and NERV, both being introspective Super Robots, and their last episodes having very surreal natures that comparisons are ever made. In fairness, there are some places where it cribs pretty directly from Eva, like that one monster of the week that attacks in exactly the same way as the 12th Angel. That's more a surface detail than a core thematic element, but it's the kind of thing that people notice.
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Mar 12, 2019 10:26
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