Neo Genesis Evangelion: Apocrypha
The Second Child / Promises To Keep

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Writer's Rambling Miscellaneous Notes
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No, sorry, this is *not* a new chapter nor a new epilogue of
"The Second Child / Promises To Keep". I merely decided, while updating
these Writer's Notes, to write them out to a separate file.

So if you haven't posted or emailed a review, you can do so now before
you read these notes, since my expository writing might just bore you :-)

First, the disclaimers.

Neon Genesis Evangelion and its characters are the property of Gainax, Inc.
of Japan, and the U.S. English releases are licensed by ADV (for the TV
series) and Manga (for the movies). No pecuniary or malicious intent
should be attributed to this writer, and he in fact encourages you to
buy the aforementioned companies' products. This writer respects the
owners' copyrights, and seeks no profit from this story.

This story you have just read is "fan fiction" and is not connected to
nor authorized by Gainax. While this fic adds elements to the EoE movie,
it does, however, try to remain true in all other respects to Eva canon.
Or at least those aspects of Eva canon that I'm aware of.

Dialogue for the flashbacks are taken from the English subs and dubs
released by ADV. Since the movies and the "Director's Cut" Episode 22
scenes have not as of this writing been released to the U.S. market,
dialogue for flashbacks of these scenes are taken from the script
translations found on various fans' sites on the Internet.

Manga will release the U.S. English version of EoE in the latter half
of 2001. The Director's Cut versions of the last TV episodes, including
Episode 22, will probably never be released in English-dubbed form. The
LD's, VHS tapes, and Region 2 DVD's are available, however, from various
anime shops and Internet sites if you know where to look.

And now for some explanations for the story.

This fic is based on the movie End of Evangelion, especially the
"My True Heart For You" episode and the epilogue episode "One More Final/
I Need You". The latter is probably among the most
heart-wrenching movie scenes I have ever watched, something I both
loved and hated. Considering the sheer simplicity and brevity of the
scene, its dark portrayal of cosmic hope, despair, and anger, and
the moving force of its pathos and ambiguity, the scene left me stunned,
frozen in my seat, muttering "What the hell...?"

The strong ambiguity in the ending to EoE is probably amply
described by the director himself when he was interviewed about
NGE in general and he descibed the whole series as an act of burning
his angst into film: "I tried. I don't know what the result will
be. That is because within me, the story is not yet finished."
Indeed, the act of finding life's meaning doesn't end, never gives
full closure, even in his movie.

Whether or not the NGE characters Shinji and Asuka can overcome the
barriers between them is left up to the viewer to speculate on. There is
reason to hope, and reason to doubt, and enough uncertainty to make
one feel sick. NGE could not have had a more apt "ending."

But for some of us who were touched by the story of NGE and recognize
its director's message of angst, there is enough faith to go around, to
believe that a happier continuation is possible, even if the gist of the
story continues only in our minds.

Of course, sometimes we don't like things to be *too* ambiguous, and
we're tempted to write our own myths.

This fic was written partly to flesh out parts of the Eva story (especially
the fate of one of the major characters) in such a way as to leave a more
optimistic ending, a "light at the end of the tunnel", while at the same
time trying to retain at least some of the moody flavor of the original
story as a plaintive grasping and groping for meaning against the awesome
darkness and mystery of existence.

As for various odds and ends within the story...

Rei's apocalpytic monologues (i.e., the Dead Sea Scroll prophecies and
the modified myth of Lillith) are fictional additions to the Eva myths
and are not to be mistaken as real-life theology, of course :)

Rei's apocalyptic line regarding "a man with no faith, a woman who would
scorn love" points to the Children as an inverted image of the Biblical
character of Job. Whereas the elderly Job survives his tribulations through
his existing albeit shaken faith, the Children have to discover faith
from scratch in order to survive their tribulation.

"By the waters of Babylon" is a reference both to the scene in "One
More Final" in which Shinji weeps over Asuka by the red LCL sea,
as well as to these words in Psalm 137: "By the waters of Babylon
we lay down and wept, and wept for thee Zion. We remember thee, we
remember thee Zion." It is also the title of a well-known short story,
by Stephen Vincent Benet, which shares some themes with this fic.

Rei's participation in the Children's post-Instrumentality dream is partly
an allusion to the dialogue between Rei and Asuka outside Shinji's
hospital room, when Asuka asks Rei, "Don't tell me you don't dream?"

The confrontation in the elevator between Rei and Asuka in Part 1 is
intentionally reminiscent of their infamous, if less dramatic, encounter
in Episode 22.

The theory that Asuka did not die, either in her Eva in "Air" or in the
Instrumentality death sequence backdropped by "Komm Susser Todd" in
"My True Heart For You", is based on the observation that she was the only
character aside from Rei and Shinji whose remains weren't seen dissolved
into LCL, even though characters who were earlier killed off that day,
including Misato, Ritsuko, and various NERV personnel, were seen dissolved
in Rei's presence. For purposes of this fic, I've accepted the theory
proposed in various message boards that the splitting of Asuka's upraised
arm in "Air" was a vivid illusion generated by her neural link with her
dying Eva.

Asuka's pseudo-flashback to her conversation with Hikari had its context
shifted on purpose, so that in Asuka's mind they speak of Shinji rather
than Touji. The context shift is an allusion to the Hikari-Touji
relationship's apparent role as a foreshadowing device to illustrate the
depth of the multi-layered tension between the Second and Third Children,
whose own confused affections for each other were only implied in the TV
series but have been the subject of so many fan fics even before EoE. The
scene also brings up Rei's seemingly ambiguous role in both triangles.

Asuka's bitter line "You don't know what I want" is a restatement of
Hikari's aside "You don't know anything" at Touji's bedside. These and
other references to the so-called Hedgehog's Dillema and the inability of
people to completely know one another are sprinkled throughout the fic, as
in the TV series and movies.

Shinji finding Asuka on the seashore, and her earlier comment that "the
shore isn't so far that you can't reach it" is an allusion to the bedtime
conversation between Kaji and Shinji in Episode 18 regarding the gap between
a man and a woman's heart "on a distant shore", following the enigmatic scene
in which Asuka clams up after cryptically saying she can't enjoy herself that
particular night.

The part of Yui's monologue explaining the shift in the focus of Shinji's
angst from his father to Asuka also serves as an implicit explanation for
the fact that Rei asks Shinji "Did you really try to understand him/her"
twice, once in regard to Gendo after the incident with Touji, the second
time in regard to Asuka during Instrumentality. Both questions occur inside
a dream sequence involving riding a train, and this fic portrays Asuka's
finally coming face to face with his pain by bringing her into the train
with him during Instrumentality.

Asuka's confrontation with the gray-cowled mob in the train station directly
alludes to a scene from one her dream sequences inside Arael (from the
Japanese Director's Cut video version), and again points out that her fall
in Episode 22 was a foreshadowing of Shinji's Instrumentality. The different
outcome of her second encounter with the gray-cowled LCL mob proves her
newfound inner strength, and allows for her decisive last confrontation and
conciliation with Rei.

Rei's farewell appearance in the empty train station accounts for Shinji's
seeing apparitions of her in Episode 1 and in "One More Final/I Need You".

Kyoko's monologue by the seashore describes Asuka's redemptive dream inside
her Eva in "Air" as a foreshadowing of Shinji's reconciliation with his
mother and his reappearance/rebirth by the seashore in "One More Final/
I Need You". Kyoko's line regarding mutual creation is a restatement in
visual imagery of the existentialist view of subjective reality, that we
define each other's selves through our interactions with each other.

Various influences, both Eva and non-Eva, helped in the writing of this fic,
the principal ones of which are listed below, in addition to the ones listed
in the Writer's Notes for the previous chapters:

The line "That which is dreamed can never be lost, and can never be
undreamed" is a quotation from Neil Gaiman's "Sandman: The Wake" specifically
from the "Exile" story. Whereas the character in Sandman uses the line in
recollection of the past, Rei inverts the context and uses the line in a
more forward-looking, hopeful message.

Note also the allusion to Gaiman's "Exiles" story, the allusion
to the Jewish exiles in "By the waters of Babylon", and the allusion
in "One More Final" to Adam and Eve (who are, after all, exiles from
Eden). All point to the idea of being lost, of being alienated; in
the end, all the two human pilots have left, after having alienated
themselves from the world, is each other.

The "Day After" scene on the beach is derived from a Gainax LD cover
artwork, showing a scene from after "One More Final/I Need You".

Kaworu's monologue uses modified snippets from T.S. Eliot's "Hollow Men"
and from Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice" in reference to the destructive
effect of emptiness in a human heart, while also pointing out the reverse
side of destruction, which is the construction of something new; i.e., the
Hegelian concept of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. The title "Thesis,
Antithesis" is therefore an intended play of words on the English title of
the TV theme song, "Cruel Angel's Thesis". Out of Third Impact would arise
something new, the "Neo Genesis."

I had thought of quoting a haiku instead of using these Western poems, but
didn't have anything appropriate available at the time I wrote this fic.

"Promises to keep" comes from the Robert Frost poem "Stopping By Woods on a
Snowy Evening". The poem, like Dylan's "Rage Against the Dying of the Light"
has sometimes been interpreted as expressing rejection of early or
meaningless death, and as an affirmation of life's promise.

"Take me to your dream, I will walk with you" is, I think, the title of a
J-Pop song which I haven't actually heard; I just thought the phrasing went
well with this Epilogue. The "theme song" I sorta had in mind for this fic
was actually the instrumental version of "Thanatos, If I Can't Be Yours" from
the End of Evangelion OST; the music is played in the movie right after
Shinji sees the mangled remains of Eva-02. (Portions of the lyrics from the
vocal version are in fact alluded to in some of the dialogue with Asuka and
Rei, as you may have noticed anyway.) If you listen to the music, you'll
notice that a sad, mournful mood permeates the song until we near the end of
the song. I like to believe that the epilogue of this fic ties in nicely with
the more upbeat tempo and and hopeful mood with which the music ends. A leap
of faith into the darkness, towards the possibility of light at the of the
tunnel.

****
James Lee, April 2001
[email protected]
Somewhere in the USA
AMDG