I kind of want to talk about the effect that Neon Genesis Evangelion had on me, but I’m not going to - not really, anyway. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s the idea that I might get a response I don’t like. This is the sort of show that has a few layers of ambiguity, and I think it’s possible to draw different conclusions depending on a few things (not least your mental state in approaching the show in the first place), but the internet doesn’t like ambiguity. Despite that belief, there’s the fear that someone will tell me I’m somehow “getting it wrong”. There are parts of this that, a day later rather than immediately after, have awoken very visceral, personal flashbacks of being an eighteen-year-old Philosophy student with actual delusions of solipsism, but the fact that a television show made me remember - rather than therapy, or some other event we consider sacrosanct and something you carefully pace around - means that talking about it could provoke reactions that confuse an intimately personal reaction with a television review.
One thing I did learn - through Arden, and later confirmed by reading up a little - is that the show’s creator, Hideaki Anno, has had a strained relationship with his more obsessive fans. Watching the show, it doesn’t surprise me (in End of Evangelion, the two-parter designed to replace or complement the final two episodes, flashes of death threats to Anno and an obscenely-graffitied Gainax office appear), but that level of obsession seems to be taken for granted now. Maybe it’s been there for longer, but the internet diversifies it - every show, every band, every idea provokes its own miniature Beatlemania. People get possessive. Get too close to a piece of fiction, and it can fuck with your head. I can only wonder at the volume of hate mail Steven Moffat gets. I think it’s that sort of thing that’s unprecedented - when your TV show is so desperately owned by others that any good narrative decision is met with histrionic wailing and claims of having “all the feels”, and any voice of dissent is met with death threats, then it becomes a little stifling.
People who put all their stock in a market economy probably don’t have a problem with this - the potentially criminal elements, sure, but the ownership of media by those who invest (their time, money, attention) is taken as read. But that’s odd to think about. The terrifying devotion of fans has thrown out a huge, centuries-spanning debate about the purpose of art simply by virtue of its ferocity.
Neon Genesis Evangelion works because of the authorial voice. There’s a distinct impression, about halfway through, that it’s no longer being explicitly written for an audience, and that’s where the autobiographical elements, the controversial ideas, and the real feeling of excitement shine through. There’s a feeling that someone’s actually making something, rather than just meeting the expectations of people who - let’s be frank - aren’t making anything themselves. You stop thinking about the monster of the week, and start losing yourself.
Obviously, I don’t really have fans (apart from Arden, who doesn’t really count because fiancés are biased), but I did notice myself continually being referred to - by people who like what I do - as a “British sci-fi writer”, and it kind of backed me into a corner. I got to some weird creative bottleneck, where the hyper-awareness of that trite description meant that I was shoehorning futuristic-sounding but ultimately soulless ideas into stories, and being obsessively wry about everything in sight. You’ll never see those drafts, because they suck. I’m back to writing more honestly now, but it can be a hard place to reach these days.