these_balls | Understand the secrets and have some fun

APPLICATIONS!

Currently: Closed!
Route 29 has closed as of May 30th. For the continuation of the game, please visit victory_road!

Applications will be normally checked during the weekend following the first and third Sunday of each month unless otherwise stated, and we will allow one application per person during one application cycle. Remember, the most characters one player can have at a time is currently set at five.

Applications received after 11:59 PM EST on Saturday of the first and third weekend of each month will be checked the following app weekend unless otherwise stated.

We now ask that potential applicants post their application in comments rather than linking. If their application contains explicit references to 'hard' spoilers (character death, unforeseen plot twists, big reveals, he was evil all along etc), players should put the application in their own journal or their character's journal and link it, making sure to mention the presence of spoilers within. For further clarification on our spoilers policy and whether or not your application needs to be linked, please check this page. Thank you for your cooperation!

The comment character limit on dreamwidth is 16,000 characters so apps no longer need to be split into multiple comments; however this is at players' discretion.

Please use the form below and post your application in comments rather than linking if you can. If you have any questions, feel free to ask either of the mods. You can reach us through emails, IMs, or PMs.

A reminder for those waiting to hear back, please don't be worried if we skip yours while going through them. It only means we needed a little more time to research!

Helpful links!
Taken: 1|2|3 / Reserves
Please do not app a character from either of these unless you reserved them!
Starter Pokémon!
A compiled list of the starter pokémon to choose from offered in Route 29!
Word Count Tool!
Word count! It has other pointless stats too.
Navigation

Player
Name: 
Personal Journal: <user name="">
E-mail:
AIM/Plurk/Etc.:
Timezone:
Current Characters in Route:

Character
Name:
Series:
Timeline:
Canon Resource Links: Here we would have the links to wikis and other information sites. If none of those seem to provide enough information, feel free to add more about the character here. However, please do not use this section as a full history section unless your canon is ridiculously obscure. General rule of thumb: if there are a good amount of descriptive resources, please just link them and use this section to add in what may have been left out, as opposed to writing an entire history section.

Personality: Give us at minimum 2-3 full paragraphs of how you understand your character's personality. Talk about basic characteristics, any major developments over the course of their canon, their motives, their social behavior, and anything else you can think of that shows off your knowledge of this character.
Strengths/Weaknesses: Try to cover the good points of what they can do, their life skills (not necessarily powers, but things they're just good at). Go into their biggest fears and what they just can’t do.

Pokémon Information
Affiliation: What career path will your character be taking? Breeder, Trainer? Or maybe even down the dark path of becoming a member of Team Rocket? Note: All Rocket members start as grunts. (For right now, only those three positions are available, whether your character chooses to follow their assigned path or not.)
Starter: What starter pokémon do you want your character to have? Please use the list linked above to choose from. Certain pokémon have an orange star next to their names; if you choose one of these starters (Deino, Zorua, Litwick, Pikachu, Scyther, Dratini, Bagon, Gible, Axew, Ralts, Riolu, Beldum, Larvitar, Eevee, or Beldum) you must provide reasoning. You do not need to explain your reasoning for pokémon other than those listed above.
Password: This is where you'll put the passwords from the Rules and the F.A.Q. There are two words, to assure you've read both.

Samples
First Person Sample: The sample must take place in Route_29's setting. Eight sentences is the minimum. This is a PokéConnect post--one that will be on the character's journal, broadcast to the network. Although it is short, it needs to show how your character would communicate with others, as well as be descriptive enough to express the character's voice without sounding too generic.

Third Person Sample: The sample must take place in Route_29's setting. The minimum is 300 words. Please note that what we are looking for is an inner working into the character’s thoughts and actions, and how the character responds to the setting, not something that could be taken as an excerpt fanfic. You may use other characters to bounce your characters actions off of, but everything should still be mostly from their point of view.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Unfortunately, we can't accept your application at this time. Based on our review of the canon history links provided in the app, it appears that the majority of the application relies heavily on interpretations of a theory of canon that is unsubstantiated by official canon resources. While some headcanon is both natural and acceptable when it comes to interpreting canon events for the purposes of exploring a character's personality and characterization in an application, we feel that we cannot accept an application whose foundations are rooted in theories as opposed to in concrete canon. As the wiki and our independent research indicates that the Evangelion manga and the TV series are separate continuities, we unfortunately must treat them as such and cannot accept an application that interprets them as being otherwise. For this reason, we cannot accept your application at this time. Please feel free to reapply as many times as you like.

Before I reapply, can I ask for clarification?

Is your problem specifically with linking the manga and NGE, or is connecting NGE and Rebuild also not okay? Because Kaworu literally spends Rebuild saying things like "this time, I'll definitely make you happy" (after descinding from the moon to stop Shinji from Third Impact, theit first actual meeting in Rebuild) and "I really was born to meet you." (Mirroring his line in NGE.)

So I'm a little confused if the problem is the assertion of time iterations itself.

Hello! We apologize for the delay on getting back to you; as it is the holiday season, RL is frequently taking precedence over RP for the modteam.

Our concern is that the application as submitted treats several distinct presentations of canon as being multiple segments of a single continuous timeline, when the canon resources linked in the application give no such indication. We feel that level of interpretation and headcanon goes beyond the scope of acceptability by Route's application standards. Therefore, your stated canonpoint of "the manga leading into NGE" was unacceptable because they are two separate continuities of Evangelion, not a single continuous timeline that is treated as such by canon sources themselves.

As your first canon source link itself states: "Neon Genesis Evangelion is a manga series by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. It is an alternate retelling of the story of the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series, constituting a separate continuity."

Likewise, that same wiki indicates, with regard to Rebuild of Evangelion: "Rebuild of Evangelion (ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版 Evangelion Shin Gekijōban, lit. "Evangelion New Theatrical Edition") is a series of four movies by the creators of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which form an alternate retelling of the original TV series. "Rebuild of Evangelion" constitutes a separate continuity from the continuity of the original TV series and associated movies, Evangelion: Death and Rebirth and The End of Evangelion."

As canon sources indicate that the manga, TV series, and Rebuild are all separate continuities of the Evangelion story, we therefore must require that you app from a single continuity, and restrict the content of your application to canon and analysis from that continuity. While you may use information from the other continuities sparingly to inform that analysis (for example, comparing and contrasting different iterations of Kaworu to better illustrate his personality traits, or using an example of how Kaworu behaves under a given set of circumstances that may not be represented in one continuity but are nevertheless canon actions for Kaworu to take), we reiterate that the use of that information should be sparing and used only to support the analysis of Kaworu from the singular continuity from which you are apping him.

With regard to your final question, a rejection of your application means that you may reapply for the same character with a new application in the following application period. We will next be processing applications on January 2 and 3.

Thank you, and happy holidays.

Obviously a decision is a decision and I respect your right as mods to make one, but I feel somewhat pressed to explain why I presented this app's information as canon.

I'll admit I'm the one at fault here; I wasn't expecting to need to explain the cyclical nature of Evangelion as a story because I thought it was widely known. I assumed (and we all know what assuming does) that this was an understood quantity and did not need elaboration. So I focused instead on trying to make the difficult cosmology of Evangelion into something more linear, because it helps with understanding what Kaworu is and does.

But the creators of Evangelion have literally said that this canon is cyclical, and... well. Rebuild actively references it.

Hideki Anno himself has said "Eva is a story that repeats."

Here is a transcript of an interview with Akira Ishida that discusses the subject as it specifically applies to Rebuild. The entire interview references the fact that Rebuild is not an insolated continuity or retelling, but if you don't want to comb it, there's this: "Even if they talk about different things, the feelings Kaworu has for Ikari Shinji… they won't change. I knew the world was different this time, but, on top of that, I was worried about how to best approach Ikari Shinji this time so that everyone would understand that. That was a high hurdle. I was thinking about how to handle it from the very beginning. How should Nagisa Kaworu be after he's accumulated several different cycles in his past?"

"The first two films in Rebuild were used to vividly remind the audience of specific scenes and nuances of the original TV series. No matter how many times it happens, it always ends the same way. It should have been different from the previous cycle, *but the same mistakes are repeated once again*."

(All bolded emphasis mine.)

This Reddit thread also contains a number of pertinent quotes and interviews. (I know Reddit isn't exactly a reliable source, haha.)

Here is the Evangelion Source Anthology if you're inclined to further research.

Interviews aside, Kaworu's actions and a great deal of his dialogue in Rebuild depend on this principle to make sense.

And if need be (and if you're open to in-canon examples), I've actually gathered some specific scenes and lines from the series that reinforce what's discussed in the interviews above.

Part of the issue with Evangelion--and the confusion here, which again is my fault--is that Evangelion itself is extremely messy in terms of canon and also in terms of fanbase. Wikipedia is obligated to explain the canon in non-canon terms, which is fine. The Evageeks wiki, while a great source of information for specific mechanics, does not actually do a very good job of any narrative explanation.

Regardless, the cyclical narrative of Evangelion isn't a headcanon of mine (I wish I were that clever), it's just the implicit nature of the canon. Sorry if there was any misunderstanding about my interpretation, and obviously you aren't obligated to rethink anything.

Apologies for the hassle!

Edited 2015-12-23 04:50 (UTC)

We appreciate the time and effort you went to in providing us with this further information about Evangelion's nature as a canon. However, taking all of the information at our disposal into account, we have ultimately decided to stand by our previous decision, and we appreciate your willingness to respect our authority to do so.

For the purposes of applications to Route 29, we feel that the various Evangelion canons should be treated as separate continuities. Therefore, if you choose to reapply for Kaworu in the future, we will ask that you please treat the various canon sources as separate continuities, and indicate which individual continuity you will be apping him from. Thank you, and happy holidays.

Also, can I edit my app and reapply this round, or do I have to wait two weeks?

Understand the secrets and have some fun

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