>>3932525Not to blog, but for me it isn't like that. I avoid ecchi or hentai content depicting her, and I often get feelings of anxiety when I encounter such images. Fan art can distort a character's actual, well, character, and I'm well aware of this effect, but even still I sometimes cross over from more respectable feelings to feelings of sexual attraction, but it resets. I find e.g. the Rei/Shinji pairing to be very cute and fitting, but don't really self-insert as Shinji. I sympathize with him and a lot of his issues, family especially, but he isn't me.
Simultaneously I have come to see Rei as a daughter and a mother figure (helped along by the figure of Lilith and events of EoE, plus other religious aspects of Eva). It might be as one thinks about a figure like Jesus: you have aspects of an unknowable, even terrifying being cohabiting with a figure representing empathy, even kindness towards mankind, all at once. I am sure that sounds somewhat mad, and I also admit I really haven't studied these things yet, but it's how I feel about Rei. It really started when I began conversing internally with "her" about problems I'm having; she as my conscience keeps me going, and the situation has evolved from there.
I don't think I have some kind of psychosis --- I know, fundamentally, that Rei is a fictional character. Regardless, I have a deep attachment to her. I carry a keychain of her every time I go walking, I am getting into drawing and music because of her, and my physical health and grades have dramatically improved since this association started. In many ways she ironically saved me from pure NEETdom --- not that I could afford such a life anyway. Anyway, then, Rei is a source of inspiration for me --- an obsession that I take to be on the whole positive, and I have felt this way for about a year.
I hope this made sense. It is hard to translate raw internal emotions into coherent external text. Most basically: I love Rei deeply, and I am better off for it.
