oh hey reminder that AT (“Absolute Terror”) fields are themed from the same source as “terror management theory”

reminder that that concept is about the defenses we erect to protect us from awareness of our own inevitable mortality

so the Unit-02/Mass Production Unit fight in End of Evangelion where Asuka goes balls out and channels all her perfectionist neurosis into beating them all before her power supply ends, but then they just rise up again and break through her AT field and impale her mother/avatar/self through the face to be cannibalized

the very moment where their spears, forcing their way through the field, turn into a Lance of Longinus - the very tool by which his inferiors killed God - and she exclaims in astonishment, that second when she realizes that no matter how perfect she is she’ll die anyway

that’s also a metaphor for realizing that no matter how perfect you are you’ll die anyway