>>280682629It feels like gradually Shinji's default presentation has become passive, meek, and, well, feminine. There's been a real rise of homosexual art of him lately, as well as outright tranny art, as well as art of him participating in more female-coded fetishes like weight gain, as
>>280650963 notes.
The internet is kind of a great streamliner and synthesizer. The collective intelligence of everbody seems to strip away the things that don't "last" or "matter" in pieces of media we consume, and their characters. Shinji's more interesting nuances and his more favorable personality elements, his more masculine ones, tend to be cast aside in online discourse.
There's been a big winnowing-down of Shinji and the other characters of Eva, a show that relies on a lot of subtle moments and small signifiers.