ITT: Misunderstood characters

Rei is the one orchestrating instrumentality, and offers for Shinji to live in the fictional world. Even though she does not necessarily want for him to take her offer, it does not change what she represents. Furthermore, for the vast majority of the show, she is barely a person. Interacting with her easy and inconsequential, as she is effectively empty. She gradually develops some semblance of agency, but this is her going against her character. It doesn't change her role.

At the end, shinji is literally melting into rei before rejecting the goop and accepting difficult interactions with asuka, a real person.

I don't think you can say she represents it when ultimately her arc is coming into terms of being her own person and going against Gendo.

Whatever her arc may be, it is still what she represents for shinji. Besides, a character ultimately making some change does not necessarily retroactively alter their place in the story. Gendo honestly telling yui how he feels right before his death doesn't mean that his character isn't there to show the consequences of emotional isolation and universality of problems.

Asuka is the one that represents escapism

Elaborate.

When everything goes to shit and Shinji has no one left he goes and demands Asuka to fix his problems while she's in the hospital. After everyone who he cared about (kaworu) is dead, the other bonds he had are weak as shit at the moment (misato) or are dead to him (rei 3 is not rei to him), he doesn't want to face the real situation and to him Asuka is "the only one who can help him now", Asuka herself tells him that he doesn't care about her, but that she wants to use her because there's no one else, that "anyone would do".
He doesn't want Asuka, he wants the idea of Asuka as someone that will save him. You can see that Shinji, after the hospital scene, doesn't care that Asuka is fighting alone or that she lost and the MPEs are destroying her body, he just sits there and does nothing, not even an attempt to go help her.

When Asuka is no longer useful to NERV, she becomes comatose. She is nothing more than a puppet, or DOLL to be used
Meanwhile, Rei chooses her own path which involves standing up for herself against her abuser, and ultimately becoming a GOD.

>Meanwhile, Rei chooses her own path which involves standing up for herself against her abuser
You could argue that at the end of it all Asuka too stands up for herself since she's comes back and despises Shinji and the world.
The become GOD part, sadly fro Rei, means she can't truly be free though, in my opinion. So both had good and bad things in that ending

And this is escapism how exactly? I think you don't know what it actually is.

If you can't see how that's escapism then sorry dude

They both go through ups and downs and while they get character development no one really wins there, not even the god-like characters. Maybe if evafaggots weren't so focused on their waifuwars and trying to make one of them look better than the other they would understand that but alas...