#freedom spoilers

[gundamtitanium]

Hello friends it's your friendly neighborhood Athrun Zala apologist coming to spread the truth of our lord and savior once again.

(Thoughts on Freedom under the cut)

First of all let's give it up for the REAL Gundam Jesus of the series: ya boi Zala. Might be a hot take but Athrun is always coming in clutch, rising from the ashes of defeat, and got to punch Kira in the face a few times. (I love Kira, he just needed a good hit to rescramble those martyr brains.)

Down to the bramblewire: not a fan of the new English dub voices. I know the previous dubs are coloring my perspective, but I had a hard time following some of the lines due to the unfamiliar voices. I will definitely watch it again in the original with subtitles. (La-COOS? Never heard of her.)

Also wasn't expecting such a huge focus on love, but you know what? Love wins. While Kira and Lacus are the ship of the movie, I liked how they also highlighted Shinn and Lunamaria, plus Murrue and Mwu. Oh, and also:

ALL HAIL ASUCAGA SUPREMACY!

Beyond happy to see them rectify the mistakes of Destiny by getting Cagalli and Athrun back together. Best couple is here best couple is now.

Special shoutout to my boys Yzak and Dearka for reprising their Destiny roles as "Stop doing the bullshit" security for ZAFT. Glad to see them back, if only for a brief moment.

It was a nice movie that I will rotate around in my head for a while, probably with more commentary after a rewatch or two. Mostly I'm excited for the resurgence of the SEED fandom and new merch!!

[raccooncityriots]

I finally found the Athrun and Cagalli pre-Freedom short story and it’s 4am, so I need to talk into the abyss about it.

I didn’t like it. End post.

I’m kidding, it was cute, but I'm not sure when exactly it takes place. The setup makes it seem like not too long before Freedom, but that doesn't make a ton of sense to me.

Anyway, the basic premise is that Cagalli invites Athrun to a restaurant to get his latest report from Terminal. They do briefly talk about the implications of the intel, but then she tells him she mostly invited him out because she wanted a day off to relax. Athrun mistakes her security detail for enemies and proceeds to make a scene. He pretty quickly realizes what’s happening, but says fuck it since she wanted a day away from her job and commits to kidnapping the leader of the country from her own security. After running for a while, he lifts her on top of a wall to hide and the guards unknowingly run past them in some Looney Tune-esque shenanigans.

Mu and Murrue are contacted by the security guards that tell them Cagalli is missing via Athrun kidnapping and they are both laugh it off. Mu says to leave them alone as they aren’t children anymore. Murrue says she’s sure Cagalli is safe with him, but Mu questions if ‘safe’ is the right word.

Cagalli and Athrun find themselves on a beach and enjoy a few moments of peace before Cagalli returns to her security and they begrudging do not arrest Athrun.

This was one of the little pamphlet stories they gave out the first week of the movie in Japan as sort of an early viewer reward. I’m not sure how 'cannon' it’s supposed to be (I'll get into that later) and full disclosure I’ve not seen Freedom since we don't get it here until May and I don't know Japanese, so 99% of my info is from fan translations. OKAY facts over, opinion time.

1. My biggest takeaway from the story is that they aren’t together anymore. The story is mostly from Athrun’s point of view and he thinks to himself that while he’s excited to see her because it’s been a while, it’s also awkward as they used to be inseparable and now they have work meetings. This is why I question when this takes place? They're 100% not back together yet in this story and nothing I know about Freedom has them 'getting back together' per say, they just are.*** I dunno, it doesn't matter too much, I'm just wondering about order of events here.

2. My second biggest takeaway is that despite the love triangle angle of that, like, one poster, Athrun seems infinitely more bothered than Cagalli does. Love to see it. Yes, I am a Cagalli stan above all else. Yes, I am still mad about Destiny. He clearly misses her and is overthinking everything. At multiple points he thinks/jokes about if her wanting to eat lunch with him was a "I want to spend the rare time I get alone with you" situation or an "ayye bro, I love this food and I had to meet with your ass for this intel anyway so". We get from his internal monologue that he 'desperately wants her to see this from his perspective' and I guess give him some sort of either hope she might still love him or closure that they're over. She gives him neither. I choose to believe purposefully. Come on, she has to know what inviting her ex-fiancé to lunch looks like and after Destiny, I'd like to think she's just fuckin' with him a little.

3. She asks what he's been up to and he starts to talk about his Terminal work with Meyrin and then immediately gets hung up as he says that, afraid that mentioning Meyrin would makes things awkward for Cagalli. All it does it make her concerned and start grilling him if something bad happened and if Meyrin is okay. He assures her that she's fine and thinks about how he made it weird by thinking Cagalli wouldn't want him to talk about Meyrin. Not only does she not visibly react at all to the fact he's still working with Meyrin, she actively brings her up again later and is like, "tell Meyrin I said hi and I hope she's doing great!" Athrun is sweating at how unbothered she is. Again, she has to be fucking with him, if only just a little. I gotta think this was written by another else ex-asucaga shipper that also spent half of Destiny wanting to straggle Athrun. I've read this fanfic 15 years ago, I stg. My people. Again, love to see it.

3.a Between this and the remarks Meyrin makes about Cagalli in the second movie novel, I have decided that they are actually besties now and I am not longer accepting any bullshit love triangle angst from anyone other than Athrun, thanks.

4. Despite what I may sound like in points 1-3, it's clearly supposed to be a very asucaga story. Once the 'kidnapping' starts, the awkwardness is over and they spend the rest of the story holding hands as they run through back alleys. At one point he's physically carrying her (during the Looney Tune shenanigans) and talking about feeling her heartbeat, Cagalli gets a drink that's literally called, "my first love", etc.

5. At the end of the story Athrun looks at how happy Cagalli is walking next to the ocean and thinks about how (as Mu pointed out to Murrue) they're adults now and how much they've both changed/matured. They part ways with Athrun telling her to hang in here and being satisfied with himself that he could make her day off a little more enjoyable.

*** Yeah, again, I've not seen Freedom, but from what I have seen, I have to assume they're back together. Why would Athrun be thinking about Cagalli naked during combat and Cagalli clutching her engagement ring while she prays to her dead father if they're not back together? That's on them. I ain't taking any responsibility on misreading the room.

From what I've heard, I don't think the Destiny callback memorial scene in the novel is in the actual movie because I've not heard anyone talk about it before the novel came out, I lowkey hope I'm wrong about that because it is a pretty good moment.

I'm gonna have to wait until I see the movie with my own eyes before I make any final judgments, but at the end of the day I'm so grateful to have more content of a series that had such a huge impacted on my life and I might remove the "ex" from my ex-asucaga fan status. Might.

I just want my girl to be happy.

[nataliescatorccio]

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON 1x01 | 2x08

[kannra21]

Gege needs to understand that he's depriving his fans of Maslow's hierarchy of needs

[thevastnessof]

your god asks why you're crying and when you say because you've been looking for him he says "but we've been together the whole time!" hope has been with you all your life!! hope never left!

[dykealloy]

i really hate recommending things on the grounds of "yeah just put 1000 hours into it and it'll start getting crazy good" but you should watch one piece

[beaulesbian]

"The world should have protected you, but you have been asked to protect it. What an honor. What an injustice." - NADDPOD, Bahumia campaign ep. 97 (x)

[fluffyartbl0g]

Since Gear 5 is right around the corner, can we see when it awakened in your time travel AU?? I saw in the ASL installment that Ace referenced a fight with an admiral, was it then?

Well I’m kinda busy rn so I won’t be able to draw the entire encounter, but this is about what it looked like when akainu first saw it 👍

Speedrun/Time travel AU masterlist

[the-ratt-king]

so new earthspark huh

[mummer]

rhaenyra outsourcing motherhood to rhaena and assigning her that passive feminine role was REALLY interesting….. rhaenyra as a character is at her most fascinating when she is forced to navigate and ultimately perpetuate the gendered structures she despises and wishes she could transcend— the seeds of her tragedy already sewn here. just great character work

[m-u-n-c-h-y]

I postponed watching the last episode to make this...

[imminent-danger-came]

"Well, it was nice seeing you bud, just run off like you always do-"

"-No that's YOU!"

"You're the one always running off!"

[rodatirhaalo]

I think my favorite little parallel between Ascended vs Spawn Astarion has to be this little, probably even unintentional, detail in the epilogue:

Mr Vampire Ascendant, when confronted about freedom, asking the pc if they'd prefer sleeping in the dirt over "living" in his prescribed decadence.

Meanwhile, if left as a spawn Astarion is like

*Passes several chairs, rugs, a pile of pillows, and two log benches to plant his pretty little ass in the dirt*

"THIS DIRT'S THE BEST! I LOVE DIRT!!"

[roachymochi]

Not gonna lie if i was in Shuro's place and every time I tried to do something by myself as a child only to meet the Knife Hag, I too would have trouble expressing when something or someone is bothering me in an healthy manner.

[semi-sketchy]

They're wild for this

[nahoney22]

Stripping the paint from the armour has me so emotional I can’t lie