#i can vaguely remember talking with the BF early on in season two about what would have happened to ein post-edmonton

[stillness-in-green]

u know, pardon if this is out of the blue bc i was looking at my old reblogs posts and found ur analysis (?? breakdown???) of mcgillis from gundam ibo and was wondering if u ever posted one for both gaelio and ein (either separately or together) bc I couldnt find any in my own reblogs (yes i know its been like 5 years or something pls let me live)

Heya!  Sadly, no, I never got around to the Gaelio essay, and while it’s still something I’d like to write one of these days, it would definitely need to wait for a series rewatch.  I’d also rather want to watch it bearing in mind that Gaelio was intended just to die at the end of Season 1, and consider what that means for his—and likely Ein’s, as I suppose there’s no reason to bring in the Type-E if it weren’t for Gaelio—arcs that they got that second chance.

But, that’s not to say I’ve never posted any meta about Gaelio or Ein.  I’d highlight these:

This one about the Bauduin family trio.

This one talking about the parallels Gaelio was drawing when he took the name Vidar.  Written rather early in the second season, a little ways before the Hashmal arc, so not all the theorizing about the extended mythology is correct, but all the stuff about Gaelio himself was on-point.

This one briefly analyzing the showrunners' post-series claim that Gaelio could only walk because of the Type-E, which was destroyed in the finale, hence his being in the wheelchair in the epilogue. It's a little disjointed, largely because I liked the first half of the proposition but thought the second half didn't match what we saw in the show at all, and was further a poor explanation for, if not the wheelchair, certainly the hospital gown. I wasn't as clear as I could have been in distinguishing my responses to the two aspects. But I do still like the idea that Gaelio was paralyzed at the end of Season One, even if the in-show evidence doesn't always track with it, and that post goes a bit into why.

As to Ein, I've written less meta on him.  This is the only one I'd particularly note, leading with a reply to an ask about Mikazuki, but ending with some talk about Ein, his unusual-for-the-show moral framework of sinfulness, and where he might have picked it up.

Just to note, I frequently call him things like "unhinged zealot," but I do so with 100% fondness.  I love Ein, but I love him from the position of believing that he was a closet whack job destined to go wildly off-course as soon as something unbalanced him from his tightly controlled spin.

(Below-the-cut bonus!  Impromptu meta blurb!)

Ein needed a grounded, steady superior to keep him stable, which Lieutenant Crank, with his age-honed composure, was well-equipped to handle.  Gaelio being more malleable in nature left him open to being influenced by Ein's extremism, which then allowed Ein to get up to all sorts of taboo nonsense, with Gaelio following him down out of a cocktail of personal loyalty, admiration, and a sense of debt.  I largely view them as having enabled each other to get worse, but specifically what broke down was their physical condition (as with Ein's steady deterioration from Regular Able-Bodied Dude to Ghost In the Machine) and their sense of morality (Gaelio's surgery to use the Type-E despite his clearly established Earth Sphere revulsion for body modification).  Their relationship, conversely, only ever got more intimate.

In short, I think Gaelio and Ein's feelings for each other were very positive in how they experienced/perceived them, but their priorities (Ein's hatred of Tekkadan, Gaelio wrangling with McGillis’s betrayal, the Gjallarhorn influence on both of their values) meant that what could have been a pretty darn wholesome and uplifting relationship instead locked them into a spiral of pursuing what they thought the other wanted, in ways that got wholly out of hand in almost no time at all.  Great in terms of dynamic relationships,(1) not so great in terms of bonds that would help them both make it to the end of the series intact.

Really, it's probably only thanks to Julietta that Gaelio made it to the epilogue in any remotely well-adjusted fashion.

(Disclaimer: I recall a statement being made at some point that the writers intended Type-E to not have any real cognitive capability left, that it was basically just unusually gruesome backup processing power.  I am further aware that Gailio probably just called the system by name because Gaelio was a capital-R Romantic.  However, with no evidence in the canon one way or the other, I am not about to let either of those facts stop me from headcanoning the shit out of Ein’s ongoing presence in the Type-E.  It’s just tastier that way, you see.)

That all said, you can find more of the above takes in fanfic I wrote for the series if you’d like. Here’s a link to all the stuff on my AO3 involving Gaelio and/or Gaelio+Ein.  There’s also this little Rustal POV on Gaelio and Macky that never made it to AO3 because I never got around to writing the second part of it.

Thanks for the ask, and the interest!

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1:  So long as you don’t need your ships to be eligible for the Tumblr Purity Brigade Stamp of Approval, anyway.