Cornelia: Have You Accepted That Geass Is Evil And The Ones With Code Are An Abomination Against God?

Cornelia: Have you accepted that Geass is evil and the ones with Code are an abomination against God?

Lelouch:

Lelouch: Uh, you know, I meant to accept it, but then I just got really busy.

The funniest thing about Genesic's au where Lelouch dies instead of Shirley and she takes over as Zero is that she kind of does a better job of it than Lelouch? Like, she heals Rolo's psyche, she gets Nunnally out safe, the FLEIJA doesn't go off, she gets all our main characters to meet up and have a discussion (tragically, we only get to see her informing them of Lelouch's death), and, obviously, she doesn't sow the seeds of her destruction by murdering a whole compound of kids and unarmed scientists (but Cornelia still gets out of the geass compound anyway, courtesy of Jeremiah). Granted, this is partially because Lelouch left a battle plan and put a leash on Rolo by ordering him to obey Shirley, but still

Like, Sunrise really said, "actually, things would have gone better if our main character had died three-quarters of the way through and been replaced by his civilian semi-girlfriend"

Critical Zero LuluShir Crumbs

After seeing THIS, of course I had to get my hands on Critical Zero to see if there were any other LuluShir bits 😂 Thanks to @nicerbutnot2u for reminding me I had this in my drafts.

I have to say, I only checked out the stuff of Shirley-related episodes, but it was a worthy purchase. I wanted to share some of my favorite tidbits but since I don’t have the time to translate, I just grabbed the kanji with an app and let DeepL do its magic.

Episode 12

- それと並行しルルーシュとシャーリーの関係にもようやく変化が生じるが、それば悲劇の始まりだった。

At the same time, the relationship between Lelouch and Shirley finally changes, but that is just the beginning of the tragedy.

Keep reading

“Shirley’s feelings were one sided.”

Tell me you don’t know how basic storytelling works without telling me you don’t know how basic storytelling works 🙃 Lelouch is venting his feelings of loss to a now amnesia having Shirley and it immediately clicks in her mind that he is talking about a person he was in love with.

“I don’t know.” Doesn’t detract from this at all. At first I thought it was just added in for extra angst, but now I’m thinking this part of the dialogue is just as loaded as the last. “Right now, I don’t know anymore.” this almost sounds as if prior to the mess with Zero and Mao, he knew he had growing feelings for her. But now he’s so numb inside (rewatch the scene and just look at how lifeless he seems, especially the eyes!) that he doesn’t know how he feels anymore. If Mao’s arc wasn’t obvious enough for you, R2 says hello. Is it unusual for Lelouch to be devastated by the death of someone he cares about? No, but it is unusual for him to change his plans and mercilessly slaughter a group of people he collectively deems responsible for her death (even saying he’ll bring back the corpse of her killer to her as a gift, yandere much?).

Both times their partings were filled with so much emotion, this part got me good 😭 Shirley intuitively knew what was coming, and she would rather live with the memory of her father’s death at the hands of the man she loved than forget about Lelouch completely. That is how much she loves him. And Shirley means so much to Lelouch, he says himself that her smile saved him every day. She gives him peace amongst his brutal war against Brittannia. But Lelouch would rather her not suffer even if it means he loses his connection with her. 

Her death scene is just as impactful in showing how much they care for each other, and is also a direct parallel to R1 when Shirley loses her memories. It is heavily implied that after they die they will both be reborn and find each other again. They even have their own love song. In this life they couldn’t be together because of the war with Brittannia, but in the next life….

The biggest LuluShir tragedy is that both Shirley and Lelouch only notice they have feelings for each other when they think they've lost the other.

Shirley only seems to notice and embrace her feelings after she mistakenly thinks Lelouch might be dating Kallen:

And Lelouch only notices after he accidentally gets her father killed and realizes he needs to give up on her if he wants her to be safe:

It's no wonder that finally acting on his feelings for Shirley is at the very forefront of Lelouch's ideal world, as shown in the special story published in Newtype 2008:

I suddenly remembered something I had kept in my breast pocket. That's right, these must have found their way to me precisely for this very moment. "Hey, Shirley..." "Hm? What is it?” "What do you think of classical music?" "Huh? Well, not much, really. I've never been particularly interested in it." "I just happened to have some tickets for a concert, if you'd like to come." "Huh?! You mean, you want to go with m—me?" "Yes, I want to go with you."

The fact that in Lelouch's vision — the world that CC herself confirms is Lelouch's dream and the way he desperately wanted his world to look like — he does a role-reversal so he can be the one to ask Shirley out to that classical concert is both, really sweet and really sad.

If only Lelouch had realized how happy he was at Ashford before, that classical concert could have been the start of his relationship with Shirley. But that's not what fate had in store for them, and Lelouch regretted it so badly that he wanted to do it all over again.

I'm still reviewing Code Geass during my spare time, and let me tell you how a lot of small details really went over my head back when I first saw it a decade ago.

For instance, this quote.

I'M SORRY? WHAT?!

I genuinely thought Gilbert G.P. Guilford is just another guy who can't get girls or be bothered to look at them, because he's just too focused on his princess. But then, Cornelia said this in R1 Episode 10 (Guren Dances).

I made it my day's mission to review fanfictions and discussion boards, but I haven't encountered any that included this small detail.

GILBERT G.P. GUILFORD HAS WOMEN. NOT WOMAN. WOMEN.

It's so easy to forget that he's actually a healthy man in his late twenties. Plus, he's Britannian. He literally lives in a country that has an Emperor with so many wives, we get all these princes and princesses, who- when lined up together- looks like a complete color spectrum.

We should probably quit writing Guilford as a virginal knight.